The Stern Report has everyone talking about what measures companies and governments are going to take to mitigate the acceleration of climate change. Here at Chartreuse, since we are first and foremost about adopting a green approach in our personal lives, we would like to take this opportunity to remind our readers (& ourselves) of some simple steps we can and should all take to reduce our carbon footprints.

1. Replace your lightbulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs.
If every American switched ONE lightbulb in their house to a CFC, we would save enough energy to light >2.5 MILLION homes for a year.
A couple of CFL facts: They use 1/3 of the energy of regular incandescent bulbs and last up to 10X longer and will save you $30 over the life of each bulb. To find a store carrying CFLs near you, click here.

2. ENERGY SUCKERS:

• Don’t keep applicances on STANDBY. The UK is considering banning these buttons altoghether as they use 8% of all domestic energy. Factor in Americans’ desire for TV sets in everyroom and our general fetishism of electronic appliances, a study conducted at Berkeley estimated that Californians’s standby buttons are draining anywhere between 6 and 26% percent of their energy.
• Chargers: Cellphones, Blackberrys, etc…. You may have taken your phone with you, but if the charger is still plugged, it is still draining energy so much so that a source inside the EPA suggested cell phone chargers alone negated savings made through the Energy Star program.

No one wants to run around switching off power and pulling out plugs - make it easy on yourself and invest in a few power strips. you can just flick one switch and leave your house with a clear conscious. Some of them are so smart, if you plug in your computer and related peripherals, turning off your computer will signal to the strip which in turn will turn off printers, scanners etc. Check it out here.

Another innovative strip glows according to how much energy items plugged in are using - A very visual reminder!

Tune in next week for 2 more tips to make a difference

I accidentally encountered a lovely series of articles on the Guardian website about traveling the old fashioned way in order to reduce your carbon footprint. 3 Journalists choose 3 different destinations and write about their journey getting there. What struck me the most as I was reading these was how little I cared about the final destination and how fascinated I was about their experiences actually on their journey.
I can’t vow that I won’t ever take a plane again, but I am definitely rethinking the way I plan my holidays. So I hope you enjoy the trip to Hong Kong, Egypt & Ibiza. Personally, I found it really brought back the romance to travel and as we all know with romance.. there is always a lot of excitement & fun as well as the occasional heartburn…

Blogged with Flock

As a student and someone with a penchant for working in non-profits, I have had to curtail the number of organic items I buy throughout my food-shoping life. I always found it tricky to remember which foods were deemed ‘dirty’, consistently ending up with the highest level of pesticide residue and which were clean…well cleaner that I could rationalize buying non-organic come the end of the month.
A site called foodnews has come out with a very nifty little wallet size shopper’s guide to pesticides in foods, listing the top 10 clean & dirty fruits and vegetables to help you prioritize if necessary when you shop. You can download the card here as well as view an extended list & learn about lots of other interesting food facts.

I love the concept of this card. It’s keeping it real for many of us who can’t just pop into Wholefoods and spend our rent money on organic food. My only complaint is that they don’t consider the ‘carbon’ impact of the foods they list. For example Kiwis are listed as a clean food, one you could risk bying non-organic but they don’t tell you that for every pound of kiwis you eat, 5 lbs of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere getting it to your table so keep that in mind. (have you ever seen kiwi trees growing in your local park?)

A great addition to this would be to join a local food coop -check out our side bar listing- or CSA (community supported agriculture) program and get better, fresher, local food for cheaper.

Scientists stumbled upon another possible global warming feedback as they were tracing the “life” of a giant iceberg in the Antarctica. One day it broke, seemingly for no reason. The instruments the scientists had put on the iceberg recorded a disturbance that they eventually traced back to a storm in Alaska, on the other side of earth. The meaning of all this is that increased storms, a probable result of global warming, increases ice to break and therefore melt, which increases global warming - and that’s another feedback we now have to worry about. Source. Easy read summary.

So I found a way to recycle my organic waste (excluding animal products) through my indoor compost.

Next are those things we can throw into our clear plastic bagged garbage bins in our residencies (here an overview of what we can throw in there), which excludes a huge amount of plastics that are not smaller at the “neck”, like Yoghurt cups, take out food containers, etc. to which I will give some recycle solutions down the page .

If you suspect your building personnel to throw all the recycle-ables in the regular garbage, check for the schedule of pick up and place your own clear bag outside the night before so at least YOU do not recycle in vain.

You can order free recycle posters, flyers, magnets, etc… for your building to remind everyone what goes where.

You can also report (anonymously if you wish in 1 minute online) your building owner/manager/neighbors for failing to adequately recycle and or post signs.

Recycle Electronics

I am finally throwing out my old computer equipment & TV, so I found out where to bring it and if you have any electronic equipment you want to throw out, check the next Lower East Side Ecology Center electronics recycling event, or the next NYC event or for an extensive list of other options go here.

There are good places (Bronx & NY, NJ, CT etc…) where you can drop off your stuff almost any day if you have transportation.

If your computer equipment still works, see if you can donate it to a non-profit.

