Talking about the environment

At last check, there are over 14,000 individual blogs reaching 12 million readers today to talk about one topic: the environment. The aim of the project is to get us talking about a better future, but I hope this amounts to more than just a really big BUZZ.

Germany
Since I am using my blog to talk about my travels through central Germany and develop parts of my dissertation work on the history of fear, I might as well start with what I have seen here in Germany. I am interested in things like innovative architecture and organic whole foods markets.

Buy more local, consume more organic
Berlin has more and more "Bio" stores like the one in this picture. "Bio" products are also appearing more and more regularly in conventional grocery stores, so there is a growing market and distribution network in the making much like in the US. For those trying to stay local, there are lively farmers' markets in several parts of the city. I have also seen the growth of this local and whole foods trend in other parts of Germany, especially in the former East Germany in the agricultural region of Thuringia and its cities like Erfurt where I will be in a few weeks. The "Bio" mark on products represents the European Union's system of inspection and regulation for organic and whole food products. In this case, I think a supernational or national system helps. The label carries a strong sense of quality. Moreover, prices for many products are more and more comparable with non-"Bio" alternatives in other stores,. Still, it is a good idea to check out the ingredient labels; many of those "Bio" products have things that may not be right for you. Some of my friends and I try to buy less things, eat more local, more organic, more whole foods and waste almost nothing. I am learning not to necessarily buy the whole foods shipped in extra special from half way around the globe. Berlin also has a municipal composting service, but many people still do not use it or use it properly from experience. Even Germans have some way to go when it comes to food consumption and waste.

Buying fish

Since I am talking about food, I will post a link to the Blue Ocean Institute's "Guide to Ocean Friendly Seafood". We like to eat fish. This guide provides useful information on different types of fish, typical harvest and farming methods, and species health for the purposes of conservation and sustainability. Check it out if you are interested.

Rethinking our buildings

In my limited travels, I think the three most interesting cities in terms of alternative design, green architecture and urban planning have to be Portland, Oregon, New York City and Berlin. Tell us more about other places that are out there! Wind energy is a major state initiative in Germany and outside of Erfurt, for example, I can count four large wind farms on each direction of the compass with between 15-25 mills. Much of the central German landscape, regions like Saxony and Thuringia have substantial wind farms. In Berlin, I notice that some of the new tram stops have glass roofs with embedded solar cells. Berlin is also a fairly green city with parks all over the place. Sometimes from some of the elevated subway lines in central Berlin, I can see green roof tops, even on the tops of corner gas stations. I hear that Germany is a leader in this field, which Americans helped start. There is also quite a large water remediation project on Potsdamer Platz that filters gray water from the whole plaza before letting it enter the neighboring Landwehr canal. There is a very good mass transit system with light gage rail, trams, subways and buses and there are pretty good cycling lanes with coordinated traffic lights for bicycles in many parts of the city.

On the right are details of the GSW headquarters building in the middle of Berlin (renovated in 1999). Those red, orange, pink and white shutters are integral parts of a frame, which drapes the entire western side of the building. The shutters automatically rotate to help regulate the building's use of energy, light and air resources. The architects, Sauerbruch and Hutton, also developed an innovative ventilation system, including an aerodynamic cantilevered roof that generates a strong depression by intensifying the natural thermal currents around the building. One site claims that the building's design cuts energy usage in half. Plus, it is just a beautiful looking structure that should inspire innovative thinking.

Bringing it all back home
I have been keeping my eyes and ears open for years on alternative living ideas, mulling over designs for our family house and changes in my own life. When I returned to north central PA in 2003 for grad school, I decided I needed to make some basic changes. For one thing, I was glad to be back home in the hills, near the creeks and our family garden (pictured on the left in its winter state). Putting my hands in the soil and tending vegetables, herbs and fruit trees is much more than hippy junk (real hippies rock). Gardening changes my perspective on the environment and my relationship to living things and healthy living. It is also hard work. I have lost berries to birds, peaches to deer, beets to rabbits, tomatoes to groundhogs, broccoli to flea beetles, squash to acidic soil, blueberries to heat and drought, on and on. Planting is not about plugging it in and taking it out when it is done. It involves learning on all kinds of levels about plants, soil, insects, animals, chemistry, etc. But I get to be outside in the sun, wind and rain. My mother and I spend good time together weeding and catching up. We marvel over life and its seasons through the little things in our gardens. We get to eat fresh fruits and vegetables and supplement our diets with the most local of local foods.
Before I left for Germany, I turned the compost one more time and planted the garlic cloves for next year's harvest. I plan to make at least a three season garden. I miss it and look forward to visiting it in December just to see what is going on in its fourth season.
Gardening is also one of the things that many people have been doing in our region for years. Older folks grew up with gardening around here and bring a wealth of experience to what appears to be a good trend (within an older cycle: there was an organic movement around here in the 1960s; look for notes on the old Walnut Acres Farm, which only really exists in a label now). My brother-in-law Yuri has been developing nicer organic gardens over the years. My friends, Kurt and Masha, started their first garden (pictured above with my friends Keith and Alex and their two children Lucy and Ella). Plus my colleague and friend, Jan, and his wife Beth have a plot in a beautiful community garden in the north end of State College. So gardening is alive and well in this part of the country.

