30 Toothbrush Reuses Plus Options Plastic-Free

January 14, 2016January 14, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 3 Comments

Brushing Your Teeth With Plastic:

OK, we’re not going to try to wean you from using toothbrushes…well…sort of. Although most toothbrushes of the world are made of plastic, we have to admit they’re very handy and, for the most part, do the trick. But once we started seeing a lot of toothbrushes lying on our favorite beaches, my children and I had to look into whether there are any environmentally-friendly alternatives. First, why are toothbrushes found on our beaches? Think, seeping sewage. Around our lovely little island, there are some old sewage pipes that are known to dump right into Puget Sound. And, you guessed it, people are flushing their plastics down the toilet. You can only imagine what other plastics we find, like tampon applicators and those single-use plastic floss applicator thingies.

Why are we concerned about brushing our teeth with plastic? Many toothbrushes are made with PVC and Bisphenol-A, known toxins that, frankly, should be banned from all toothbrushes. If you’re considering reducing your plastic footprint in the toothbrush department in the future, I found this great guide to BPA and PVC-free toothbrushes that might help you choose one less toxic. I also like to see what Beth Terry has to say on the subject, as she has put a lot of care into her research. Here are 4 less plastic alternatives that my family has tried:

1) We first got ourselves some bamboo toothbrushes and have enjoyed them immensely. Combined with our zero waste toothpaste, they’ve been getting our teeth and gums clean in a plastic-free way. When we’re done with the toothbrushes, they’ll be used as kindling for the fire or could even go into our compost!

2) My toothbrush before the bamboo one was a Radius toothbrush, made of recycled wood with a replaceable head. I love it, used it for years, replacing the head periodically until a crack developed where the head meets the handle. It was a good half-way alternative, but the large size did prove a bit cumbersome for travel. (However, on expeditions, just bringing the head was perfect for cutting down on weight)

3) Toothbrush before Radius, and a travel alternative that I used, was the Preserve toothbrush which I bought in a mail-back pouch that I promptly lost. Preserve takes back their toothbrushes when you’re done with them and recycles them along with other #5 plastics through their Gimme5 campaign. Many Wholefoods Markets have bins where you can drop off your toothbrush, along with dairy tubs like yogurt containers produced by Stonyfield Yogurt. These cradle-to-cradle practices are growing and we applaud Preserve, Wholefoods, and Stonyfield for making this a reality.

4) But (you knew I’d say that), plastic is plastic (it’s hard for me to imagine that there are zero health concerns about putting plastic in our mouths, now that I’ve been keeping up with the latest toxicology reports on plastics and the additives put in them.) And once you go down the plastic-free-living path, you start looking around for ALL your options and inevitably discover how people lived and kept their teeth clean long before plastic was invented. Which leads me to….”the traditional natural toothbrush”: Peelu miswaks.

Miswak Sticks are the New Toothbrush in Our Home

Now, these things are cool. And if you want to impress your next guests, rather than handing them a guest toothbrush to use, slip ’em a miswak stick and let ’em start chewing. Just as Native Americans once used bark for teeth cleaning, in Pakistan the peelu tree has for centuries been the traditional teeth cleaner of choice. I won’t pretend to be an expert, here, but after I read this fantastic article by Nourishing Treasures, I had to get me some miswak sticks.

The kids and I enjoyed them for many months. And it’s no wonder since they’re reportedly known to entice the companionship of angels, aid in digestion and even improve eyesight. These things leave my teeth feeling cleaner than they’ve ever been! And then I read this clinical study which proves that the use of the miswak outdistances toothbrushing in terms of removing plaque and overall gingival health. I quote, for you, the study’s conclusion:

“It is concluded that the miswak is more effective than toothbrushing for reducing plaque and gingivitis, when preceded by professional instruction in its correct application. The miswak appeared to be more effective than toothbrushing for removing plaque from the embrasures, thus enhancing interproximal health.”

Now to just get that “professional instruction” and we’ll be laughing all the way to the dentist. Any professionals out there, feel free to provide instruction in our comments section below. Yes, the miswak sticks are sealed in plastic, but for argument’s sake it’s less plastic than in a traditional toothbrush.

Reuse Your Toothbrushes

Unable to throw things out because of our zero waste lifestyle, we’ve accumulated quite a few plastic toothbrushes in our day. But it turns out old toothbrushes can come in handy. Here are 25 wonderful things that can be done with that little versatile brush (once you’ve retired it from use in your mouth):

1) Use it to clean hard-to-clean places.

2) Pass it on to your dog for brushing his/her teeth. (Yes, sanitize it first!)

