September 29, 2007 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

We’re still cleaning up the mess we made of our sleep schedules in the process of birthing the Vermont video, but we haven’t forgotten about you! The Michigan and Illinois videos are in the works, and in the meantime we’re delighted to get under the hood a little bit with wind energy.

Just click here or the picture below to watch "YERT Conversation 7.1: Community-Powered Wind Energy"

Andrew Stern, President of New England Windpower, LLC, generously showed us around the Hull Wind project during a brisk morning in Massachusetts, and answered our deepest wind energy questions– at least as deep as we could muster on minimal sleep. The good news is that as we learn more about wind energy, we get more excited about it. For juicy contrast, as we learn more about coal, we get more depressed.

Another nifty feature of this video is that if you listen closely you will hear the swooshing sound that comes from a relatively small windmill. The newer, larger windmills generally rotate more slowly and make even less noise. We literally set up the camera right beneath the blades, and the sound only gets softer as you walk away from it.

And it simply looks cool. There’s something extraordinary about seeing such a giant object moving around and around. And around.

Win(d)somely Yours,

Julie, Ben, and Mark (Your YERT Team)

team@yert.com

P.S. And now for Breadcrumb(s)! If you want to learn more about the topics in this video, check out this resource:

• Hull Wind publishes a handy brochure explaining everything about the project, from cost estimates to pollution saved to awards to links containing additional information. Enjoy it here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d like to take this windy opportunity to clarify a previous statement made in YERTpod7: Words of Wind-dom in Massachusetts. Mark Rodgers of Cape Wind kindly offered the following clarification, particularly referencing the point that the electricity from Cape Wind would indeed first serve power needs near Nantucket Sound before flowing to the rest of New England. He notes:

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative held a public forum on Cape Wind held on October 31, 2002. The MTC held a series of these session to clarify the facts regarding the project by inviting panels of disinterested experts to answer questions from the 71 stakeholder attendees.

The first panel at this session was entitled "Electricity Supply, Reliability, Pricing and Air Impacts" and included Charlie Salamone, NSTAR’s Director of Transmission System Planning. The question and answer by Mr. Salamone at the pages 5-6 of the attached report disposed of this issue definitively:

"Q: There has been some confusion about whether or not power generated by the Cape Wind project will be consumed on the Cape. As an example, assuming all operations normal, if Cape Wind generates power (i.e., 100mw, 300mw, or 400mw) — where is it consumed?

A: From a physics perspective, electrons flow along the path of least resistance, so if Cape Wind is the closest source of electrons, physics indicates that the electrons will flow to the closest load, which will likely be on the Cape and Islands. In this example, if you presume the Canal plant is running, the electricity coming [from off-Cape] through the Bourne substation and into the Cape & Islands grid would be decreased by the amount of power being generated by Cape Wind."

This finding filtered up to the 3rd point of the MTC Highlights of what was learned, see:
http://www.mtpc.org/offshore/highlights.htm

YERTYERTYERTYERTYERTYERTYERTYERTYERTYERTYERTYERT

Posted in Video | 2 Comments »

September 28, 2007 by Julie.

Fate - well, actually, our car’s being covered with big vinyl YERT signs - introduced us to super cool Rhode Island couple, Joe & Rebecca back in July (see Friday, July 20 blog, last paragraph). They called to us across a Thai restaurant, “What’s YERT?” After we got to know them a bit, they told us that if we passed through Elk Bend, Idaho, we should stay in their cabin - or better yet, their cave… and talk to a old fella named Dugout Dick who carved a bunch of mines into the hillside back in the 40’s, turning them into shelters when he didn’t find so much usable ore.

Well, Elk Bend is a bit off the beaten path but a man who’s lived in a cave for the last 60 or so years is an example of sustainability we would not miss and so, a day later than we’d planned (due to the Vermont pod taking 4 dys longer to produce than we’d hoped), I wrote down the directions Rebecca had emailed me, ending with, “Look for the emus…” and YERT drove North from Utah with visions of caves with double beds and large flightless birds…

After hours of rolling hills and rain and no cell phone service, we emptied out of Rachel Carson onto a gravel drive at the feet of the Caretaker, Jim, a bright-eyed scrappy fellow with a hearty hello, and his two wonderful dogs, Max and Hailey, who leaned on us and brought us the ball, respectively.

