350.org is an international campaign that’s building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand. 350 is the most important number in the world! Scientists say 350ppm is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Find out more on the global site, 350.org.
Ann Arbor 350 is your link into doing something about climate change here in Washtenaw County! This site is gathering into one place a “Cookbook” of simple but powerful step-by-step recipes for taking community action. Our featured recipe is below, but you can explore them all in the Recipes for Community Action section.
Pledge to do at least 2 of the actions below (or propose your own) through 2012. Tell us who you are, circle your actions, and then scan/copy/print/cut out this pledge and send it to us. We are asking you to use paper here. The back of something, a scrap, recycled paper — it’s all acceptable. We’re doing this because writing pledges down make them more likely to succeed.
Unless otherwise attributed, the information below is from the 2010 Ann Arbor Energy Challenge Booklet, written by Kim Wolske with contributions by Nate Geisler. The full booklet will soon be available at a2energy.org.
HOME
Add eco-friendly insulation to your walls & attic
Improving your attic insulation can save 84 pounds of carbon dioxide each month by decreasing the amount of hot and cold air that escapes through your roof in the winter and summer. Insulating your walls is a bit more challenging, but it saves a whopping 395 pounds of carbon dioxide each month. Sierra Club’s Green Home website provides a lot of helpful information about what you should look for in insulation.
Install a low-flow showerhead
Save 105 pounds of carbon dioxide per month. Select a shower head with a flow rate of less than 2.5 gpm. This will allow you to use less HOT water — meaning you use less water AND less energy (to heat that water). Here’s a recommendation from our friend Matt at Greenovation.TV:
Bricor – ultra-high efficiency shower head with flow rate of only 1 gallon per minute (gpm). A standard shower head has a flow rate of 2.5 gpm. So, this shower head will save a family of three about 16,000 gallons of HOT water every year. It’s a huge energy saver as well as a water saver. Learn more about what Matt’s done to his house here.
Install faucet aerators
The aerator—the screw-on tip of the faucet—ultimately determines the maximum flow rate of a faucet. Typically, new kitchen faucets come equipped with aerators that restrict flow rates to 2.2 gpm, while new bathroom faucets have ones that restrict flow rates from 1.5 to 0.5 gpm.
Aerators are inexpensive to replace and they can be one of the most cost-effective water conservation measures. For maximum water efficiency, purchase aerators that have flow rates of no more than 1.0 gpm. Some aerators even come with shut-off valves that allow you to stop the flow of water without affecting the temperature. When replacing an aerator, bring the one you’re replacing to the store with you to ensure a proper fit.
Wash laundry in cold water with a full load
This saves 57 lbs CO2 per month. The folks at TreeHugger figured this one out years ago and wrote a lovely article about it:
When you use cold water to wash, you just use energy to run the machine — about .24 kWh — without using any energy to heat the water. That .24 kWh translates to about .41 pounds of CO2 per year. That’s about 8 gallons of gas, or 164 miles of driving. Compare that to the 3595 miles of driving that the top end of the emissions scale (washing in hot/warm, using a top-loading machine and water heated with an electric water heater), and pressing that cold/cold button starts to make a sizable difference.
Use LED holiday lights
The estimated household savings of LED holiday lights is 47 pounds CO2/month.
Starting in 2007, the Ann Arbor DDA began using LED (light-emitting diode) holiday lights, 114,000 LED bulbs to be exact, on trees throughout most of the downtown (coincidentally equaling one bulb per city resident – isn’t that an interesting fact!). This is one of the largest LED holiday lighting displays in the country, and attracted NBC national news.
This technology requires 80 percent less energy than traditional lights: 100 LED holiday lights draw 8.8 watts, while 100 regular, mini holiday lights draw 44 watts. Ann Arbor’s 114,000 bulbs equate to an annual energy savings of $7,000, (71,468 KWh) and 70 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of taking 12 cars off the road. LED lights also last much longer as well, with a 40-year life expectancy before they burn out, which translates to a maintenance savings, as well.
TRANSPORTATION
Don’t let vehicle(s) idle!
If you turn off your car instead of idling, you can save up to 24 pounds of CO2 per month. Each time your car idles for 5 minutes, you waste 1 pound of CO2. There are also an incredible number of myths out there that keep people idling, but — rest assured — idling is NOT better for your car.
