Tidal Wave of Recycling

Here's a fun holiday picture to make up for the gloom and doom:

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The Cove

Well, I was amused to spot one of the people in the film wearing a Sharkwater tshirt, having shown that film at the college a few years back.

They’re very similar films, Sharkwater and The Cove, except The Cove is (sorry Sharkwater guys, we love you) overall a little more coherent and compelling. Part of that is the underlying narrative which gives the film its name: a group of concerned activists discover a place on the coast of Japan where thousands of dolphins are annually driven in to shore, where they are rounded up and captured to be sold in the live dolphin trade. The dolphins that aren’t taken, including infants, are herded into a nearby secret cove where they are slaughtered for their meat, which is packaged as whale meat in Japan since the Japanese do not traditionally eat dolphin. The group of activists decide they must infiltrate this cove and film the slaughter process to get the word out to people the world over.

The film definitely had me on the edge of my seat, as it combines real life activism with a kind of Ocean’s 11 crack team operation suspense (they make the reference themselves in the film, but I found it to be fairly accurate). They obviously get the footage, and by the time you finally get around to the slaughter part your brain feels like it’s about to explode. Well, mine did. I was so angry that things like this constantly continue to go on that it was a miracle I didn’t run from my house screaming. It wasn’t simply the slaughter- it was the capture and trade of live dolphins, it was the fact that they were hiding that they sold the meat, which is highly contaminated with mercury, it was that children were dying of mercury poisoning because someone was trying to make money- it was the Japanese representative to the IWC blaming the decline in global fisheries on whales, who, according to him, eat too many fish- and backing it up with "scientific" evidence.

None of this is actually surprising. If you’re still surprised that stuff like this goes on, you’re living in a naïve fantasy world. And maybe I’m bitter and cynical, but stuff like this is going to CONTINUE to go on. Endlessly, maybe. Because no matter how many movies you make about this stuff, it doesn’t stop. Making movies does not stop people from slaughtering whales. Nor does writing letters, the suggestion given by the website of The Cove. Yes, write letters. Go for it. To whom? Who are you going to write a letter to who’s actually going to stop these people? It’s great to raise awareness, for people to know what’s going on. But everyone in the world being aware that dolphins are being slaughtered is not going to stop them from being slaughtered. Stopping people from slaughtering them is going to stop them.

Oddly enough the better depiction of how to stop people killing whales is to be found on South Park- given, they do a bang up job of making fun of everyone in the process, but that’s what the point of the show is. But as always, decide for yourself. Watch the movie, get angry, and decide for yourself if “letter writing” is the appropriate response to that slaughter- to the man who believes whales eating too much are responsible for the catastrophic decline in global fisheries- to the slaughter of millions of sharks- to all the rest of it.

Oh. And happy holiday.

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Compost Testing Yields Good Results

Since the start of this semester, it has been my goal to put some science behind the composting that goes on at Washington College, and yes, we do compost by the way. Mid-September, I met with Dr. Sherman, associate professor of chemistry at Washington College who specializes in soil chemistry. She agreed to guide me through the testing and soon I was on my way to determining the quality of our compost.


The procedures were taken from the manual Test Methods for the Examination of Composting and Compost (TMECC), developed by the U.S. Composting Council. The purpose of following these procedures rather than our own is to have the ability to analyze our compost according to widely used standards. Also, in the future we may want to market our compost to the public, and following the TMECC procedures will allow us to put a Seal of Testing Assurance on our compost.

So far, three tests have been performed on the compost from last year, which finished decomposing over the summer. It has been tested for pH, conductivity (soluble salt concentration), and moisture. It is still in the process of being tested for organic matter, which will tell us the percentage of carbon-based materials in the compost. This does not, however, tell us the carbon to nitrogen ratio which is most important during the process of composting, determining the ability for the pile to decompose aerobically and at the correct temperature. This test is quite complicated, so we must send samples to select labs with the proper equipment.

These are the results:

pH: 7.43
Conductivity: 10.83 dS/m
Percent Moisture: 42.8%

Analysis of the results:

A pH within the range of 6.0 and 7.5 is optimum for compost according to the TMECC. In this range, necessary nutrients are available for microbes and the compost can decompose readily. If the pH were below or above this range, necessary biological processes would not occur. A pH within this range indicates that nutrients necessary for plant growth are available. The presence of toxic metals is also an important factor in compost quality. Toxic metals are indicated by a pH less than 5, so we do not need to be concerned about toxic metals in our compost.

