Category: Sustainability

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A tool to see the energy profile of your local electrical utility

I found a neat tool from the EPA that shows the energy sources that your local electricity is generated from.

California is looking pretty good! J and I do buy a solar/wind mix, but it’s nice to know that even the average user gets 1/3 renewable.

Our electricity provider, PG&E, has a really nice website. It has plots of our energy usage by hour (wow, such resolution!) and compares our overall usage to similar homes in the area. You can totally see those days when it was too hot to go without air conditioning, ’cause the energy usage goes waaaaay up. It is also really easy to switch to different billing plans (tiered, energy at night is super cheap, etc) and to buy renewable energy. It’s a very fun website 🙂

This was that heat wave day last summer. We used air conditioning that night, as you can see. You can also see when we were cooking brunch (we have an electric stove).
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Darning

I have a pair of not super high quality socks that were getting major holes in them. (Oddly, the holes were under the ball of my foot…) I didn’t actually intend to repair them – they’re definitely not worth it – but in the end couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. At least I got to practice my darning skills!

Hole on the left sock, darn on the right. The thread that I used was among my maternal grandmother’s crafting supplies. It is specifically meant for darning and matches really well! Wow!

A darn is basically a little patch of woven material. You sew back and forth over a hole, then go back and forth the other direction, running your thread over and under the crosswise threads. See this post for detailed instructions.

The blogger who runs that site seems very into obvious patching and the distressed look. For example, see this patch, where he specifically says to not sew too carefully. You wouldn’t want it to look good or anything. He’s going to look like a hobo one day – and I probably will also…

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Making a rag rug

Rag rugs are a great way to reuse clothing that is too worn to wear, repair, or donate. As my mom says, you can always have more rugs! Basically you tear or cut the garments and fabric into strips, then weave, knit, or crochet the strips into a rug. Super easy!

This is a great use for clothes that are too worn to patch and too worn to donate. Any material (cotton, polyester, etc) and any type of cloth (woven, knit) can be used. However, I try to use a single material and type of cloth within a rug. Knits and wovens in particular behave differently.

Cutting up a childhood dress.

There are a ton of rug-making methods:

A woven way

A braided way (you can do the same technique using an n-strand braid)

A knit way (using linen stitch)

Crocheting

This is definitely an accessible craft. For the simplest method (braiding), all you need is rag strips! You should try it!

The finished rug! It is in-front-of-sink-sized. I plan to give it to Sibling A.

For the rug that I made, I used a child’s dress (pink flowered), a robotics t-shirt (turquoise), a scrap of single-knit cloth (pink), an old pajama shirt of Sibling A’s (light blue), and part of a fitted sheet (white with turquoise stripes). It ended up way more themed than expected. I’m used to rag rugs looking more mismatched, which is a nice look, too!

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American-made bedding options

My parents wanted new sheets, so, of course, I wanted them to buy the most sustainable option! So I ended up doing a ton of market research to find the best option. Here is the answer:

Native Organic

They sell sheets, bath towels, kitchen towels, and aprons. The cotton is organically grown in the US (in Texas). The fiber is milled, spun, and woven in a historical water-powered mill in Mexico (source). Their products are colored through a combination of low-impact dyes and color-grown cotton. The prices are on par with other mid-tier bed and bath products not made sustainably and not made in the US (so I hope that Native Organic makes a profit!).

My parents went with Coyuchi, not a bad choice. They are also organic and, I believe, use low-impact dyes, but their products are mostly made in India (and, surprisingly, are more expensive). The balance was swayed in Coyuchi’s favor because they have sateen sheets in white (the closest Native Organic has is “natural”).

Red Land Cotton is another good option, although I know less about it. They grow their cotton in the US (in Alabama), and make all their products in the US. Their cotton is not certified organic, but the About Us page states that they dry-farm the cotton (no irrigation!) and use sustainable practices.

On a similar note, KellyGreenOrganic and Holy Lamb Organics are cool sustainable bedding companies. They sell mattresses, pillows, sheets, blankets, other home goods, and craft materials. DIY Natural Bedding is the mecca for bedding-related craft materials. They are amazing!! Most if not all of these companies’ materials are organic and sustainably sourced, and made in the US.

Next time you need to buy bedding, support one of these amazing companies! They appreciate it 🙂

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A step forward in haircare

I only wash my hair with water (and scrubbing!), which works well with soft water. If you have hard water, though, dissolved minerals bind to sebum in your hair to form a weird sticky white residue. Super unpleasant! It makes your hair oddly stiff. The only solution I’d found in the past was to occasionally (maybe once a month) wash with normal shampoo.