If you’ll be parked for more than 10 seconds, turn off the car. Restarting uses less fuel than letting the car idle – and contrary to popular belief – will not damage modern engines. Even in cold weather, modern cars need no more than 30 seconds to warm up. You’ll actually heat the engine twice as fast by driving rather than idling in place.
Replace 1 vehicle commute by walking or cycling
Save about 20 lbs CO2 per month. Consider walking or biking for short-distance trips. In congested areas, riding a bike can actually be faster than taking a car. Even at a casual pace, a one mile trip can take only 5 minutes on a bike or 20 minutes on foot. Each mile you power by foot – instead of your car – prevents nearly 1lb. of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
Inflate tires once a month
Save 29 lbs CO2 each month. Looks can be deceiving – half of the vehicles in the U.S. have at least one tire that is underinflated. Under normal driving conditions, your tires naturally lose 1-2 psi per month. Since underinflated tires have more contact with the road, they require more energy – and gasoline – to move and maintain speed. By inflating your tires to the recommended level each month, you can save up to 18 gallons of gas each year. The proper tire pressure for your vehicle can be found on a sticker in the driver’s side door jamb or in your owner’s manual.
FOOD
Compost your food scraps
When you toss banana peels, coffee grounds, and other organic matter into the trash, they end up in landfill where it produces methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more harmful than CO2. Instead, consider returning your food scraps to the earth. You’ll save up to 28 lbs of CO2 each month, halve the number of times you have to take out the trash each week, and generate a nutrient- rich medium for gardening. A number of commercial compost bins are available or you can start a pile in a corner of the backyard.
Go vegan for just 1 meal per week
Vegans are responsible for 1.5 fewer TONS of CO2 emissions each year than meat-eaters. The math is a bit tricky here because most of the calculations have been done for vegetarian meals, but you’ll likely save 11 pounds of CO2 per month if you replace 4 meat meals with vegan meals.
The University of Chicago reports that going vegan is 50% more effective than switching to a hybrid car in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads.
Bring your own grocery bag
The global warming impact of using a single disposable bag is small. But each year Americans use over 100 billion plastic bags and 10 billion paper bags. The typical shopper uses 9 bags per week, at a cost of 6 lbs. of CO2 per month. The next time a cashier gives you the choice of paper or plastic, take pride in providing your own reusable bag instead. Reusable bags hold up better and can even earn you some cash. Many grocery stores provide a cash rebate – up to 10 cents per bag, every time you check out.
Eat 1 local meal per week
Save 4 lbs CO2 per month. The average meal travels between 1,200 to 1,500 miles from the producer to your plate. Aside from arriving short on flavor, high mileage foods also take a serious toll on the climate. After harvest or processing, they’re loaded into an assortment of energy-guzzling transports – freight trains and ships, semi-trucks, and even airplanes. Buying food from local farmers saves transportation-related emissions and puts money in your local economy. If local offerings are sparse, try to pick in-season food that traveled the shortest distance. Many produce labels will indicate the state or country of origin.
This is a slideshow of images sent into 350.org from around the world of people just like you and me, connecting the dots on climate change. Here’s a message from 350.org co-founder, Bill McKibben:
We’re going to need you soon to fight the political battles that will make use of these images, but for the next day or two just relax, and enjoy the feeling of solidarity that comes from knowing there are millions of people thinking the same way, harboring the same fears and, more importantly, the same hopes.
CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. Here’s a definition from the US-duh (a Joel Salatin term, not mine):
Community supported agriculture (CSA) is a direct-to-consumer marketing arrangement that permits household consumers to purchase advance shares of a farm’s production in return for regular (usually weekly) deliveries during the growing season. CSA operations have experienced a dramatic rise in popularity in the United States during the past several years, expanding from an estimated 60 operations in 1990 to approximately 3,600 operations as of mid-2010.
You may have heard it before, but I don’t think there’s harm in saying it again: CSAs are good for communities. And: YOU SHOULD GET ONE.
The scale of benefits are absurd. You’ll COOK, experiment with new ingredients, end up google-finding for new and amazing things to do with kale, help local farmers focus on growing and not on selling, and on and on.
Many local CSA shares start pick ups in the next couple of weeks, so there couldn’t be a better time to sign up.