3) Keep one with your craft supplies to be used as a special stiff paintbrush for art projects.

4) Clean corn.

5) Use as a grout scrubber.

6) Keep one under the sink for scrubbing around faucets and sink edges.

7) Label another one for use as a fingernail cleaner after gardening.

8) Keep one in the car glove box for emergency assistance like brushing off battery terminals.

9) Put one in your child’s “scientist backpack” for archaeology outings. A toothbrush is a critical artifact cleaning instrument. I can attest to the fact that my son’s spare brush packed in with his archaeological brushes has come in handy for our team of scientists in the excavations we’ve done in the Caves of Mustang.

10) Stash one in your foyer or mud room for cleaning mud from shoes. Keep one in your shoe shine kit for sprucing up drab shoes.

11) Keep one on your tool bench for assisting in cleaning tools.

12) Store one in your cleaning supplies bucket for spot cleaning carpets and furniture.

13) Save one for the laundry room for spot cleaning grease stains, etc.

14) Put one in with your makeup to brush away mascara clumps and to be used as an eyebrow brush.

15) Another one will be wanted on-hand as a back scratcher.

16) Use one for cleaning your bicycle chain.

17) Save one for cleaning jewelry or silverware.

18) Use one to clean out brushes and combs.

19) Some people swear by them as excellent fish tank algae cleaners to scrub algae off the glass.

20) Here’s a reuse idea from our favorite repurpose/reuse website: “For all you fishermen, and women out there, cut the head off the toothbrush, and then drill a hole in either end, attach a swivel to one end and then the hook at the other end, make great spinning lures as they are often bright and multi coloured and the bodies make the perfect shape.”

21) Lift the lid and look at the hinges of your toilet seat. Pretty gross. Use an old toothbrush to make it look (and smell) as good as new.

22) Use as a bottle cleaner for those vintage bottles you collect.

23) Make a toothbrush bracelet.

24) Use your toothbrush as a tool to make a rag rug.

25) For some serious fun, visit Evil Mad Scientist and learn how to make a bristle bot. Decapitate the toothbrush (off with its head!), and affix a teeny, tiny pager motor or (get this) battery-powered toothbrush motor (the sort that make your toothbrush vibrate), as well as a battery (and maybe some LEDs), and of course any googly-eyes you might have lying around and you’ve got yourself a buzzing little bot, bouncing around on bristles.

26) Use one to clean the grooves on your horizontally-sliding windows.

27) One reader wrote in to share that she uses four toothbrushes glued side by side to brush fleece sweaters and blankets after they are washed. It helps to make them look and feel like new.

28) Use one for a hair dye applicator.

29) Use your old toothbrushes to clean your dryer lint trap. Residues can build up and the brushing helps clean that off.

30) Dust and clean the crevices and ledges on hardwood molding with your old brush.

You’ll see the comments section is below. We’re hoping to find some further great ideas, links, instructions, even photos if you have ’em, for toothbrush reuse or waste-free alternatives to tooth-brushing.

The Thing About Breadmakers

January 13, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 9 Comments

I was once a breadmaking fanatic, because my breadmaker meant 4 minutes of prep and 3.3 hours later I’d have delicious wholesome organic bread that the whole family would devour. Unlike most breadmaker owners, we actually used our machine regularly. We’d been making bread from it non-stop for years, until this week.

An artisan-style bread from a bread-maker that will please all. Photo © Liesl Clark

Here were the obvious benefits of this delicious bread:

1) No plastic packaging.

Bread bag with a little plastic bread clip.

2) Saves money. Our locally-baked bread costs about $5.00 per loaf. We buy our ingredients in bulk and each loaf costs us less than $1.00.

3) Nothing better than the smell (and taste) of home baked bread coming out of the oven.

But, truth be told, this bread has fluoropolymers leaching into it.

Let me back up a bit. A few years ago, I purged all things plastic from my kitchen. Especially plastic containers and Teflon-coated pans. I took our breadmaker to Best Buy for recycling because it had pans made of Teflon. I noticed, too, that the pans would peel this weird-looking plastic coating from them every year or so. That was the fluoropolymer coating that Dupont makes for all Teflon coated pans. This alarming article in The New York Times can fill you in on just how toxic fluoropolymers are.

