My First Week “Fit”ting In

This past Saturday I headed over to the Honda dealership to trade in my Honda Accord Hybrid for a new Honda Fit. While my Accord averaged about 27 mpg, it just wasn’t enough for me…and honestly, being 25 years old I wanted a “younger” car.

I also was able to justify the purchase from both environmental and financial viewpoints. My Accord still had a lot of good life in it and would move on to another happy owner (probably an ex-SUV driver). The Fit would cost me very little after the trade-in, it is a small, ultra low emission vehicle (less smog and a tax break!), uses no pesky nickel metal hydride batteries, and will depreciate much more slowly than my Accord did.

I also apparently picked a good time to get the new car with the craziness unveiling on Wall Street and the state-wide gas shortage. For my trip from Alpharetta to Atlanta and back for class I was able to get a little over 42 mpg and for the week with mixed city and highway driving, I have averaged 37.5 mpg.

The vehicles I have owned over the years include a pickup truck, sedan, sports car, SUV, and now a subcompact. Surprisingly the Fit has been the most fun to drive (especially when you add the cost of fillups).

A Beginner's Guide to Suburban Chickens

Tired of paying five bucks for cage-free eggs? Getting uncomfortable about all the reports on factory farming? Want an organic source of protein right in your own backyard? Well, a lot of folks feel the same way and their answer's unanimous - a backyard flock of chickens. Suburban coops are shooting up across the nation at a breakneck pace.

And why not? Chickens are livestock anyone can raise. Hens are unobtrusive city dwellers, happy to peck around your small (or large) Alpharetta backyard. They require little time, money, or space and in return for some humble room and board - you get a free lunch. Recently Mother Earth News did a farm egg vs. grocery store egg comparison and found the free-range birds' bounty lower in cholesterol and twice as high in omega-3 fatty acids compared to the ones in the checkout line. So not only are homegrown eggs organic and local - they're better for you.

Most cities allow small flocks (without roosters). After all, they cause less damage than dogs and are quieter than cats. When you live in a world of failing banks, soaring gas prices, and E. coli in the produce isle - it's reassuring knowing you can always opt for an omelet at the end of the day. So to get you started, here are the first steps toward bringing some hens into your life.

1. Check With Your Neighbors And Your HOA
Keeping chickens in Alpharetta is legal (to the best of my knowledge), but there is a 75 chicken maximum. Go knock on your closest neighbor's doors. Check with them on how they'd feel about a few hens in your backyard. Explain that chickens are clean, quiet, and won't cause any problems (all true as long as they live in a stress free and well maintained home). While I don't think there is any legal reason you need a neighbor's permission, it does show a certain amount of respect and responsibility on your part. It also might stop any possible future complaints when you offer them half a dozen fresh eggs every two weeks for their cooperation. I'm telling you, these birds can build bridges.

2. Do Your Homework
There are a few great books out there. Barbara Kilarski's Keep Chickens! is a perfect introduction, written by an Northwest urbanite about her trio of hens. Another good one to pick up is Living with Chickens by Jay Rossier. Besides books, there are also great resources online such as Backyard Chickens and My Pet Chicken. Get to know them, they're well worth it. Reading up on these animals will prepare you for all the fun and interesting times ahead. It'll explain to you why your hen's first eggs are the size of walnuts and what to do when you see your birds sneezing a lot. At the very least, keep some books on the shelf at home for reference.

3. Set Up A Living Space
This can be as simple as a medium sized wooden doghouse from the hardware store propped up on two layers of cinder blocks. The doghouses with the removable roofs work best, since it's the easiest way to collect eggs and hose it down every few weeks to clean it out. All you need to do to these houses to modify them for poultry is add a roost about a foot off the doghouse floor and layer the bottom with some straw for nests. Around the coop pound in some inexpensive t-posts and roll out some wire garden fencing to keep them in (and neighbors cats and dogs out). This hour in your backyard will be the most labor intensive part of the entire process. And hey, if you don't want to build anything you can always order a small pre-built coop. The Eglu and Chik-N-Hutch are both great small flock homes.