Electrical conductivity measures the soluble salt concentration in a sample. Salts are important factors in compost quality because high concentrations can damage seedlings, prevent or delay germination, and decrease nutrient availability. Low concentrations may indicate low fertility levels. Typical compost samples have a conductivity of 1.0 to 10.0 dS/m, and although our reading was slightly higher, it is not excessively high and will not likely damage plants when mixed in with soil.

The percent moisture measures the amount of water in the sample. Percent moisture does not really affect its quality, but rather its ease of handling and transportation. A preferred moisture range is 40-50%, so our compost should be easy to handle.

By the end of the semester we should have results for the organic matter tests as well as results from a sample being sent to a soil analysis lab to determine carbon/nitrogen ratio.

You may be wondering about the actual application of the compost on campus. Some of the compost from last year’s pile has just been applied in front of Daly Hall. Now with these data we can rest assured that the plants are growing in quality compost. Look for signs in front of Daly indicating the use of the compost and be on the lookout for more signs in other areas in the future!

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The Cutest Little Trash Collector

That would be me, apparently. At least that’s what I was called, while collecting the recycling the other morning.

The funny thing is, I basically am a trash collector. Some people like to make a big fuss and insist that we’re collecting recycling, as if this makes the act of collecting it inherently different from collecting trash. The end use is different, certainly. The recycling gets, you know, recycled. But when it comes down to actually going through every building and pulling out bags of bottles and cans and hauling them all over campus, it feels a lot like trash collection to me, except the trash goes straight in the compacter. We have to sort the recycling. By hand.

It’s the sorting that really gets to you, after a while. It would be one thing if you grabbed a bag of recycling, and it was full of clean bottles and cans that had been rinsed and emptied. But chances are someone threw a full cup of coffee in the recycling, and neither the cup nor the coffee are recyclable. Most of our bins around campus sport prominent labels that read “BOTTLES AND CANS ONLY”, but somehow we consistently end up with objects which are neither bottles or cans. Paper coffee cups are a popular addition, as are those greenware cups from the dining hall. Hate to break it to you, campus, but just because it says “greenware,” they do not suddenly become recyclable. They are made out of corn. Technically they could be composted if we had a way to collect them and a much bigger composting system. But they can not go in with the petroleum based plastic bottles.

The thing that really gets me is how, even when we put a big giant label on something that says “NO CUPS,” you will lift the lid and, surprise, there are cups.

This has me a bit worried. Is our campus illiterate? This idea was suggested to me by another staff member who was astonished by the amount of trash I displayed in one bag of recycling I had pulled. “But why would people but trash in the recycling?” he asked, perplexed. Possibly they can’t read the signs.

But we decided to start asking students, and see if there was another answer. It seems unlikely that students were able to get accepted to the college if they were unable to read simple words like “NO” and “CUPS.” The common answer seems to be that there aren’t enough trash cans. It is far more convenient to put your trash in one of the many, many recycling bins on campus than to hunt down a trash can.

Now wait a minute- I thought we didn’t have enough bins? This is what I hear all the time, when people are trying to tell me that we don’t collect enough recycling, that recycling isn’t convenient enough, that I need to buy more bins. But, as it turns out, we have too many bins. And not enough trash cans.

Unfortunately that’s not something I’m allowed to put in my budget. Any ideas, dear readers, on how to keep the trash out of the recycling bins, in lieu of buying appropriate trash receptacles? Because the cutest little trash collector is getting a little tired of getting covered in coffee every morning.

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One Day Only, Hazardous Waste and Recycling Drop Off

MIDSHORE HOUSEHOLD HAZARDOUS WASTE COLLECTION

MERCURY THERMOMETER COLLECTION

"eCycle" - CONSUMER ELECTRONICS RECYCLING

SATURDAY, NOV. 7 - 8 am to 2 pm - DENTON, MD - Free !

Click below for the full announcement.


Household HAZ Waste & eCycling events on Saturday, Nov. 7 - (One Day Only)

Rain or Shine, 8 am to 2 pm

Caroline County Public Works, Denton, MD

For your information – SEE DETAILS BELOW or visit www.midshorerecycling.org regarding specifics about:

* A one day collection of old fuels, solvents, lawn & garden pesticides, oil-based painting products and many more items, including Mercury Thermometers.

* A Recycling event for electronics such as computers, computer peripherals, TV's and many other electronic items.

