Maple Syrup: Testing out the Pig

A few weekends ago I brought a few friends over to my place and we tested out the Pig.

The Pig is my homemade maple syrup evaporator. It’s got a body made out of a 55 gallon metal drum, legs from Cyrus’s futon frame, a front damper/door made out of a discarded STOP sign, and a chimney made out of old heating duct.

Sustainability at DHMC: Reuse those foam plates!

I was in line at the cafeteria last week when someone from one of the other offices in my building said “Oh, when did they start using china in this cafeteria?” I had to politely tell the woman that DHMC was not deploying reusable dishes at all of its cafeterias and that I bring my own plate and just wash it afterwards. “Oh, what a good idea!” she said, “I should bring my own plate sometimes. Washing it off afterwards isn’t too hard.”

Handwashing isn’t that difficult, but washing off all of the dishes in a central location, using an auto dishwasher, would probably save money and water, and would certainly save a time for all of the people working in the building. There would be an initial outlay and ongoing expense to stock the china and deal with breakages and so forth, but it would be a great step for sustainability.

Oktoberfestivities 2009

Last night was Oktoberfest 2009. We had a lot of tasty food including hendl (chicken, in Bavarian), almonds mit hoenig (I can’t remember the german term for almonds), sausage, mashed potatoes, beer, and just a drop of Jaeger.

Oktoberfest, as I’m sure you all know, is that other fall holiday when guys and girls get to dress up in sexy costumes. Unlike Halloween, Oktoberfest encourages the guys to wear leather shorts, and encourages everyone to dance, drink, and sprechen deutsch. All in all it’s quite a good holiday.

This morning I wrote hijacked a song. Would you like to hear it? Oh, I bet meine lederhosen schwartz you would:

Jaeger-weiss, Jaeger-weiss,
Every morning you talk to me,
Dark and sweet, tastes of deer meat,
Jaegermeister I love thee.

To quote the Black Eyed Peas, “Tonight’s going to be a good, good night.”

Live Blogging: Sykes Free Concert Series

Okay, so I’m going to try out this live blogging thing. No promises.

We’re currently at the Sykes Free Concert at Collis Commonground. This concert is (or perhaps all such concerts are?) funded by Jack Wehner ‘74. The concerts are dedicated to Music professor Jim Sykes and his wife Clay.

Tonight we’re hearing music by Boismortier (Concerto), Abreu (Tico tico no fuba), Telemann (Duo), Rossini (Quartet) and Brahms (Sonata for violin and piano). Nothing by our perennial favorite, P.D.Q. Bach. Tsk, tsk.

We’re currently noshing on local cider, apples, bread, cheeses and ice cream.

Manufacturers: Please label all plastic with resin identification codes

As I’ve mentioned before, Dartmouth College recycles plastics marked #1-7. Coca-Cola of Northern New England (CCNE) is the recycler of Dartmouth’s plastic and aluminum, and they can’t recycle plastics unless they are marked with a number. Although most plastics can be recycled, there’s a significant class of not numbered plastic bags, lids, tubs, and other items that CCNE cannot identify, and so must go into the trash.

The plastic resin identification codes and icons were set up by the Society of the Plastics Industry in the 1980s. As far as I can tell these codes and icons, like the universal recycling symbol itself, are in the public domain. There’s no organization that polices use of these logos. So any given plastic manufacturing company could easily, and without royalty or compliance fees, change their manufacturing process to stamp, mold, paint, or otherwise include the appropriate resin id code on their plastic products. Sure, a bottle marked #1 could turn out to be half Polyethylene (#1) and half Polystyrene (#6), but in such a case a company could probably be sued for false labeling.

Because there are still un-numbered plastic products out there, I have devised a plan: Whenever I come across a plastic container or container component that isn’t numbered, I’ve been putting them aside in a separate bin. My thinking is that once I have a pile of these items I can sit down and contact the product vendors or container manufacturers and ask them to properly label their containers with resin id codes.

If enough people ask for properly-labeled packaging, I think that businesses will definitely start to pay attention. Even if only some of the container manufacturers start to label all their products, we can use those manufacturers as leverage and get companies to switch or threaten to switch to a new container supplier if all of the plastic parts on a given container are not properly marked.

