riding mower

It has been said that necessity is the mother of all invention.  If so, I think the combination of laziness and beer must come in a close second.  I think the contraption shown here is the most ingenious thing I have ever seen (ya’ know, other than my computer, the electricity making it run and the human body, yadda, yadda, ya…).  I ask you, who has more of the aforementioned combination of necessity, laziness and beer than North America’s redneck?

Clearly, a hard-working, hard-resting, God-fearing redneck without the financial wherewithal to acquire some mad-fangled riding lawnmower contrived this beautiful solution.  Genius, I tell you.  By employing some gears and pedal-power a standard reel mower is transformed into a veritable gobbler of grass (I am assuming, anyway).  And during times of recession this is exactly the sort of ingenuity we need.

Who do you think invented the brick in the toilet tank? Some Yankee do-gooder? (well, maybe.)  What about the beverage koozie? huh?  Who knows what great discovery the back woods will release on an unsuspecting world.  I can barely breathe for the suspense.

Yeti by Philippe Semeria

The only question in regards to the death of the current green enthusiasm is, “Will the new green fad die via popular adoption, or via wholesale abandonment?”  Well, I guess this is the first question, not the only.  The second one would be, “What will green living look like when it is either abandoned or adopted?”

An intelligent reader (I know you are out there!) would of course respond, “Well, economical solutions will be adopted while unrealistic and utopian greening will be abandoned.”  And while making sense, this sort of reasoning with the American people is redonculous at best and dangerous madness at worst.  Just look at corn ethanol, still going strong all these years despite its fairly wide-known economic unfeasibility.  And we all know that the milk of the female Yeti could be a financial boon for holistic medicine if someone would just put in the hard work to create a Yeti milking program, or at least learn to synthesize the stuff.

All good fads come to an end.  Bad ones sometimes uncannily remain, but good ones, they always end.  Some of these fads become the next compact disc or Garth Brooks Juice Tiger juice diet – loved and embraced by all, effectively ending the fad.  Compact fluorescent bulbs have reached this level in the green world.  LED’s are currently still just a fad, but they may reduce CFL’s to vinyl status eventually.

On the other hand, some fads fade away like goldfish shoes and Scientology (ouch! I am such a insensitive jerk.  Luckily, jerkiness is hear to stay.)  Within the green living movement there will certainly be many such fads that never cut the mustard. (Mmmm, green mustard…)  A list of undecideds include smart home meters, ERVs (energy recovery ventilators), urban chicken coops, hemp diapers, anti-polyethylene-terephthalate and/or polycarbonate mania, cloth shopping bags, not wasting water on Kentucky Bluegrass in Utah, and duel-flush toilets.

New technologies are sexy, and they can make going green seem Hollywood.  Getting a green app for your iPhone can be a breathless affair, but this is all a bunch of who cares in the end.  Sure LED lights, if made affordably and practically, could once again radically alter energy consumption from structural lighting.  But so could turning off the lights when you don’t need them.  So why is it that buying flashy new bulbs is hip while insisting on turning off unused lights is totally fuddy-duddy?

I, for one, think that this latest fad of green living will actually die a death of wide-spread adoption.  It will no longer be a fad due to being mainstreamed more than forgotten or ignored.  While this makes my dirty, hairy toes all tingly with excitement like a cool squish in the mud on a hot day, I also fear it may not matter much in the end.  If the lasting heritage of this round of green living includes only a smattering of genuine technological innovations clumped together with a bunch of persisting yet questionable green devices, then who cares?  Really?

Behaviors have to change and Yeti’s must be milked if this new green fad is to become anything that will matter in the end.  If only our behavior would truly be driven by economic sustainability and a rational passion for sustainable free-markets, then we might see some wonderfully amazing and surprisingly simple ideas.  These could include wasting less, workable new energy sources, sweatshop-free labor, more shared-space and less consumer-product redundancy (a TV in every room and a lawn mower in every garage).

It ain’t sexy, but it would be a future enhanced by the fad.

U Car Share provides another alternative, alongside riding a bike or taking a bus, to individual car ownership.  This sort of thing has been going on for years in romantic locals such as McMinnville, Berkeley, Portland and Madison.  But, alas, I have never lived in any of those places.  I do, however, live in Salt Lake City.  Thus I should be thrilled to have access to car sharing.  Yeah!  Woohoo.  Yep.  Hizzaa.  Woopty doo.

I just can’t think of a reason to use it.  I get it.  I do.  I just ain’t excited.  Bear with my math.  My wife and I pay roughly $4000 to $5000 a year to own, maintain and fuel (this includes the 8,000 we paid for it divided over the period of time we have owned it) our only car, a Honda Civic.  With the current rates for U Car Share I could share a similar car for about 8 to 10 hours a week (depending on how many miles/gallons I drove it) for around the same $5000 a year.