DIRECTIONS:
From West:
Take Route 404 East to Denton (stay on 404 East, don't take Business 404)
Cross Choptank River
Right at Denton / Greensboro Exit (McDonalds, Pizza Hut)
Right onto Route 619 South (6th Street)
Right on Wilmuth.
For GPS & Mapping programs, the street address is 520 Wilmuth St, Denton, MD 21629


Future Events:
* Spring 2010 - Queen Anne's County, Date & Location TBA
* Fall 2010 - Talbot County, Date & Location TBA
* Spring 2011 - Kent County, Date & Location TBA
* Fall 2011 - Caroline County, Date & Location TBA


Who May Participate:
* Residents of Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne's & Talbot Counties
* NO Business, Industrial or Commercial Farm Waste
* Residency and Household Status Verification will be requested

What Will Be Accepted:
* Gasoline, Gas/oil Mixes, Fuels
* Acids
* Cleaners
* Solvents
* Automotive Fluids
* Bleach
* Ammonia
* Pool Chemicals
* Dark Room Chemicals
* Household and Lawn & Garden Pesticides
* Insecticides & Herbicides
* Painting Products: Oil Based Paints, Paint Thinner, Turpentine, Wood Preservatives, Wood Strippers, etc.
* Dispose of solidified LATEX paint with trash - to solidify, add dirt, mulch, kitty litter, etc.

Pre-arrange large loads. Empty fuel containers returned upon request. Stall will unload vehicles.

What Will NOT be accepted:
* Explosives
* Ammunition (contact Fire Marshall at (410) 822-7609)
* Medical Waste
* Radioactive Materials
* Picric Acid (Don't transport - call MDE at (866) 633-4686 or HazMat Co.)
* Compressed Gas Cylinders (propane, refrigerant, etc.)
* Asbestos
* Smoke Detectors
* Materials from BUSINESS, INDUSTRIAL, OR COMMERCIAL FARM SOURCES

Suggestions:
* Buy quantities that match the task
* Try to use materials up
* Find a use or reuse for materials
* Follow label instructions
* Label all items & store in proper containers
* Choose safer products & substitutes
* Keep out of reach of children
* Put dirty empty cans in trash
* Recycle clean & empty metal cans
* Recycle lead acid vehicle & marine batteries at retailer
* Recycle motor oil, antifreeze and tires at existing transfer stations during normal operating hours
* Motor Oil & Anti-Freeze Dropoff Locations
* Recycle Rechargeable (Ni-Cad, etc.) batteries at Radio Shack, True Value and other location see www.rbrc.org
* Don't bring latex paint
* Solidify & dispose of latex paint with trash

Project Partners:

Midshore Region - (410) 758-6605
Caroline County - (410) 479-4040 or (410) 479-0520
Kent County - (410) 778-7448
Queen Anne's County - (410) 758-2697
Talbot County - (410) 770-8170
Midshore Landfill (MES) - (410) 820-8383
MD Dept of the Environment - (800) 633-6101

Funded by Midshore Counties (Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne's, Talbot) & available grants.

__________________________________________________________________
Mercury Thermometer Collection

Turn in old mercury thermometers:

* Weekdays at either the Kent or Queen Anne's County Health Departments
o Kent County Health Dept (410) 778-1350
o Queen Anne's County Health Dept (410) 758-0720

* At the Fall 2009 HHW Collection Event
o Where & When:
+ Saturday, November 7, 2009
+ 8:00am to 2:00pm
+ Caroline County Dept of Public Works - Denton, MD
+ See Directions Above

Visit the Maryland Department of the Environment's Mercury Website

__________________________________________________________________
Consumer Electronics Recycling


Where & When: (also see new drop-off sites below)
* Saturday, November 7, 2009
* 8:00am to 2:00pm
* Caroline County Dept of Public Works - Denton, MD
* See Directions Above

What will be accepted:

Computers:
* CPUs, Keyboards, Monitors*, Mice, Printers, Cables, Modems
* Computer Speakers, Scanners, External Disc Drives, most other peripherals
* Note - for computer equipment only, see the list of new county drop-off locations below.

Other Electronics:
* Televisions*, Remote Controls, VCRs, CD Players, DVD Players
* Calculators, Cell Phones, Telephones, Radios, CB Radios, Stereos^
* Facsimile Machines, Answering Machines, Copiers

Pre-arrange Large Loads
*Recycling fees for TVs and Monitors will be waived for the November 7, 2009 collection event.