–Q

M&C Summer 2009: A compostable successable

Milque & Cookies was this past Friday at 9pm and was a resounding success.

Phi Tau took a departure from the normal schedule of Saturday at 8pm due to Sophomore Family Weekend and thus had to forge ahead and bake like crazy on Thursday night. Everything came together marvelously well and a good time was had by all. I mean, who doesn’t want to stuff themselves with milk and tasty, sugary, yummy cookies?

Because I’d acquired compostable cups, we were able to put out compost bins instead of trash cans:

Recycling and Composting at Phi Tau

Phi Tau does an amazing job recycling and composting as much as possible. There has been a long line of dedicated recycling chairs/sustainability coordinators over the years, and the current officer, Ashley Morishige, has continued to expand and improve the system.

Recycling and composting in any situation can take time and energy, but recycling and composting at a fraternity can be an especially big challenge! Thankfully, Phi Tau has amazing support from the FO&M people that pick up all of the trash, recycling, compost, and bulk trash.

I’ve assembled a gallery of photos on my Zooomr account which you can view in blog format here.

Here’s a view of the outside bins:

Industrial Kitchen Toys

I have just come into the ownership of two awesome kitchen toys. Both of them came from the kitchen of a summer camp who, I can only imagine, needed to clear out some old equipment.

The first item is The Eagle, a powerful, hand-cranked kitchen slicer:

This bad boy was made by The Eagle Tool & Machine Company, Inc. based in Springfield, Ohio. The company is still around under that name and now has a website.

Phi Tau to have 100% Compostable Milque & Cookies!

I’m really pleased to note that for the first time ever, Phi Tau’s summer Milque & Cookies event will be 100% post-consumer compostable. (Milque & Cookies is a termly event in which the brothers bake a couple thousand cookies and serve them alongside an ice-cream-and-milk concoction)

For a few years Phi Tau has done a great job of recycling and composting as much as possible during baking and other prep for the event. During the event itself, milk jugs and plastic ice cream containers are recycled, and the waxy-paper ice cream cream tubs are composted.

Unfortunately, it’s been cumbersome to have one bin for plastic cups and another for cookies and paper towels and nigh impossible to get all of the students to properly sort their waste. But this term I’ve helped the brothers find a source for biodegradable plastic cups, so Phi Tau will be able to set out one bin and compost everything!

The compostable cups are currently quite a bit more expensive than the “dinosaur plastic” cups, and concerns have been raised about the use of GM corn and large quantities of pesticides in their creation. I’m currently working with a group of people at Dartmouth to try to find the most sustainable cup possible, but in the meantime it’s great to take this first little step toward using compostable cups.

I’ll make a post after the event with pictures and all that sexy jazz. In the meantime, feel free to add a comment with a guess of how many pounds of compost we’ll generate.

–Q

It’s not a myth: You can recycle plastics #1-7 at Dartmouth

A couple of years ago I emailed the College’s Sustainability Coordinator, Jim Merkel, and asked him about plastic recycling. I’d heard conflicting rules about what could go into the recycling bins, but I figured that he would know what the latest rules were for plastic recycling. When Jim told me that Dartmouth recycles all plastics from #1 – #7, I couldn’t believe him. I emailed him back to confirm what he’d said, and he reiterated the fact that I could recycle plastics from #1 (PETE) to #7 (OTHER) in a single bin. We could even comingle the plastics with aluminum cans.

Most curbside recycling programs only take #1 and #2 (HDPE) plastic bottles and jugs. For Dartmouth to provide recycling of not only different container shapes, such as berry clamshells and tubs, but also of plastics #3 – #7 is really amazing. Although I wanted to believe that Dartmouth had found a recycler to take these materials, I still had my doubts. Dartmouth has had issues in the past with recycling being collected and then just trashed, so I always remained a little wary about the whole process.

This past week I was able to communicate with the people that handle all of Dartmouth’s plastic recycling and I must say that I now feel much more confident about the program and much more comfortable telling people to go ahead and recycle as much plastic as possible. So here it is:

If you work/live at Dartmouth (not DHMC, see below), you can and should put plastic items marked with a #1 – #7 in the recycling bin.