We live about 4 blocks (like 8 normal city blocks) from the nearest U Car Share drop-off and pick-up point.  So, we could sell our car and drive nice, new U-Share cars for up to 10 hours a week instead and still pay the same amount of money.  Cool, huh?  Huh.  O.K.  both my wife and I work on the nearby University campus, where there are also pick-up and drop-off points.  So, we could use the car in the morning (after a brisk 12 minute walk) and leave it on campus.  Then we could take it home again in the evening.  But one of us would need to take our son, and we might not leave at the same time, or one of us would need to come back.  But maybe one of us would just stay home with the kid anyway.  So one hour twice a day for 5 days to get to campus.  That is our ten hours.

Nah, we would just take the bus or trax to do that.  So, what about shopping?  Going out to eat?  Visiting friends?  Driving up into the mountains for a hike?  I just don’t get using the U Car Share program for any of these.  If I wasn’t so lazy I would just be riding my bike around for most of this anyway.

You say, “Hey, jerk.  This car sharing stuff isn’t meant for people like you — young, urbanite, granola couples with adopted children and too busy trying to simplify in order to care.”  O.K.  who is it for then?  Well, maybe students for one.  Afterall, why should students park their car coffins on campus just to collect dust while they exercise their minds in ways to save the future?  But when I was a student I wouldn’t have paid $15 dollars to share a car and drive to Walmart when I could have ridden the light-rail system for free, or just borrowed a friend’s car.

I don’t know, maybe I am a big jerk.  Maybe my searing hatred for U-haul is blinding me to their non-profit grubbing, earth-saving ways.  Now that my city finally has a car share program I just can’t care.

If I can’t find a good pair of hemp cargo pants that fit me, how am I supposed to rant to strangers on the bus about how evil cotton is?  If I can’t rant then how will I devise the next clever and rankling debate point to slay the slovenly, money-grubbing, truth-ignoring participants of our downward-spiraling global economy?

Ah, therein lies the problem.  Granolas lack the cutthroat instincts to run the world.  They can’t even run a clothing line that makes hemp cargo pants with a 34in. inseam.  I’m not even that tall, people.  I’m 6′1″.  Most on-line shopping for hemp pants brings up yoga and meditation pants, or outdoor clothing for women.  What, men don’t go outdoors?  Just because I want hemp pants doesn’t mean I’m an old, retired hippy sitting on my couch with the munchies all day.  I am a relatively fit and trim, young man who happens to like having multiple pockets on my pants.  Yes, I have an iPhone and keys, a wallet that I carry in my front pocket.  Sometimes I even need a car key (I just like to listen to the radio.  I don’t drive it, I promise).  But I am not allowed to wear pants made out of an earth-friendly material?

The answer is, no.  Or, yes.  I am not allowed, because granolas can’t figure out how to run a legitimate clothing business for men’s hemp pants.  What the human population needs now is a few dozen Alex P. Keetons with the Republican savvy and business sense to ruthlessly gouge hippies and granolas while selling them sweatshop free, organic hemp clothing made for everyday life.  I don’t want to wear meditation pants to campus.  I don’t want to wear meditation pants at all.

Do I seriously need to be writing this?  Has no money grubbing, global economy participant out there thought of this?  Granolas are notoriously bad with money.  (Why be good at something that reeks of empire and evil?)  They make easy targets.  Frick, I want hemp cargo pants, 34 x 34.  I will pay $100 frickin bucks for a pair of decent hemp cargo pants.

So, I put down the gauntlet.  Anyone out there with the business savvy and the desire to make money off of tree-huggers… do it for the money.  Helping to bring justice and sustainability to life on earth will just be a side-effect.  You won’t even have to notice.

Reclining Toilet by Downtowngal

imagination.  And a recent toilet snafu has left me exercising my imagination as well.  I manage a house that has 5 toilets in it.  That’s a lot of shiz, a lot of flushing, and a lot of things to go wrong.  A couple of weeks ago the last of my “jet-pack” toilets (you know, the kind in public restrooms that would frighten the piss out of you if you hadn’t just voluntarily evacuated it) finally lost its flush and had to go.

The problem is, I don’t have access to the ranch truck anymore, I live in a city and I drive a Honda Civic.  I can fit my tools in the trunk, but not a broken down toilet.  Clearly you can see my dilemma.

The redneck in me won out on that day, and I just decided to deposit the toilet discretely in the side yard and leave it.  Heck, I even threw the tank in the garbage can.  What’s a broken down toilet in a yard among friends and neighbors?  Oh, did I forget to mention that the house I manage is across the street from a major public university and a couple houses down from a bar?

