Week 42 – More on convention swag
Whew. When grades are due, all my other responsibilities take the back burner for a few days. Forgive the lateness of this posting.
Last week, I posted about my experience at the National JEA/NSPA high school journalism conference held in Portland, and about how, while I find conferences invigorating and come away with many new ideas, I don’t like what our “conference culture” has morphed into – loads of freebee giveaways, flashily designed to attract attention and then destined for the garbage can upon arrival back home.
I managed to leave this conference with very little in tow beyond a T-shirt (always useful), a new totebag that was my “adviser gift bag,” loads of convention flyers/informational handouts, and some pens that will eventually run out of ink and have to be thrown away.
Well, my mom read last week’s blog post, and boy did she have some ironic news to share with me. While I spent last week’s 40thannual Earth Day teaching, as usual, Mom was able to spend part of her day volunteering in Washington at the Joint-Base Lewis McChord Earth Day celebration. I grew up living close to this military base, as my papa (Mom’s dad) is retired from the air force. Mom now staffs a table at the Earth Day fair as part of her volunteer work with Wolf Haven, a nonprofit that rehabilitates wolves and educates the public about wolves’ important role in our ecosystems.
Anyway, long story short, Mom came home from the Earth Day fair with her own swag bag (and an extra one for me, knowing this sort of thing is right up my alley). When my parents visited last weekend, we dove into the bag and had a good laugh about what came out. Here’s the breakdown:
Canvas "goody" bag from Earth Day fair.
Some of the Earth Day favors from inside the gift bag.
The Good
- Canvas tote bag made from 85% recycled cotton
- Seed packets containing both flowers and herbs. Seed packet paper is 100% post-consumer recycled paper with soy inks.
- Cotton T-shirt
- Wooden pencil
- Paper bookmark
- A journal that appears to be made from recycled paper. Unfortunately, the journal comes with a disposable plastic pen.
The Bad
- Plastic dustpan that says “clean the environment”
- Plastic ice scraper made from 100% recycled plastic
- Plastic ruler made from recycled soft drink bottles
- Plastic coffee mug. Outer shell is made from 25% recycled denim and 75% post-industrial plastic. Inner shell is made from new plastic.
The Ugly
- Foam toy shaped like either a garbage can or a recycling bin, it’s hard to tell
- And (oh, the irony) a foam raindrop packaged in a plastic bag
Unnecessary plastic.
My reaction to this is mixed, ranging from a desire to laugh to momentary despondency and finally a renewed resolve to keep on keeping on, even if Earth Day fairs are giving away plastic wrapped in plastic.
We’ve come so far as a society. “Going green” is no longer a fringe movement; it’s something so mainstream, in fact, that this military base near where I grew up now hosts an annual Earth Day event. The fact that environmentalists are no longer considered tree-hugging wackos, but rather intelligent people with a knowledge of science and a desire to keep the earth thriving is a victory in itself.
At the same time, we have a ways to go. Somehow, we have to get over our love of “stuff,” especially stuff no one wants, needs, or uses for more than 5 minutes. Seriously, if anything had ever been designed as throwaway, it’s these little foam toys. They are too firm to be used as stress balls. I suppose if we had kids, they could become children’s toys, but how long are these going to occupy a child’s attention?
I want to be clear that I’m not condemning the Joint Base Earth Day event, nor am I suggesting this swag bag is an isolated incident. My point, in fact, is exactly the opposite – this sort of thing happens all across the country every day at every fair, convention, or conference a person can attend.
I don’t know the solution to this problem other than continued grassroots activism. The more people start to understand how truly unnecessary all of this plastic junk is, the closer we are to a day when we can leave any convention – earth day, journalism, or otherwise – with no garbage in tow.
Week 41 – The trouble with conventions …
Last Thursday through Sunday, I was in Portland with a group of high schoolers for the JEA/NSPA National Convention (it’s a convention for student journalists and high school newspaper advisers). We’ve been planning for this convention for months, and with it came all the typical convention “stuff” – hotel arrangements, eating arrangements, and the ubiquitous convention flair that is so a part of our culture. My experience at this convention, which was really no different from any other such gathering, got me to thinking about how truly peculiar are some aspects of this tradition. And though the convention took place in one of the country’s greenest cities, much was to be desired from an environmental standpoint.
When we arrived at the Oregon Convention Center, we made our way to the registration desk, which was all the way at the back of a room the size of a football field. To get to the check-in desk, we had to wind our way through booth after booth of vendors wrangling for our attention. It was no easy task keeping a group of seven high schoolers focused through this gauntlet, let me tell you. After checking in, we each received a name tag – a piece of paper enclosed in a plastic protector – and a convention lanyard. Then I, as the adviser, was given a gift bag – a neat black and orange tote bag emblazoned with “Yearbook It!” Of course, the Jostens yearbook company logo also makes an appearance on the bag, because in the world of student publications, yearbooks are where the money is at. Nevermind that I am a newspaper adviser….
