Need-a-Bag Project Update 02.06.10 -- oh yeah, happy new year...

Here is a bag that lasted, like, 5 seconds on the fence because...it has Noah's Ark on it! How could you not want this bag?! This is actually from last year. Geez, where has the time gone?

The market was bustling today, lots of lettuce and onions and some carrots and not so many strawberries. DG managed to snag me a box of strawberries because we had gotten to the market late and I hung bags while she went in to shop (my fault, I've been dawdling like a fiend of late). My family gobbled them up after I got back -- seems the freezes have not been kind to strawberries, among other crops, this year.

And now, the news -- Celebration! We've finally nailed down a date and time for our Need-a-Bag? Project Second Anniversary Banquet. It will be at Civilization this year which, I found out, is a co-op owned venture. It makes me want to frequent them even more than I have, which is none. This will be a time to thank the people who have helped Need-a-Bag? continue through two years of service to the Hwy 441 Saturday farmers market.

I was hanging bags this morning and a gentleman walked up and said, "are these for frees?" Haha, no, they're for free! Cute.

DG and I talked the other day about doing something crazy like apply for a grant, and then we realized we'd have to do something crazy like become acknowledged as a non-profit or something. That's too hard! I thought we should become a non-profit and then get the project signed up for the Disney volunteer service=free ticket to the parks thing, but again -- TOO HARD! I don't think I've emphasized enough how truly lazy we are, and so doing something like being officially recognized as a 501 c.3 or whatever would be disastrous to our continued willingness to do this project.

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).