Joe & Rebecca’s cabin was like mother’s warm arms. Jim had lit the woodburning stove for the very first time just before we got there. He took us on a tour of the whole place (He was only recently made caretaker but nevertheless is obviously fiercely fond of it all). We filmed inside the little side paddock where the emu laid down, and down again, when Jim petted him just so, and then we walked the labyrinth Rebecca built out of stones…

Jim led the way to Dugout Dick’s hillside where we found Joe & Rebecca’s cave - “2 over from Dick’s,” just where Rebecca said it would be. It was cold and rainy outside but inside the cave was warm and dry. They aren’t really caves, i should say, but mineshafts built into and out from the earth, with doors and windows of scrap automobile parts and various recovered “junk” items like woodburning stoves and little cabinets of scrap wood…all the air smelled sweet with sagebrush…but the hillside was littered with trash.

There were cats everywhere. Little mama cats and kittens and littler kittens still, all crying and scrambling under our feet in case of falling food. I am a cat person. I have rescued my share. I have laid dead kittens in the garbage after they perished in my backyard, but I found myself swallowing hard. We were out in the middle of nowhere, there was nobody to take care of these little guys at all, and they were starving. I decided to focus on the task at hand.
Dick was not around. But we did talk to Bruce, a sometime cave-dweller who looks after Dick much of the time. Bruce gave us quite a profound interview, inside his dark little house with his gasoline fueled lantern, and his library books on the “windowsill.” We filmed him and his little black blind-in-one-eye cat, Pennzoil and thanked him, planning to be back the following morning to catch Dugout Dick himself.

*Delicious Milestone!: Jim provided us our first real opportunity to cook dinner for someone; He had fresh food for us. Mark broiled the salmon, I sauteed vegetables, Ben made salad, and then Jim opened a bottle of the most delicious red wine, which we did not refuse. *Trash note: We decided early on that we could not drink single bottles of beer but if our host(s) uncorked a bottle, it would be unseemly not to help them drink it…

Have to admit I hadn’t had wine in awhile. By the time dinner was all eaten, and we got to watch some of Jim’s stunt driving on TV, i was rosy and all I wanted to do was to climb upstairs in my sock feet, and snuggle under the covers of the cozy double bed with Ben. Cave, schmave. I was in heaven. So, Mark spent the night there!
And Max the Pointer spent the night on the bed with me and Ben. He is a very big dog.

Next day, Mark came back from his field trip, we had a nice breakfast of duck egg omelets, toast and coffee, and then we headed back to the caves for the big interview. Bruce, who had been reticent to sign a release form, finally acquiesced, thankfully. Then we went to find Dugout. The door to his inner cave was all black and shut. Ben called in to him and Dick hollered back. We went in, we could barely see him, our eyes weren’t used to the dark. The cave smelled of thick old smoke and the pictures on the wall were completely opaque with soot. I didn’t last long in there as the tiniest kittens came out from under the sofa, mewing, couldn’t have been more than 3 wks old. I spent the entire interview walking around with the 4 babies tucked in my jacket for warmth, ’til they fell asleep crying from hunger, their little eyes puss-y and swollen, their tiny tummies empty. There was no food for them or for their mother, who was nowhere to be seen. She probably had her head in a Chef Boyardee can somewhere, desperately licking at at the last drops of artificial tomato sauce.

I heard the boys talking, asking Dick questions, heard his pauses and muffled replies, looked in every once in awhile to see his red miner hat bobbing slowly, heard him singing a song to his long lost love, Bonnie. Dugout Dick is almost 92 yrs old and lives on Chef Boyardee and Oatmeal. He has done for years, lives more sustainably than anybody I have met in these United States, lives on practically nothing. But I couldn’t appreciate his lack of carbon footprint for all the little cats that needed fixing. My stupid little girl heart broke when it was time to go and I set the 4 baby kittens back down onto the filthy sooty floor with no mother cat near, and no nest, mewing their tiny kitten hearts out, scrambling back to my feet.

