LOCAL ACTION CALENDAR RESUMES

The Montessori nature school in New Berlin has started up for the year.  My preschooler is duly and oh so happily ensconced.  And so the summer hiatus has come to a close.  There are a number of fall events coming up, including the 3rd Annual Susquehanna River Symposium at BU this Friday and Saturday.  Some have made the calendar already and others have yet to be posted, but moving forward there will once again be more regular Local Action Calendar Updates to keep you abreast of such news. 

For now LAN monthly meetings will be less of a focus, with programs happening at a variety of times and in various locations under the aegis of LARA or Bucknell or Slow Food or SEDA-COG.  There will still be time for monthly get togethers, just less in the way of organized programs.  It's time to resurrect the business meeting, in fact.  If you have projects or ideas or just want to talk over the state of the ecosphere, those late evening 3rd Mondays will be for you:  8:30pm at St. Paul's United Methodist Church on S. 4th St in Lewisburg.

There is one event that we are really working to get the word out about now and that is Rev. Richard Cizik's lecture on creation care coming up on Thursday, October 16, at 7pm at the Forum in the Langone Center.  There is a broad coalition of sponsors making this appearance possible.  For those not familiar with Cizik, he was named as one of TIME Magazine's "100 Most Influential" people of 2008.  He is a formidable force within the ranks of organized religion, specifically evangelicals, in the United States and since 2000, he has been working to bring the issue of climate change into focus for people of faith.  We are working on inviting every church in the area, both pastors and entire congregations, and hoping to get a good turnout for what should be an interesting evening.


LIFESTYLES OF THE WASTE REDUCERS:  SUMMER BACKLOG

Union County is cracking down on improper recycling these days.  The persecution of those who actually try to participate in the voluntary program (as opposed to those who just discard plastic, glass and cans willy nilly with their trash) is giving some people a complex.  But to ease your mind, HandUp Recycling in Milton takes ANY paper, including junk mail, envelopes, whatever.  They also take chipboard (most of that packaging you find filling your waste bin).  They even take things like aerosol cans, like for shaving cream.  Don't make a special trip to Milton just to visit them, but if you're heading that way anyway during the day, bring it all on by.  So even if your efforts to enlist catalogchoice to empty out your mailbox are falling behind, you still have recourse.

Maybe worms don't eat the refuse from your house that HandUp won't take.  But they could.  And you think about it some.  And you've looked at the Worms Eat My Garbage book and you still aren't quite sure...  Would you like some worms to borrow.  We have access to a nicely established colony of the requisite red wrigglers in a bin and ready to go.  Their regular humans are on sabbatical and they are available on a trial basis for people to see what it's like, think about what size bin their household would really need, and decide whether having such a nexus of activity in the garage or basement seems ok or too scary for words.  They are not demanding.  They like to be fed, kept moist, and stay in the dark.  They can't be allowed to freeze.  Call me if you'd like to try them out for 2 to 4 weeks.

You're getting really good at remembering to bring your nifty cloth bags to the store and to the market, but then you get home and find them full of smaller plastic bags.  What you need are smart, small reusable produce bags.  There are may options.  Here's one source for some made from rip stop nylon in a wide range of sizes.  And here's another that carries a muslin version.  They aren't see through so the vegetable bin takes on a different look and air of mystery, but it's such a relief...

Or maybe you have reduced the plastic bags so effectively that you don't have any left.  What's a person in search of a bag to do?  Well, call the Local Action Network supply line (i.e. email me).  We may have just the compostable bag for you.  We have a selection of cellophane bags usefull for snacks and sandwiches that will just disappear in your compost bin given the chance.  And another set of corn starch kitchen garbage bags that promise to disintegrate fully one they get to the landfill.  Check in and we'll see if we can't set you up with something or the other (like toothbruses with replaceable heads, if the bags aren't doing it for you, or chlorine free, recycled paper products, for when you just can't use cloth).

Yet another carpooling facilitator has crossed our line of sight.  This one, called GoLoco, looks like it builds more on social networking sites like Facebook or My Space to provide transportation communication in real time for the trips you really need to or want to make.  It's less subset focused (work, kid chauffeuring) and could be the most flexible yet.

You ditched the bottled water but you still want it filtered, but buying the filters over and over -- and throwing them out -- is kind of getting to you (especially since they are recycled by the company in Europe).  Here's an interesting site that tells you how to refill the filter.  There are some drawbacks.  You don't have access to the components that keep the ichor from growing in short order all over your massively huge surface area filter media or those that bind heavy metals.  So it all winds up begging the question why it's not recycled by the manufacturer here.  Since they can even reprocess the activated carbon and recycle it...

Send more goodies (information, not stuff) and I'll pass it along.

All for now,
Sam