Not specially recycled electronics, that we usually just put out on the street here in NY, most of the time get shipped to third world countries who then burn those to get to the precious metals while polluting their air and water in the process—of course only where the poorest of the poor actually have to live, breath, drink…

Check out the Computer Take Back Campaign that tries to get computer manufacturers to agree to take back their old machines and take on the responsibility for their products full lifetime.

Take action & tell the EPA to stop shipping the waste to developing Nations.

Dell, HP and Apple have some computer take back programs. Apple’s is fairly new and you have to ask about it when you buy a machine and you will get a voucher to ship your apple product back for free when it died. Contact your computer manufacturer directly and ask.

“Special” Waste

Here some recycling options for the following items:

Household:
fluorescent tubes & bulbs
batteries: household
latex paint (up to 5 gallons per visit)
mercury thermometers and thermostats (up to 2 per visit)

CAR Parts:
batteries: automotive*
motor oil (up to 10 quarts per visit)*
motor oil filters (up to 2 filters per visit)
transmission fluid (up to 5 quarts per visit)
passenger car tires (up to 4 per visit)

You can drop these items off at the Special Waste Drop-off Site, which exist in every borough at the following locations:
• BRONX: Hunts Point at Farragut Street and East River.
• BROOKLYN: Bay 41st Street and Gravesend Bay, south of the Belt Parkway (adjacent to the DSNY Brooklyn 11 garage).
• QUEENS: College Point at 30th Avenue, between 120th and 122nd Streets.
• STATEN ISLAND: Foot of Muldoon Avenue off the West Shore Expressway (440) adjacent to the DSNY Staten Island 3 garage.
• MANHATTAN: DSNY garage at 605 West 30th Street, between 11th & 12th Avenue.

More info about operating hours and locations.

Plastics

You can drop off your PLASTICS #1,2,4 + shopping bags and Plastics #5 from dairy products only (clean and dry, check bottom of your container for numbers), e.g. Yoghurt cups at the Park Slope food coop (I do it once a month when my bag is full) even if you are not a member, since it doesn’t happen in the members only part of the coop. (If you know of a place that takes these plastics beyond Park Slope please inform me!!)

Address:
782 Union Street / Between 6th and 7th avenue / Brooklyn, New York 11215
Recycle Times:
Every 2nd Saturday of a month from noon-2pm;
Every 3rd Thursday a month from 7 – 9pm and
every last Sunday of a month from 10am-noon.

Everything Else

• ANYTHING that’s still good can be donated!
(Bikes, Blood, Clothes, Baby stuff, Books for Prisoners, Building Materials, Cars, Food, sheets, towels and blankets for animal shelters, etc.)

• Eyeglasses – bring them to Lens Crafter stores (or Pearle Vision and BJ Optical at Target), they refurbish them and give them to developing nations

• Batteries: Most can be dropped off at a Radio Shack, from small AAA to laptop and cell batteries…
(or check out Earth911 for more options)

• Cell Phones: drop them off at any Staples or get a tax credit from collective good, or just sell it to Planet green, Inc.
• Apple takes all ipods back (I know why, too)

• printer cartridges: drop them at staples and get your next cartridges for less, OfficeMax, FedEx Kinko’s or sell them to Planet green, Inc

• Furniture:
If still usable:
-Salvation Army offers on line service to schedule pick up or call 1-800-95-TRUCK (1-800-958-7825)
-or Furnish a Future
If not: Curb side / the city will take care of it / more or less

• Clothes:
Depending on the items quality, donate them or bring them to a donation event. Drop them off at Salvation Army, or sell it at a second hand store. If you have clothes, rugs, blankets, other farbic material for recycling check here for vendors.

• Towels, blankets, sheets for Animal shelters.

For everything else and more info in general check:

Free Cycle, a global network for giving and getting stuff for free locally.
NYCWasteLe$$
Earth911
OR: Call the NYC Stuff Exchange toll free at 1-877-NYC-STUFF

Big Time Corporate/National Recycling Information:
The National Recycling Coalition
Resource Recycling Journal

This is my indoor compost that I have been enjoying for a few months. I attended a compost workshop organized by the Lower East Side Ecology Center with the option to buy a full set (box+worms) for 10 dollars (subsidized by the Department of Sanitation).

So far so wonderful – it’s quite exciting so see the worms turn my fine organic food scraps into compost that I can use on my plants or dump it on any nutrient-deprived New York City tree. The worms need very little care, they can feed off the New York Times snippets that are used as “bedding” and to burry the organic waste. No smells come out of the closed box, the worms procreate and you do not need to buy more over time.

Contact the good people at the Lower East Side Ecology Center if you are interested in ANY kind of composting. And for even more resources check out New York City’s Compost Project with many more resources. You can even get a composter certificate and teach others how to compost or get a master composter to come into your class and teach about composting.

If you do not see yourself feeding worms, there are drop off locations for your food scraps (contact first to ensure!), which you could collect in a bag/bin in your freezer until the day of disposal to counter and nasty smells.