My Carbon Footprint

This has been a great weekend for me. I'm connecting to "things that matter"--volunteering as a tree pruner/weeder for Gantry Plaza State Park, supporting local businesses (bonus: wine tastings with cheese, bread and concord grapes!) and our teensy Saturday greenmarket, going to the District 26 city council candidates debate in my neighbors' theatre, the Chocolate Factory. Today I'm venturing in to downtown Manhattan to meet friends at South Street Seaport for The New Amsterdam Market. http://www.newamsterdammarket.org/

There will be over 80 vendors from farmers and butchers to cheesemongers and brewers, touting the ideas of fair trade coffee, slow food, farm to table eating, organic production, etc...

The first person I knew who talked about things green and sustainable was a friend of a friend, Margaret Lydecker, wayyy back in 2002. Turns out she went on to found Green Drinks NY and the movement is huge today. http://www.greendrinksnyc.com/

I'm a member of Queens Green Drinks and there is definitely momentum. I'm dipping my toe in, and getting a lot of satisfaction out of "doing my part" to reduce my carbon footprint (my typo was foodprint, but that would apply as well!)

I bought a composting bin for outside (behind the cedar shed!) after taking a workshop and deciding against having a worm bin in the house. That's a tad too earthy for me. In the kitchen next to the sink I fill a gallon sized can every few days with fruit and veggie scraps, spent coffee grounds, dryer lint (!), eggshells and used tea bags (before they mix with milk.) My lawn and weed clippings go in to the outside pile as well as torn up newspaper...and the result is that I'm eating more fresh food and I have less garbage going out the front door. I've been tilling the heap since Spring and I'm learning to balance the browns and the greens. Freezing the food scraps first kills fruit fly eggs...and that was a good lesson learned. I peeked into the bin and got a cloud of fruit flies in the face. Yuk!! I can see the beginnings of "black gold" and I look forward to adding that to the herb garden and to my window boxes.

My friend Jill Palermo (and her mom!) started "We Add Up" Check it out on http://www.weaddup.com/ We can't do it all, but each person can make a difference by choosing one green activity...and those numbers add up!! Mine is "Drink Tap."

So though I'm not 100% well versed in spent grains and gravity poured beer...I'm thoroughly enjoying the slow food movement and this generation's attention to the land. I'm very sure I don't have any hemp to wear today...so off I go in my requisite jeans, oxford shirt and flipflops.