One Local Summer - Week 8

This week's meal featured meat cakes! Roughly based on the idea from here, my version is basically a flat, round meatloaf (this time I made it with sweet onions and an egg from Elizabeth Telling Farm) which is then topped with mashed potatoes (these were lightly mashed red thumb potatoes, which were a lovely shade of pink) and bacon sprinkles. The meat cake has become a staple in our house, a kind of vegetable-free shepherd's pie, only much groovier. Side dishes were corn on the cob and pole beans with onions. The pole beans were a 0-mile food, right from the garden!

Non-local ingredients were salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and Worcestershire sauce.

polycarbonate water bottles in the news

Polycarbonate bottles were in the headlines in Yahoo health news today.

I switched to a Kleen Kanteen a few weeks ago, and I do like it. I noticed a metallic taste in the first or second use but it hasn't returned (and I use it almost every day). I especially like the sturdiness of it - I almost bought a Sigg water bottle, but I didn't think it would hold up to the kind of abuse I'm likely to dish out.

The High Cost of Bottled Water

Think about all of the bottled water that you see for sale in the stores. Now think about the fact that all of those bottles are manufactured, shipped (using a great deal of fossil fuel), and usually tossed in the trash. About 10% are recycled, but recycling requires a great deal of energy – which usually comes from fossil fuels. Bottles thrown into the trash are either burned (releasing toxic chemicals) or buried (taking up to 1,000 years to degrade.)

So why do we drink so much bottled water? For one thing, it’s pretty darn convenient. People feel that it tastes better and is more pure than tap water, though this is often not the case. Bottled water has fewer regulations and safeguards than tap water. Many brands, including a few big-name best sellers, get their water from municipal sources – that’s right, it’s tap water. And blind taste-tests have shown that people often prefer tap water to the bottled stuff.

So what are our greener options? Treat yourself to a nice, reusable water bottle. (Bottled water bottles are hard to clean and the plastic degrades with repeated use, so reusing them is not recommended.) Plastic sports bottles made of polycarbonate (marked with a #7) are the cheapest option, though polycarbonate has been shown to leach a compound called bisphenol-A (when exposed to hot water and heavy detergents - so avoid washing them in those.) Nalgene is the most well-known brand of polycarbonate bottles. A better choice may be a bottle made of aluminum (the inside is coated to prevent the water from contacting the metal) or stainless steel. Sigg (http://www.mysigg.com/) and Klean Kanteen (http://www.kleankanteen.com/) are reputable brands of metal water bottles. Some larger natural food stores carry metal water bottles.

But what about the taste of tap water? Here in Columbus the tap water reeks of chlorine. A water filter will help remove the taste, as will letting the water to sit for a few hours (this will allow the chlorine to dissipate.) Affordable water filters do create landfill waste, but my carafe water filter can process 40 gallons of water before the filter needs to be replaced - and that is the equivalent of more than 300 half-liter bottles of water.

think about your trash

I went to Kent State in the late 80's/early 90's, and we had no recycling available on campus. The students of McGilvrey Hall took matters into their own hands. I'm not sure who was responsible for it (the Geology department was the main suspect) but they had a very clever approach.

A number of recycling bins, clearly labeled, were placed next to the trash cans in the main hallway. A black-and-white bumper sticker reading "THINK" was placed on the lid of the trash can.

You know what? I did think, every time I used that trash can. I never threw away a recyclable.

I've thought about having some stickers printed up, but as I was looking around on-line, I discovered that cafe press already has them. (They come in a rectangular form as well.)

We should really take the time to think before we commit an item to the trash bin. Is it recyclable? Compostable? Could somebody else use it? Some things are rather unequivocally trash, but is everything?

Think.