I couldn’t say anything at all in the car. We stopped by Jim’s one last time and I told him about the littlest ones, in case he might consider taking them somewhere. He went the very next day and found a vet who will spay all the cats for free but he didn’t find all of the kittens. Jim said in the end Dick seemed sad and pointed his cane to underneath the couch. Only one little kitten was still alive, last I heard, the very littlest pale orange one. It’s funny, she’s the one I thought would be the first to go, she seemed so much smaller and mewed so much less than the others.

Anyway, who knows when the kitties came to the caves. Years ago, probably. Probably Dick did not ask for them to come, just started giving them his leftovers because they showed up and he felt sorry for them. Now they are many. Dick lives his life as he has for the last 60 yrs, and still leaves out his leftovers for them…I am, meanwhile, very thankful for Jim.

Not sure of the end to this story. Dugout Dick has a mining claim on the land which allows him to stay there. When he dies, the land will go back to BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and no one knows what will happen to the “caves.” Bruce says that he plans to carry on the same idea with land he’s bought just down the way. But for now, anyone can pay just a dollar a day to stay in a cave on the hill, to the miner who lives in the hillside. For $25 a month, or $300 a year, you can live off the grid, and be warm. Think about it. There is an outhouse. But please, do something about the cats.

Posted in Travelog, Issues, Julie | 3 Comments »

September 25, 2007 by Julie.

I should be letting Ben write this blog, since he was the one with a total of 8 hours sleep in 4 nights of working on the mountain of footage that was Vermont. Over 10 hours of tape he whittled down to 7 minutes of video. That was like 80 hours of work. My husband. My hero! sigh.

Needless to say, these heroics would not do and so we had a sort of ‘realism’ conference once he was in the clear. We have once again committed as a team to try to focus a little more even as we are entering another US state so that we may find the strength not to turn the camera on every time a wonderful opportunity comes up … because they come up and up and up! It is hard not to want to shoot everything, really it is. But we won’t last a year at last week’s pace.

That said, when Mark stumbled upon a worldwide event called PARK(ing) Day we blew that commitment right out the window. It was also being celebrated right in the heart of Salt Lake City just 20 minutes from where we were staying! We 3 looked at each other and there we went. We drove downtown, fed our meter, and left Rachel in search of greener pastures - of parking spaces laid with sod, furnished with park benches and lawn chairs - with nerf football, sesame cheese doodles (from the bulk bin at Wild Oats - have i highly recommended these before?) and a book for good measure. As if we would take the time to read.

The boys played some tackle nerfootball with some locals. Everybody involved was super cool and laid back. A metermaid stopped her golf cart for a minute, made a call, then rolled away. A police officer strolling by asked what was going on and when he was given the rundown, he smiled and finally said, “Alright. Watch your meter.” We had a nice interview with Shauna Kerr of TPL (Trust for Public Land)-Utah, and I won my first ever game of croquet all while cars were driving by. A 3-pc suit carrying a briefcase stopped and asked, “What in the world are you all doing?” and when it was explained that we were all just taking a couple of hours to imagine what it would be like to have more parks and less parking spaces downtown, he just said, “Alright.” Only one accident was reported from rubbernecking motorists on Main Street. Some might call that a success.

Posted in Travelog, Julie | 1 Comment »

September 25, 2007 by Julie.

We were told Utah is sometimes called the “reddest” state, and Environmentalists are sometimes called “Treehuggers.” What happens when Republicans realize that caring for the environment can make good economic sense? Before we left Utah, we met with Rich (R) and Marsha (D), who are working together for Living Green Expo to bring awareness to this issue that affects all of us, no matter our political affiliation. As Rich noted, caring for the environment used to be part of the Conservative Party’s platform, starting way back with Ulysses Grant and carried further by Teddy Roosevelt….

We spoke with Salt Lake City’s Mayor, Rocky Anderson, who also believes that the environment is NOT a party issue (See his on-camera mayoral challenge from yesterday!)

So, I have crap internet connection here. I am not going to frustrate myself by trying to post and add pictures. I will instead say “Welcome!” to our brand new nephew, as yet unnamed, “We can’t wait to meet you in the spring when we are scheduled to be in Connecticut. So glad you are a tiny baby and will have no remembrance that we missed your first days…”

Posted in Travelog, Issues, Julie | 1 Comment »

September 24, 2007 by Ben.