(Need a link? http://tiliancenter.wordpress.com/ )
I’ve put a call out on Facebook for more farms with shares available. I’ll update this post with what I find. You should feel free to leave comments here or on Facebook so we can do some networking to get as many shares filled as possible.
UPDATES:
This might help folks who otherwise couldn’t afford a CSA: Groupon deal through May 5th
Attention: Renters. If you thought you couldn’t take energy saving actions because you rent rather than own your home, I’ve got good news for you!
There’s more you can do besides the basics — e.g. switching to CFLs or LEDs, putting your energy vampires on surge protectors with power switches. Confession: I haven’t done that last thing yet, but I do try to keep the vampires out of my sockets. Unsurprisingly, given this lack of information and options, many renters have given up and are assuming they don’t have much control over basic things like heating and cooling costs and efficiency in their rented apartments.
Fortunately, through my service on the City of Ann Arbor’s energy commission, I’ve learned that there will be funding to work on greening rental housing. This is thanks to a $3 million Community Challenge Grant award for the Washtenaw County Sustainable Community project, the goal of which is to create a coordinated approach to promote affordable and energy-efficient housing locally.
A portion of the grant will go towards funding a staff person to coordinate green rental housing efforts across county agencies. One idea on the table is work with the major online rental housing listings in the county, especially those geared to students, to build monthly electric and gas costs into individual listings where renters pay utilities. This way you can compare one apartment to another by energy performance. If you can see that apartment A averages $100/month in energy costs and apartment B averages $300/month you will have a more realistic idea about expenses going into your lease. Plus, when you’re selecting where to live, you can choose apartments that are more planet-friendly.
Listings like these will create incentive opportunities — for renters and landlords alike — to start thinking about rental housing energy costs, an integral first step in inspiring action. We hope these listings will be accessible to the public in the next year or so. Once they’re launched, they will allow you, regardless of your income bracket, to be able to apartment shop by energy cost and performance.
Our goal is to assemble a representative set of how many people care about our climate crisis as well as why (how it impacts us). On 5/5/2012, we’ll be at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market with “dots” — including blank ones — asking farmers what their thoughts are. You can join us then.
BUT you can also join us before that, but taking these 4 easy steps:
The most important step: ASK FOR HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT. We have construction paper, some ideas, and access to volunteers. We’re happy to help and would be sad to know you didn’t participate because something fixable stood in your way.
Step 1: Pick a location or idea that illustrates how climate change impacts us locally (e.g., Dexter/tornado after-effects)
Step 2: Make a climate “dot” — take a piece of paper, cut it into a circle, write why you picked the site
Step 3: Take a photo of yourself or someone else holding up the dot at the site you’ve chosen.
Step 4: Send your photo to annarbor350@ecocenter.org OR to poses39first@photos.flickr.com
Another local example that I’m THRILLED about is a partnership between The Agrarian Adventure and Project Grow. These two incredible, local, grassroots groups are uniting to support and sustain the growing number of educational school gardens in our community. In short: WAHOO!
This spring, the two groups are launching a pilot series of workdays in AAPS school gardens to mobilize interested community members to get their hands dirty at local school gardens. Volunteers don’t need gardening experience – so you can also think of this as a free training from people who know what they’re doing.
I strongly suggest that you take advantage of this opportunity and be a part of growing healthier kids in schools. You can sign-up for any of the following opportunities at a variety of locations:
Sat. April 14th, 9am-12pm: Pittsfield Elementary School Garden
Wed. April 18th & Fri. April 20th, 8am-3pm (2 hr block) Seedling Planting for School Gardens @ Tappan
Sat. April 21st, 9am-12pm: Bryant Elementary School Garden
Thurs. May 3rd, 9am – 3pm (2 hr block): King Elementary School Learning Garden
Photo courtesy of The Agrarian Adventure
Note that some of these volunteer opportunities are during the school-day and involve working with kids, while others are to support and build the school garden infrastructure. And it doesn’t end there.
Background on both organizations:The Agrarian Adventure is an educational non-profit organization working in partnership since 2002 with public schools to schools to connect students with food, health, community, and agriculture. Project Grow Community Gardens is a non-profit that has been providing the space, education, and inspiration to make organic gardening accessible to all since 1972.
