Yesterday's Big Haul: Free Squash

I went to a big lunch at the small liberal arts college where I taught until recently. The theme of the lunch, served outside under tents, was local food brought in by local farmers. Every ingredient, other than the salt, was locally procured. The farmers brought in tons, and I do mean tons, of various squash that were used to decorate the grounds and, I suppose, illustrate the bounty of our local farms. People were allowed to take squash home, and here is what I carried back to my car: While we were eating, my friend Katheryn commented on the tendency to eat to excess at buffets, and wondered why we do this. We all agreed on the general explanation that we are disposed to eat, and keep on eating, whenever we find ourselves in situations of bounty, as a disposition, perhaps even genetic, left over from our hunter-gatherer past, when such a dispositon would be crucial to survival. Eat when there is lots of food available, and you are more likely to survive the periods when there isn't enough. If that explanation is right, and does explain our tendency to gorge ourselves when surrounded by piles of free, ready-to-eat food, then I think that it may also extend to my disposition to take as much free stuff as I can fit into my hatch back when I'm surrounded by free, good stuff! After I got all this squash home, I regretted that I hadn't gone back for more.... I wish I had more of the butternuts, and the carnevales, which you see in front, especially since squash stores well. Now I've got a nice store of squash in a basket in my basement, covered with one of these towels.

Free Foraged Food - Part 2 - Green Beans

Fall is the time to put food up for the winter, and I'm doing my part. My neighbors, Sam and Marcia, are good scavengers, and yesterday they brought me these green beans, gleaned from some farm up in Poland, NY, which had been a bit mangled by the harvesting machine: I washed them off, cut off the damaged parts of the bigger beans, blanched and froze them. Here's what I ended up with: I'm glad for the beans, and glad to have kept them from going to waste.

Terracycle - Reusing Plastic Bottles

My friend Frank recently told me about this company: Terracycle. These guys are making plant food by feeding organic waste to worms and then packaging these gardening products in old soda bottles, which would otherwise enter the waste stream. Pretty clever. Of course what we really need to do is to produce far fewer of these plastic bottles in the first place - reusing just isn't enough of an answer to our waste problems. I also would like to know how much fossil fuels these guys are using to make their products. But in any case, there is some clever thinking going on here.

Creative Use for Plastic Bags

I took some pictures for this blog while travelling in England and Scandanavia this summer, but did very little blogging from there, so I have a little catching up to do. I saw this clever reuse of plastic shopping bags (what the Brits call "carrier bags") one evening while killing a little time before I went to see a play at the Old Red Lion pub, near the Angel tube station. (Pub theater is great. This place was a nice pub downstairs, with a tiny, tiny theater upstairs. You buy your ticket, get a pint, and when the bell rings to let you know to go upstairs, you bring your pint along. I didn't love the play, but I did enjoy the overall theater experience.) So, an empty storefront window had been artfully filled with crumpled plastic bags, affording privacy to whatever was going on behind the window, I suppose. Of course it's too bad that there are so many plastic bags in the world to begin with, but I liked this clever repurposing of them. There are some movements afoot to ban plastic bags, such as this one in San Francisco. Here is another story about the international movement to get rid of them. I'm all for such bans. Here is another site to get you acquainted with the issue.

Last Week's Treasures from the Trash

I got a few good things out of a neighbor's trash last Tuesday. Here's what I came home with: a bunch of nice, new fake flowers. (Fake flowers are very much not my thing, but my next door neighbor likes them, so I picked them up for her. I do, however, feel a little conflict over this, since the detritus of various fake flowers end up migrating into my back gardens. Oh well - she does lots of nice things for me, so it will be nice to do something she will appreciate.) I also got a bunch of file folders, which I don't need, but oak tag paper is so handy to have around for making tags, etc. I also got a brandy new box of push pins, a nice old pair of scissors (can you have too many scissors? I don't think so), a little plastic tray, a box of pearl costume earrings that I will add to my yard sale, and a small spatula. Not bad for a few moments picking. And, on the same day at another house I got another one of these. So that brings the count of perfectly good, white, plastic, kitchen trash cans to four!

Would you throw this mug away?

I found this very nice, handmade mug in the trash of the old woman who lives across the street from me. It was still wrapped up in what I took to be its original wrapping paper. Maybe someone gave it to her as a gift. Mugs are a standard issue, generic gift. Which made me wonder why she, or some member of her family, didn't just regift it. What a waste to throw it away!

Finding things along the road, too!

