Natural Step

Recently I read Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns can Change to Sustainable Practices, and I was very impressed. In the book they provide a framework for what a sustainable society or community should be and the methods needed to achieve that goal. Developed by scientists in Sweden, the Natural Step is essentially four simple rules that become guidelines for developing sustainable solutions. Already many municipalities throughout Sweden and several major corporations have successfully adopted these strategies with universally positive results.
The four rules are simply this:

To become a sustainable society we must...
1. eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of substances extracted from the Earth's crust (for example, heavy metals and fossil fuels)
2. eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of chemicals and compounds produced by society (for example, dioxins, PCBs, and DDT )
3. eliminate our contribution to the progressive physical degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes (for example, over-harvesting forests and paving over critical wildlife habitat); and
4. eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs (for example, unsafe working conditions and not enough pay to live on).
(taken from: http://www.naturalstep.org/en/faq)


I think there is so much to like about this. First, it's simple and to the point. It removes all the details that can stir people away, thinking it is too large of an issue to tackle, and gets to what is absolutely essential to sustainable living. Secondly, there is no real political or ideological spin that can drive people apart, since these four principals are derived from facts everyone can agree on. Finally, due to its simplicity it is highly scalable, from the choices an individual makes in his or her home to the actions of communities, businesses, states, or even nations.

The book has some great examples of how the Natural Step has been applied and what other communities can learn from these cases, or you can learn more about them on their website www.naturalstep.org. Maybe the most important lesson to take from this organization is not their specific framework, but that change is possible. For many of us it may seem that becoming a sustainable society is an impossibility and that in order for us to live and grow we must always take at the expense of the Earth. The communities who have followed the Natural Step or other examples like it around the world have proven this notion false and have shown that living in concert with the environment is a goal all of us can achieve.

-Andrew

compost passion

As I posted in an earlier blog, we started composting as a result of not using plastic liners in our trash.  I am in love with the compost.  I haven't even used it for anything yet, but the rich, dark, heavily scented and alive mulch just brings me a tiny bit of joy!  As with others who are starting to compost, it's been a process as I learned how to adjust the recipe to discourage flies, reduce unpleasant odors and encourage decomposition at a reasonable rate.  

What I'm noticing now, is that I'm not alone in my passion for the compost.  Anyone I've met that has a compost talks about it with a serious emotional attachment.  For example, a good friend of mine in northern Cal wrote a few months ago complaining about her frustration with not being able to find a compost bin.  She then wrote recently with the following note:  "I found a bin about a week after my rant to you about not being able to find a bin locally. You can bet I've let the city (and anyone else who would listen) know about that. After trial and error, last month I turned out a beautiful batch of rich crumbly compost and put it in the garden. This morning as I drank my cup of tea in the backyard - while admiring my plants and enjoying the activity of birds, squirrels and a lizard - I thought of you and Lisa.  I had to write and say hi. I hope you are doing well!"  Can't you just feel the magic of the compost?  And the websites, blogs, and compost classes are further testament to the attraction of composting.  I speculate it's the connection with nature, like gardening, only much easier.  The transformation of our personal garbage to nutrient-rich and life-giving planting material is really amazing if not downright miraculous. 

Try this experiment:  ask others about their compost.  I guarantee they will talk as long as you like and give you all the details of their tiniest contributions to their bins along with blow-by-blow histories of how they arrived at their current compost recipe with an energy and excitement of sports fans whose team won the national championship.  And truthfully, I'm about a 1000 times more interested in the compost!

lynn, co-owner Olive Branch  

Farming in Downtown San Diego

This past Saturday my roommate and I decided to head downtown and lend a hand at San Diego City College's urban farm. As a collaboration between the college, San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project, San Diego High School, and Garfield High School the farm that was once a small patch of campus lawn in the summer of 2008 is now a productive farm that serves as a classroom, an example of local sustainable agriculture, and a source of fresh vegetables for city dwellers who stop by its farm stand every Tuesday morning.