Yeah, within a week the toilet had been redeemed by a passerby and had discovered new life.  I can’t say this was totally unexpected.  I seem to recall discovering an abandoned toilet on campus during my own student days.  The granola in me thinks this is great.  A rejected object is being reused.  But, on the other hand, a yard-crapper of this sort doesn’t really seem to be sustainable or ecologically safe.  This brings me back to the title of this blog: Toilet Gardening.

Just think of all the great ways a ceramic toilet could be used to enhance the aesthetics and functionality of a residential garden.  This is the perfect combination of yard pickens and sustainable living.  It could be a mulcher and planter all in one, a rain gage or quiet place to take a load off and enjoy the peace of nature.  But to cut down on public indecency, I think I have decided to use my sledge hammer to create a nice ceramic grist I can use in the bottom of planters and for drainage in the side bed where water collects.  The sledge hammering will at least be fun, but if you have better ideas I would love to hear them.

This summer, Reburbia, a suburban design competition, was held by Inhabitat and Dwell Magazine. The competition set out to gather creative and imaginative ideas on how to go about re-visioning the American suburban sprawl that will almost certainly become our suburban wasteland without intervention. Several of the ideas were great, but one in particular caught my eye.

Forrest Fulton designed Big Box Agriculture: A Productive Suburb. In his design he advocates for transforming abandoned big box stores into suburban farms and markets, and I think it is a tremendous idea. Within three miles of my house right now (and I live close to downtown Salt Lake City) there stands an empty big box store that used to be a CompUSA. Yeah. Remember buying that flash drive there last Black Friday as they were going out of business? Well the building is still there. Currently there is a Halloween business pumping plastic jack-o-lanterns and pregnant Brittany Spears costumes into the soon to be saturated October holiday madness. But they will be gone again in another month. The location is perfect. Less than a mile to the East is a long stretch of solid neighborhood. A little further to the West and you will find the same. Right next to the Costco and Sam’s Club there could be a blacktop farm and market.

Fulton’s idea would use the old CompUSA building as a greenhouse and restaurant by replacing most of the roof with glass and the rest with more crops. One could easily imagine a small market to find fresh produce or where one could wash and wrap the harvest one’s self. By keeping the blacktop parking lot and using containers for the farming the urban/suburban farm could maintain flexibility and easy customer access. In a place like salt lake the greenhouse space would prove invaluable as well. Winter roles around and all the plants that need to come inside have a place to stay.

The two problems that I just can’t shake are crime and parking. Ironic that you can’t just plow up all the parking lots in the world to plant crops even though most of these parking lots were farmland not so long ago. I don’t know about the location of most big box stores, but the old CompUSA isn’t in what you would call a walkable neighborhood. And I don’t think Costco is going to like people using their parking lot/derby arena for parking their John Deere. Could an operation like this maintain a shuttle with off-site parking? Is it ridiculous to consider an underground parking garage? Yeah, probably.

The second problem would appear to be crime. I guess you could always put up a ten foot cyclone fence around the whole farm, but that tends to take some of the community feeling out of the friendly local market. I don’t know, maybe there aren’t that many thugs who need to make a tomato-plant-peace-offering to their old lady for shooting out the television. Then again, my church had its freshly planted perennials yanked out just a few months ago.

One last thought to ponder would be the profitability of an operation like this. Urban and suburban property is still pretty pricy in most cities. Can dense, container farming pay the bills? I know I would like to see someone in SLC give it a try in the old building where CompUSA gave up the ghost.

Well fellow greenies, the commercial deity, Wal-Mart, has done it.  And by done it, I mean they are working on it and it won’t come out for at least a few years.

It is just so hard to research each and every consumer item, even for an informed and concerned shopper.  I can pick a tomatoe in my backyard.  I can use the same old JVC CD player for 18 years (true story).  I can pass on certain luxery items.  But when I need a new ultimate frisbee should I stick with Discraft or maybe snag a Wham-o?  Oh, and what about the great debate between Coke and Pepsi?  Maybe sustainability could be the final deciding factor in the ultimate taste challenge.  Should I stick with Dr. Pepper two liters?  Or is there a more environmentally sound way to rot out my teeth and develop diabetes?

So many questions could finally be answered with such an environmental cost rating system.  Sam Walton, next time I pass through Bentonville, I will lie flowers on your grave, sir.  With sustainable, thoughtful ideas like this one and the muscle to force the world to adopt them, maybe Wal-Mart can survive the suburban sprawl it has helped create and actually help us form a better consumer future.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a U.S.-based nonprofit, teamed up with the Ecuadorian government to bring to life this “earth-shaking” and “ground defending” legal document.  They have yet to see how, or if, it will work (it was only put into place in Sept. of 2008), but it is kind of mind-blowing to think about.  How would the very fabric of our daily lives shift if the ground we walked, worked and lived on had actual, legally binding rights?