So, I thought I would be clever and find a Teflon-free breadmaker, one safe for my family. Enter Zojirushi. Zojirushi makes what they call a Teflon-free breadmaker that we switched to after reading all the negative press about the potential health hazards of cooking with Teflon. We converted our entire kitchen into a Teflon-free zone, with the one exception of the breadmaker because we were ignorant. This machine is NOT teflon-free. In the product description it states “non-stick coated pan.” They coat it with a generic polymer that is….Teflon, but it’s just given a different name, fluoropolymer, the new fancy substitute that is an endocrine disruptor known to cause all kinds of cancers. It’s a sad state of affairs. I don’t believe there’s a bread machine out there that doesn’t have fluoropolymer coating.

Alas, if we want Teflon-free bread, we’ll have to make it sans breadmaker, in our clay or enamel-coated cast iron pans, with a little more care and attention to the process which might just make the bread taste even better. I grew up on homemade Teflon-free bread, and I’d like my children to have that privilege, too. I wonder if our local bakeries are using Teflon-free pans? It might not hurt to ask.

If you’re interested, here’s the recipe my family has eaten for years. Now they’ll have to enjoy it when I have more time to bake. It’s a whole wheat raisin and walnut bread that toasts perfectly, is moist, and has just the right amount of crunch in the crust.

Teflon-Clad Zogirushi Pans. Photo © Liesl Clark

Whole Wheat Walnut Raisin Bread

1 Cup warm water

3/4 Cup combination of liquid ingredients (we use 1 egg + milk and a little yogurt)

2 Tablespoons flax seed oil (you can substitute another nut oil, but flax seed oil is excellent)

1 Heaping teaspoon salt (we use a celtic sea salt)

3 Cups flour (we prefer one cup whole wheat and 2 cups white, all organic)

4 Handfuls walnuts (this is also excellent with flax seeds)

3-4 Handfuls raisins

1 Tablespoon honey

3/8 Teaspoon yeast (we add more as our yeast ages since we buy it in bulk)

If you like a little body to your bread, add about 1/4 cup shredded zucchini or carrot which we do when those veggies are in our garden.

I think I’ll try to simulate a breadmaker next time and just add all of these ingredients in this order, making sure the yeast is added near the honey so it can react to the sugars in it and place the whole thing near our fireplace to activate the yeast with honey so it can rise in a breadmaker-like simulation, but using a big bowl. Then, mix the dough and let it rise, punch it back down, knead it, and let it rise again in a plastic-free bread pan, then bake. This recipe makes a 2-3 lb loaf of bread. Might make sense to double it so you get 2 loaves for your effort.

Cheap. Healthy. Homemade. Plastic-Free. Photo © Liesl Clark

Himalayan Megaquake: The Past Informing the Future

January 12, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 3 Comments

If there’s one big thing I learned from the April 25, 2015 magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal, it’s that in the face of tragedy and hardship, people make do, learn from the events that transpire, adapt, and forge forward in new and often improved ways. The Nepalese people have been building and rebuilding after major earthquakes for millennia, but it doesn’t mean this seismic event was run-of-the-mill. The Himalayas were made by the world’s most colossal tectonic convergence and mega earthquakes have played the leading role in the formation of the dramatic landscape.

Few Nepalis today have lived through a big quake, and now we know there are secondary affects of large earthquakes in such a vertical landscape: Avalanches that can take out entire villages, glacial lake outbursts that can cause great flooding, and landslides that can block high-flowing rivers.

The Himalayan Uplift Zone in the Nar-Phu Valley © Liesl Clark

Because major quakes only happen every 80-100 years in Nepal, people forget about the severity of the great quakes after a generation and then homes are no longer built to outlast the rocking, jolts, and permanent elevation changes an earthquake can bring about. What we’ve found especially humbling is the resourcefulness of the millions who live outside the nation’s capitol. Traditional homes are constructed from the resources at hand: Rock, mud, and less often, wood. And in some villages, there are stacked stone homes that withstood a shaking that brought every building around them down. Why did those buildings, and the people inside, survive while others didn’t?

The Village of Nar, Stone and Mud Mortar, Pre-Earthquake © Liesl Clark

When I was asked to make a film for NOVA about what the scientific community has learned from the earthquake, the assignment was humbling and also a concern. There’s been a lot of great science going on behind-the-scenes, post-earthquake. Which projects should we focus on? And, how can we address, without sensationalizing, the devastating loss of more than 8,800 people?

We sure feel helpless when an earthquake half way around the world rocks our loved ones, but for everyone I know who lives outside Nepal, who has had any intersection with this beautiful country, those first few weeks after the earthquake were grueling. The news coming out of Nepal was hard to fathom, and in the months afterward, indeed even now (up until January 4, 2016), over 423 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or greater have been felt by the people residing there.

