Climate Challenge Day Six: Peter Defazio

As researching climate offsets took considerable time last night, today my action was to write to our federal representative, Peter Defazio, asking him about his plans for the next session to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  This is a tricky issue for him; he area includes wide swaths of rural Oregon, which tends to be more conservative and dispersed in population.

Climate Challenge Day Five:Carbon Offsets

Carbon Offsets

As we work towards being carbon neutral, we purchase carbon offsets, which pay for projects to reduce the amount of carbon being used or  in the atmosphere. Large scale solar installations (like the solar panels on CHS) qualify. Replanting deforested areas qualifies. Purchasing small, highly efficient cooking stoves for people who have been cooking on open wood fires qualifies.  The projects are often global because the organizers are looking for the largest reduction for the least money, which is not a bad plan.

Carbon offsets are good idea, especially if you have done all you can in your own home to reduce your consumption or if you have to fly for family emergencies or business requirements. However, they do come at a cost—you may expand your ecological footprint or the amount of land needed to support your lifestyle—while you reduce your carbon footprint. It is a tradeoff.

We have purchased offsets for years. Mark set up an automatic withdrawal from our account so that we made a monthly contribution.  A few months ago, he realized that the system had broken down, so he is in the process of researching and evaluating various projects. There are dozens of options—and questions.

How are organizations certified? Is the certification meaningful?  Are the projects effective? Can we sign up for a monthly donation? Are we interested in more local or global projects?  We created a chart, which we found very helpful.

name	certification	monthly	Global/local
Native Energy	Not clear, but they are in Vermont. Reputable businesses work with them.	Have to call them, so, not really	global
Terrapass	Gold Standard, Verified Carbon Standard, the Climate Action Reserve, and the American Carbon Registry	yes. Actually, the site was very difficult to use. It was totally down one day.	global
Gold Standard	The Gold Standard	no	global
Green e	Green e	No—they do not sell offsets, they just certify	global
Carbon Fund	·         American Carbon Registry ·         Climate Action Reserve ·         Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standard ·         Gold Standard	Pre-set options for households, houses, cars, gifts….not monthly	Global
McKenzie River Trust: Faith Community Fund	No, but works with One Percent for the Planet and Earthshare	yes	Eugene, Oregon

The Corvallis Interfaith Climate Justice group   is working on a fund for  local carbon offsets so that we can see the direct impact of our purchases while we are out and about in the neighborhood.

If you are just beginning and you have Pacific Power you can purchase Blue Sky energy, which supports community solar installations and requires that all of your energy come from renewal sources. The more people who purchase Blue Sky, the more pressure there is on the power company to find renewable energy. 

Update: After trying to set up a monthly account with terrapass for about a week, we purchased offsets for the year and vowed to revisit a monthly donation later on.

Options:

Blue Sky power or Smart Energy (Northwest Natural‘s program).

Carbon Offsets to become carbon neutral  or negative.

Work to establish local carbon offsets.

Climate Challenge Day Four: Step by Step

Not all climate change actions happen in one day.  Most take time.

For example, we are working to reduce the amount of electricity used at Corvallis High School. Our new solar panels will produce eight percent of what we use; if we can match that with conservation, that’s significant.

We have targeted refrigerators as a starting point. There are two in the staff room; one is going to the counseling office, where it will replace a very old appliance that does not keep ice cream frozen (and yes, sometimes you need ice cream in counseling….). We have also worked with two staff members to remove their mini-fridges, but there are more to go. Soon, they will all be hauled off.

I am also curious about our new chromebook carts, which hold 36 chromebooks at the ready, fully charged all the time (if the students plug them in).  How much energy does that take? I brought in my kill-a-watt meter to a social studies classroom and we plugged it in. We’ll gather data this week and use it to talk about further actions.

Step by step, we are walking the long march.

Options:

Borrow a kill-a-watt and use it at home.

Unplug.

Climate Challenge Day Three: Full Ovens

Full  Ovens!

How to use your data! We have a smart meter, so I checked our electric usage for Friday, when I was NOT being oven aware. We woke up in the morning to no bread, which means, no lunch. Because I had dough, I baked a loaf, all alone in the oven, and Mark brought me a sandwich before lunchtime. Then, when I finally came home around six, I tossed two sweet potatoes into the little toaster oven we use for small batches. I was able to sort out about how much electricity each used. Both were on for about the same amount of time and at the same temperature.  The big oven used about .9 KWh to bake a loaf of bread, and left its heat in the house. The small oven used about .6 KWh to bake the potatoes and only warmed the back hall.  The small oven is more efficient and should be used for small batches. However, the ideal would be to bake both sweet potatoes and bread in the same oven, saving .6 KWh of energy.

I make our own bread, using locally grown, home ground wheat combined with white flour from eastern Washington State, which is the closest I could find.  Because of this, our oven is on several times a week. My goal, which I am working on this month, is to never bake just bread. Something else has to be in there, too.