The bag was stuffed full of the usual – coupons, flyers, brocheres, pens, fake tattoos, a rubber band bracelet, a convention program, etc. Most of this stuff I can use, and most of what I can’t use was easily recyclable, but still – I don’t really need a rubber band bracelet or a fake tattoo, do I?
The vendors aimed at the students were much, much more blatant. The students didn’t get gift bags, but by the end of the convention, they might as well have. One booth was giving out lime green reusable grocery bags (neat!), and by the end of the day Friday, I’m pretty sure that each of the 5,000 attendees was carrying a bright green bag around. They stuffed the bags with free flair from other vendors. Some of the giveaways were neat (metal backpack buttons), others downright ridiculous – fake plastic press badges featuring a photo of the student, plastic glow sticks, or light-up guitar pins (what do guitars have to do with journalism, again?). Other typical items were given out, including tons of pens and candy.
I’ve been to many of these events – most of us have – and this particular convention wasn’t worse or better than all the others I’ve attended. I’m not pointing fingers at this convention, but rather at convention rituals in general.
Because really, it’s necessary to ask ourselves how our educational gatherings reached this point. These types of events are so embedded in our culture that it’s hard to recognize them as absurd, but seriously – why do I/we need to be bribed with free plastic crap in order to learn something new in a field we’re interested in? I paid $95 to attend this convention, plus food, hotel, and transportation costs, and I signed up to go because I wanted the opportunity to learn cutting-edge information in my field. I did not sign up for the free goodies that go along with the classes I paid to take.
One side of me, the environmentalist, feels annoyed at all the waste so unnecessarily generated by the cheap plastic giveaways these companies spend thousands of dollars on. The other part of me, the well-trained consumer, understands the pull of freebees. After all, why pay for something when you can get it for free? Any teacher will tell you that these types of events are like hitting the pen/pencil jackpot – load up on free writing implements, and your classroom is stocked for a year.
The point here is that our love of cheap junk runs deep, and we need to extricate ourselves from this web. How much better would it have been, for example, for all the vendors to have spent their promotional money on causes that matter – clean drinking water for all, food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless? The trash problem is not just a matter of reducing our dependence on overpackaging. It’s also about creating a willingness to invest in things that matter, rather than coveting throwaway goods.
Week 40 – How does your garden grow?
My new garden is growing! Gardening is one of a few activities that make me feel especially “green,” mostly because the entire process involves getting my hands in dirt itself. If you recall, we put in a garden in our previous rental house last April, building raised beds and hauling 2 yards of dirt, until I had four garden beds waiting to be filled. While I’ve grown up with gardens my whole life, last year’s garden was my very first real garden – beyond containers and pots, that is. Our plants grew remarkably well, so much so that one of the few sad things about leaving our old house behind and moving into our new place was having to let fall plants like tomatoes, gourds, and pumpkins go to waste.
We were left with two options – leave the beds at the rental, intact, or shovel out the dirt and move the beds. Well, we decided we hadn’t built these beds for nothing, so I shoveled those 2 yards of dirt back out and we moved our 4 raised beds in a U-Haul. It was a giant pain, but I’m so glad we did it. (Now, of course, I thinking ahead to the moment when we buy a house and I have to decide whether or not to move the beds one final time).
Over Spring Break, Mom and I shoveled another 2 yards of soil and positioned these beds in a full-sun spot in our yard. Here’s the finished result:
Facing out the back of our house toward our shed - 4 garden beds waiting to be filled!
Toward the back left of the photo, you might be able to see something I’m pretty excited about. The property came with a ready-made gardening area. Problem is, the full thing doesn’t get sun all day long. Nevertheless, we turned over all the soil, and we’re going to keep our fingers crossed that the corn and pumpkins I plant get just enough sun to produce. We also installed a pea trellis, so I can grow my most favorite vegetables, snow peas.
The pea trellis.
The inside of the house has turned into a little plant factory, as all my veggies and flowers get a head start before being planted in the ground. I’ve discovered this year that starting plants indoors and recycling go hand in hand. Take this neat greenhouse contraption, for example (I found this idea in a magazine and love it) – a used plastic chicken container (recyclable # 5 plastic). An empty egg carton was cut in half and now has citrus seeds started in it. Cool, huh?
An empty chicken container and part of an egg carton double as a makeshift greenhouse.