I can’t go into detail about the film, as it’s about to air, on January 27th, 2016 at 9 pm on NOVA/PBS (check your local listings! Some markets may have different and additional broadcast times.) But what I can say is that there’s a clue to the survivability of some structures in the quake and the absolute destruction of others. It can be found in the old part of the Hanumandhoka Palace, a structure built hundreds of years ago. The multi-story original palace structure, in general, withstood the strong shaking of the quake, while the newer wing of the palace, built more recently, is on the verge of collapse.

There's Timberlacing Here. The Secret to a Palace's Success in Surviving an Earthquake. © Liesl Clark

There’s a Clue Here. The Secret to a Palace’s Success in Surviving an Earthquake. © Liesl Clark

We can learn from our predecessors, who lived through past quakes. Old technology is often better than new. Look for examples of what works from our past, to pioneer the simple engineering solutions of the future. This is what people have learned over generations and what we strive to teach in this blog.

Rebuilding a Rubble Stone Home Using Innovative Ideas © Liesl Clark

There’s a story of deep commitment and ingenuity in the film about to air, from the scientists, engineers, and architects who have worked decades to warn of the inevitability of earthquakes here, to the specialists in Nepal who have been hands-on, writing about the Nepali innovations of yore and today, to the people themselves who survive, adapt, innovate and thrive no matter what comes their way.

These are the lessons our children take home with them, better for having spent precious time in the lap of ingenuity and compassion.

Manhku Kids © Liesl Clark

If you have the time and interest, our film on NOVA airs at 9:00 pm on PBS on January 27, 2016. Hope you have a chance to watch.

Mapping Plastic: Aquaculture’s Styrofoam Beaches

January 10, 2016January 10, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 3 Comments

Day 5: Pleasant Beach to Fort Ward Boat Ramp

This article is part of a survey of Bainbridge Island’s 53-mile coastline. We’re circumnavigating the entire island to collect and make observations of the kinds (and amount) of plastics we see along the way to try to answer the question: Where does it come from?

The single-most prevalent plastic we find on our beaches, in our citizen-y-science-kind-of-way, is polystyrene. There’s so much of it, we see it in every shape, from tiny single particles the size of a snowflake to car-size chunks.

Styro-mobile. This car-sized chunk came riding in on the sea. © Liesl Clark

Styro-mobile. This small car-sized chunk came riding in on the sea. © Liesl Clark

But wait, this other one is just 300 yards down the beach. © Liesl Clark

But wait, here’s another enormous one just 300 yards down the beach. © Liesl Clark

Where are these huge styro-chunks coming from?

They’re used underneath floats and docks. The aquaculture industry is known to utilize polystyrene to keep their operations afloat. But nature eventually takes its course. Boring isopods damage expanded polystyrene floats under docks and, in the process, they expel copious numbers of microplastic particles. This paper describes the impacts of these mini drilling marine isopods in aquaculture facilities and docks and the resultant pollution the isopod-infested styrofoam is causing.

Here’s an opening statement in the article (I’ve taken out all of the references for ease of reading):

Like other microplastics (defined as <5 mm in diameter) in the marine environment, these particles may have detrimental effects to marine organisms. Plastics persist for hundreds to thousands of years in normal oceanic conditions. Also, polystyrene fragments and other minute plastics in the marine environment are readily colonized by biofilm and other organisms causing them to sink. Thus, these particles may interact with benthic and pelagic organisms. Ingested microplastics may cause both toxicological effects by transmitting bioaccumulating toxins and possibly physical effects by occluding feeding structures or inducing a false indication of satiation.

What I get from this article is that these little organisms, like shipworms and wood lice, bore into the styrofoam under floats and docks and in so doing they shed tiny plastic particles into the water, like a drill spewing mini-plastic shavings. The isopods start to feel full, after dining on the stiff white stuff, and eventually die off because their fast food source ain’t so good for them. The little ubiquitous particles end up not only in our bellies, but everywhere. On every continent. They even look like plankton and are now a part of our food chain. Experts, for years, have estimated microplastic particles are outnumbering plankton 6:1 in the marine environment. The bigger fish eat the ever-present plastics and then we eat the fish. End of story. The plastics are now in us, and they’re toxic.

Another little factoid is that mussels and other bivalves raft over the deep blue seas on freed polystyrene floats to foreign lands — lands where they don’t belong, where they’re considered alien and invasive.

Alien bivalves are the plastic-fed zombies of the future.

Unlucky Beached Bivalves, Rafting on Styrofoam © Liesl Clark

I’ve picked up so much beached polystyrene and other everyday plastics over the years, our personal dumping fees at our local transfer station can be astounding, given we produce as little waste as we can as a family.