Think you got what it takes to go toe to toe with Rocky? We found out just what it takes, and you have to be on your game. On Thursday, we were lucky enough to speak with Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson at his office in city hall - this guy is one tough eco-heavyweight and he’s not going down without a fight. Determined to deliver a serious body blow to the threat of climate change, Rocky came out swinging at the inaugural StepItUp event in April, putting on one of the country’s biggest and most effective StepItUp events. During our interview with him he went one step further, challenging mayors across the country to StepItUp themselves on Nov. 3rd - the date of the second big StepItUp nationwide rally for taking action on climate change. Check out this video (and Rocky’s left hook) then visit StepItUp2007.org to find out more about what you can do to help.

Just click here or the picture below to watch "StepItUp 2007 - Rocky’s Challenge"

Let’s all StepItUp on Nov. 3rd!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

September 22, 2007 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

The only things more pervasive than uplifting environmental stories in Vermont were the Subarus. Everybody we met seemed connected to everything…

…to the land
…to the food
…to each other
…to a Subaru
…even to a peaceful kind of inner wisdom.

Just click here or the picture below to watch "YERTpod10: Seeding is Believing in Vermont"

Somehow Vermont was unique, and delightfully so, but why? As we explored these connections in conversations with all stripes of Vermonters, including Mayor Bob Kiss of Burlington, we repeatedly encountered the concept of a “land trust.”

Wikipedia helped us understand that “A community or conservation land trust is an organization established to hold land and to administer use of the land according to the charter of the organization.” We’re still learning about what all that means, but it seems that land trusts can help local communities increase their control over the way their land is used. If the words confuse you, try this imagery instead: A large, pristine, flowering meadow on what appears to be extremely valuable real estate next to a highway. Completely undeveloped. Simply a beautiful view. And it makes all the difference in the world. It makes us love Vermont.

We had difficulty boiling down our Vermont experience into a tiny little video, so we’re asking you, our viewers, to tell us what additional footage you’d like to see in one or more longer videos. Our editing time is painfully limited, so please vote in the poll below on the following options…

1. Kit Perkins, Executive Director of the Intervale Center. This unique institution acts as a farming incubator, and their stated mission is “To develop farm-and land-based enterprises that generate economic and social opportunity while protecting natural resources.”
2. Guided tour of the McNeil Generating Station, a power plant fueled by wood chips from sustainably-harvested forests. John Irving, McNeil’s Plant Manager, gave us a personalized tour of every nook and cranny in this facility, not to mention a candid assessment of the pros and cons of wood-fired power generation.
3. Gil Livingston, President of the Vermont Land Trust (VLT), helped us get our heads around the concept of a land trust and its benefits to folks (and critters) in Vermont.
4. Dan Bradley, Transportation Planner for the City of Burlington, gave us a ride in the city’s experimental hydrogen-powered Prius while discussing the challenges and opportunities of hydrogen-based transportation.
5. Bob Ferris, Executive Director of the Yestermorrow Design/Build School. This creative institution gives designers, architects, and hobbyists an opportunity to hone their eco-building skills.
6. Phil Rice and Daniella Malin, from the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont, showed us around the Cobb Hill intentional community and introduced us to some award-winning cheese cows, not to mention the innovative systems-based approach they bring to environmental sustainability research.
7. Mayor Bob Kiss of Burlington helped us connect to many of the various “dots” in our Vermont eco-exploration. Mild mannered, friendly, and full of common sense, it was refreshing to speak to such an interesting and interested community leader.

With Love for Vermont, and All Y’all,

Julie, Mark, and Ben (Your YERT Team)

team@yert.com

<a href="http://www.micropoll.com/akira/MicroPoll?mode=html&#038;id=54760">View MicroPoll</A><br /> | <a href="http://www.questionpro.com" title="survey software">Survey Software</a><br /> | <a href="http://www.micropoll.com" title="web polls">Web Polls</a><br /> | <a href="http://www.contactpro.com" title="email marketing software">Email Marketing Software</a><br />

P.S. And now for Breadcrumbs! If you want to learn more about the topics in this video, check out these resources:

• By at least one Canadian measure, Burlington VT is the "Greenest City in the U.S.A." This article in the Toronto Star also names Mayor Bob Kiss America’s greenest mayor. We’re absolutely un-stunned by this result, but the article is a fun read from a foreign perspective. (Country Home magazine also names Burlington the "Best Green City in America" in 2007.)
• It seems that the Vermonter way of life is good for citizen health. This survey found Vermont to be the "Healthiest State" in 2007.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

September 21, 2007 by Julie.

