10 ways to be more sustainable with your vegetable garden

Yes, I know a vegetable garden in and of itself is a pretty sustainable thing. Growing your own food instead of getting it from the store (usually in some sort of plastic bag or container) is great. But what are some extra steps you can take to be even more sustainable with your garden? Here are ten of them.

1. If you start your own seeds, do it in reused containers instead of buying new ones. Yogurt cups are great for this, but any container will do. Also starter pots made from newspaper are an eco-friendly way to go.
2. Use water saved from cooking or captured water from running the faucet to water your plants. When you cook vegetables or pasta in water, nutrients leach into the water and that water makes great plant food. Don't use water that you've used to cook meat in to water edible plants, though. And, make sure the water has cooled before you use.
3. Water early in the morning or late in the evening so the midday sun doesn't soak up half of the water before the plants get it. You'll have to use less water this way.
4. Save your seeds for next year. In addition to saving seeds from my own garden, I plan on buying a couple expensive heirloom tomatoes from the farmers market, enjoy them, and save their seeds for next year. I'm not sure how well it will work, but I'm going to give it a shot.
5. Share your bounty. Your bound to have too much of something (basil? zucchini?). Don't let it go bad. Share with friends and neighbors or find a food bank that will take the donations.
6. Compost. Turn your vegetable and plant waste into food for next year's garden.
7. Rotate your plants. Even in a small garden, moving the plants around from year to year will help the soil.
8. Deter pests naturally. It's very tempting, and I know how tempting it is from experience, to want to destroy bugs or keep the rabbits away using toxic methods. But, this is food your family will eat so keep the chemicals away. Experiment with natural remedies and be okay with losing a little of your crop while you're figuring it out.
9. Learn about the types of diseases your plants could get and how to identify them. This year especially with the late blight wiping out tomato plants, identifying and properly handling a disease could save part of your garden and your neighbor's garden, too.
10. If you have kids, get them out in the garden with you and pass on the skills that you have (or maybe learn skills together) so that they will continue to garden when they have their own space.

School fund raising makes me wanna scream

Last night, I went to the parent/teacher association meeting at my school. When I arrived there was a representative of a school fund raising organization giving her spiel. She had catalogs of candies, candles, wrapping paper and easy to grow seed bags and mats. With the exception of a couple of soy candles, there was nothing in these catalogs that even gave a hint that this company was trying to change their line of products to become a little more responsible ecologically. 

As I sat and listened to her talk about how their wrapping paper was the highest quality and the thickest, I searched through my sample catalog for any sign that perhaps this wrapping paper was made from recycled paper, but I didn't find it. I felt the blood drain from my face as she talked about all the prizes the kids could get for selling. Most kids will end up with cheesy plastic crap like beach balls the size of my palm because they won't sell more than one or two things.

Then she said something that made me want to stand up and scream. She said that the sales packets that the children would receive would come to the teachers in an eco-friendly reusable bag that they could keep. She threw the word "eco-friendly" out there like it made their company hip and responsible.

All the while, the president of the group kept asking us if we had any comments or questions. I had a ton of them, but I kept them to myself. Why? I don't regularly attend these meetings. It's not that I'm not involved with my kids' school. I am, but there are only so many meetings a week I can go to before I'm neglecting my family, and these meetings fall low on my priority list. However, next month, I am running the scholastic book fair, and I needed to be at the meeting to talk about it.

And there lies the reason I felt like I needed to keep my mouth shut. Is the book fair any less environmentally damaging than this fund raiser? My head was swirling during the meeting. I started mentally making a list to convince myself that the book fair was completely different than the other fundraiser.

• It's books. Kids need books. Nobody needs overpriced chocolate bunnies made from low quality ingredients.
  
• Books tend to have long lives. When you're done with them you give them to someone else or donate them somewhere. Wrapping paper just gets thrown out, usually without even being recycled.
  
• Nobody is pressured to buy anything at the book fair. I completely ignore all of the "selling suggestions" that the company throws at me. I set up the book fair and let the kids come. We sell what we sell. With the catalog type fundraisers, grandparents, neighbors and co-workers usually feel pressured to buy something they don't really want.
  
• It's books. Books are magic.

It's easy to come up with a list to justify the thing that I like while totally trashing the thing that I don't. But if I'm honest, there's a lot of environmental damage created to host these book fairs. First there's all the paper and inks used for the books. Then there's the shipping of the big cases of books to and from the school. Add the disposable plastic table cloths that are provided to decorate the fair (I've always kept them and re-used at least once before disposing of them), the piles of little crappy things that we're supposed to sell at the register like pens with fuzzy tips and erasers that look like dollar bills, and it's actually one big wasteful endeavor. 

Ugh.

I entertained the idea of standing up and saying, "I can't do this." But the fair is in six weeks. If I don't do it, someone else will. And if I were to bail at this late date, none of the good people in my small town would ever listen to me again. And they do listen. I know I have their ear on these issues. Many of them read this blog. I get questions about different things as I'm picking my kids up after school. 