Kids love the mints (or is it gum?) that come in these plastic containers. Why do they have to be packaged in a container that will remain here forever? © Liesl Clark

Aquaculture’s equipment and incidentals are also polluting our beaches.

Shellfish Netting © Liesl Clark

Plenty of this plastic netting washes ashore, nets used to hold mussels or oysters.

We find tons of these:

No clue what this is used for, but it has aquaculture written all over it. © Liesl Clark

Some sort of substrate netting used in aquaculture © Liesl Clark

The aquaculture industry has all sorts of specialty items, 100% plastic:

I beg to differ. This specimen is not sea-fit. © Liesl Clark

But we can’t blame it all on aquaculture and the marine industry. We’re all responsible for the myriad plastics in the sea that wash up on our beaches. Plastic floats, it’s buoyant and lightweight, it moves with flooding waters and wind. It mostly comes from us, from our homes.

Beached Sign, Tattered By the Sea © Liesl Clark

The polystyrene that isn’t from marine floats and the aquaculture industry is from us, our fast food takeout containers, styro-block packaging, and packing peanuts flowing into our seas from inland rivers. According to Beachapedia:

The ‘Two Rivers’ study in Los Angeles found that over 1.6 billion pieces of plastic foam were headed to the ocean over a three-day period during surveys in 2004/5. 71% of 2.3 billion plastic items in the survey were foam items and that made up 11% of the overall weight of plastic pollution collected during the surveys.

If that isn’t enough to sound an alarm for you about styrofoam, there are plenty of studies that can fill you in on how polystyrene in the marine environment acts as a sponge for persistent organic pollutants like PCBs and DDT. Chelsea Rochman’s study of the beaches around San Diego shows that the most toxic plastics found in the marine environment is, you guessed it, styrofoam. Her lab fish that ate it didn’t fare so well.

Solutions?
1) Stop using styrofoam: If you mail order a product, ask the shipper to ship it without styrofoam.

2) Refuse takeout containers made of styrofoam.

3) Recycle what styrofoam you can. Our island has a recycle event twice a year for styrofoam and Seattle has a facility that recycles. Just type into your browser “Styrofoam Recycling in (name of your city)” and see if there’s a facility or green organization near you that will take your styrofoam. If not, find the nearest recycling facility (even if it’s a few hours away) and be the person in your community who organizes a styrofoam recycling event on Earth Day each year. Your community will likely get behind the costs of renting a U-Haul to get the stuff to a safe recycling operation.

4) Get out there for yourself and walk your shorelines, river shores, wild places. Pick up what styrofoam you find and start asking questions about where it might come from. Educate everyone you can.

If you’re interested in reading more about the previous legs of this survey, here’s a list of our stages so far:

Special Thanks:

A special shout-out to Julie Skotheim who took time out of her day to join us on this leg of our journey.

Marine “Rope,” 100% Plastic © Liesl Clark

Off the Grid Toast

January 9, 2016January 9, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 2 Comments

The Stovetop Toaster You Always Wanted

Our toaster oven stopped working two years ago and, coincidentally, I found a camp stove toaster a day later. I had wanted one of these for years. They’re the foldable lightweight stovetop toasters that enable you to toast your bread right over your burner. Coleman makes them and they cost less than $5 at Walmart. But if you’re patient, you’ll likely find one at a yard sale or in your Buy Nothing group.

These toasters are perfect for the homebody interested in downsizing and getting rid of their small electrical appliances that just take up room and leave you with no options when the power goes out.

One by one, we’ve offloaded the little electrical appliances we rarely use, and our cupboards are so much easier to deal with. But more importantly, we’re making hand-made food again, and it ain’t no chore. We’re finding alternative ways to make things off the grid, like yogurt, and are rediscovering the pleasures of simplicity and mindfully-made food. No, we aren’t poster-children for the farming life made simple, and we certainly aren’t feeling deprived. We don’t miss our toaster oven at all, thanks to our trusty Coleman camp stove toaster. I keep our new toast-maker on our stovetop day and night because toast is a staple around here since we bake our own bread. But it’s also foldable, so this gizmo won’t take up much room in your cupboard.

Not only are we saving electricity, we’re convinced our toast tastes better as it’s toasted lightly over a diffused flame over the course of a few minutes, the same amount of time it would take in an electric toaster. I do believe Bagels are much better toasted with this thingy. And when the winter storms come and the power is out — we have toast! (Our stove is natural gas.)