Utah: Ben has been editing with hardly any sleep for 4 dys. Salt Lake City has such acute air pollution problems that there is a website devoted to this issue called Utah Moms for Clean Air. Our 2nd nephew is due to be born any second, and I am thinking, how are we possibly doing enough?

This blog isn’t meant to be depressing or to sound futile. But I did not give up our life just to go on a fun trip around the country - I did it to find out as much as we can and to do something to help raise awareness about the environmental state that we have purchased for ourselves: water that is too polluted to drink and that people are told not to wade in after a storm; air that causes lung disease especially in children; birds and fish that are so concentrated with mercury that people are told not to eat them; food that is so saturated with corn syrup and non-food ingredients that we are becoming malnourished and obese; and rapidly rising rates of cancer. So, in the spirit of this solution-seeking, Your Environmental Road Trip gladly accepted an invitation from Jim Westwater to attend a meeting of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club in Provo.

YERT rolled in with cameras in hand and joined about 25 other folks in Room 201 of the Provo Public Library. The bland ochre walls did not reflect the profoundly important messages, which transcend politics and party lines and should be available to everyone, in every walk of life, in my opinion. The American people deserve to know what atmospheric pollutions are doing to them, what poisons are being sprayed on their trees, crops, lawns, streams; what is going into our bodies; what are the true environmental and economic costs of the energy we are purchasing to power our homes and cars, and Americans should understand that we have a right to demand that healthy options be made available to us. Global climate change aside, whether or not to recycle aside, Americans are getting more and more unhealthy, due to our own pollution of our environment. We have to speak up. There is no other way for change to happen.

Rebecca Wessman appealed to the gathering for the citizens of Orem, UT, who want to protest pesticide spraying for Japanese Beetles in their community.
First, let me say that I am still reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (which, for anyone who doesn’t already know, she beautifully wrote in 1962 as a scientific dissection and condemnation of the indiscriminate use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides, which were sprayed without outside study for environmental effects and without the public’s knowledge or understanding of the poisons. These petroleum-based solutions may have been deemed “not harmful” in certain ppm but the problem is they don’t go away, they become increasingly harmful as they travel up the food chain and intensify, concentrating in animal tissues as well as in streams and watersheds). Rachel wrote Silent Spring over 45 years ago. One entire chapter is devoted to the futility of spraying for EXACTLY THIS INSECT…spraying that has been proven to be inferior to natural and biological methods (such as natural predators). I am appalled to see that we are still fighting the same fight, almost EXACTLY. Rachel must be rolling over in her grave.

Get this: Residents in the Orem, UT area have been told that once the pesticide spraying has occurred, they cannot eat produce from their gardens, vines or trees for THREE YEARS.
How is this acceptable? Isn’t our government supposed to be protecting us?

The information is out there. Here’s a passage from Landscape America:

Chemical pesticides are incredibly poisonous and kill many other things than the shiny green beetles they target, not to mention they increase in concentration and are even causing sterility in some bird populations. What if people are trying to live off the food in their gardens in order to avoid pesticides and herbicides still lingering on conventionally grown food? Is it possible that we cannot avoid manmade chemical poisons in our daily lives? Is it right? Hello, no.

From Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (speaker Dr. Brain Moench):
1. The Medical Community does not dispute that that 80% of all Cancer is environmentally caused.
2. There is no safe level of air pollution because there is no safe air pollution. Effects of air pollution on our children’s health (specifically leukemia and lymphoma) are NOT debated.
3. There are no regulations on mercury emissions from coal plants.
4. Coal is the major source of radioactivity on Earth. 1 yr of coal processing = 18 tons of Uranium. People living near coal-fired plants are absorbing more radioactivity than people living near nuclear power plants.

