This past winter, I took out most of my huge hydrangeas – don’t worry, if you are like my wife and are concerned that I killed these 7 foot plants – they were transplanted to a shady garden in Berkeley and are doing quite well.  In their place were planted a number of low water plants, things like Lavender, Heliochrysum, Salvia, Nepeta, and grasses like Berkeley Sedge, Korean Feather grass, and Rubrum.  In the coming weeks I will photograph these and include them here.  Already the water reduction has been significant.  

Locally, I’m seeing many people changing out landscaping – opting for lower water plants that are more appropriate for our climate.  I’ve seen front yard gardens popping up, entire lawns being taken out, low water ground cover going into planting strips – especially in areas between the sidewalks and streets, and mulch being spread everywhere.  While we received more rain this year than last, the difference was minimal, and more water conservation needs to happen.

One of my favorite sites lately is seeing succulents cropping up in places formerly reserved for water thirsty, and labor intensive flowers.  Check out the planter boxes outside the stores at Bay Street in Emeryville, or hanging planters in San Francisco traffic islands.  The best thing about succulents in pots and planters, is they don’t need to be watered everyday.  Pots heat up, and to keep flowers alive, it takes a lot of water, and more importantly watering – with succulents, you only have to remember once a week or so – less water, less work.

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“My green bin is full of flies.  What are we doing wrong?”

Nothing.  Putting food scraps in the greens bin is doing a huge amount to divert waste from the landfill.  If you look at the weight of the items you used to put in the garbage, food scraps comes up high on the list.  While you’re not doing anything wrong, you can do even more right, and get rid of the flies as an added bonus.

First things first – green bins aren’t just for food scraps!  If you had been putting just food scraps in your garbage, you’d have had flies too.  What you need is more stuff that will decompose into compost, but stuff that isn’t fly food.  If you layer in the following items, your problem will go away:

• Garden clippings – anything from your yard – dead plants, cuttings, moldy pumpkins, even un-painted un-treated wood scraps (old bits of 2x4s)
• Food soiled paper – pizza boxes are great, but you can also put in milk cartons, take-out food containers (yes even those that feel like they have a wax coating inside – chinese food boxes), the paper that separates the cheese slices, the paper bag your bread came in, even cereal boxes.
• Shredded paper – it’s actually torn too thin to recycle, but it’s a great addition to a green’s bin or compost pile.
• Paper towels and tissues – if you have your compost container on your kitchen counter, put all these items in it instead of the garbage – they decompose very quickly, and do a lot to keep down the flies.  Tip: you know when your kitchen pail is getting too full and you want to jamb all the stuff down but don’t want to stick your hand in – do it with the dirty tissue or paper towel then next time you’ve used one.
• And, try to keep your pails out of the sun – your garbage pails will smell better in the shade too (especially if you have Fido’s daily gifts in there).

If all these things go into your green bin, and you are recycling everything you can, you’ll be surprised how little is left for the garbage.  At my kids’ elementary school, the green bins have been put to great use daily, but are only picked up once per week – but no smell and no flies.  How?  They custodian hoses them out once in a while, but adding leaves in Fall, and paper towels from the school bathrooms each day after lunch, has served to keep away the odors and flies.  And, no, they don’t use those expensive compost-able plastic bags – leaves, paper towels and pizza boxed are all you need. 

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My sister gets all the credit for this one – tucked inside a box of random thank you gifts was this small innocent plastic scraper.  Looking at it, I first thought a dumb idea, a waste of plastic – at best, a cheap gimick.  Boy was I wrong.  The following day when we had frying pans coated with eggs and burnt potatoes, I became a believer.  

Every once a while you see a product that makes you think – “Duh, of course” – sort of a modern wheel moment of caveman era.  This incredibly simple piece of plastic, with different curves on each corner, make ridiculously fast work of removing gunk off pans.  It wiped off the mess faster than any Brillo or SOS pad would have done.  And the best part – it looked exactly the same when it was done [picture for yourself a scouring pad filled with egg and burnt grease].  Next day, same thing – still good as new.  I can’t imagine you’ll ever need to replace it – until of course, you drop it down the disposal by accident.  

So while I’m going around thinking I’ve made the greatest discovery for the kitchen, I learn from a friend that he’s had one in his backpacking camp stove set for almost a decade.  You simply must get one of these – keep it in the kitchen, get a second for your camping stuff, and never buy soap encrusted steel wool again (or, almost never).  

So how much?  I saw a set of 3 on eBay for $4 – just Google “kitchen scraper.”  Backpacking stores sell them for about $3.  Ace Hardware has them at $2 for two.  And here’s the low-tech even greener option – reuse an old credit card – same effect, just not as grippy, and without different cut-out corners.  And, there’s the potential for identity theft by people who come into your kitchen and clean your pots.

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Water – not the flat stuff, but sparkling, soda, fizzy, bubbly water. We drink a lot of it at my house, so last year I researched greener options to stop bringing all those plastic bottles into the house. I wrote about my find last summer and want to give an update. The solution was a home sparkling water maker from SodaStream. It’s a small machine that holds a canister of CO2 – you fill their specially designed bottles up with tap water, pump the handle a few times – instant sparkling water. Tastes great. But is it really the same as … yes, it is, it’s carbonated water.

Last week I counted how much sparkling water we drank in my household – 18 liters. That’s a lot of bottles saved, true, but it’s also a lot of money in my pocket, and no lugging cases of sparkling water in the house.

So what’s the catch? Not much – you buy this machine ($80-225 depending on the model), about the size of a coffee maker. It comes with two CO2 cartridges – each one seems to last about a month in my house. When we have two empty cartridges, you log onto the website, order two replacements ($30 total). Then you leave your empties on your doorstep and a few days later, they’ve dropped off two full ones. The part I like the best is that the cartridges are re-filled and reused. About the only thing that gets thrown out is small protective plastic cap, almost nothing in the landfill, nothing that needs to be recycled.

Soda drinker? The company also has mixes to make your own soda. Personally I used to drink a lot of Snapple – with the sparkling water always available, I find I drink it instead – even less bottles, less money, and a few less calories to boot.

http://www.sodastreamusa.com

Now available at Williams Sonoma too – check out their website – 44 people have reviewed the gadget. The average of all reviews is 5 stars out of 5 – I’d have to agree!

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