Oh, and I’ve found the small base plate with holes on the toaster makes an excellent chili pepper roaster, too.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover Batteries

January 8, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 8 Comments

The Batteries We Recycle © Liesl Clark

The average American has at least 10 batteries in their possession at any given time and throws away 8 batteries per year. That statistic feels low to me. Members of my household blast through many more than 8 every few weeks. We try to use rechargeable batteries, because they’re reusable, but in some remote parts of the world where we work, we just need to bring disposables with us because the charging of batteries requires power.

Should we recycle batteries? Absolutely! The mercury and cadmium in our batteries can wreak havoc on the environment. According to the Environmental Health and Safety Organization, “In landfills, heavy metals have the potential to leach slowly into soil, groundwater or surface water. Dry cell batteries contribute about 88 percent of the total mercury and 50 percent of the cadmium in the municipal solid waste stream.”

By recycling batteries, we’re ensuring those heavy metals are captured again and kept from our watersheds. Whether they power our cell phones, laptop computers, or flashlights at night, batteries are an essential part of our everyday lives. Finding the nearest place to dispose of them is now easier, through your municipal recycling transfer stations and facilities like Ikea for alkaline batteries and Staples for rechargeables and cell phone batteries.

Here’s an amazing resource from Environment, Health and Safety Online that will clue you in about all of the different types of batteries and how they impact the environment. They also highlight how to safely dispose of them. For example, those tiny little button batteries that go in your watch or in some toys should go to your household hazardous waste facility. Them things are toxic!

In Nepal, where we travel each year, batteries are what enable us to make our documentaries for National Geographic and NOVA. Without that stored power, we couldn’t run our film equipment. Batteries, whether rechargeable, alkaline, gel cell, or lithium, are essential to our mission. Each one is carried back down from the mountains and reused on future expeditions. The spent batteries are taken home with us for safe disposal since there’s no battery recycling in Nepal. In the Himalaya, we’ve seen batteries regularly discarded outside villages in the rivers and streams.

Over the years, we’ve worked to set up a battery recycling program in the kingdom of Mustang, one of the highest watersheds in the world. We’re trying to inspire villages to collect their batteries and stockpile them. Trekking agencies heading out of the kingdom with their clients can take a bag or 2 of these batteries downhill to be disposed of responsibly in Kathmandu or Pokhara, two of the largest urban centers in Nepal. Better yet, trekkers could take batteries home with them to recycle them in their home countries. The crisis of battery waste building-up in the pristine wilderness needs to be addressed by everyone who lives and travels through these fragile environments. We pick up batteries in the villages we stay in, and do a cleanup with villagers whenever we can.

Prayer Flags in the Kingdom of Mustang. Photo © Cory Richards

The next time you see a battery lying on the ground, whether it’s in a parking lot, on a trail in the wilderness, or outside a rural village, think of our planet as one interconnected ecosystem. All water, and whatever might have leached into it, travels downhill. If we address, globally, the most toxic materials first and then work our way down the waste chain to the more inert ones, we have a place to start and a set of priorities to follow.

Batteries found in just a few minutes of searching amidst the town dumping site just outside the walls of the royal city of Lo Manthang. © Liesl Clark

If you’d like to help us, please donate, even a few dollars, to our battery rescue operation through the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation.

Embracing Ugly Veggies

January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 21 Comments

Digging around in the garden, today, I had to run into the house to look up a stunning fact. Here it is: Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tons, is wasted. But here’s the hitch — The Food and Agricultural Association claims:

Fruits and vegetables, plus roots and tubers have the highest wastage rates of any food.

Fruits and veggies top out the list, not grains, dairy, meat and legumes. It’s the perishables that contribute to (in this country) the over 33 million tons of food each year that ends up in the landfill.

I posit that much of it is ugly veggies, like ours.

This time of year, the veggies in our garden are downright repulsive.

That’s Broccoli Folks! © Liesl Clark

The ceaseless rain and a recent freeze, has waterlogged the cauliflower.

Browned Cauli Still Tastes Great © Liesl Clark

Thanks to a few thousand slugs that share the land with us, the slender kale has holes in it.

The finger potatoes and sun chokes cling to the sodden earth like black clods of nutritious grit.

Never fear, friends, just lower your standards, and don’t let your ugly veggies get you down. They’re still food. Hideously delicious food.

Gone are the days of showing off our succulent crops in beautiful baskets on long lost sunny afternoons. No, tonight’s dinner was wrestled free from the muck and slime of a New Year’s dark garden of primal growth that only the diehard will eat. We eat the foul-looking foodstuffs because snubbing our nose at them would contribute to the EPA’s wasted food bottom line. No, we’ll whip up dishes from weird days where clouds and wet shadows prevail over the sheepish sunlight.

