Plastic-Coated Paper and Recycling

placemat project for boxes

Here is a WiseGeek page on what types of paper can be recycled - you will notice it says:

Other types of paper can be recycled with a little work. For instance, if you have envelopes with plastic windows, you can cut the windows out, and then recycle the envelopes. Be wary of junk mail, especially if you shred it. Much of its paper can be recycled, but you may need to pull out things like blank plastic credit cards or plastic coated paper.

Plastic coated paper, believe it or not, has been a concern of mine for awhile for this very reason.  (Yes, why would you believe I didn't have this strange, neurotic tendency to obsess about plastic coating on boxes?).  I became aware of it when one of the librarians I worked with at the Law School Library told me not to throw a carton into the recycling bin because it was coated with plastic. 

I tend to believe that plastic coating on boxes is more often on thin, white-paper boxes than on the grey cardboard but I was looking at the boxes of cereal and crackers we keep on the top of our fridge and really couldn't tell the difference between painted cardboard and plastic coated cardboard.  I even dragged out DJ's microscope and tried to look at a couple of pieces up real close, but could not see any difference. 

The horrifying thing is that if they're all plastic-coated then none of the cereal and cracker boxes can be recycled and then what do you do with them?  Make cereal box placemats?

Screenshot links to ReplayGround page about box placemats

Oh yeah, about the Accidental Experiment...

Haha, remember when I said I was going to take the bus to my doctor's this morning?  Well, I canceled my appointment because I'm in a crunch, work-wise - my thesis director wanted a draft two days ago and I thought it was due next week...hahahahah!  So funny.  But now I have to crack down and not do fun things like blog - I'll do fun things like read about utopianism in late 19th century American Literature!  Yeah!

Anyway, I wanted to update that I did not take the bus to my doctor's appt. because of work, but also because it is pretty nasty outside - the old man was saying this morning we really shouldn't complain about rain when our friends to the north are getting pummeled with snow and ice.

I did, however, take the bus to get to campus for my seminar on Tuesday; I couldn't for the life of me find my keys, so couldn't double-lock the house and couldn't unlock my bike.  What is usually an hour and a half ride home from campus after 7pm, was only about an hour before 6pm.  Sorry, I don't have pictures but will get some soon.  I enjoy riding the bus, but it takes too dang long because you have to take these cockamamie routes to get anywhere.  At least my prof gave me a ride home so that was nice.

Graphic swiped from weather.com

Accidental Experiment: Gainesville's Public Transit System

Decided I would make a trip to the doctor's an experiment in using my city's public transportation system.  I've reported on using public transpo when I was still working at Library West (you can find the post here), and I'm very sour on the state of our city's bus system - the buses are scheduled a lot slower in the parts of town where there aren't an insane numbers of students crammed into tinder-box apartment complexes, and the routes are not that convenient.  In other words, they need at least double the number of buses and routes to make it a truly efficient public transportation system. But, this is Gainesville where SUV's are still de rigueur.

Anyway, this takes place on Thursday and will update.  My prediction: It will take me an hour and a half each way, from my home to the office and back.  Better remember my book.

Got the funky bus picture from Hemmings blog

Air-potato Roundup Makes AOL News!

Here is a link to David Their's article on The Great Air-Potato Roundup for AOL News.  Surprise!  He writes from Cone Park, where our group was on Saturday!

Here is a link to the original post about the Great Air Potato Roundup 2011.

Cannery in Jacksonville

The old man told me about this facility over a year ago, and I'm finally getting around to sharing it.  The cannery is located in Jacksonville and it sounds like it could be a decent way to cooperatively can foods in a cost-efficient way.  So, say, you have a group of homesteaders who grow tomatoes and end up at harvest with a ton of tomatoes and then someone goes, "you know who has the best recipe for pasta sauce?  My mimi," and everyone goes "yum, homemade pasta sauce!"  So you get your bushels and bushels of tomatoes, load the kids and the moms in a couple of minivans (here, I'm assuming the only folks with enough stamina for this kind of activity would be moms and my apologies to non-moms) and drive up to Jacksonville and use the Duval Extension Canning Center.