Apologies for any inconvenience, but this event has been cancelled due to lack of turnout. For assistance with your garden, feel free to contact us by email and we can brainstorm solutions.
How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, ‘No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don’t care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.’ Wouldn’t world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings?
Did reading that make you put your hand to your heart like it did for me? If not, I hope it moved you in some other way.
And now (drumroll) I get to tell you some very exciting news. Well, okay, you already ready it in the title of this post so the drumroll would be over the top. Still, it’s true! The People’s Food Co-op is bringing Joel Salatin to Ann Arbor! Next month!
Since the library’s already done it, I don’t see a need to write it up all over again so here are the details, courtesy of your local (and wonderful) library:
Joel Salatin, the well-known organic farmer, will be coming to Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater on Tuesday, April 24th by way of the People’s Food Co-op of Ann Arbor (PFC), to “share how his farm serves as a prototype to the way local food can lead to our agricultural, environmental, and nutritional salvation. Noting that our food system now faces challenges in biosecurity, food safety, energy, integrity, and humane animal husbandry, he will explain how local production, processing, distribution, and patrons in the Ann Arbor area can reshape our food future.”
Salatin’s ideas and progress in the world of sustainable farming have been featured in Michael Pollan’s bestselling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in the documentary films Food, Inc. and Fresh, and also in his very own books, Folks, this Ain’t Normal and Holy Cows and Hog Heaven. “Since his cutting-edge sustainable farm, Polyface Inc., began inspiring people throughout the world, his charismatic nature and ability to produce provocative and poignant proclamations about the unfortunate state of our food system have made him one of the most influential voices in the sustainable food movement today.”
The event will take place at the Michigan Theater in Downtown Ann Arbor on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 from 8pm to 10pm. Tickets are $15 for the General Public, and $13 for Students & PFC Members. Available at ticketmaster.com or surcharge-free at the People’s Food Co-op of Ann Arbor.
If you missed our screening of Gasland last week, here’s a chance to catch up. Keep in mind that you’re also welcome to borrow the DVD…just email us.
Gasland got many of us thinking about fracking, what’s happening in Michigan, and how to understand what’s happening nationally. Since going to law school, I think in outline form so here’s a quick fracking outline for you:
Nationally
Fracking is a pretty big deal…particularly in states like Colorado and Pennsylvania, which were featured in Gasland.
Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council has done an incredible job explaining fracking — and its Michigan history and status — here at their website (complete with diagrams!)
Last week, the Detroit Free Press reported that there’s an oil boom going on in the Irish Hills, where some residents are worried oil companies are using fracking technologies and putting water supplies at risk
Tuesday, March 13th at 7:30-8:45pm
1040 Dana Building
Popcorn will be provided!
A little bit about Tapped:
Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig’s debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.
From the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car and I.O.U.S.A, this timely documentary is a behind-the- scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water.
From the plastic production to the ocean in which so many of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry and the communities which were the unwitting chips on the table. A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this revelatory film features those caught at the intersection of big business and the public’s right to water.
Our group is working to reduce bottled water on campus. If you want to help in allowing reusable water bottles in the Michigan Stadium click the link below and signing in your UMich accont and click “sign this petition”: https://www.msa.umich.edu/upetition/p/takebackthetapbighouse
We'd love to make this site a group effort: if you have something Ann Arbor 350-related, write it up and send it (and any accompanying photos) to our email address. We'll make it live in no time.
350.org is an international campaign that’s building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand. 350 is the most important number in the world! Scientists say 350ppm is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Find out more on the global site, 350.org.
Ann Arbor 350 is your link into doing something about climate change here in Washtenaw County! This site is gathering into one place a “Cookbook” of simple but powerful step-by-step recipes for taking community action. Our featured recipe is below, but you can explore them all in the Recipes for Community Action section.
CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. Here’s a definition from the US-duh (a Joel Salatin term, not mine):
There’s more you can do besides the 
Our goal is to assemble a representative set of how many people care about our climate crisis as well as why (how it impacts us). On 5/5/2012, we’ll be at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market with “dots” — including blank ones — asking farmers what their thoughts are. You can join us then.
If you missed our screening of Gasland last week, here’s a chance to catch up. Keep in mind that you’re also welcome to borrow the DVD…just 
Tuesday, March 13th at 7:30-8:45pm