First of all, isn’t property meant to be owned?  After all, all of the land on earth (save a section of Antarctica) is owned.  Land, property.  Aren’t these the same thing?  All land is someone’s property right?  Now obviously, not all human cultures have seen things the way that we do now in the great U.S. of A.  But even in cultures where personal ownership of land was not spoken of I don’t think it was because the land owned itself.  It was the idea of trying to hoard or possess the land, not the violation of the lands basic rights.  I am no anthropologist here, and openly admit I could be wrong.  But it feels somewhat like we may be opening a whole new way to relate to the creation around us.

Oh, I went and said it – creation.  Yeah, I look at the world that way, as a wonderful creation.  Even though the Judeo-Christian world view is being blamed for humans’ dominating, manipulative stance toward the earth, I still believe in it.  And I don’t think it is fair to assess the Christian creation imperative as one of dominion for human sake.  It is my understanding that God handed over the reigns of creation care to humankind so that we could care for it (us included) in his good name, not so we could use it in what ever way benefit us the most.

So would the ground having legal rights for its defense against human abuses alter how I walk on it?  Probably.  I would think twice before bringing in a nonnative plant species or using chemical or even natural additives.  I would probably be more careful about the emissions coming from my house and my car.  Would I be found guilty in a court of law?  No.  As a Christian I have always valued the land and cared for it as something that belongs to God, not to me.  So, maybe the emancipated earth is nothing new after all.  Maybe God has been defense council, Judge and Jury since the very beginning.  It may be simply that we have strayed so far from any sort of connection with the ground we walk on that for most of us, granting it rights could be a scary prospect indeed, and a humbling one.

Burning hemp based fuels also has the benefit of not releasing an array of other toxic chemicals.  But, the real beauty of hemp as a replacement for petroleum based products is not in the gas tank, but instead the shower, the pantry and the closet.  Before the 1930’s most of America’s paints and cosmetics were not based on petroleum but hemp oil.  Hemp actually works better for paint, especially when applied to wood.  Think about the life span of the plastic waste finding itself into the Pacific Gyre and our local landfills.  Hemp based plastics have a natural degradation rate and will return to dust when their purpose has passed.  I mean, holy shizbat.  Look around you right now at how many things you can touch made out of petroleum based plastics.

As a biofuel, hemp is probably not the answer, not by itself anyway.  Right now it is a challenge to get below a cost of $6.00 a gallon for hemp biofuel.  Now hemp waste could be used to contribute and would be better for the environment than say, rice waste (which is tough to dispose of without carbon pollution. But hemp oil can be a wonderful golden crude.  Hemp has promise as a fuel, but that discussion will have to wait.  Hemp seed can produce between 15 to 25 gallons of oil per acre.  When hemp is grown in a fuel and fiber combined manner this oil becomes very affordable and very real.

But that doesn’t make it right.  I am in the process of trying to cut my steady dependance on the stuff even thought I come from a family of cotton farmers (on the one side.  But don’t worry, we’ve moved on to petroleum products for our fortune.  Oh crap!  That’s tomorrow’s blog.)Anywho… industry momentum is pretty much the only reason left that we make all of our clothing from cotton or synthetics instead of natural and sustainable fibers like hemp.  With some consumer ethics kicked into high gear we can change that pretty quickly.  Hemp easily has the advantage on cotton when it comes to warmth, absorbency, durability and tensile strength.  Hemp also breaths better and wicks away moisture better.  The long standing disadvantages have been the scalability of the crop and the softness or fineness of the fiber count.  The latter of these issues has been addressed by Crailar (and probably others).  The former will only be addressed once the consumer tide changes and producers scale up to match.

HT Naturals claims that even by blending cotton and hemp you can save 744 gallons of water on a single t-shirt.  So, to sum up — hemp good, cotton evil.  Oh, but you might be saying, “what about organic cotton, chump?”  Well, some say potato, some say potato. (Hmmm.  Kinda’ loses its effect when typed.)  Fine.  It’s organic.  That deals away with the pesticide problem (cotton uses 50% of all pesticides in U.S. even though it is around 2% of total cropland).  But, organic cotton is still cotton.  It still damages the soil, uses crazy amounts of water to grow and process and now you aren’t even getting a half to a third of the crop per acre that you would with hemp (because you have gone organic).  Organic cotton is kinda’ like driving a Prius.  (Oh, snap!  I said it.)  The label looks nice if someone reads it, but it is a stop gap effort at best.

So, cotton has been king for long enough.  It has been a good ride.  What with slavery and all, depleting most of the soil in the Southern United States, and poisoning our environment so that Southerners are all sterile and/or impotent, it’s been fun.  But it is time to give hemp a run.