Our  Bread Recipe

3 cups of warm water

1.5 T yeast

1.5 T salt

6.5 cups of flour—I usually use half whole wheat, half white.

Mix it all together.  Let it sit, covered, on the counter for a couple of hours, then put it in the fridge overnight.  The next day, take half of it, form it on a ball, let it rise for about 15 minutes, and toss it onto a baking stone on a 450 degree oven. Bake until it sounds hollow—like thumping a dog on the base of the spine with a cupped hand.

You can use the dough for pizza, sticky buns, onion and cheese rolls….anything that wants a yeasted dough.  You can also add all sorts of things to the dough or mix in different flours. I, of course, have a chart.

Options:

Learn to make one food that comes in single use packaging, like bread or yogurt.  Commit to making, rather than purchasing, that food for one year.

Set a goal of the percentage of local, whole, unpackaged foods your family will eat in the next year.

Check your smart meter data! Every day for a week, so that you remember what you were doing when. Make adjustments accordingly.

Climate Challenge, Day Two: Trash Audit

Trash Audit: November 24^th through December 1^st

Kitchen Trash:

·         6 plastic caps

·         4 butter wrappers (firestarter!)

·         2 veggie ties (garden ties)

·         3 teabag packets

·         1 soy milk container

·         1 fish wrapper

·         1 cheddar cheese wrapper

·         2 “weird things”

·         Dirt

Bathroom Trash:

·         TP from a bathroom repair project, not compostable

·         2 q-tips

·         Dental floss

·         1 toothbrush

Compost: 1 two gallon bucket

I did not dump this one out….but Mark gave Mr B. the rinds of a melon and I gave him two apples from school that are not included in the photo (bottom of the page).

Recycling:

·         Newspapers—The  daily GT and a Sunday New York Times

·         About 1 inch of good office paper (council packet)

·         3 cans

·         2 jars

·         2 milk jugs

·         2 film bags, that we will save outside of the city recycling bin

·         Paper scraps and several catalogs

Paper is our biggest toss every week. We could reduce this significantly if I were willing to read the newspaper and the council packets on line.  I am not. The screen bothers my eyes. However, I would like to find a place to turn in all of my good paper for a higher grade of recycling than the bin.

A trash audit can yield some really useful information. What we think we are tossing out is not always accurate. Once everything is sorted, the piles raise questions:  where do I take those spray oil cans when I am done? Or, do I really need the spray oil containers at all? Is there another way to get the same results without generating waste? Finding the answers becomes a challenge.

I was at a meeting several years ago where we were talking trash and recycling. One man described his strategy to reduce non-recyclable materials in his own life. “I let them pile up in a bag,” he said, “until I either find a place to take them or get so sick of the pile that I figure out a way to do without it.” It worked. We all nodded agreement around the table, thinking about our own pile at home.

The Corvallis Sustainability Coalition has created an excellent recycling document. This is the link: https://sustainablecorvallis.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ReUse-Directory-2016-17_11x17.pdf

Climate Challenge, Day One: Record keeping

               I am obsessive about record keeping. I’ll admit it. We track our solar production every week. I compare all of our bills to last year and spend hours quizzing Mark if they go up. I plan our meals, based on seasonal produce. Before we shifted over to local food, I tracked our groceries for a year; I knew that we needed about forty pounds of oatmeal for a year’s worth of breakfasts. I have tracked our percentages of very local, 100 miles, and distant food several times. I know what I have canned and dried each year. I keep a list of all the books I read (often rated).

I have systems as well. We use a daily/weekly/monthly cleaning chart. All of my recipes are divided by season.  We have packing lists for a backpacking trip as well as camping in the Ark.  I was trained this way. I poured over my mother’s 1957 Betty Crocker cookbook for hours; I was in charge of the weekly cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping while I was still in junior high. My mother worked and cooked dinner. I did the rest, as well as my homework. It was a fair division of labor.

                I mention this because it has made a huge difference in our ability to reduce our ecological footprint.  Knowing what you are working with and where you are starting allows you to make clearer decisions and to track progress. It’s good to revisit tracking after a few years, just to keep yourself  honest! This week, I am going to track some data:  steps taken vs. miles driven, a trash and recycling audit on Saturday morning (cleaning day), and how far our food has traveled, for a week.

Options:

Track data. Consider food, gas, electrical use, trash…whatever you want to reduce. Knowledge is power.

If you have a smart meter, do online, create an account and start poking around....where are your peaks and lows? What creates them? What can you do to cut back?

The Rains

The rains arrived this week. Although it has been a lovely fall, with sunlight and dry air, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Rain in November is normal, but can be challenging emotionally. It's dark, and damp, and cold for weeks. What to do?

1. Go outside, even in the rain.
2. Wear wool socks and skate around the house.
3. Sleep a little later. It's normal to hibernate in dark cold times.
4. Visit.
5. Eat baked potatoes and sturdy green salads for dinner.