4. Order Your Birds
You have a few choices on where to actually procure your birds. Short of knowing any sustainable farmers in your area that are willing to sell you some, I suggest ordering them online. Yes dear readers, there are plenty of online poultry suppliers and hatcheries that can ship chickens right to your downtown post office. If you want eggs soon, order 18-week old started pullets. These young adults will begin laying within a few weeks of arriving at your home.

5. Introduce Them To Their New Coop
When Chicken Day does occur, make sure your coop is set up in advance. Have a poultry feeder and water font set up with fresh water and organic layer feed. Make sure they have a proper pen and are safe from brave stray cats and four-year-olds. Line their coop with straw for bedding and let your neighbors know they're on their way. When everything is ready in paradise, try to hold off till dark to set your adult hens in their new coop. The birds will just be calmer in general if they can go right to sleep in a safe place and wake up in the morning in their new digs. It'll imprint on their tiny brains that they're home.

6. Care And Feeding
Invest the extra money in organic chicken feed. The average fifty pound bag of feed is thirteen dollars. The organic version might cost up to eight dollars more, but it's well worth it. Because even if you are raising hens right in your own backyard, the eggs they lay aren't organic if the food they eat isn't. Store the food in a metal trash can with a good lid so rodents and bad weather can't break in. You can store right outside the backdoor or in the garage, or even right next to the coop itself.

7. What To Do When You Leave Town
Chickens are easy keepers. If you're just leaving for a day or two, they don't require any oversight at all. A filled water font and feeder is all they need. If you leave for a few days or an extended vacation, ask a neighbor or friend to stop by after work to collect eggs (offer to let them keep what they collect as a payment for their time) and throw some feed on the ground and offer fresh water. None of these chores are backbreaking, time-consuming burdens. Far as livestock goes, this is easy street.

Adapted from: A Beginner’s Guide to City Chickens – Jenna Woginrich
Photo credit: david kindness

Atlanta Wins “Most Improved” Honor From SustainLane

Hotlanta? How about Greenlanta? The city leads the southeast in LEED-registered buildings—over 140 projects are currently seeking certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. It also has a “no net loss” policy for its trees.

One challenge to Atlanta: urban sprawl. Five hundred thousand Atlantans live in the city proper, while five million people are sprawled into the eight-county metro area. To remedy that, city planners are working on dense, transit-oriented development along Atlanta’s BeltLine, a 22-mile-long old railroad track that runs the perimeter of the city.

Next on the agenda? Diversifying its energy portfolio.

Source: SustainLane

Transgenic Animals Inching Toward Grocery Aisles

The U.S. government is paving the way for genetically engineered animals to enter our food supply. Though no transgenic animals are currently on the market, the Food and Drug Administration released a draft guidance on Thursday that provides requirements and recommendations for producers of GE animals. Much like transgenic plants, it doesn't sound like any independent tests will be done on these novel livestock. It's up to the manufacturers to demonstrate the safety of their GE animals, not the government, and surely not an independent party with no vested interest in the success of such a product.

And did I mention the proposed rules are non-binding?

Consumers Union was critical of the document, saying they should require labeling of transgenic animals sold as food. And they called the risk assessment "pathetic," saying it was designed improperly and contained small sample sizes, among other shortcomings. They believe consumers (and we agree) should be able to choose between ham that came from a conventional pig and ham derived from a pig engineered with mouse genes. In fact, a May 2008 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 53 percent of Americans said they wouldn't buy GE food (if given the choice, of course).

The draft guidance was published just a couple weeks after 20 leading food companies announced that they would reject ingredients from cloned animals, including Kraft Foods, General Mills, and Gerber/Nestle. In January, the FDA declared cloned animals and their progeny safe to eat. Critics of cloning say this announcement opened the door to allowing transgenic animals into the marketplace.

The comment period for the draft guidance closes November 18, 2008.

Published first over on Evirovore

Understanding the Egg

Today your eggs can be cage free, free range, pasture-raised, vegetarian, fortified with omega-3, organic, certified humane, or animal welfare approved. Which one is best?