Please assist with unloading, if able.

What will be NOT be accepted:
* Large or small appliances, power tools, household items, manuals, diskettes, packaging
^Wooden-cased TVs, stereos or speakers

General E-Cycling Information:
* Typical monitors & televisions have 4 pounds of lead
* Lead & other toxic and valuable metals can be recovered and reused
* These bulky items with toxic materials can be kept out of the landfill
* This event is a pilot program with the Maryland Department of the Environment, Midshore Regional Recycling Program and eCycling partners.


New - Computer recycling drop-off sites were recently set up in each Midshore County for computers & computer peripherals;

*
Kent County - Nicholson Drop-Off Center near Chestertown;
*
Queen Anne’s County - Grasonville Transfer Station in (8-5 daily - except Thursdays & Sundays);
*
Caroline County - Hobbs Transfer Station near Denton (Tues, Wed, Fri 11-6; and Sat. 8-4 ) ;
*
Talbot County - Chesapeake Center at 713 Dover Road in Easton, by appointment on weekdays with Lisa Korrell at 410-822-4122, for details, there is $10 fee for monitors (TV's also accepted: $15 fee) .

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Chickening Out, Pt 2

The reason the whole chicken thing is so significant (aside from the fact that I broke a nearly ten year hiatus on meat), is what it implies. When I was standing there watching the chickens have their throats slit with one of my neighbors, she asked why I had decided that I needed to watch the chickens die. She wasn’t the only one- a lot of people have been asking why I couldn’t just decide to start eating meat, why I had to be there to witness the blood (there’s less than you’d think) and guts and gore (which is mostly fat).

And I told her that my biggest problem with our food system is that it allows you to look away. A live, feathered chicken looks absolutely nothing like the chicken you buy in the grocery store, and it’s amazing how quickly after death they cease to look like animals and more like hunks of meat. And that’s fine- you wouldn’t want to eat it with all the feathers on- but people in our culture have the luxury of not having the faintest clue where their food comes from. And when you don’t know where your food comes from- especially when it comes in a bright and shiny package in the store- you divorce yourself not only from the knowledge of what went into the process of bringing that food to your table, but from the responsibility of choosing foods that are not only going to nurture your body, but are thoughtful, humane, and environmentally friendly choices.

In direct contrast to my afternoon standing outside in the sunshine butchering chickens, last night the college showed a PBS Frontline feature called “Poisoned Waters.” In it, journalist Hedrick Smith explores the causes of the vast amounts of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, pollution that never seems to abate regardless of how much money we pour into the problem. And he traces that pollution, unsurprisingly, back to CAFOs- Confined (or Concentrated) Animal Feeding Operations, a term more commonly used to apply to cattle, but which can also refer to chickens. The audience around me gasped at images of vast chicken sheds- often holding as many as four hundred thousand chickens in one long building. Chickens live in close, cramped quarters, usually in darkness, frightened and falling all over one another. They end their lives by being unceremoniously dumped into a truck, driven down the highway to one of the plants (plenty of ‘em down around Salisbury), and butchered on an assembly line. Stainless steel belts filled the screen- workers in gloves and hairnets and masks each making one cut, each only doing one part of the process, as fast as possible- and certainly not talking to each other. I had to lean over to the person next to me and point out the difference- our slaughter was a community event- people came to see their chickens before picking them up, they brought their kids, they talked and caught up and brought snacks. Not so in the poultry industry.

Smith interviews Jim Perdue, Chairman of Perdue Farms, one of the biggest poultry growers on the shore. Perdue argues that to succeed in business you need efficiency- and “efficiency is often size. Things had to become bigger to keep costs lower.” And this does indeed keep prices down. But chickens on the Delmarva, in addition to providing cheap chicken, produce about 1.5 billion pounds of manure. A year. And there’s not a whole lot you can do with 1.5 billion pounds of chicken s***.

Instead, a lot of the nutrients are washed into the bay. At one site where manure tainted water was running off into the bay, E. coli counts were found to be 48,392 colonies. The standard for clean water is 126. Arsenic was found at 9 times the standard levels- not to mention the high doses of nitrogen and phosphorus, which cause the algae blooms that suck the oxygen from the bay and cause massive fish kills every year.

