DrawDown #6: Compost and Turbines for the Apocolypse
What a week, bookclub members. While authorities are separating migrant children from their parents in the U.S.A. then losing track of them, Congress deregulates banking just as we're bidding on houses in an over-heated market, and more, we won't postpone a book club meeting.
We hold a vague sense that composting and gun violence and climate change are connected. We can't explain it.
But grab a virtual plate - given the stress of the week, we're serving a comfort food favorite: veggie burgers and fries. Of course, I pulled this recipe from Bon Appetit yesterday afternoon, ingredient-shopped, then chopped and assembled the mix until 1:00AM. B.A. recipes seduce with a great photo, then pull you in with prep-cook step after step. But it's done - indulge!
I. Review
II. Composting (page 62)
III. Wind Turbines (page 2)
IV. Next Meeting
I. Review (Invest in Tree Farms, We're Bullish on Paper)
Last week we reviewed Household Recycling (page 158) and Conservation Agriculture (page 62.) And it reminded us of headlines: China stopped taking our plastic in January and it's piling up in places like Oregon and ... the Northeast.
On the bright side: trash-sorting robots are in use! In both Denmark at the Dong corporation (who can forget that name) and in Oregon, and more links to sort-bots at the bottom of this post.
Actor Adrienne Grenier of Brooklyn is importing a #stopsucking trend from Malibu, California attempting to outlaw plastic straws through his "Lonely Whale" nonprofit. The Brooklyn Eagle that reported on Grenier showed a picture of a beached whale's 64 pounds of plastic stomach contents (photo, above,) retrieved after the emaciated creature washed ashore in Spain in February.
For months at this house we've been diverting plastic from the recycling outflow to see how much we're using. (Truthfully we're looking for opportunities to patent a plastic-replacing product and profit from this bookclub.)
Here's what we sense: start a tree farm, because so much of this plastic today can be swapped with paper products, which are easier to recycle: 1) milk jugs for milk cartons 2) plastic yogurt tubs for paper tubs 2) produce bags for waxed paper bags (or reuseable string net bags) 3) plastic trays of pre-marinated salmon or pre-sliced mushrooms for cardboard trays.
(Untested assumption: paper is easier to recycle and less harmful to the environment than plastic. Is this correct?)
Also since last meeting, this writer had another eureka moment that involves: Electric Vehicles (E.V.), apartment-dwellers, and political candidates. We'll save that for next week.
Onward! Let's discuss this week's chapters.
II. Composting (page 62)
Odorless. Odorless is how this writer would describe the compost cans in households and the curb-dotting green compost bins seen in our home city San Francisco since 2009. So it was a surprise to find in this chapter that food waste and compostable matter that ends up in landfills -- and is never composted -- converts to harmful methane, which emits a signature pungence. And contributes more to global warming than CO2.
A Little History
"Organic matter matters." Around the first third of the last century, an Englishman and his wife were sent to India to "teach" the natives how to farm, but the natives schooled them.
Luckily Sir Albert Howard penned these techniques in a book now a regarded as highly, but less widely, than Jane Jacobs' "Death and Life of American Cities" or Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
Howard fought the establishment much of his life because it was a time of discoveries - two German scientists won separate Nobel prizes for their papers and advancements of synthetic fertilizer.
But Howard suspected something about organic fertilizer, compost, offered something synthetic fertilizer lacked, that boosted health specifically of plant roots. He couldn't pinpoint it at the time, but he was right: microbes in compost (and there are millions of microbes) move and deliver fertilizing agents through the soil, abetting both breakdown and growth, simultaneously.
"There are more microbes in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the planet."
Cities and Composting
New York City is just starting to compost, and still does not do so on a household-by-household level. They have a funny garbage system there - residents tie garbage up in plastic black bags and place it on sidewalks for collectors. Could they tie compost matter in a separate green plastic bag, and include that inside the encompassing black bag, presorted?
(
Speaking of New York, it regales a complicated history of its relationship with garbage. See this letter addressed to "New York Moms" reminding housewives not to throw trash out of apartment windows onto the street. Or read about NYC's free-roaming, trash-eating pigs that ate up organic waste, following professional rag-pickers who sorted recyclables like paper and textiles.)
Cities if you're not composting, please start. Or investigate if the endpoint of your waste is successfully teasing out organic matter from the rest of the recyclables and garbage. If it's not, get involved and make it happen!