The answer…none of the above

Your best choices would be to get your eggs from a local farmer you trust or get a few hens yourself.

If you still want to pick up your eggs when you do the rest of your grocery shopping buy the Animal Welfare Approved eggs (if you can find them) or buy organic eggs as a second choice.

Here is a quick breakdown of what all these terms mean:

How They Are Raised
Cage Free - chickens were kept out of cages and had continuous access to food and water, but did not necessarily have access to the outdoors.
Free Range - in addition to meeting the cage-free standards, free-range birds must have continuous access to the outdoors, unless there’s a health risk present. There are no standards, though, for what that outdoor area must be like. (A concrete lot could do.)
Pasture-Raised - implies hens got at least part of their food from foraging on greens and bugs, which adherents say can improve flavor. Some studies have found that pasture-raised eggs have more nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin E and beta carotene, and less saturated fat and cholesterol.
Certified Humane – has requirements for, among other things, ventilation, density and the number of perches and nesting boxes that must be provided. It requires that each hen have at least 1.5 square feet of space (324 square inches).
Animal Welfare Approved - available in limited markets, it is a new label by the Animal Welfare Institute that is given only to independent family farmers. Flocks can have no more than 500 birds, and chickens over 4 weeks old must be able to spend all their time outside on pesticide-free pasture with a variety of vegetation. They must have access to dust baths and cannot have their beaks trimmed (a practice on crowded egg farms) or be fed animal byproducts.

What They Are Fed
Vegetarian-Fed - means the eggs came from hens raised on all-vegetarian feed. Hens are not naturally vegetarian, though; they enjoy eating grubs, bugs and worms. While there’s not a substantial nutritional difference between these eggs and conventional eggs, vegetarian eggs appeal to consumers who are turned off by some of the animal byproducts that can be included in conventional chicken feed, like feather meal, chicken litter, pork and cattle byproducts and “spent hen meal” (ground up dead hens).
Fortified with Omega-3 – chickens are usually fed a supplement of flax seed to boost the amount of omega-3 in the egg yolks.
Organic - chickens must be kept cage free with outdoor access (though the time and the type of access are not defined), they cannot be given antibiotics (even if ill) and their food must be free from animal byproducts and made from crops grown without chemical pesticides, fertilizers, irradiation, genetic engineering or sewage sludge.

Check out the Vickery Green Market, My Dad & Me Family Farm, Stokes Farm, and Circle B Ranch to find local sources of eggs.

Rise Of The Millennials

I myself am a Millennial, part of a new generation poised to seize the reins of history. It's a generation unique in history. Born between 1978 and 2000, the Millennials currently include 95 million young people up to 30 years of age.

We are a powerful political and social force…smart, well-educated, open-minded, and independent (politically, socially, and philosophically). We are also a caring generation, one that is ready to put the greater good ahead of individual rewards, and we are already spearheading a period of sweeping change.

We are eager for political, social, and economic change and more likely than earlier generations to embrace innovation and new ideas.

We are highly entrepreneurial in our thinking. Throughout our history, America's success has been built on innovation and entrepreneurship. As we confront the many challenges facing us today, it is that same spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that is needed to maintain America's strength in the 21st century.

We are sold on the value of political engagement, civic responsibility, and cooperative activism. A political profile unlike that of any previous generation.

We are post-ideological, post-partisan, and post-political.

Post-ideological because we are uninterested in defending specifically "conservative" or "liberal" approaches to national problems. Instead, we are pragmatic, open-minded, and innovation-oriented, eager to experiment with new solutions no matter where they may come from.

Post-partisan because we are disgusted with what we perceive as the narrowness, pettiness, and stagnation that characterize both major parties. We are far more interested in getting beyond party identification altogether and in focusing on cooperative efforts to make America and the world a better place.

Post-political because we are fed up with the interest-group conflicts, identity-based appeals, and power-seeking maneuvers we see as dominating the public arena. More tolerant and accepting than any previous generation, we are ready to call a halt to "culture wars" that pit people of different religions, races, ethnicities, regions, cultures, values, and sexual orientations against one another for political gain.

