I Won!!!!!11!

I am very, very sorry. I posted a contest a couple of days ago, asking people to name the "recycle triangle" for a t-shirt. Well, the name of the "recycle triangle" is "recycle triangle." My bad. I won!

Will come up with a better contest when I'm not such a dunderhead.

Contest: Recycle Triangle name?

Don't mind me, just thought I'd annoy everyone with the spinning recycle triangle I found on the CoG's page about the Recycling Process. I will never have to leave my house again because now I can find out about all this stuff from the safety of my own home.

What is the recycle triangle called? Free Disney Wildlife Conservation t-shirt to the first person who can answer that question! W00-hoo! My first AE contest!

New Recycling Sheriff in Town

So, over the holidays my mom-in-law pointed out something in the Gainesville Sun which was great news -- plastic recycling would include everything from type 1-7! That's an amazing change from when Waste Management was our garbage collectors. Now our garbage collection is being handled by Emerald Waste, and they seem to be either every optimistic or very foolhardy in their wide selection of recyclable materials. After not finding anything on the GRU site about this, I finally called their media person (the most harried yet knowledgeable of people in any organization) who told me that refuse and stormwater are the only types of collections that are billed by GRU yet handled by the City of Gainesville. On their website I found a press release about the switch over to Emerald.

Finally, after a little more hunting, I found the website that explained in detail what could be recycled and what could not. Most of the other sites said something like, "you can recycle yogurt cartons!" That just kind of insults a soul's intelligence when you proclaim stuff like that. What if my yogurt carton is lacquered rosewood? Can I recycle that? I need hard facts, people!

Also, there was absolutely no announcement of the fact that type 3-7 plastics was possible since January of last year! That's the most shocking -- there should have been something somewhere to make people aware of this -- at least, make me aware of this!

Fascinating! Here's a video made in August of 2009 (1 month before the Sept. press release) where they say you can't recycle pasteboard (cereal boxes), even though they said you could one month later. This is really, really confusing -- I'm going to have to contact that nice lady with the Waste Watcher program to get some more info on this.

So much to catch up on!

My apologies for letting this blog founder; I've started another blog for a school project, so that's been eating up some time. BUT, that is no reason to let this one wither and on and on.

So, anyway, again my sincerest apologies and as soon as I can decide on where to start, I'll post again!

Sustainability Festival 2009

Gosh, has it really been two years since the Need-a-Bag? Project first launched at the Sustainability Festival at the 441 farmers market? The first year we had a table (once again I'll link to the awful debacle of DG and I stealing the Slow Food Gainesville table), the next year we didn't,
but this year we had a table again!

This year's festival was on October 24, and I decided to do a little photo gallery of our presence at the festival this year.

The first picture is of DG and her mom setting up the table -- DG had gotten a huge number of bags for the thing. DG made a sign thanking our many, many anonymous donors -- we're still having a thank you brunch, but it will probably happen after the holidays!

DJ (short for "Dude Junior" and not to be mistaken for "DG") came along to help and did a fine job carting bags over to the fence to hang them for the shoppers. He has been a good helper over the past year, and next year he'll probably come more often, as he managed to make some friends with some of the farmer's kids who were there. They ended up on the stage with the nice lady (whose name escapes me at the moment) who was entertaining the festival attendees. There was a fellow who was walking around in a pair of camo overeralls and flip flops and pretty much nothing else -- we guessed he was also going "commando." I don't know why I'm including this photo other than to say that hippie culture in Gainesville is not dead.

It was busy but not as busy if it had been on the weekend when the farmers start bringing in the fall harvests -- it was still pretty lively, and people from Gainesville Regional Utilities and Florida Organic Growers were there (I'll have to post on FOG soon because they are doing awesome work bringing low-cost raised beds gardens to low-income residents).

Need-a-Bag Project Update 11.28.09 -- Happy Thanksgiving Edition!

Note: The Need-a-Bag? project was created to promote sustainable bagging at the Hwy 441 Alachua County Farmer's Market each Saturday morning. We supply reusable tote bags reclaimed from thrift stores and garage sales. The Need-a-Bag? project also utilizes old tank tops as tote bags by sewing up the bottoms (these are called t-totes). We invite you to read the other posts on the project by clicking the "Need-a-Bag? Project" label at the bottom of this post.

It was a great Thanksgiving at the various Need-a-Bag? Project enclaves, but that doesn't mean the project takes a break! No sir, we were there bright and early this morning -- with no bags, but there were still quite a number left-over from the Sustainability Festival oh, so long ago. Dang, that reminds me, I have to post about that festival, even through it's been over a month. I have been so lame about posting, but I want to give a shout-out to Layla, our Slovenia correspondent at the AE, as she comments on sustainability behind the iron curtain -- wait, does Slovenia have an iron curtain? Don't ask me, I read The Gainesville Sun (haha, a little in-joke for the olds reading this)! Anyway, she left some great comments on my latest rant about the Krishna Lunch cards, and I hope she will not be deterred from continued commenting because of my complete lameness on not posting more regularly, especially since she's one of probably five people who read this blog without being strong-armed (you know who you are).

Anyway, a little update on our labeling activities with the Need-a-Bag? project: We have started NOT labeling some of the bags. That's right, these bags have fallen from the wide-sweeping scope of our bag procurements -- left by great, noble, anonymous (probably Jean) donors, that look clean, smell clean, and just deserve to be left hanging. Okay, we're honestly too lazy to collect them and wash them, but from now on, be warned: Bags that do not have the Need-a-Bag? Project label with verbiage and url for this blog are outside of our jurisdiction. So, you will see bags, as in the photo on the right, that have no labels and ones that do. The bags with no labels are not sanctioned by the Need-a-Bag? project, as in, they have not been washed and dried by our hands to ensure the cleanest possible tote for your shopping needs. That does not mean the unlabeled ones are not safe to use, as they have passed a cursory inspection (looking, sniffing, see above), but the Need-a-Bag? project will not be held liable for any lurking dust bunnies or hair balls we did not detect. This ends the legal mumbo-jumbo.

The only thing I've been stocking up on are pecans, which are easy to freeze and use in recipes as needed. I have so many bags right now, however, I might need to make a pecan pie, or try making one of DG's fabulous pecan, no flour, crusts. Take that, carbs!