III. Wind Turbines (page 2)
"Wind energy is at the crest of initiatives to address global warming in the next three decades, second only to refrigeration in total impact" said DrawDown authors.
(As this writer said last week, wind turbines is a subject I've been avoiding because I find their appearance, uninviting. What happened to the charm? The turbines of today spin blades taller than the Statue of Liberty that look to me like giant knives. Students - study industrial design. Wind and solar power is missing the form in "form follows function.")
This chapter brings back another of the common themes we're seeing - ramping up of fossil fuel use began around a century ago, but accelerated up in the 1940s. In other words: global warming is recent. So so recent. But it's here - the last 400 months meteorologists recorded higher-than-average average global temperature.
Windmills started as far back as 500 A.D. Persia, spread to Europe and were highly featured in what historians regard as an expedition that was shocking, even frightening, to attendees with its futuristic visions, the Chicago 1893 World's Fair. (Side note: enjoy a listen as historian Joanne Freeman and her colleagues talk about that fair at this episode of "Backstory" podcast "Shock of the New: The Legacy of the 1893 World's Fair".)
This is where we want to wrap the bookclub meeting up, and start to bullet point with quotes from the chapter:
Have a wonderful holiday weekend, we expect to see next week!
<- DrawDown #5: Is Recycling Worth It? | DrawDown #7: Walkable Cities, and Man Who Stopped The Desert ->
------------------
DrawDown #5: Is Recycling Worth It? offlinereport.net
Carton-plucking 'Clarke' brings robots into recycling: resource-recycling.com
We hold a vague sense that composting and gun violence and climate change are connected. We can't explain it.
But grab a virtual plate - given the stress of the week, we're serving a comfort food favorite: veggie burgers and fries. Of course, I pulled this recipe from Bon Appetit yesterday afternoon, ingredient-shopped, then chopped and assembled the mix until 1:00AM. B.A. recipes seduce with a great photo, then pull you in with prep-cook step after step. But it's done - indulge!I. Review
II. Composting (page 62)
III. Wind Turbines (page 2)
IV. Next Meeting
I. Review (Invest in Tree Farms, We're Bullish on Paper)
Last week we reviewed Household Recycling (page 158) and Conservation Agriculture (page 62.) And it reminded us of headlines: China stopped taking our plastic in January and it's piling up in places like Oregon and ... the Northeast.On the bright side: trash-sorting robots are in use! In both Denmark at the Dong corporation (who can forget that name) and in Oregon, and more links to sort-bots at the bottom of this post.
Actor Adrienne Grenier of Brooklyn is importing a #stopsucking trend from Malibu, California attempting to outlaw plastic straws through his "Lonely Whale" nonprofit. The Brooklyn Eagle that reported on Grenier showed a picture of a beached whale's 64 pounds of plastic stomach contents (photo, above,) retrieved after the emaciated creature washed ashore in Spain in February. For months at this house we've been diverting plastic from the recycling outflow to see how much we're using. (Truthfully we're looking for opportunities to patent a plastic-replacing product and profit from this bookclub.)
Here's what we sense: start a tree farm, because so much of this plastic today can be swapped with paper products, which are easier to recycle: 1) milk jugs for milk cartons 2) plastic yogurt tubs for paper tubs 2) produce bags for waxed paper bags (or reuseable string net bags) 3) plastic trays of pre-marinated salmon or pre-sliced mushrooms for cardboard trays.
(Untested assumption: paper is easier to recycle and less harmful to the environment than plastic. Is this correct?)
Also since last meeting, this writer had another eureka moment that involves: Electric Vehicles (E.V.), apartment-dwellers, and political candidates. We'll save that for next week.
Onward! Let's discuss this week's chapters.
II. Composting (page 62)
Odorless. Odorless is how this writer would describe the compost cans in households and the curb-dotting green compost bins seen in our home city San Francisco since 2009. So it was a surprise to find in this chapter that food waste and compostable matter that ends up in landfills -- and is never composted -- converts to harmful methane, which emits a signature pungence. And contributes more to global warming than CO2.
A Little History
"Organic matter matters." Around the first third of the last century, an Englishman and his wife were sent to India to "teach" the natives how to farm, but the natives schooled them.
Luckily Sir Albert Howard penned these techniques in a book now a regarded as highly, but less widely, than Jane Jacobs' "Death and Life of American Cities" or Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
Howard fought the establishment much of his life because it was a time of discoveries - two German scientists won separate Nobel prizes for their papers and advancements of synthetic fertilizer.