I was up in Nottingham, NH last week, visiting my father and other such things. I went out into the woods one day and pulled a few things out of an old dump in the woods, but I left them in a pile by a tree, intending to pick them up with my car later, and then never did get around to getting them. I'm pretty confident that the pile will still be there the next time I go up, when I'll retrieve it and post about that stuff. But, on my way home, walking along the road, I found this dog comb. It is just what I needed. When I came home from England this summer, my dog was in the middle of a major shedding, and I was too cheap to go out and buy a new dog comb, so I used a nice, old wooden comb that I wasn't using anyway. But now I have a real dog comb, so hopefully less of Lu's hair will end up on my couch! We'll see about that, but meanwhile, this little find really does reinforce my view that most things you need are in fact just lying around waiting to be picked up...

Free Foraged Food - Part 1

I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted! I went to England and Scandanavia for about 6 weeks, where I posted a little, but not much. And since I've been back I've concentrated on getting into a good writing routine, as well as painting my house, getting reacquainted with my dog, and pursuing an unexpected personal project. All this is by way of saying that I've been gone longer than I expected to be, but now I am back, and looking forward to getting back into the bloggy swing of things!

I'm going to a locavore (meaning one who eats local food) potluck tonight, where I'm giving a talk on waste (the topic of the book I'm writing). We are asked to bring a dish with at least one ingredient which is from the local area. I used this as an excuse to forage some lovely apples from a footpath in the Utica Marsh. I had noticed the apples while walking there with a friend recently. So I went back today with a basket and filled it up. I didn't think to bring my camera along, or I would have pictures of the tree. But the tree was loaded, and a man helped me by throwing sticks up into the tree to bring down the apples. Here is what I ended up with: Given how I got the apples out of the tree, they were a bit beat up, which was okay, since I had to cut them up anyway for the pie. I'm going to go back soon with an apple picking basket on a long pole and really stock up for pies and apple sauce. But in the meantime, here is the pretty pie I made with my foraged apples:

Freegan: An Alternative Consumerism

My friend Heather just forwarded me this article from The New York Times. Very interesting. Thanks, Heather!

Resisting Temptation to Drag Things from Dumpsters

I recently spent an altogether lovely weekend in Cheltenham Spa, up in the Cotswolds. It was a 'hen party' weekend for my friend the Lynneguist, who is getting married in a couple of weeks. It was a great town, and we spent a lot of time walking around. If I had been at home, I certainly would have retrieved the nice glass door in this skip (the British word for a dumpster): But oh well, hopefully someone else took it home and put it to good use. I see these skips all over the place, much smaller than ours at home.

Relections on Why I Do What I Do (at least what I report on doing here)...

So, being away from my usual life, haunts, and activities makes it a little more difficult to post in my usual way. That is, for the next several weeks I don't expect to drag much stuff out of the trash (I doubt that my hostess would appreciate it!). If I can remember to lug my big old camera along, I will take some pictures of relatively relevant things. But meanwhile, I thought I'd reflect on and write about the general content of this blog in a more abstract, general way. (Trained, and for many years employed, as a professional philosopher who, by definition thinks abstractly, this blog has been a welcome change of pace -- into the particular, the specific.) So, the question is, why do I take things from the trash, a practice that others find distasteful, even embarrassing? One reason is that because stuff in the trash is, well, FREE. I'm frugal, some would say cheap. (Here in the U.K. they say "tight". A British friend of mine likes to say "Tight as a gnat's chuff." Don't ask what a chuff is. But visit this great blog by my friend the Lynneguist to learn about all sorts of British/American linguistic quirks.) Why would I buy something that I can freely take from someone's pile of trash instead? Being raised by New Englanders I was early on taught to value my pennies, and this lesson certainly stuck. So, one reason to take stuff from the trash is simply to save money. I like stuff, especially old, used stuff, and trash day is one easy way to get it. Another reason though, is that waste really, really bothers me. The amount of waste in our society is staggering, and the waste we can observe is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. So, when I see some perfectly usable something out with the garbage, my inclination is to take it home and, well, use it. (Or, if I can't use it, find someone who can.) Every used thing that someone else has discarded (either in the trash or by giving it to a thrift store) that I take home is one less thing in a landfill.

Never Buy Potting Soil Again

This is the new thing I've recently started taking out of the trash: abandoned planters with soil still in them. The big square one has pretty nice potting soil in it, which I'm going to hold on to for the next time I need to repot a plant, or something like that. The other two are going to end up in my compost pile. I've thrown some other abandoned soil in it already. All of which brings me around to pointing out that my compost piles (there are in fact two), are in serious need of expansion...