To those in favor of continuing to use chemicals to control unwanted living things, and to those proponents of the coal industry who cite jobs and economy as the reasons for building new coal plants and continuing to burn fossil fuels, let’s ask: WHY NOT USE METHODS THAT HAVE NO HEALTH IMPACTS??? Where is the true cost examination, that takes into account the health impacts, and the health COSTS incurred later on due to increased poisons in our air, water, and soil. Rachel Carson asked, “…by what sort of accounting was the “too expensive” judgment reached? Certainly not by any that assessed the true costs of the total destruction wrought by such programs…”

And so I close with renewed concern, and renewed hope that Americans will start asking questions of their legislators and their neighbors, learning what is happening in their community and then taking the steps needed to help make changes that will only benefit us all in the long run, and all the little people who will be in on it when we are gone. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “Of all the questions which can come before this nation…there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.”

Posted in Travelog, Issues, Julie | 3 Comments »

September 19, 2007 by Julie.

Ummm…are we really still on this trip? I think i just suddenly realized that we really are going to be in the car for another 287 dys or so, think I felt my flight response kicking in, when we got in the car to leave Moab. Quick, somebody say that thing about ripples and waves and making a difference just a tiny bit at a time…

Shake it off. We have to recommend a little oasis of freshness in Moab called the Eclectic Cafe. Very close to the Days Inn where we spent the night, the cafe had organic, fair-trade coffee, locally-grown breakfast, and set us up on chairs outside looking at the mountains and plugged into the bar. Beautiful. We closed them down and drove through Arches National Park before heading to Salt Lake City.

OK somebody already answered me on this one: All the streets in SLC are numbered concentrically out from the main Temple, and are tagged with their according position on the map (ie: 9 streets South of the Temple is South 900 but if the street is west-ish, then it will have West tagged onto the end of it, like South 900 West?…oh i can tell i am still getting this so wrong - Anyhow, the forefathers apparently never thought the town would grow any bigger than 9 streets in any direction and so did not foresee the frustration I’d put myself through, leaving the house without phoning my destination, and depending on our hopeful but erratic navigational system in the Ford. “Navie,” we call it. My favorite quote of the trip so far is Ben telling Mark, “Google it. I trust Navie about as far as I can throw her.” sigh.
But seriously, today was a humbling day of lessons for me, lessons in planning before takeoff: How to use a phone to save yourself, time, gas, and sanity. Hilariously, I was dense enough to have to learn it 3 times in a row (that’s apparently how I really learn best) within 2.5 hours. In fact, I could have asked our gracious hosts for help finding a natural food store. But, instead, independent girl that I like to think I am, I Googled Salt Lake City co-op, found the website and street address, entered it into Navie’s little brain and drove off.
After several highways, and some really sketchy looking areas, I finally found the Co-op in an Industrial Complex - a rather unseeming locale for natural food. Then I walked into the little room with a couple of desks and 3 people, one on the phone taking orders for fresh produce delivery, and looked around to see where the rest of it was, where the food was, but there was no actual store. The people looked somewhat sorry for me and directed me to a regular grocery but their directions bounced off my cortex like so much Greek: I got back in the car, having understood none of it, pulled over and called Mark for Google help. I must have called him like 6 times over the course of the next couple of ridiculous hours driving around the city.
Then Mark did the same thing I did: Googled a store and got the address without calling first - so when I got there and couldn’t find the place, he called, and found that the store had moved locations!!! AAck! Even better, when I found the new location, I went in and realized that the store didn’t have any produce at all or the bulk food we were looking for. (Another thing we could have discovered by asking the right questions on the phone!) So, where did I end up going? Wild Oats. I was never so happy to see a Wild Oats big chain store in my life as I was after driving around Salt Lake City with a head swimming with street numbers, wondering if Salt Lake even has natural foods. But, here it is, Best of All: If I had only taken the time to ask our hosts, I would have learned that Wild Oats is about 5 minutes away from the house in which we are staying. DOH.

On a scale from 1-10, 10 being the most environmentally sustainable, I would have to give myself a 2 for the day. 2.5 hours of driving is not forgiven just bc I was driving around to find find local food. Lesson (hopefully) learned.

Posted in Travelog, Julie | 1 Comment »

September 17, 2007 by Julie.