We triumph, quietly, when the kids eat the ugly veggies.

Pizza with Kale and Red Pepper Flakes © Liesl Clark

So, why be ashamed of the slug holes and dark spots on your rotting heads of cauliflower or snail-slimed leaves of kale when you hear this confession and bear witness to our homely ingredients? Embrace your ugly veggies. They’re food after all.

Washing the Grit From Sun Chokes © Liesl Clark

No one’s watching. No one’s comparing their Instagram-perfect patches of deep solstice greens with yours. Bon appetit! Go ahead, share your vile veggies with the fates that befall all winter gardens. Welcome them into your kitchen, unsightly as they are.

We eat our ugly veggies with pride. How about you?

The Sky Is Falling! A Fine Line Between Avian Life and Death

January 4, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 4 Comments

“Mommy! A bird just fell out of the sky!”

A Stunned Young Mallard, Post Power Line Collision © Liesl Clark

I ran to see what my daughter and her friend had found, thinking a small bird had simply landed on the beach. But the sight was a sobering surprise for us all. A small juvenile mallard was heaving deep breaths of stress as blood dripped from its beak.

“It fell out of the sky?” I asked.

No shots had been heard, so it hadn’t been shot at. We looked up and found the answer some 50 feet above. Power lines etched their impression upon a clear blue sky. This little duck met its demise with a fine line suspended between its nesting area and food source, just across the road.

We were at one of our favorite beaches, Bainbridge Island’s Pleasant Beach. Across a little causeway from the beach is an estuary, known as Schel Chelb, where waterfowl thrive and raise their young. It was a bright winter day and this little critter’s flock had taken off from the wetlands to fly over the road to the bay just beyond, in search of food. Sadly, the small duck never saw the power lines that separate home from fodder for these feathered friends. It was flying right into the sun, and likely never saw what it hit.

The Power Lines That Separate The Nesting Grounds From the Bay © Liesl Clark

According to a 2014 article published at the NIH, an estimated 8 and 57 million birds in the U.S. are killed by such collisions. Globally, collisions with power lines may cause more than one billion annual bird deaths.

In 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came out with a manual for best practices in preventing bird deaths due to collisions with power lines. I’ve tried to find it online but have not had any success as all links to it are broken. An April 2005 report, available through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, provides some guidance for reducing the risk of deadly bird collisions with power lines:

“Marking wires and conductors with white wire spirals and black crossed bands in one study reduced mortality by up to 75 percent. Other potentially helpful devices include bird flappers and diverters, such as the Firefly and the BirdMark, which swivel in the wind, glow in the dark, and use fluorescent colors designed specifically for bird vision.”

Why isn’t this location a priority for our utilities to install such preventative measures? I find it ironic that a protected wildlife area, this man-made restored wetlands, is situated next to power lines that are bringing about avian deaths. Surely this isn’t the only case of duck-meets-powerline at this popular duck breeding ground.

Shel Chelb Estuary: Where The Ducks Are © Liesl Clark

My daughter described the incident: “We heard a big thud. So we didn’t know what it was. I looked over and the duck was on the ground on its side. It was breathing really deeply, its sides going up and down. It closed its eyes and then opened them again several seconds later. After a minute it flipped itself over and stood upright and walked a little bit. But then it just sat still.”

When I arrived, we could see the blood on the mallard’s beak. It was clearly stunned and taking stock of what to do next, like a hummingbird having just hit a windowpane. This little one plummeted 50-60 feet to the beach below, but it was still alive. I was able to capture this one image before the duck flew low, with difficulty, back across the road to the estuary. We followed it to the estuary side and believe it may survive amongst its little flock of mallards and other waterfowl.

We didn’t know why we wanted to go the beach yesterday, other than to feel the warmth of the sun on our faces. But it was no ordinary day for us at the shore. A silently suffering young mallard brought us the bittersweet gift of awareness of a hazard to her species. Have you witnessed such an event? How hard do you think it will be to raise this issue with our utility company and ask them to take the necessary measures to help our friend?

How to Build a Backyard Quinzhee

January 3, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 2 Comments

A what? A quinzhee.

Quinzhee is an Athabaskan word for snow shelter and when there’s enough snow about, our resident mountaineer can’t help but make one with the kids. Mountaineers learn how to build them as an emergency refuge from the ravages of winter storms in the mountains. It’s more fun when you have one just 5 feet from your back door.