Fallen Fruit - Saving Good Food

I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press 2006). This book is a must-read for anyone interested in food, sustainability, the environment, and so on. I learned a lot about how food is wasted, and how to be a less wasteful eater. Anyway, towards the end of the book, he mentioned the legal principle of 'usufruct' in the context foraging food either from public places or where fruit was going to waste. I like this idea - that if others are allowing something perishable to go to waste, then you may have the right to take it and use it yourself - very interesting. In that context, he gave a footnote to this site: fallenfruit.org. The website is devoted to the idea of foraging fruit in the city (of LA, but they would like to expand their mission across the U.S.). I am very taken with the politics of this idea (I like any idea that keeps private property in its proper place), and the fallen fruit website is very much worth looking at, including the manifesto and maps. There are some apple trees on the edge of a public recreation center a five minutes walk from my house, which I noticed last Fall, and which did have edible apples growing on them. And then, walking my dog, I've discovered an old empty house lot that I think has apple trees. This Fall I am definitely going to go back, pick a bunch, and put up apple sauce. So now what I need to find in the trash is a good old fashioned apple picker! What fruit do you have growing near you that you can collect?

Why Do People Throw This Stuff Away?

I have to admit: I don't get it. Why would someone throw away something as basically useful and necessary as a kitchen trash can? I found each of these in the trash within just a few houses of where I live, over the course of just a few months. Each time, I assumed that it was broken or cracked, but I went to check it out anyway, because I'm always on the lookout for trash cans in which to pile up my 'green waste' (yard clippings, tree limbs, leaves, etc., that the city turns into compost). But each of these trash cans is fine. I just kept piling them up in my garage, and yesterday I gave them a pretty perfunctory cleaning, and so here they are: 3 perfectly good trash cans. Each one is made by Sterlite, which says something about just how ubiquitous their plastic products are. So, what do you think? Why do people just throw stuff like this away?

What a Waste

This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. I bought some new underwear a few days ago, and when, at the cash register, I went to remove them from their little plastic hangers, the cashier said that they would just throw them out, not reuse them. I assume that the manufacturer puts them on the hangers and doesn't want them back. They are recyclable, but still! It is such a waste for all those hangers to get made, and then to have to recycle rather than reuse them.

Thrift Shopping = Green Shopping

So, I went to the Sal Army in Lancaster, Ohio yesterday with my friend Julie. This store is well worth the visit. If I were you and I were anywhere in the vicinity, I would go out of my way to go to this particular store. (I don't understand the great differences in quality between different Sal Armies. They must have some sort of distribution system that accounts for the fact that some of the stores really suck,as does the one where I live in Utica, NY, and others are great. It is not that they depend on donations from the place where they are located. There is a more complex distribution system than that.) Anyway, spending a couple hours in this store was as close to a religious ecstatic experience as I am likely to have, although nothing compares to the Garage Sales held at the Sal Army in Cleveland. Back on point, (I can stick to a point, I swear), I spent $54 and change, and here is what I got: All together, my $54 got me: a large bag of candles, which one of these days I'm going to recycle into candle cup gifts; a vintage wool blanket, with someone's name tag on it (love that!); a nice old Boater's straw hat, in great condition that I'll put up on Ebay; 2 cool vintage dresses; a very nice antique ironstone serving bowl in great condition; a little old-fashioned nightgown; a pair of brand new tights (I do draw the line at used underwear); a very cute polka dot lightweight jacket by French Dressing; a very cute reversible wrap skirt WITH ITS TAGS STILL ON IT (I swear, buying clothes and giving them to Sal Army without ever having even bothered to take off the tags strikes me as very weird behavior - wouldn't it be simpler just to burn your money from the comfort of your home?); an oldish white cotton slip (no, slips aren't underwear); a nice queen bedskirt, which I very much need; 5 large men's cotton shirts, which I'll use for more of these; 2 old silk scarves; a Texas Ware sugar and creamer, also destined for Ebay; a little white tea cup, which I'm going to use for those candles gifts I mentioned above; a pair of socks (no, socks aren't underwear either); 2 stretchy tops; 2 sleeveless blouses; a basket ware cup; 2 long linen dresses that I'm going to turn into skirts; 2 long linen skirts that I'm going to shorten; a Flax linen shirt I bought just because I like the fabric; and a matching linen skirt and top set. Not bad for $54, huh? Here are some closeup pics:
I am, as you can probably tell, pretty pleased with this score. I spent as much as I could have easily spent on a single thing, and got over 30 things instead. And, given that a few of those things will end up on Ebay (the hat, the sugar & creamer), I may in fact break even or make a little money. But as pleased as I am for myself, I am also disturbed by how much we overproduce in this country. Most Sal Armies have to regularly take things off the racks in order to make room for the enormous quantities of stuff getting delivered daily to their stores. (All the shirts I bought yesterday were 3 for 99 cents, because they are desperate to get rid of inventory. So at the last minute I scooted over to the men's section and quickly picked up the 5 men's shirts I bought.) I'm not sure what happens to all that stuff, but at least some of it simply gets thrown out, or so I suspect. And, it isn't true, as some people assume, that the clothes in thrift stores are worn out, or cheap, or hopelessly stained, and so on. The wrap skirt I bought was brand new, and I saw lots of other things still bearing their original tags. I always carefully look over what I buy, and nothing I bought yesterday is obviously worn, or stained, or torn, etc. Why waste $54 on a single skirt, when you can spend the same amount and get this much instead? So, my suggestion to those of us who are concerned with such issues as sustainability and are distressed by the extent and ubiquity of waste in the world, I say "Thrift Shopping is Green Shopping!" We all have to consume, but we don't have to do it in the 'normal' wasteful ways.