In all, here’s what we’re growing this year: Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, corn, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumber, carrots, radishes, loofas, horseradish, onions, potatoes, strawberries, and some assorted herbs and flowers. This is, by the way, inside of a tiny little town lot. I’ll update with pictures as the garden grows, but already, seeds are sprouting both inside and out.
Week 39 – Misadventures with raw milk
During my Spring Break, Mom came down to Oregon and we played in the kitchen, garden, and craft room, experimenting with things all relating back to the Green Garbage Project and a more eco-friendly lifestyle. One of the things I was anxious to try during my week off was pasteurizing raw milk/making cheese and butter and cream from this product.
Milk is one of those sticky areas in our garbage-free life for several reasons. First, I do maintain a vegetarian diet, albeit a lacto-ovo one, meaning I eat both eggs and dairy products. I get my eggs from a coworker whose treatment of chickens I can vouch for – they are free range and well-cared-for. I only buy organic milk. I often walk the line between vegetarianism and veganism, but as yet, I’ve not eliminated dairy/eggs from my diet. I maintain a vegetarian diet for animal rights reasons, so there is some cause for concern about how cows are treated in commercial milking operations. Because I currently drink milk, I would ideally like to find it from a local dairy, preferably one that bottles in glass and/or delivers to my doorstep.
Milk is tricky for another reason – it doesn’t exactly come in the most recyclable of packaging. Sure, the plastic jugs can be recycled, but by now we know that recycling plastic is really “downcycling it” – plastic can only be melted down and reused so many times before it is simply garbage. Additionally, because plastic milk jugs are often not recycled, they can end up in the natural environment causing all sorts of harm. Paper/cardboard milk cartons, on the other hand, cause their own set of recycling problems. They are often considered contaminants in the waste stream, being constructed of composite materials (paper and plastic), and because the paperboard is treated with a wax or plastic to prevent the liquid from breaking down the carton.
From a garbage-free standpoint, giving up milk in favor of soy, rice, or almond milk doesn’t make much sense, because these products come packaged either in aseptic containers or cartons similar to milk cartons. Ideally, then, I could buy milk in glass bottles that can be reused over and over again.
Since I cannot get milk delivered to my door, I had to go searching for it. I ran across a dairy in my own town that sells gallons of raw milk for $7.50. A steep price, but I decided to pay it and give the raw milk a try. I ended up paying $9.50 for this gallon of milk, because my first purchase required a $2 bottle deposit. The milk was beautiful, though, and smelled fresh. A layer of cream a good four inches thick sat on the top.
Raw milk fresh from a local farmer.
I spent a good deal of time doing research on raw milk consumption, and coincidentally, I ran across this article detailing the pro and con raw milk arguments just before I purchased it. I have nothing more to add to this article other than to say that handling anything that potentially has come into contact with e. coli must be done carefully. We decided that, to be on the safe side, we would pasteurize our raw milk. Why pasteurize raw milk when I can just buy already pasteurized milk in the grocery store? Two reasons: One, grocery store milk doesn’t come in glass bottles. And two, grocery store milk is almost always ultra pasteurized – heated to a high temperature of 192-212 degrees (info from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company). Ultra pasteurized milk cannot be used for cheesemaking – in order to make cheese, milk needs to be pasteurized at around 160-174 degrees. Since one of our goals was cheesemaking, and we couldn’t find regular (as opposed to ultra) pasteurized milk, we decided to try it ourselves.
The instructions for home pasteurization are pretty simple, at least on the surface – heat milk to 145 degrees Fahrenheit, hold at this temperature for 30 minutes, then rapidly cool to 40 degrees in a sink of ice water. These instructions come from numerous sources including Joy of Cooking, Mother Earth News, and the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. Well, we gave this a shot and decided the process is harder than it sounds. We put the milk in a double boiler contraption and got it to 145 with no problem – but holding the temperature at 145 for a half hour is no easy feat. All said, this process took more like a hour, including time it took for the milk to heat up.
Bring the milk to 145 degrees on the stove.
Then, we put the pot of milk in an ice bath. Maybe we didn’t have enough ice in the sink, or who knows what, but it took forever for our milk to cool down – so long that it would have cooled faster if we had just placed it in the fridge. We never did get the milk to cool down to the required 40 degrees, and after 45 minutes of stirring the pot of milk in the sink, we washed it down the drain. The last thing I want to do is risk my health for the sake of milk in glass bottles.
So, my conclusions are unfortunate – raw milk is not an option for me. Even if I could cool the milk faster, it still took a while to heat and hold at temperature – too long to be practical on a regular basis, anyway.
If anyone out there has any experience with raw milk, I’d love to hear your take on it.