For several hours Saturday morning myself and a few other volunteers, helped prepare a cover crop on one of the farms lower terraces. This crop will not be harvested, but instead the wheat and lima beans we planted will be cut down to feed the soil and make it more fertile for the next planting. It was a unique experience turning soil, watering, laying seed and compost for a lifelong city-dweller like myself, and even more odd that I had to go downtown rather than out in to the country to do it.

I hope that soon changes though and that City College's curious patch of agriculture surrounded by skyscrapers becomes the norm not an oddity. By farming locally in urban centers, and doing so organically we can simultaneously reduce our use of oil (for transportation and fertilization of food), reduce our waste through composting, and increase our self-sufficiency in case of disasters or emergencies that limit external supplies. Thankfully I think it may be a growing trend. San Diego Roots sponsors several projects around the county that you can read about here. There is also Greensgrow in Philadelphia, which is a great example of brownfield reclamation. Finally we can all learn something from Cuba where the fall of the Soviet Union coupled with trade embargoes forced the development of urban organoponicos to fight food shortages.

Down the street from Olive Branch is an empty, fenced-in lot. I walk by it often and think that maybe there's opportunity in that lot for North Park's very own urban farm. Until that happens though, City College's farm is a great example of what is possible.

-Andrew

the bees

The bees.  Ever since, as a city inspector, I was hearing reports of weird bee infestations in new developments, it has been in the back of my mind that something is wrong in bee world.

Turns out, our bees are in trouble, which means we are in trouble.   One third of the human diet depends on plants pollinated by insects, predominately honeybees.  They are dying, from inbreeding, captivity, and lack of natural diversity.  The bee business consists of boxing and shipping them to the almond groves of California, a month later to the apple orchards in Washington, a month later the cherry groves of Montana.  Then the grossest thing of all happens . . . Arlee Apiary bees are sent to a sandy lot near San Francisco, where they spend the winter living on corn syrup.  5000 hives are fed from a 300-gallon tank of corn syrup.  Their lids are sealed until the warmer weather arrives and back to work they go to the same monoculture crops that make the bees nutritionally stressed.  Heather Mattlila of Wellesley College, who studies honeybee behavior and genetics says, “one of the most devastating pressures on bees is the limit on what they can eat.  Vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins - all the same things we need to survive, come from pollen,” which come from different types of plants.

 “Bees have been around for 80 million years,” says Sam Comfort.  Commercial bee colonies, faced with massive mortality rates are not faring so well according an article written by Morgen E. Peck.  The national great bee die-off asks, “what has caused a third of all commercial honeybee colonies to perish each year since 2006?”

The answer is colony collapse disorder (CDC), meaning the bees are not strong enough to fight viral and bacterial infections, pesticide poisonings, and mite infestations.  “We need to have a diverse set of genetic raw material so we can find bees resistant to disease,” says Steve Sheppard, an entomologist at Washington State University.  “Genetic diversity is an important part of the solution.”

I care about the bees.  Not just because our food is dependent on them, but because I believe it is morally wrong to destroy the natural environment and carelessly eliminate other species.  If anyone wants to talk bees with me, please come on by!

Material for this blog post was taken directly and indirectly without permission from Discover Magazine.

Lisa, co-owner Olive Branch

Oh the sacrifices!

Yesterday I agreed to man the store while Lisa took a few hours off, presumably to get some chores done prior to her upcoming trip to see her mom in Mississippi.  When she arrives late, she asks for another 30 minutes, because it turns out she has to make a few finishing touches on the Chilipepper recirculating pump she has installed in our bathroom.  My first reaction was not one of support, I'm sorry to say.  (For one thing, I thought she was putting a second coat of paint on the living room and going to the grocery store.)  We are just testing it at this point, and so she installed it in our bathroom, which is a tiny 1927 craftsman bathroom with a pedestal sink, so now there is a small but ugly thing sitting on the floor with wires and extra supply line jutting out in my previously soothing and comforting bathroom.  Not only that, it is LOUD.