So my conundrum is, how do I change this for future years? It's happening this year. But next year, what can I do? My first thought is to suggest a library-type book sale instead of the book fair. Have everyone in town donate books and sell used books. Store them - where I have no idea. 

If you have any bright ideas, feel free to post them.

Image: Lin Pernille

10 Easy Ways to Be More Sustainable with Your Back to School Shopping (Going Back to School in Green Style: Part 2)

In yesterday's post about assessing what you already have before going out shopping for school supplies, I encouraged you all to buy only what you really need. Here are tips for doing that in an eco-friendly way.

1. Buy recycled paper products whenever possible. Kids are going to need things like notebooks, composition books, printer paper, and homework organizers. Save a few trees and buy recycled. It may cost you a little bit more, but if you watch the sales, you may get some bargains.
2. Earth friendly pens and pencils are getting easier to find. Paper Mate makes a good #2 pencil called Earthwrite that can be bought at most office supply stores or online. Pilot makes a line of pens called BeGreen that are made from 86% recycled content.
3. Shop at second hand stores and consignment shops for clothes, backpacks and other items. You can find a lot of great stuff for your kids and you'll save a lot of money.
4. If you are going to buy new clothes for the kids, buy them made from sustainable materials such as organic cotton, bamboo, or hemp.
5. Schools often ask for donations of boxes of tissues or antibacterial wipes. Buy tissues from recycled paper or wipes from Method.
6. Purchase durable, reusable lunch boxes, food and beverage containers to send to school.
7. If you need to buy textbooks for a college student (or any other student), buy used. Way back when, used textbooks were only available in the campus bookstore. But now, they are available all over the Internet and you can shop around for the best price while saving a few trees.
8. If you're going to buy the kids new back to school shoes (and I suggest that you don't unless their old shoes don't fit or are in deplorable shape), check out Simple Shoes. They are made from things like organic cotton, hemp and recycled tire inner tubes.
   
9. Don't take the kids with you when you go shopping if it's possible. Take your lists and nothing else. Stick to your lists. If you take the kids, they might talk you into buying more than you need or a Hannah Montanna notebook instead of one made of recycled paper.
10. Plan your shopping to do it all at once and at stores that are within close proximity to one another. Driving all over your region to purchase green back to school items kind of negates buying them, doesn't it?

Some of the green back to school products may cost a little more than their conventional counterparts. Before you go out shopping, reconcile with the fact that you might have to spend a little bit more. If you're shopping for clothes at thrift and consignment stores, however, you just might end up spending less overall.

Going Back to School in Green Style Part 1: Assessing What You Already Have

I'm so sorry to do this - talk about going back to school that is. While actually going back is still weeks away for most our kids, the time for gathering the items on your child's back to school list, stocking up on supplies for the year from the good sales, and purchasing items for your college student's dorm room is at hand. So this week, I'll be doing a series of posts on doing all of these things in as green a way as possible. If I were to wait until the end of August to do these posts, it would be too late. Today, we're going to talk about assessing what you already have.

Assessing what you already have will help to curtail your buying. It will also help you to reuse things that you already have. And, it will save you money.

1. Make a list of all of the things your student(s) is going to need when school starts. If your school supplies a list, make sure you have that on hand. List everything from school supplies like paper and pens to backpacks to lunch bags to items for the dorm room.
   
   
2. Gather all of the things you currently have that can be used. Then cross those items off your list. If your kids' backpacks are still in good working order, there is really no reason to get new ones. Your kids may stomp there feet and whine. Tough it out. This is a good opportunity to teach them about "making do."
   
   If their scissors and highlighters from last year still work, don't buy new ones. The same with lunch boxes and pencil cases and even sneakers. Yes, I know, new school shoes have somehow become a tradition, almost an obligation in this country. Buck tradition, be a rebel. Make them wear the sneakers they already have if they still fit.
   
   
3. Put all of the items that you can aside so you know where they will be when the first day of school begins. Of course, you can't put their sneakers aside, but most of the rest of the supplies can be put in a closet out of reach of the kids so they don't disappear before they are needed.

A word about the supplies needed for a college dorm. My kids aren't close to the age where they will be going to college so I'm no expert on what it's like in a college dorm these days. But I do know what I see happening in stores like Target in mid-August. Frequently I see a mom and a college age kid, both with a shopping cart, loading up on bedding, bathroom supplies, lamps, cute rugs, matching desk top accessories, tv's, stereos, gaming systems ... all for the dorm room.

When I went to college, I would cart my pillow, my bedding, even my alarm clock back and forth from home to dorm. (Sorry to say the only time my bedding or towels really got washed was when I went home to visit!). There was never a big back to college shopping trip. Ever. It wasn't even about the money (although there wouldn't have been the money to do it). It was simply that it never occurred to me or my friends to expect all new things for our dorm.

I'd like any parent's of college age kids to please think about how necessary all that stuff is and what type of message you giving your children by buying it all. That's all I have to say about college stuff.

The rest of the week, I'll be focusing on more green back to school topics. If you've got any suggestions, please post them in the comment section.