The IFAS Solutions for Your Life page for this facility says that it costs 7.50US/hour to use their equipment and you bring your own jars if you are using glass (I guess they provide aluminum cans if you go that route?).  There is an additional 0.15US/pint jar and 0.30US/quart jar processing fee which I'm assuming is for sterilization and perhaps a lid (the author seems to be a little reticent about certain details like this, I guess assuming you'll agree that 15-cents or 30-cents is an awesome deal).  I don't mean to rag on SFYL; the site is awesome since it makes all their fact sheets and extension guides available to anyone with an internet connection, and there is a lot of information on topics like this.

As a final note, if you are not in Florida, or in the northern part of the state, Pick Your own .org site is a great resource for finding the canneries in your part of the country; there are also links for Canada and a placeholder for United Kingdom links, but the former is sparse and the latter non-existent (hint, hint, nudge, nudge to people in Canada or UK)

Got the WWII poster image from Eat Local Challenge blog (the image, for some reason, hotlinks to Life Begins at 30).

The Great Air Potato Round-up 2011

Yes!  Back at it after a 3-year hiatus.  DJ is in Cub Scouts and his troop went out Saturday morning to help in this year's air potato roundup.  Here is a link to the 2008 post about the round-up, and it was fun reading over it, especially because that was a really rainy, miserable-weather day and I tried to weasel out of it but DJ wasn't having none of it, and we still had a blast.  This year's round-up, however, was still kind of chilly, but the sun was out and it made for a very pleasant excursion into the woods.  I learned today (from the old man) that they choose this part of the season to pick air potatoes because the vines have frozen and/or died, making the air potatoes easier to spot on the vine.

There were a lot of people there, and I got to meet some of the parents from DJ's troop, and got to round up some air potatoes for about a half-hour; then, unfortunately, I had to leave to sign DJ up for spring baseball at another park across town.  I was really into rounding up air potatoes (honest!) but by the time I returned to the site everyone was already leaving.

DJ is starting to dislike my PDA!  It was too soon!

Ton of folks w/buckets and kitty litter containers

I mentioned in the 2008 post that there is an addictive quality to collecting air potatoes.  I was saying to the old man this morning, as we were tromping around in the woods behind a park, that it must be some primitive hunter-gatherer instinct that makes this activity so appealing, year after year, to so many people.  There is an acquisitive aspect to it, collecting air potatoes in a bucket that you add to the largesse of potatoes that are then, ostensibly, weighed and calculated to see how many pounds we collected.  There is also a contest for the "largest" and "weirdest" air potatoes, so that adds to the excitement of collecting; the old man was convinced he and Gus had found the largest AND weirdest (the weirdest was an air potato that looked the Mickey Mouse).  Unfortunately, neither of them won in either category so that was a bit of a let-down for DJ.  His next big disappointment was not winning the big pink cruiser that was the grand prize at the after-round-up celebration at Morningside Nature Center.  This is even AFTER winning one of the 20(?) gift packages that they make up from contributions by local businesses(!).  I just have to shake my head and realize that the horror you put your parents through really does come back to bite you in the butt when you have kids of your own.

My personal haul from the event - yes, I'm still feeling guilty

The after-round-up celebration was a lot of fun, and a lot more comfortable this year with the sun in full January display and the ground reasonably dry.  The celebration was held outside of the new, screened-in pavilion at Morningside, and they had a band playing when we got there.  There were tons of people and we immediately made our way to the t-shirt booth.  I feel kind of guilty about taking a t-shirt this year since I really didn't help that much but I rationalize that (and the free snacks) by saying that I volunteer for the Gainesville Parks and Recreation already (with my participation at the living history farm) and I'm doing a blog post about the event that will be seen, ostensibly, by 70 people who follow this blog (70 PEOPLE!  I cannot believe it, a big 'thank you' to everyone ☺).