Until lately, I haven’t thought much about composting. It always seemed like a messy business and I wasn’t sure exactly how you goes about making compost.  But according to the EPA, yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 26 percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream.  That is a lot of useful material going to landfills. So I decided it was time to get educated.

There are a lot of important benefits to composting:

• Compost enriches soils
• Compost helps prevent pollution
• Using compost reduces the need for water, fertilizers and pesticides

So what can go into a compost bin?  Just about anything organic, including food scraps, wood waste, shredded junk mail, egg shells (even egg cartons), vegetable peelings, all kinds of yard waste and lots more.   The folks over at Garden Organic have some great tips on how make really rich compost out of everyday stuff that would otherwise get thrown out and wind up at the dump.

You can find plenty of composting tools for sale to help you get started.  But you can also do what this video suggests and create a compost bin out of a trash can or plastic kitchen garbage pail.

Gardening Flowers & Vegetables : Making a Compost Bin From a Trash Can

The key is to get started!  So start converting your organic waste into a rich mulch that your plants will love.  Here is a short slide show with projects that will help educate your kids (and you!) about composting.

We’ve talked about the gigantic problem of plastic bags and plastics in landfills here at Pushkin’s Planet already.  I don’t want to imply that every use of plastic is bad.  Plastics have played a major role in many industries – e.g. medicine.  They are helping in situations like the earthquake crisis in Haiti.  But there are many situations where we don’t need to use plastic and can make a personal choice not to.  One big example is water sold in plastic bottles at the grocery store.

All you have to do is remember that all of those bottles are made from fossil fuels (oil).  As it was pointed out on “Drinking Water: Bottled or From the Tap” on the  Kids National Geographic site, just imagine each of those water bottles one-quarter full of oil—that’s how much oil it takes to just make one bottle!  There has been a lot of talk about peak oil recently.  Peak oil just refers to a situation where we can’t produce any more oil no matter what the demand.  So conserving our use of plastic helps us save on the amount of oil we consume which could become very important in the years ahead.

Besides finding out about how your community recycles plastic bottles (do they ask you to separate them from paper and put them with empty glass containers for recycling), you can also try to stop using so many of the water bottles and just get your own personal water bottle to take with you everywhere and refill with regular tap water which is safe.

Let me hear from you about other ways to stop filling up landfills with plastic bottles that aren’t biodegradable.  We’ve got to think about fixing these problems now so that future generations can enjoy our beautiful planet.  We all have to help, even in one little way.

Could we run out of fresh water? 

The other night I was watching 60 Minutes and they had a story about water shortages in California.  The state has been going through several years of drought and it’s beginning to take its toll on farmers there.  It got me wondering how serious the world’s water problems are.  It seems the problem is everywhere.  For example, here are some facts cited by the Jutia Group:

• Today, 2.8 billion people, or 44% of the world’s population, live in areas of high water stress, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. This will rise to almost four billion by 2030 based on present trends. The livelihoods of one in three people on the planet will be threatened by water scarcity within 15 years.
• According to The Economist’s article, it takes about 1,000 liters (264 gallons) of water to produce one kilogram (2.2lbs) of wheat. But it takes as much as 15,000 liters (3,963 gallons) to produce a kilo of beef. The meatier diets of Americans and Europeans requires about 5,000 liters (1,321 gallons) of water a day versus the 2,000 liters (528 gallons) of water needed to sustain the vegetarian diets of Africa and Asia.  The world will need as much as 60% more water just for agriculture for the 2 billion people expected to join the urbanite ranks over the next decade and a half, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
• The Murray-Darling basin, an area of southeast Australia as large as France and Spain combined, recorded its lowest level of inflows in 117 years during the first three months of 2009. Farmers have been restricted to as little as 16% of their annual water allocation. Authorities warn that water supplies for the two million Australians who live in the basin cannot be guaranteed beyond next year.
• Saudi Arabia – a desert country that is swimming in oil but desperately lacking fresh water – is putting $800 million into a new public company that will invest in overseas agricultural products, the Financial Times reported.  The reason: The Saudi government is discontinuing domestic wheat production to conserve its water resources. The country has been producing about 2.5 million tons of wheat each year since it began its wheat program in the late 1970s.

Yikes! Governments and organizations around the world will have some tough decisions to make in the coming decade to try and reverse these trends. All of this while trying to deal with global warming.