We believe that all of us…not only all Americans, but all humans across the planet…will ultimately share the same destiny, and therefore must find ways to work together for the common good. And we stand ready to lead the effort. Keep an eye on us…we are about to change our world forever…for the better.

The Huffington Post
Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America and Changing Our World Forever

Recycling Just Got Easier

Mike Meuse of Allied Waste Management, those guys who collect your recycling, presented the new recycling bin to Council, which looks an awful lot like a normal trash bin.

Taller, on wheels and having a flip top, the new receptacle takes some of the work out of recycling and makes it safer. The wheels were added to make moving it easier and the flip top keeps recyclables in the can. Being much taller than the current bin, the new one holds 35 gallons, almost twice the material of the current one, yet keeps the same footprint as the old 18 gallon one.

“We collected 595,000 pounds in July,” said Meuse. “2,256,000 pounds went into [the] landfill. That’s about 20 percent of total [was recycled]. It’s a good rate.” But not good enough. Meuse and Allied Waste want to increase that 20 percent to 25 percent. To do so Alpharetta must increase its recycled material by 113,000 pounds per month, or 2 pounds more per house per week.

The new cart was introduced to make that goal easy for each household.

“Alpharetta will be, to my knowledge, the second municipality in the entire metro area to provide residents with this type of cart,” said Meuse. Everybody else still has the small 18-gallon box.

“I actually have one,” said Councilwoman Cheryl Oakes. “I’ve had mine for about a month. It’s great. It rolls easy and the lid keeps the dogs away… I love the rolling feature.”

“It helps support our goal of a greener city,” said Mayor Arthur Letchas.

There will be no additional charge for the new recycling can. Residents just have to turn in the old one.

To order, call Allied Waste at 678-407-6216.

Big Creek Greenway Update

Construction has begun on the Forsyth County portion of the greenway (although it will be some time before it connects with the Alpharetta part which currently ends at Old Milton Pkwy). The first phase of the Forsyth portion starts at McFarland Pkwy and extends North West to Fowler Park off of hwy 9.

The City of Alpharetta is planning on extending the Big Creek Greenway farther north to a point near Marconi Drive in Windward. The proposed path, which would extend the Greenway one-half mile, is in line with the long-term goal of connecting Alpharetta's Greenway to the future Forsyth County Greenway System. A separate grant application is in the works to connect the south end of the Greenway to Roswell Riverwalk project via sidewalk on Mansell Rd.

To get to the Alpharetta YMCA trailhead:
From GA 400 take the Old Milton Parkway (SR 120) exit and head east for 1/2 mile. Turn left at North Point Parkway and head north for 4/10 mile. Turn right on Preston Ridge Rd. Continue on Preston Ridge for 2/10 mile. Look to the right and you will see signs for Big Creek Greenway. Parking is on the right, just before the YMCA. You can park right next to the trailhead or in the available slots on Preston Ridge Rd.

The greenway can also be accessed from the following locations:

Haynes Bridge Road: From North Point Parkway, go 2/10 mile south on Haynes Bridge Road. A parking lot is on the east/left side of Haynes Bridge Road across from the Archstone Apartments.

North Point Mall: Driving northbound on North Point Parkway, halfway between Mansell and Haynes Bridge Roads, find the greenway sign directly across from Haverty's Furniture. The entrance to the greenway is just past Ethan Allen Furniture store on the right. There is limited parking at this trailhead. Restrooms are available at that location.

Kimball Bridge Road: Located 1/4 mile southeast of North Point Parkway, across from New Prospect Elementary School.Parking is allowed at the school during hours when school is not in session (weekends, after hours on school days,and during the summer). There is one porta-pottie at this location.

Old Milton Parkway (SR 120): There is no parking here. However, there is a staircase that leads to the trailhead that is just after the bridge that crosses Big Creek. You could run, walk, or cycle to the trailhead via the sidewalk that goes along the north side of Old Milton Parkway.

Clean Air garners more employer ‘partners’

By Caroline Gray

Twelve companies have made a commitment to improve the environment in north Fulton this year through a partnership with Georgia’s Clean Air Campaign.

