From the Bluestockings site:
Wednesday, July 2nd @ 7PM – Free
Reading: Kellogg & Pettigrew “Toolbox for Sustainable City Living”
Please join co-founders of the Rhizome Collective for a reading from their book “Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide,” and in a discussion of the design of autonomous urban communities utilizing simple techniques such as rainwater harvesting, bioremediation, and worm composting.
Photo of the Rhizome entrance from the Collective’s Web site.
This week in trash news:
Pixar still via the LATimes
At the Nairobi Giraffe Center, it isn’t just the endangered Rothschild Giraffes that get fed, a healthy population of wort hogs lives on the reserve. It’s a bit far from the National Park, but after catching wind of the free food scheme, the wort hogs have taken up permanent residence. No food waste at the Center!
It doesn’t take a tall fence to keep giraffes in, their knees prevent them from being able to step OVER anything.
Among the fun facts I picked up on this only tangentially trash-related afternoon: giraffes sleep only half an hour a day, standing up with their eyes open.
Wort hogs and giraffes hang out in the real world, as well. Giraffes have great eyesight and can see danger coming. Wort hogs can’t see anything if its not right in front of their faces, but can smell trouble coming that giraffes might not see. A happy pairing.
Next week, back to the wonkier side of trash.
Ugh. I took some hilarious photos of wort hogs eating up fallen food pellets at the Nairobi Giraffe Center. Sadly, I don’t have the connection speed to upload them here. Sorry, trashies, I’ll be home this weekend and promise to make up for lost time garblogging.
A promising sight upon entering a supermarket this afternoon: lots of reusable bags. At the checkout counter there was an even larger display. Often when travelling I get all peeved and self-righteous about diesal fumes and the lack of recycling. It’s great to see a model example from Africa.
The trash-related news is grim today. In Guatemala, a landslide at a dump killed four trash pickers. For more about the lives of these people, check out the inspirational documentary Recycled Lives.
What better way to get back at the FBI for storming and trashing your home than to create a public art expo out of the trash they left behind?
[Apologies for the recent lapse in posts. I’m in Kenya this week and while the internet connection at the hotel is quick, my mind at the end of a long day of meetings is not!]
Brooklynites, have I got a Friday night suggestion for you: Garbageland author Elizabeth Royte is reading from her new book at the Community Book Store in Park Slope! Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is the title and 7:30 is the time. Expect to laugh and learn from the absurdity. Those far from the better borough can go out and get the book from a local bookshop.
The Sundance Channel is having a contest to find the next big green idea. You can vote for innovations such as S A Schimmel Gold’s portraits made of recycled junk mail by clicking here.
As you may recall, students at Virgina Tech recently removed trays from their cafeteria to see if they could reduce the amount of food waste they produced. The results, as reported by the fabulous garblog Wasted Food, are in and the news is good: a 29% reduction! Andy Sarjahani, VT’s dietetic intern, was kind enough to share this presentation on the study (please seek his permission directly before using any part of it) and to answer a few questions here. Bon appetit!
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everydaytrash: What sparked the food waste inquiry at Virginia Tech?
Sarjahani: This was my final project for my Virginia Tech dietetic internship for my “Food Service” segment of the internship. VT is seeking to become more sustainable while avoiding the notorious road of “green-washing” that has become so very common since this whole movement was triggered.
The project more or less mushroomed into this whole quixotic adventure throughout the 6 weeks it took to organize and implement. Initially, VT Dining wanted to phase out all of its styrofoam/plastic “to-go” dishware in favor of their compostable counterparts. Obviously, it doesn’t make much sense for one to dish out the extra money for compostables if one does not plan to compost them! So, the next step was to find a way to get all of this composted. I then had the blessing of crossing paths with PME Compost, LLC, a local composting facility that was looking to expand its business. PME sought to pursue a truly large-scale operation and this was/is ideal for VT Dining…and incredibly timely to say the least. I wanted to give PME an idea of how much compostable waste they’d be dealing with per certification codes and other bureacratic riff-raff so I decided the only true way to attain an inkling of accuracy from such a gargantuan food-service operation was to choose the facility with the largest waste (explained in the attached PowerPoint) and go to work. It became quite apparent to me that a beautiful opportunity was given to me: obtain stats to ignite the commencement of a composting initiative while simultaneously forging an food waste advocacy campaign.
I have an intense passion for all things sustainability – namely food systems, as that’s where I’ve elected to hone my professional skills – and this proved to be quite a serendipitous connection.
everydaytrash: What have you found so far (and do you think its representative of campuses across the country)?
Sarjahani: I’ll list them bulleted-point style as that will hopefully present some clarity between the variance of the issues at hand.
everydaytrash: What’s next?
Sarjahani: I am currently apprenticed on a grass-based, sustainable livestock farm in upstate New York – Sap Bush Hollow Farm and working with one of the farm’s partners, Shannon Hayes, PhD (Sustainable Agriculture/Community Development) to create awareness in the area of sustainable agriculture. I am also pursuing the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Society Policy Fellowship in an effort to obtain funding to further advocate for two issues very close to my heart:
1) Food waste and its effects on hunger, the environment, and society
2) The dire need to re-connect with our food and where it comes from and the tremendous need for us young folks to enter the profession of farming if we are to have food security.
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P.S. I realize it’s Wednesday, but didn’t want to loose the alliterative effect!
I discovered Lou’s Upcycles on ETSY when Lou commented on an everydaytrash post last week. Someone buy this bag quick, because I really don’t need another messenger bag and I really, really want this one! If I can maintain the restraint, I’ll take a stab at the DIY version later this summer.
My friend Jenny in Italy sent me this link to a film called Biùtiful Cauntri, an Italian trash documentary. We’re still searching for a subtitled version for those of us who need them. Jenny sent this note after a recent trip to the front lines of the trash war:
“The situation in the area around Naples is still devastating, this is what this documetantary talks about. The mafia has been dumping toxic waste into farm land for over 14 years, what we are seeing in the papers isn’t news to the neapolitans.”
everydaytrash 