Living in State College for graduate school has also put me in contact with a whole group of interesting people centered around a new alternative co-op (on the right). They participate in a local Community Susported Agriculture (CSA) organization. This CSA is made up of local farms that work together, using "environmentally friendly methods to raise a variety of farm products, including vegetables, herbs, flowers, dairy products, eggs, meats, and berries". Paraphrasing their mission, they work together to coordinate growing, marketing, and distribution and provide an abundant and reliable source of fresh, healthy foods to grocery stores, restaurants, and individuals. Right now, they are laying the groundwork for an effort that may one day evolve into a farmer-owned cooperative, supporting a large number of local farmers and supplying food to a great many members of the community. If you are interested, check out the home page for the GroundWorks Farm CSA in the Penns Creek watershed.

Recycle

If you are interested in local recycling networks to get rid of things other people could use or find some things that you could use, please check out the Freecycle Network for a network near you.

Health and well being: yoga
When I returned to graduate school, I found myself generating
stress as I did in my old college days. I knew I liked yoga when my sister introduced it to me years ago. So I decided to find a class somewhere in town and trusted the recommendation of a classmate. There are so many things one can do to bring movement into one's day of sitting, reading and staring into computer screens. For some it is jogging or squash, cycling or soccer. I like those things too and get outside to kayak in the spring when the water is up or cross country ski in the winter when we get the occasional snow. However, yoga helps me integrate my mind, body and spirit through increasingly more and more practice. At first, I went once a week and decided to commit my time and money as an investment in my general health and well being. Practice is part of a long learning process, discovering flexibility in some places and inflexibility even pain in other parts of my body. When stress from work is building up and time seems so precious, that is when I need to go to yoga class the most. When I am in State College, I go to Laurie Bonjo's Iyengar-style class at least three times a week now. I brought my mat with me here to Germany and unroll it all the time in my apartment to practice. Yoga helps me clear my mind, work out the body's kinks, increase my flexibility, make me stronger and healthier. It also helps me focus on the here and now, draw my mind back from its intensity and bring better breathing into my daily activities. It helps that I have an amazing teacher and friend in Laurie Bonjo (that's her above). If you are interested, check out her home page for the Harmony Center.

The big dream: rethinking our home
I have had many ideas for our family home in north central PA and I have been mulling them over for years. Since my family seemed most interested in integrating innovative technologies into our house and thinking about the family's future in relationship to the home, I decided to focus our efforts on considering alternative energy. My girlfriend, Nicole, put me in touch with a new local company called Envinity to see what we could do (check out the link if you like). They are a great group of people and they approach their work in a personable way. As an extra benefit, talking about alternative energy with them has brought my family together in interesting and exciting new ways.
As a first step, we had the Envinity guys conduct an energy audit on the house for about $500. This involved surveying the house, going over its energy systems, doors, windows, electrical outlets and insulation from top to bottom. They then used a big fan to create a pressure differential in the house and see how and where air was leaking out. They fed those results into their super powerful computer programs and came up with an energy audit and a list of possible improvements we could make with the time it would take for those improvements to pay back our investment.
The first steps are basic, frugal, do-it-yourself. Over the next year, we are collecting materials to improve the building's insulation. Our house looses heat through a door into the attic and through electrical outlets. So we purchasing things like electrical outlet insulation covers, weather stripping and door sweeps (to seal the door jambs) plus thinking about other little things we can do to make the house more energy efficient before considering bigger ideas. For one thing, we are reducing the energy envelope of the house - that space we need to air condition - by sealing the hallway door to the basement.
We have also decided to invest in solar heating water. We can do this almost year round in this part of the country. Plus heating water usually takes up a third of the energy budget because of those pesky hydrogen bonds. Installations can run up to several thousand dollars for a house like ours, but we will save hundreds of dollars on those heating bills and the technology pays itself back in about 18 years.
The biggest decision involves a "closed" geo-thermal heating and cooling system. This technology uses the temperature differential of the ground and air to its advantage. In the summer the system draws water from a series of small wells spaced around the outside of the house and sends it coursing through the interior of the home to draw heat from the warmer air. In the colder months, the system reverses itself, drawing warmth from the ground below to heat the water and send it coursing through the home. These systems cost more than $20,000 to install for a house our size, but the energy savings are in the thousands of dollars and the system will pay the initial investment back in about 16 years. It is an extremely efficient heating and cooling system and we can combine it with a heat recapture and ventilation system that will help bring fresh air into that sealed interior space and recapture heat that may be lost through conventional venting.
What surprised me the most was the cost for photovoltaic systems (solar generated electricity). These systems can run over $30,000 for a house like ours and they pay themselves back in over 100 years. The technology and the markets are simply not there yet for serious consideration for any sanely budgeting family.
One last part of this family plan: my mother's office and medical practice. When our parents moved out here from New York City in the early 1970s, my father converted the original garage of the house into my mother's medical offices where she still practices to this day. When I was 14 I helped my father and a construction crew build an addition. My mother is nearing retirement, so it is time to think about the future of our family. My sister is a local hospice caregiver and developing her own practices as a certified massage therapist and yoga instructor. So we want to redesign the old office space and make a health and wellness center where my sister would have a beautiful new yoga studio and massage room and my mother could still see the occasional patient. Thinking about these things gets us all excited, but there is much work ahead for us to make this happen.