Well, I guess we just had a day off. We’re staying at a Days Inn in the mountains of Moab, UT, and today we went to the Valley of the Gods for some non-environmental, but very respectful, sightseeing.
In fact, haven’t done a single environmental thing for the last two days…well, aside from the usual blogging and Ben’s doing the weekly pod and Mark’s returning 500 YERT emails… and of course our unwillingness to create garbage or turn on incandescent light bulbs … but we didn’t INTERVIEW anyone or see anybody being particularly sustainable…I am finally reading Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” though. And trying not to throw up my hands because of how little seems to have changed since 1960…

In other better news, two of my best friends just gave birth to two little baby girls this week and my sis in law is due to have our 2nd nephew tomorrow, so I think I will dedicate this next little section to little mamas. It is “21 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle,” from Co-op America, and it is currently on the front page of their website, but I thought I would just add it here and make it easy on some of the new moms whose wake time is precious. here you go, my girls! For when your husband is looking for things to help you do…

1. Appliances: Goodwill accepts working appliances, www.goodwill.org, or you can contact the Steel Recycling Institute to recycle them. 800/YES-1-CAN, www.recycle-steel.org.

2. Batteries: Rechargeables and single-use: Battery Solutions, 734/467-9110, www.batteryrecycling.com.

3. Cardboard boxes: Contact local nonprofits and women’s shelters to see if they can use them. Or, offer them up at your local Freecycle.org listserv or on Craigslist.org. If your workplace collects at least 100 boxes or more each month, UsedCardboardBoxes.com accepts them for resale.

4. CDs/DVDs/Game Disks: Send scratched music or computer CDs, DVDs, and PlayStation or Nintendo video game disks to AuralTech for refinishing, and they’ll work like new: 888/454-3223, www.auraltech.com.

5. Clothes: Wearable clothes can go to your local Goodwill outlet or shelter. Donate wearable women’s business clothing to Dress for Success, which gives them to low-income women as they search for jobs, 212/532-1922, www.dressforsuccess.org. Offer unwearable clothes and towels to local animal boarding and shelter facilities, which often use them as pet bedding. Consider holding a clothes swap at your office, school, faith congregation or community center. Swap clothes with friends and colleagues, save money on a new fall wardrobe and back-to-school clothes – then donate the rest.

6. Compact fluorescent bulbs: Take them to your local IKEA store for recycling: www.ikea.com.

7. Compostable bio-plastics: You probably won’t be able to compost these in your home compost bin or pile. Find a municipal composter to take them to at www.findacomposter.com.

8. Computers and electronics: Find the most responsible recyclers, local and national, at www.ban.org/pledge/Locations.html

9. Exercise videos: Swap them with others at www.videofitness.com.

10. Eyeglasses: Your local Lion’s Club or eye care chain may collect these. Lenses are reground and given to people in need.

11. Foam Packing peanuts: Your local pack-and-ship store will likely accept these for reuse. Or, call the Plastic Loose Fill Producers Council to find a drop-off site: 800/828-2214. For places to drop off foam blocks for recycling, contact the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers, 410/451-8340, www.epspackaging.org/info.html

12. Ink/toner cartridges: Recycleplace.com pays $1/each.

13. Miscellaneous: Get your unwanted items into the hands of people who can use them. Offer them up on your local Freecycle.org or Craigslist.org listserv, or try giving them away at Throwplace.com or giving or selling them at iReuse.com. iReuse.com will also help you find a recycler, if possible, when your items have reached the end of their useful lifecycle.

14. Oil: Find Used Motor Oil Hotlines for each state: 202/682-8000, www.recycleoil.org.

15. Phones: Donate cell phones: Collective Good will refurbish your phone and sell it to someone in a developing country: 770/856-9021, www.collectivegood.com. Call to Protect reprograms cell phones to dial 911 and gives them to domestic violence victims: www.donateaphone.com. Recycle single-line phones: Reclamere, 814/386-2927, www.reclamere.com.

16. Sports equipment: Resell or trade it at your local Play It Again Sports outlet, 800/476-9249, www.playitagainsports.com.

17. “Technotrash”: Easily recycle all of your CDs, jewel cases, DVDs, audio and video tapes, cell phones, pagers, rechargeable and single-use batteries, PDAs, and ink/toner cartridges with GreenDisk’s Technotrash program. For $30, GreenDisk will send you a cardboard box in which you can ship them up to 70 pounds of any of the above. Your fee covers the box as well as shipping and recycling fees. 800/305-GREENDISK, www.greendisk.com.