According to Brian Carr, spokesman for the Clean Air Campaign, employers have several avenues to help keep pollution out of the air in their communities. Van pooling and car pooling can be set up with help from the campaign to help save money on gas and increase productivity for stressed commuting employees. He said the organization can also help with conserving power in the company’s building and decreasing their carbon footprint.

“We work with companies of all sizes to come in at no cost and find ways to work it in with their business,” said Carr. “We let employees know about what they can do and also work with the mentality of the company to reduce energy use.”

At Cousins Properties-North Point Center East, the many changes have been instituted to make the companies that lease the office space more environmentally-friendly.

According to Bob Martin, director of property management, the company has been involved with the Clean Air Campaign since 2004, but re-implemented its programs this year. With four buildings housing about a half million square feet of office space, Martin said the campaign has really taken off with its tenants.

“It’s good for the tenants and very timely,” said Martin. “We’ve reenergized our efforts since gas prices and energy prices keep increasing.”

He said the four major companies involved in the campaign have a combined 500 employees. Programs implemented include car pooling and working to develop commute alternatives like walking and biking.

Three initiatives introduces this year at the Cousins property include getting companies to agree to not run the air conditioning on Saturdays which could save between $55,000 and $57,000 per year, said Martin. He said recycling programs have taken off and using a more drought tolerant grass instead of thirsty Fescue grass.

Alpharetta Neighbor

What To Do With All Those Green Beans

As summer marches on, many gardeners find themselves with an overabundance of certain crops. The wise gardener processes and preserves this bounty for the lean times of winter, but one can only eat so much of a vegetable and a little more variety is welcomed.

What can you do with the extra green beans that can never be eaten... Food swapping: we all do it informally, passing on extra vegetables, sometimes in return for a jar of homemade jam or chutney. But in England, it's becoming much more organized. There are good reasons; with the poor economy affecting everyone, it is an easy way to get a little bit extra for free. For example, take it to the pub. One pub has a sign up on the wall saying "If you breed, grow, shoot or steal anything you feel may be at home on our menu, ask at the bar. Let's do a deal." So far, pints of beer have been swapped for potatoes, mackerel and a kilo of fresh fruit.

In London they have been holding “The Great Food Swap” for the past few years. People brought a wide range of produce that they had made, grown, picked or found and poked around for something to trade for it. The event was a surprising success and was repeated in the winter. At that one eager participants traded mince pies, oyster mushrooms, home made yogurts and home made bread. It was organized by "Growing Communities", a social enterprise group which was ahead of its time. They began buying up sites in a poor area of north London in 1997 for organic allotments. They were the initiators of the first box scheme in the city, selling fresh vegetables from 25 organic farmers. They then started an organic farmers' market in the area.

Why not try a food swap next time you go to the farmers market? It doesn’t hurt to ask.

Content Borrowed From: Treehugger
Growing Communities

Green Express – Atlanta’s Earth-Friendly Delivery Company

In Georgia, the hot summer sun combined with car emissions creates an unhealthy air quality which is dangerous to our health. Due to heavy driving, courier companies in Atlanta are using thousands of gallons of fuel and diesel fuel daily while emitting carbon gases into the atmosphere.

Jay Holgate, owner of Georgia Couriers decided that his company should do something to help. Georgia Couriers was rebranded as Green Express and the fleet of traditional cars was replaced with hybrids. Green Express is the first courier in the country to move its fleet to hybrids (and it happens to be located in Alpharetta). The company provides rush courier, same day, next day, and overnight courier services to Metro Atlanta and the Southeast.

Environmental groups like the Georgia Conservancy and Atlanta Botanical Garden have switched to Green Express. So have environmental attorneys Morris, Manning and Martin, and three divisions of Interface, Inc. – a global carpet manufacturer known for its leadership role in reducing the company’s carbon footprint worldwide. Interface’s legal secretary Karen Daniel uses Green Express almost every day. “The fact they drive hybrid cars – as well as being extremely reliable – is an added attraction for anyone who cares about controlling air pollution,” Daniel says.

