| Live Green in Plano Volunteers,
I invite you to read this newsletter for inspiration and timely green tips.
You'll find many opportunities to learn simple steps you can take to promote reuse for Texas Recycles Day, to landscape with native plants, to create an energy-efficient home and to buy local foods. Volunteers Katie Massucci, Tanis Roelofs and Cherie Ware have provided articles to keep you informed and up to date. Liz Aviles' blog continues, giving us a peek at some of the daily thoughts of a Live Green Volunteer.
Fifty volunteers supported
the Zero Waste efforts at the Plano International Festival in Haggard Park this year with an amazing 73 percent diversion rate. This means that rather than sending all of the event-generated trash to the landfill, 73 percent of the waste was recycled or composted. Kudos to organizers Andrea Sethi and Kim Soto. Thanks to each volunteer who educated the public on sorting their waste and to our Live Green in Plano volunteer leaders: Janice Bowling, Heather Edwards, Karen Mitchell, Tammy Pritchett, Tanis Roelofs, Pamela Sengupta, Carolina Teixeira and Richard Wilder.
Edson Calixto of DFW Solar Solutions explained the ins and outs of energy audits at the first Learn Green to Live Green lecture of the season. He showed the equipment used in helping a homeowner determine the most cost-effective improvement investments. Home Energy Rating System (HERS) scores are already a deciding factor in the purchase of a home. Buildings are powered 24 hours, 7 days a week and are responsible for 38 percent of the pollution we produce. Energy audits evaluate energy use, health and safety issues, comfort and durability. The visual assessment, diagnostic assessment and analysis of the results leads to a list of the most beneficial improvements. Once the work is finished, a follow-up evaluation provides the new HERS rating.
Live Green in Plano Volunteer, Renee Krebs is working to build a green team at her office and welcomes ideas from others who are working in this area.
Welcome to the enthusiastic Live Green in Plano Class 12! They will be meeting on Thursday evenings through Nov. 4.
Deb Bliss
Sustainability Volunteer Coordinator |
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Hosting a SWAP Party
by Cherie Ware
 Here's a great idea for anyone who wants to de-clutter their home but is mindful of not adding to the landfill. Be the first in your neighborhood to host a SWAP Party. The concept is simple - you trade (or swap) your unwanted items for those belonging to your friends and neighbors. Voilà! Your trash becomes someone else's treasure.
Start by picking a date and inviting your guests. Give them enough time to search through their homes for appropriate swaps: old gifts (they never liked), sale items (they never opened), household décor (no longer matches), etc. Specify how many items each guest should bring and be sure you have adequate space to display them all. You may want to choose a theme for the swaps, like kitchen items, or clothing and accessories. If it's a co-ed party, maybe include tools and garage stuff as possible swaps.
Once all the swaps are displayed and everyone has a chance to mingle and check out the merchandise, then it's shopping time! At a recent party, guests were given one wooden clothespin for each swap. If they brought five items, they received five clothespins to mark with their names. A timer was set for 15 minutes for everyone to "pin" the items they wanted. Then they went through the room and held tie-breakers for any swaps where more than one person had clipped their pin. (Tie-breakers can be trivia questions, rock-paper-scissors, arm wrestling or anything else you decide.) By special vote, guests were allowed to place multiple clothespins on items they really, really wanted to win! Hosting a SWAP Party is a great idea for many reasons: - It's a FUN and FREE night of entertainment with friends
- It encourages RE-USE and RECYCLING
- The leftover swaps are DONATED to CHARITY
So, try the latest "green" trend in social entertaining.... Host a SWAP Party! |
Carbon Neutral Campuses:
Local Colleges and Universities Promote Sustainable Future
by Katie Masucci
As I near the end of my undergraduate career, I look forward to the future with a readiness to solve real-world environmental problems. Certainly my classmates at Austin College - and college students from all over North Texas - are experiencing the same sense of enthusiasm and excitement. Local college grads are equipped with a strong interdisciplinary background offering specialty courses, degree programs and extracurricular societies dedicated to promoting environmental awareness. Regardless of the professional paths chosen by local students, the chances are high their institutions have helped instill a sense of environmental stewardship.
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Choosing an Eco-Conscious Lifestyle by Aubrie Wolff
Our resources are scarce and it's more important now than ever to save what we can. Every little bit will make a difference especially if we all make an effort. You don't need to do anything drastic. There are many things that can be done in our everyday lives to help save our planet's resources on which we all depend.
It all starts with what you choose to bring into your home. When shopping (with your cloth bags), make decisions to buy products in recycled or recyclable packaging or at least not ones not in wasteful packaging. Everything we buy requires resources to produce and ship. If a product is wrapped in a ton of plastic, it used a lot of resources to make and it will take a long time to breakdown. Try to reuse or repurpose anything you can, such as scratch paper, cleaning rags, compost food scraps and empty storage jars. Donate things you no longer want to charity or friends. Stop buying anything disposable like paper plates, cups, razors, etc. One of our most precious resources is water. From using rain barrels and planting native shrubs to collecting shower water in a bucket while it heats up to installing water saving toilets and showerheads, saving water can be simple and should be a priority.
Click here to read more. |
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Green Your Halloween
by Tanis Roelofs
 Halloween is another opportunity to "Go Green" and make eco-friendly, earth-friendly and healthier choices with the types of costumes we wear, the types of foods we serve and the way we celebrate. When the little ghosts and goblins in your family go trick-or-treating this Halloween, make sure they carry reusable bags or containers not needing to be discarded after they are used.
Cloth or canvas shopping bags make terrific eco-friendly alternatives to paper or plastic bags.Instead of buying a Halloween costume you or your children will wear once and throw away, make your costumes from old clothes and other items you already have around the house.
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 Day in the Life of a Live Green in Plano Volunteer Blog by Liz Aviles
8:15 - I plug in my coffee maker and switch it on. I take the old coffee grounds and place them in a large, plastic, empty sour cream tub on my kitchen counter. I have chosen this as a temporary receptacle for them. There is no sense in purchasing any more cheap plastic; we all know who really pays for all that stuff now. I wonder if I should place the coffee grounds in my indoor or outdoor bin. I have not had much luck getting worms to visit my outdoor bin. My indoor bin has worms. They are doing well, reproducing and fattening up. I wonder if so much coffee can be any good for my worms-especially the babies!
8:45 - Now that I'm really awake, it's time to get breakfast ready. Oatmeal - I purchased a huge 100-plus servings box of this stuff and there is still plenty left. It helps reduce the garbage my family generates, instead of getting individual packets or a small container and replacing it each time it finishes. It will last longer and reduce the amount of garbage I throw out. Except, I think, this has two plastic bags inside and can't remember if they are recyclable. So I wonder if it would it have been better to buy the small cylinder cardboard type containers? I will have to look into that sometime.
9:00 - I let the oatmeal cool off while I go get my kids out of bed.
9:05 - Soaking wet diaper, first one of the day, to go into the bucket of water. I wake up my 4 year old and 12 year old.
9:15 - I get the kids ready and take them down for breakfast.
9:45 - Kids are fed. My daughter gets the dishes washed. I see her working and am proud she has learned well. She is washing them by hand, using the minimum amount of water possible for washing. She has collected water in a small container where she has placed some soap. And she will be rinsing on the other side of the sink. Now off she goes to start her schoolwork.
(Continued in the next issue)
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