18. Tennis shoes: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program turns old shoes into playground and athletic flooring. www.nikereuseashoe.com. One World Running will send still-wearable shoes to athletes in need in Africa, Latin America, and Haiti. www.oneworldrunning.com.

19. Toothbrushes and razors: Buy a recycled plastic toothbrush or razor from Recycline, and the company will take it back to be recycled again into plastic lumber. Recycline products are made from used Stonyfield Farms’ yogurt cups. 888/354-7296, www.recycline.com.

20. Tyvek envelopes: Quantities less than 25: Send to Shirley Cimburke, Tyvek Recycling Specialist, 5401 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Spot 197, Room 231, Richmond, VA 23234. Quantities larger than 25, call 866/33-TYVEK.

21. Stuff you just can’t recycle: When practical, send such items back to the manufacturer and tell them they need to manufacture products that close the waste loop responsibly.

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September 16, 2007 by Julie.

So, Part 2 of the Colorado blog found YERT at the headquarters of Nilar Batteries, where we got to sit with Neil Puester (founder), Norman Vickers (Pres)and Johan Edin (CEO) and learn about how Nilar is using new technology to make batteries safer, lighter, more compact, and much more economical. Here is Neil on one of the scooters we also got to test drive…they really do zip right along. In the scooters, the Nilar battery pack takes up about half the space of the conventional lead acid battery, and twice the range. Their website states, “Compared to traditional batteries which cannot withstand repeated deep cycling and require periodic replacement, Nilar Membrane batteries should last the life of the scooter essentially making it a maintenance free vehicle.” We give them a thumbs up for sustainability and another thumbs up for zippy emissions-free travel. Nilar batteries are also being used for the converted Plug-in Priuses. Prii. (Somebody please help me with the plural.)

We next met green entrepreneurs Robbie Jenkins and Rick Felton near the REI flagship in Denver, and got a sneak peak at their new patented green building technology - insulatory SIPS panels flanked by concrete that can be used all the way down into the foundation providing better structural support and a solution re: thermal mass and insulation working together. So good they plan to build their own homes with it! Go boys, go!

YERT footage is building daily due to generosity and passion of friends old and new who are connecting with us, sharing their homes, their thoughts, their hopes, their maps (Thank you, Jack Cox)…and we are editing it as best we can so it can be shared with all who are interested…

Colorado wouldn’t have been complete without the assistance, once again, of magnanimous and fun Eco-broker Stu Galvis, who this time brought YERT to a home he’s showing in Solar Village, an affordable green community in Longmont where the streets are named things like Ionosphere and Tenacity, Confidence and Half-Measures Drive and Incorrigible Circle. The condos are solar-powered and finished without the use of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s), meaning that tenants can afford to live and breathe easy, knowing that their chosen abode is not harming them or the environment. I am personally VERY encouraged by this trend in commercial development, since urban sprawl is, I think, evidence of ZERO planning for the future.
p.s. Sierra Club has a really cool Smart Growth demo they call “community transformation examples.” Watch as buildings grow upward to share space with stores, bike lanes and light rails appear and trees line the street…they also show people walking, which is maybe most important of all…

After Stu spun off for his next appointment, YERT trekked uphill to the National Center for Atmospheric Research where we were, quite frankly, blown away. First we talked with NCAR scientist and lead author of the latest report from the IPCC (InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Beth Holland. Beth gave us several interesting points to ponder: 1. Our last remaining wild places are our only ’sinks’ for the pollution we are emitting on a daily basis. If we lose them, we will have nothing to soak up the Carbon, etc. we are putting into the atmosphere. 2. Acidification of our Oceans is making them unable to help with the carbon load. 3. We have already “purchased” Global Climate change, since atmospheric Carbon does not break down but stays in the atmosphere for a very long time. (The question becomes how many more generations do we want to purchase?) 4. Scientists are incredibly reticent to come to agreements on anything but they are all coming to the same conclusions about global climate change as a very real phenomenon that is being affected by humans. None of the models that the scientists built were able to come up with the kind of climate changes we are seeing EXCEPT when human actions are built into the equation.

We were also welcomed into the office of Lawrence Buja, who showed us the most recent computer data an

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