Once Green Express took the leap of going green, it became a crusade – a kind of challenging game – to filter every process through an environmental microscope. By employing the most advanced GPS mapping technologies to boost efficiencies even further, drivers are often rerouted to alternate roads to avoid the worst congestion – another way to save fuel. One wrong turn can waste a gallon of gas every day times 10 cars; that’s at least 2,200 gallons a year. “We also advise our customers on the best times for pick-ups and deliveries to use gas more efficiently,” Holgate adds. And the company has moved to paperless e-billing and designed an easy online system for placing orders.

Holgate encourages his customers to rethink how often they use their own cars for trips Green Express can easily handle. “We are already on the road using the most efficient routes driving zero-emission cars,” Holgate remarks. “It makes sense to let us run personal errands as well as business deliveries to save gas and people’s precious time.”

Learn more at greendelivers.com.

Introducing Fruitful Alpharetta

Heeding the call from our neighbors to the south, Sustainable Dunwoody, I introduce you to Fruitful Alpharetta. Fruitful Alpharetta is a volunteer-based community initiative to harvest fruit and nut trees around the city of Alpharetta before they go to waste.

What we will do 
Fruitful Alpharetta will organize volunteers in the Alpharetta community to gather fruit before it falls. Half of the harvested fruit will go to the volunteers and the remaining half will be donated to local charities. We will register fruit & nut trees around the city, coordinate harvesting parties, and offer workshops in pruning & fruit preservation.

How you can help
Write me at info@sustainablealpharetta.com if you are interested in volunteering, have a fruit tree(s) you would like to include in the program, or have any suggestions.

Are BioPlastics A Good Thing?

My favorite milk is an unhomogenized whole milk from Sparkman’s Cream Valley. The milk is produced in Georgia, is rBGH free, and comes in a corn starch bioplastic bottle. On the surface bioplastics look like a good idea. They are made from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable oil, corn starch, etc., instead of petroleum. But are bioplastics really any better than traditional plastics?

Here are seven reasons why bioplastics are worse than traditional plastics:

1. Why make stuff out of it when you can eat it? There are lots of hungry people in the world, and it seems a little odd to be making disposable cups out of the stuff when it could be eaten instead.
2. You can't always recycle it. Because bioplastics come in dozens of varieties, there's no way to make sure you're getting the right chemicals in the recycling vat. And, in general, the solution is compost instead of re-entering the supply stream.
3. It could make plastic recycling impossible. Even worse than not being recyclable itself, if it creeps into the recycling stream (which is likely, since it doesn't look any different) it can introduce new chemicals that make the final recycled product weaker or even unusable.
4. Compostable doesn't mean compostable. If you toss a bioplastic fork into your compost and assume it'll be dirt in a few months, you'll be sorely disappointed. While bioplastic is (sometimes) compostable, it requires high intensity, high heat commercial composting.
5. It's never made from organic corn, and generally made from genetically modified corn. We won’t get into the concerns with genetic modification but conventional corn production is a very petroleum intensive process.
6. It makes low quality plastic. Instead of solving the problem of the disposable society, bio-plastics generally can only be made into disposable items. They're having problems even making transparent bioplastic that's strong enough to hold water for a few months.
7. It's good marketing, but bad honesty. It's very easy to have bioplastic cups or bags or forks. But it's very difficult to figure out what that means. Because there are so many different types of bioplastic, you never really know what you're getting into. Maybe it's compostable, maybe it's not. Maybe it's recyclable, maybe it's not.
   

Bioplastics may one day be superior to traditional plastics, but today they fall short (think of them like first generation biofuels). Without the technology and infrastructure in place to handle these materials (and consumer awareness to use it) bioplastics are likely to end up being thrown away rather than recycled or composted.

What can Alpharetta do to help?
The best thing Alpharetta could do is to expand curbside recycling to include traditional #3-#7 plastics (like Roswell) as well as starch-based bioplastics. If recycling the bioplastics is too expensive, the bioplastics could be collected along with yard waste to be composted.

8 Reasons Why BioPlastic is Worse than Regular Plastic
Sustainable Bioplastic Guidelines (PDF)