But I just had a breakthrough! Some people claim that washing with cold or cool water keeps your hair nicer (for unknown reasons). Between this and the fact that cold hard water in particular should have fewer dissolved minerals, I decided to try washing my hair with cold water (but take an otherwise hot shower). I wash my hair as the water is warming up.

It works amazingly well! The cold water even reversed previous mineral buildup. My hair is silky and soft without being greasy. It’s not stiff, it’s not sticky. Even my skeptical mom says that it feels nice!

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Speaking of food waste…

If you have food that’s going to go bad or that you think you won’t use, what do you do with it?

If you want to eat the food yourself:

  • Eat it before it goes bad, quick!
  • Ignore expiration dates! They are unregulated except on medication and baby food (and even then don’t mean much. 90% of medications retain nearly their entire efficacy 10 years after the expiration date. Even the military ignores expiration dates to save loads of money!). If it looks fine, smells fine, and, finally, tastes fine, then it is probably fine.
  • Freeze it. Many things can be frozen without harm to their taste or texture. This includes raw and cooked meat, purportedly hard cheeses (never tried this myself!), tomato sauce, broth, cooked beans, whole and sliced bread and other baked goods, dry goods (flour, dry beans, spices, etc if you’re worried about rancidity or loss of flavor), and more! Many veggies can be blanched and then frozen.
  • Preserve it. There are many preservation methods to try! You can can, dehydrate, salt, ferment, smoke, or pickle. For example, turn milk into kefir or yogurt. Ferment cabbage into kimchi or sauerkraut. Smoke fish. Make jam.

If you are sick and tired of a particular food:

  • Take it to work to share with colleagues! Alternatively, share with friends and neighbors. This works especially well if you’re trying to get rid of desserts and snack foods.
  • On a similar note, have a potluck.
  • Give it away! You can do this on Freecycle or Craigslist (there is an area for free things under the sale section). There is also Olio, a food-sharing app for smart phones, soon to have a web app as well. Unfortunately, it isn’t as widely-used as Freecycle and Craigslist. I believe Olio is European in origin, so it is widespread in Europe. Amazingly, people also use it in Northern California! Lucky!
  • Feed it to pets. My grandparents always fed their cats table scraps.
  • Feed it to animals you’re going to eat (e.g. pigs or chickens).
  • Feed it to wild animals. Although not good to do frequently, at least some living being gets to eat it.
  • Compost it and use the compost to grow something else!
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Wasted!

There’s a new food waste documentary out! It’s called Wasted! and features Anthony Bourdain, a food show celebrity who apparently has a cult following.

The documentary is well-produced and covers familiar as well as unfamiliar ground. I’d say that the overall message is familiar, but the details and anecdotes are interesting and illuminating.

Did you know that people in Seoul, South Korea, pay by weight to throw away their food waste? And Japan has a food-waste-saving pig-feeding operation. That’s pretty neat! Japanese pork producers have been experimenting with what combinations of types of food waste (e.g. veggies and fruits, but no grain) to feed pigs to get the best flavor.

And it takes about 25 years for a head of lettuce to decompose in a landfill D: Not neat. So don’t waste food! If you’re not going to eat it, give it away or feed it to a pet. And make sure to take advantage of composting in your area! If you have a yard, start a compost pile. Maybe your city collects compost, maybe there’s a community garden near you that has a compost pile. Lots of options! Some people even keep worm bins in their apartments.

You can rent the documentary various places online. See the website for details!

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Feijoas and chickens

The other day, J and I took a trip to pick up free fruit.

Free pineapple guavas (feijoas) from someone on Freecycle! The fruits have an amazingly fruity, floral smell that’s apparently due to (naturally-occurring) methyl benzoate.

I’m not sure what I’ll use these for. Eating, of course, but they get overripe fast. I was thinking of making cobbler or drying some. Any other suggestions?

On the way to pick the feijoas up, we saw chickens!!! I guess zoning allows them in this area.

They weren’t scared of us at all. In fact, they walked up to us as if they were expecting treats.
The chickens had a ton of space. Definitely free-range, cage-free, and probably pretty happy. There were several different breeds, too. I wonder if any were heritage breeds?

During the trip, J and I stopped by Whole Foods to buy some stuff and to recycle some number 5 plastic through the Gimme 5 recycling program. Plastics are turned into plastic lumber and maybe into consumer products. They also recycle Brita filters!

Fancy coffee drink from Whole Foods.

We used the trip to go to our local Japanese grocery store, where we had dinner. I check out 99 Ranch’s and Nob Hill’s dumpsters on the way. Unfortunately, they both use compactors, so I couldn’t go diving.

Lastly, we stopped at Goodwill for more mason jars! I think we’re finally reaching the saturation point for prepared food storage. At this point, I’m attempting to get enough that we can store dry goods in jars too. It’ll make the kitchen cabinets a lot more organized.