But Howard suspected something about organic fertilizer, compost, offered something synthetic fertilizer lacked, that boosted health specifically of plant roots. He couldn't pinpoint it at the time, but he was right: microbes in compost (and there are millions of microbes) move and deliver fertilizing agents through the soil, abetting both breakdown and growth, simultaneously.
"There are more microbes in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the planet."
Cities and Composting
New York City is just starting to compost, and still does not do so on a household-by-household level. They have a funny garbage system there - residents tie garbage up in plastic black bags and place it on sidewalks for collectors. Could they tie compost matter in a separate green plastic bag, and include that inside the encompassing black bag, presorted?
(
Speaking of New York, it regales a complicated history of its relationship with garbage. See this letter addressed to "New York Moms" reminding housewives not to throw trash out of apartment windows onto the street. Or read about NYC's free-roaming, trash-eating pigs that ate up organic waste, following professional rag-pickers who sorted recyclables like paper and textiles.)Cities if you're not composting, please start. Or investigate if the endpoint of your waste is successfully teasing out organic matter from the rest of the recyclables and garbage. If it's not, get involved and make it happen!
III. Wind Turbines (page 2)
"Wind energy is at the crest of initiatives to address global warming in the next three decades, second only to refrigeration in total impact" said DrawDown authors.
(As this writer said last week, wind turbines is a subject I've been avoiding because I find their appearance, uninviting. What happened to the charm? The turbines of today spin blades taller than the Statue of Liberty that look to me like giant knives. Students - study industrial design. Wind and solar power is missing the form in "form follows function.")
This chapter brings back another of the common themes we're seeing - ramping up of fossil fuel use began around a century ago, but accelerated up in the 1940s. In other words: global warming is recent. So so recent. But it's here - the last 400 months meteorologists recorded higher-than-average average global temperature.
Windmills started as far back as 500 A.D. Persia, spread to Europe and were highly featured in what historians regard as an expedition that was shocking, even frightening, to attendees with its futuristic visions, the Chicago 1893 World's Fair. (Side note: enjoy a listen as historian Joanne Freeman and her colleagues talk about that fair at this episode of "Backstory" podcast "Shock of the New: The Legacy of the 1893 World's Fair".)
This is where we want to wrap the bookclub meeting up, and start to bullet point with quotes from the chapter:
- "The world's first megawatt turbine went online in Vermont in 1941." Wow.
- "Fossil fuels sidelined wind energy during the mid-twentieth century."
- "The oil crisis of the 1970s reignited interest, investment, and invention."
In 2015, a lot of wind capture was erected all over the world, even though fossil fuel prices dropped. China installed wind turbines. Three U.S. states have enough wind power potential (land) to power the entire country coast to coast.
- Newer designs address bird-killing concerns with slower blades and site placements outside of migratory paths.
- Intermittence - wind power and other renewables are "intermittents" and need storage and delivery to complement them, as we discussed in DrawDown #4 - Microgrids, page 5.
Interesting. There is another chapter in the book that talks small-scale wind power that we're tempted to read now, but we're committed to two chapters per week, max. We want to read along with everyone, so the novice can ask the stupid question that experts forget are not stupid questions at all.
But if we as a nation embark on a mass house-building spree, which many are clamoring for, we should read that chapter and all the chapters to direct ourselves out of climate change as we build, IF we build more housing as the "Yimbys" want us to.
But if we as a nation embark on a mass house-building spree, which many are clamoring for, we should read that chapter and all the chapters to direct ourselves out of climate change as we build, IF we build more housing as the "Yimbys" want us to.
IV. Next Meeting - and Thanks
It's tempting to pause and let all of this information sink in, but we should keep going, keep these meetings light, so we can think about these different climate change solutions concurrently.
We can't wait for our leaders to fix this for us. We are their employers when we vote. And politicians get ideas from think tanks, who get their ideas from journalism and blogs.
Since driverless car companies are gaining exemptions from safe follow distance laws in several states, and our infrastructure could adjust further to favor Automatic Vehicles (A.V.s), let's read some counterbalance chapters:
- "Walkable Cities" page 86. (Remember: we always feel better after reading these.)
- And it's time for an essay chapter: "The Man Who Stopped the Desert", page 118.
Have a wonderful holiday weekend, we expect to see next week!
------------------
Further Reading:
DrawDown #5: Is Recycling Worth It? offlinereport.net
Carton-plucking 'Clarke' brings robots into recycling: resource-recycling.com