“Flow” Sounds the Alarm on Worldwide Water Shortage 

So what can we, as individuals do?  I found some sites with simple suggestions that we can all follow.

• Water – Use it Wisely – 100 Ways To Conserve - A sample suggestion?  “# 5 – Run your clothes washer and dishwasher only when they are full. You can save up to 1,000 gallons a month.”
• American Water & Energy Savers – Save Water 49 Ways – Here is one of their sample suggestions.  “#3 – Repair dripping faucets by replacing washers. If your faucet is dripping at the rate of one drop per second, you can expect to waste 2,700 gallons per year which will add to the cost of water and sewer utilities, or strain your septic system.”
• Nature Conservancy – Freshwater Conservation: What You Can Do – Since I’m a little bit lazy sometimes, here is one of my favorites: “#6 – Take the easy way out and hit the car wash. A car wash typically uses about 32 gallons of water per vehicle, but the EPA estimates that washing it yourself can use up   to 500 gallons of water…not to mention loads of your time and energy.” 

All this has made me think a lot harder about not taking fresh water for granted and doing what I can to make sure we don’t run out.

Here are some ideas to help your kids (and you!) become more aware of your plastic bag usage.  Here are some questions you can ask:

•  How many plastic bags do your family use and discard each month?
•  What are some ways you could reuse the plastic bags you already have?
• How many cloth bags would it take to eliminate the use of plastic bags in your house?
• Which stores in your neighborhood or city now offer reusable shopping bags?
• Does your city have a recylcing program that includes plastic?
• What happens to the plastic bags your family throws away each month?

A few plastic bags in your garbage may seem like a small concern until you realize what is happening to much of the plastic packaging, wrappings and bags we dispose of each day.  A continent sized swath of the Pacific Ocean has now become completely saturated with plastic debris (see map below). 

Like other areas of concentrated marine debris in the world’s oceans, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it is called, formed gradually as a result of marine pollution gathered by oceanic currents.  According to the Wikipedia:

The patch’s size is unknown, as large items readily visible from a boat deck are uncommon. Most debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite. Estimates on size range from 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) to more than 15,000,000 square kilometres (5,800,000 sq mi) (0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean), or “twice the size of the continental United States”.  The area may contain over 100 million tons of debris.  It has also been suggested that the patch may represent two linked areas.

Seeing these pictures made me realize how important it is to get into the habit of recylcing and reusing our plastic bags and replacing them with cloth bags when possible.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – Good Morning America

Governments, communities and consumers have become increasingly concerned about the impact plastic bags are having on the environment.  According to Worldwatch, each year, Americans throw away some 50-80 billion non-degradable plastic bags, and only 0.6 percent of plastic bags are recycled.

Plastic shopping bags represent a non-essential use of petroleum feedstock. For example, in 2006, the Pacific Institute estimated that producing the billion of plastic bags that year used 17 million barrels of oil, an amount which would otherwise produce 240-million gallons of gasoline.

Plastic bags can also take between 20 and 1,000 years to breakdown in the environment.  As a result, a number of cities and states are considering or enacting bans or imposing fees on the use of plastic bags – e.g. San Francisco. 

Plastic Bag Pollution

But people aren’t waiting for new laws to make their move to reusable bags.  You caan see them popping up in grocery stores, drug stores and other retail outlets.  And they’ve become stylish to boot.  The choices used to be bland (black or white, perhaps with a store logo).  Now you can designer shopping bags to fit any statement you want to make.

Maybe this will make it easier for me to remember to take bags with me to the store.  So, I always keep a couple reusable shopping bags in our car and a couple of more in the house.  That way I never have to experience that ”oops” moment at the checkout counter.

Welcome to Pushkin’s Planet.  If you read the About page, you’ll know that I’m a curious Schnoodle.  Right now I’m interested in ways to help make our Earth a healthier, happier place.  That can seem like such a huge project; so overwhleming there is nothing we can do as individuals.  I don’t believe that.  I like to keep things simple and I’m on the hunt for things we can do every day, on our own or with friends or family, to keep our planet alive and well!

 I love collaborating (great word!), so jump in with your ideas, suggestions and stories.  I’ll be here.  And thanks for dropping in on Pushkin’s Planet!