This was no surprise to me. After all, there was a reason I was only going to eat chicken from a farm where the chickens are raised on grass, and where the manure is just tramped down into the soil, where new grass grows up out of it. You can only do so many chickens this way, and chances are it is a far more expensive process. It is nowhere near efficient. Efficiency doesn’t even begin to account for expenses like pausing in cleaning a chicken to explain to a child why we saved out all the livers (for fishing) and what that green stuff was (accidentally slicing into a gall bladder). Not to mention that most of us had never butchered a chicken before, and kept pausing to compare techniques and debate over whether or not we’d gotten the lungs out (they are tricky little things).

The one problem I had with the film was its’ sideways attack on farmers. No, it’s not right that farmers allow so many nutrients to wash away from their chicken operations that the bay is barely functional. But the farmers are not the only culprit. The film spent a long time attacking the poultry industry- the CEOs who could very easily assist their farmers in upgrading their farms to manage wastewater and to prevent those nutrients from escaping into the bay- but who will not do so because of the cost. They certainly share a far greater portion of the blame than many of the farmers, who aren’t given a whole lot of options if they want to keep their land.

But there is one other place where the blame can squarely fall. After all, would Perdue produce millions and millions of chickens if no one was eating them?

What if the millions of people who eat chicken EVERY DAY demanded that chicken operations prevented those pollutants from running off into the water? What if millions of people actually visited the chickens they were eating, and then watched them being slaughtered, and took a turn at helping with the butchering?

Do you think we’d still have the system we do?

You can watch the full PBS special here: Poisoned Waters

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Chickening Out

So yesterday I butchered a chicken.

Actually, I cleaned a few chickens- I didn’t do any killing because it requires a firm hand and a steady stroke, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get all the way through the jugular quickly enough to prevent the chicken from too much pain.

Are you grossed out yet? I hope not.

I’ve been a vegetarian for about 9 years. And this week I ate a piece of chicken. It’s been an ongoing internal debate for months now- or possibly years- ever since I started spending time with people who raise chickens. And with chickens. And then started thinking to myself- well, why not, really? If my primary reason for not eating meat is that I disagree with the conventional method of raising and slaughtering animals, and here I have found a community of people who raise chickens in a sustainable, humane way, what are my reasons for not eating meat?

I really didn’t have any. I’ve never been much for the “its cute, so you can’t eat it,” sort of argument, because while animals are very cute and deserve to live long happy lives, there’s a line in there somewhere. Lions certainly aren’t contemplating whether or not the zebras are too cute to eat.

But clearly part of what makes us human is our ability to reason about things, sometimes endlessly. And so I decided that if I was going to eat a chicken, I wanted to meet the chicken. And I wanted to witness every aspect of its life, from birth to death, and let the chicken tell me if it was really ok. I spent hours with these chickens- held them, pet them, watched them run around in their outdoor pen, eating bugs and watermelons and grains. I found that chickens aren’t very talkative creatures.

When the time came to watch the chickens die, I was afraid I’d be grossed out. I was afraid I would throw up or something- and I was very afraid that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But my friend told me something very wise: no one has to be good at everything. And that includes killing. I’m very good at making clothes. He is not. He’s very good at raising and killing chickens. I’d probably be ok with the raising- but there is no reason for me to be ashamed that when it came down to it I didn’t actually cut their throats.

I did, however, clean the carcasses, pulling out guts with my bare hands, plucking the last few feathers, cutting off the feet and the head- oh yeah, I did all that. And all while standing around chit chatting with neighbors and friends from my co-op and their kids, who were fascinated by watching us pull out perfect little hearts and lungs and livers, and wanted to pick them up and feel them and see how they worked. At first it was weird- but within a few minutes we were comparing techniques and laughing and joking, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to stand there yanking on chicken guts.

However, when it finally came to eating a piece of chicken, I still hesitated- I was kind of afraid I just wouldn’t like it, and all of this would be for nothing. My friends roasted a chicken, and I sat down with four adults and two children. Having sat down at the “kids” end of the table, the adults sort of forgot that I was having a significant moment, and left me to my thoughts while I stared at the piece of chicken on my fork, wondering if it was the chicken I had sat and held for a good half hour a few weeks ago. The six year old next to me finally asked what I was doing. “I’m thinking about this chicken, and how it lived, and whether it had a good life, and thanking it for giving its life so I could eat it,” I said.

“Of course it had a good life,” she said, “I got to pet it.” She then proceeded to devour an entire chicken wing.

And so I ate the chicken. I like the dark meat better, by the way.

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