When Did Plants Become Disposable???

So, I got this lovely orchid plant(it's a Phalaenopsis) as a gift from my brother and sister-in-law several weeks ago, as housewarming gift, when I finally got around to throwing my housewarming party. (The party was a great success, if I say so myself.) When they gave it to me it had a lovely stem with four or five very pretty white blossoms on it. The last of the blooms died recently, and after removing the flower stem, I was reading the tag that came with the plant to find out how best to care for it. Reading the tag, I was rather discouraged to read the last line:It's that last line that really struck me. This is a lovely plant, even without the blooms, but the company that made it would prefer that I throw it away and just buy another one, rather than keep this plant and nurture it while it readies itself to bloom again. Now, throwing it away isn't directly wasteful. If I were to throw it out, I would put it into one of my compost bins (you aren't surprised that I compost, are you?), so the plant itself and its soil would get recycled. (One of the many reasons I look forward to Spring is that I can once again drag home my neighbors dead plants in order to add them to my composting efforts.) But all the energy that went into growing it, watering it, transporting it from Florida to Massachusetts (where my family bought it), would all be a waste. And much of that energy is, of course, in the form of fossil fuels. And so this little example of planned wastefulness strikes me as the perfect microcosm of the biggest source of our environmental woes and coming disasters: our economy depends on all of us wasting as much as we can, which always means, among other things, wasting fossil fuels. The company that grew this Phalaenopsis makes more profit the more we waste these plants by throwing them away and buying more. We are in serious trouble if we don't change our ways and waste less.

Things I Dragged Out of the Trash

Well, since my last couple of posts didn't in fact involve anything actually I found in the trash, I thought I should show a few things that I have, indeed, saved from the eternal obscurity of America's landfills. Truth in advertising, and all that.

First, we have seven lovely pinecones with floral wires, even lovelier, attached. Neighbors had thrown away their Christmas wreath, so these were lying there, in the snow, ripe for the picking. While my dog was shitting at the next house down (yes, I did pick it up), I wrestled these little beauties out of the wreath. They'll come in handy next Christmas, so into the pile they go.
Next is a perfectly good, and nicely sized, dog crate. I found this in the trash in the last town I lived. I intend to give it to a local, donation dependent animal sanctuary which always needs whatever basic supplies they can get. Why I moved this to my new house rather than donate it before I moved is a good question, indeed. But a better question is why people throw out perfectly good stuff that others would be happy to have.I found this perfectly good pair of scissors in the metal dumpster at a dump ( in Nottingham, NH) for which I have great affection. The dump now thinks of itself a recycling center and so there is a place for everything and everything has its place. The metal dumpster is something like 20 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 8 feet deep (or whatever is normal for a normally large dumpster). Everything metal or mostly metal goes in, and these scissors were right on top which meant that, as an extra bonus, I neither had to go beg for a hook from the minders of the dump, nor risk falling in to get them. And, yes, they cut fine. Again, why would someone throw these away? In other words, what exactly is wrong with people?!? Given my predilection for scissors (see here), I was very happy to have found these. There is a little cognitive dissonance going on here: I'm perpetually frustrated by how much America just throws away, but also happy to have treasures to take home...
In the past week alone, I've dragged even more great things from the trash, but this is all I've got time for tonight!