Okay, now the cool part.  What does this thing do?  Well, this is a pump with a computer chip, and when you press the button, it starts pushing the water that is sitting there in the line into the hot water heater and continues in a big loop until the water reaches a certain temperature at which point (25-30 sec) it turns off and your hot water is sitting there ready to come out of the faucets.  From my end what I see is that you press a button and then the machine comes on for 30 seconds, turns off on it's own, and then you turn the valve for the hot water, and OMG voila, hot water.  No wasted cold water running down the drain.  No expensive tankless water heater.  Just hot water.  

Lisa tells me we can put this under the house to hide the ugliness and muffle the noise (which is only for a few seconds anyway), and run the little button up through the floor so that we can just turn it on prior to using the hot water (anywhere in the house).  So once we finish this phase of the test, we will try the more permanent test.  If this works as good as it appears it might, then what a great product.  We have so many water-conscious customers that are diligently saving their cold water in buckets while the hot water heats up.  This could put an easy and efficient stop to all that it seems.  Status updates to follow.

Lynn, co-owner Olive Branch 

Light therapy

I knew the natural lighting would benefit me when we installed the solatube at home, but now we have discovered something that may be equally beneficial:  blue LED lights.  Thanks to one of our lighting suppliers, we were just alerted to the benefits of this lighting.  But first, I must say that I am trained as a researcher and am extremely skeptical of holistic and natural "therapies" unless there is scientific research to back it up.  So once the lighting person told us that blue LEDs have an effect on circadian rhythms, I got interested and then excited when I checked it out.  

Turns out there is a newly discovered cell in the eye that acts as a photoreceptor (in addition to rods and cones) that regulates our circadian rhythms (biological clocks).  In short, this cell is particularly sensitive to the blue light wavelengths of light emitting diodes (LEDs).  The blue light suppresses melatonin, which is in part responsible for sleep.  So researchers tried using LED lights during the day, basically to inhibit melatonin in case it's too dark, like during the winter or if there's some other upset making you produce too much melatonin during the day (e.g., jet lag).  

There are at least two studies I found in peer-reviewed journals that show improved mood in general and reduced depression for my favorite disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder (see previous post about Solatube).  As I type, my blue light is shining, but resetting your biological clock to make it easier to get up in the morning presumably requires only about 45 minutes of blue light when you first waken.  I now drink my coffee to blue light.  Now of course it could be a placebo effect, but I swear I am waking up more easily.  I have to admit that for some reason I love the idea of this.  I guess because it's something that can improve mood via a non-pharmacological approach which I'm sure many would agree is a good thing for a multitude of reasons. 

I intend to try this out this winter; the acid test for anything light-related, since counteracting the effects of the brief daylight hours is paramount, for me at least.  I'll continue to update as the evidence comes in.  I'm recruiting my friends and others as experimental subjects in my own completely unscientific clinical trial.

And, oh yes!  The blue LED runs on 2, that's right, 2 watts of power.  How else could I feel good about this?     

Solatube natural lighting

Lisa and I try to use all the products we sell, so we can test them and give out first-hand information and, if we love them, then we have no restrictions on telling everybody what great products they are. So our latest product test is a Solatube (natural light tube). We installed one in our dark hallway and maybe divine is too strong a word but awesome is not! I love it. Everyone who has one or knows someone who has one has told us that once the first one is installed, then whoever it is always gets more. I see why. I now want one in my office and my bathroom, just for starts! It's almost like a window got installed in the hallway. You can't see out of course, but the light coming in is exactly like the bright light from a window. Being an early riser, I also dig on the light coming into the hallway outside my bedroom as soon as it gets light outside. (You can get a diffuser that makes it dark if that's not your thing and you want to control the light.) As a self-diagnosed sufferer of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), I am loving this extra (guilt-free) light coming into my home!

Lynn, co-owner Olive Branch