How do you build a quinzhee? It’s easy. And you don’t need a lot of snow on the ground to pull it off. We built this one with only about 8 inches of snow on the ground.

First make a huge pile of the white stuff, packing it with shovels and skis if you have them, without walking on the pile. Get it as tall as you can and make it cone-shaped, adding a good volume of snow to the back end. Really pack it down. Let it sit as long as you can, to settle the snow and let the snow crystals sinter. Sinter? Yes, sinter. Sintering is bonding of the snow crystals and this happens when snow crystals come in contact with each other. Packing it really helps.

We let ours sit over night. But you might not be so lucky. In the event you are stuck out in a storm in your backyard because you forgot your house key, you can let it sit for an hour.

It Might Look Like a Pile of Snow. But In No Time It’ll Be Home.

Next, you’ll want to cut a small entrance close to the ground. You’re essentially cutting a flat slab-like face on the surface of the quinzhee. Then, you can start digging into it.

Dig a small tunnel to start, only large enough to allow your body to slither in. Dig in about a body-length. Then you can start to enlarge the room.

Dig an oval-shaped room, complete with sleeping platforms on either side of the tunnel and inside the void. You want to elevate the sleeping platforms off the ground if you have enough space because the cold sinks to the bottom and the small entrance-way will keep the heat from escaping out the entrance because your entrance is low to the ground. But if you just want it to be a fun playspace, forget about the sleeping platforms. Who’s going to camp in this thing unless they absolutely have to?

Quinzhees are actually warm at night.

When the snow falls, isn’t it fascinating how we come to use it for our pleasure and benefit? Some of us like to slide on it, others strap skis on to travel over it, my husband and I like to think about how the snow can be turned into a resource for our family. This quinzhee has been a true hit.

Next time the snow falls, don’t just shovel the snow off your sidewalk or driveway randomly. Throw it into a big pile and you’ll have a fodder for a quinzhee in no time for the whole neighborhood to enjoy.

How (and Why) I Kicked the Paper Towel Habit

January 2, 2016 / Liesl Clark / 12 Comments

A few good rags,

a washing machine,

and an empty drawer

are all it took to convert my family from paper towels to cloth towels.

Rosie would be proud of these cloth towels. They’re definitely “the quicker picker upper” vs. Bounty, her paper equivalent.

And there’s another reason to skip paper towels altogether: Bisphenol A, a chemical linked with cancer among other things. Sadly, according to a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, our recycled paper products are now laced with this endocrine disruptor because thermal receipts that have high amounts of BPA have been recycled into most of our post-consumer paper products. Therefore, recycled content paper towels, newspapers, business cards, printer paper, even toilet paper have BPA and BPS in them. Returning to virgin pulp paper products might the healthier route to take! But the environmental impact of using virgin paper (a.k.a. loss of trees and the dioxins released in the atmosphere during the process of bleaching conventional toilet paper), according to the Huffington Post, far outweighs the small amounts of BPS found in our recycled paper toilet paper.

Oh, and BPA has also been detected in our currency.

I think this whole situation might be the perfect example of a bass ackwards trash backwards absolutely hazardous mess only humans can create. Somehow, we’ve managed to contaminate our own paper recycling streams with such toxic chemicals that post-consumer recycled paper itself is no longer a green option. Strategists say that if we stop recycling our thermal receipts or any recycled paper that has BPA in it, we may return to BPA-free papers. The problem is that according to some estimates, 8 million tons of BPA are produced each year and it’s been detected on every beach ever tested for the chemical.

The dilemma appears to fit perfectly with Urban Dictionary‘s definition of bass ackwards:

bass ackwards
	Ass backwards. The state of doing (or having done) something the wrong way. No no dude, you’ve got the cables plugged in all bass ackwards.

Before we recycle our papers into new papers and disseminate them all over the planet, into our gray water (in the case of toilet paper) and onto our countertops (paper towels) let’s find out what’s in them and exclude the papers that have toxic chemicals in them.

The bad guys: Thermal receipts have more BPA (that transfers into your skin upon contact) than any other paper, can, or plastic. Photo © Liesl Clark

What can you do to help prevent BPA and its alternative BPS from spreading further into our watersheds? Stop buying paper towels, refuse receipts at stores, and don’t put them in your compost, your recycling, or even in your fireplace. Seems the toxic culprits need to be collected and bagged up so their chemicals can never leach into our groundwater. Think male frogs with female genitalia and you’ll get the picture. I’m considering taking the ones I collect to our household hazardous waste facility.