Clothespin Extinction

I spent a week in Boulder, attending to IT issues at NCAR and a satellite data users' workshop. I had a few free hours* one afternoon and browsed the aisles of McGuckin Hardware.  I was looking for the clothespins I use, shown in How to Use a Clothesline. 

I learned that Penley, the maker of my old sturdy wooden clothespins, has discontinued domestic production. They now make their clothespins in China. I have no idea if the quality is the same. McGuckins hardware sells both the Penley wooden ones made in China, and a plastic variety.  Has anyone used them?  Do they hold wet, heavy laundry?

I have no use for the high-style ones mentioned in this story:

Nowadays plastic clothespins are available in endless variations, including a new one that has gone into widespread production, Zebra’s “sweet clip,” made with both hard and soft plastics, using a dual-injection manufacturing process. The hard plastic is in the long handles, while two softer cushions sit where the pin grips the clothes. Zebra developed a dual-plastic toothbrush 15 years ago, applied the principle to clothespins in Europe in the late 1990s, obtained a worldwide patent, and captured 8 percent of the global clothespin market. The pin is sold in North America under the name Urbana.

     “We love to target stupid products,” says Xavier Gibert of Zebra. “When you walk into a megastore, most of the time you see stupid products, boring products. You buy them because you need them. We target basic products to make them come alive, able to talk to people.” And what does the Urbana clothespin say? Something along the lines of “I’ll be gentle.”

     “The key of this peg is not to be able to hold very heavy clothes,” says Gibert. “It’s much more dedicated to sensitive clothes.” Response to the pin has been enthusiastic. “People were attracted by the design. They said, ‘Wow, we love the shape.’”

If we want to save carbon and achieve energy independence, we will need clothespins that can securely hold heavy and wet laundry.

* Ok, I squeezed in visits to Elfriede's Fine Fabrics and Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins.  There was stash enhancement.  Photos after I come up for air.  This is the first weekend in a month in which both Bad Dad and Bad Mom were home at the same time.  Iris celebrated by coming down sick.  She was a trooper at soccer playoffs this weekend.  Her team was short three players, and she played two quarters, even though she was very weak and tired.  She says I revived her for the fourth quarter with my magic zucchini-chocolate chip muffins.

Attitudes and Latitudes

First, a gratuitous picture of Iris on the drive between Christchurch and Akaroa.

Now let's talk about the difference in attitude towards energy between the US and NZ.

Look at this cool clothes dryer that came with our first host family's new "spec" home. The smaller portion ratchets up for a small amount of laundry. The lower portion ratchets up for a big wash day. This family doesn't even own an electric (or natural gas) clothes dryer. (If it rains for an extended period of time, the hostess uses a small clothes rack in the garage.)

What builder in the US would put a clothesline, much less a cool and space-saving one such as this, in a spec (speculative) home, built with no particular buyer identified yet? In the US, builders of spec homes put in tons of energy-wasting appliances, vaulted ceilings and install marble or granite (or some other labor-intensive to maintain) finishes throughout.

We stayed with two families and went to a party at a third. There was not a single vaulted ceiling in sight, even in the two newer homes. Hot air rises. With the ubiquitous American great-room with vaulted ceilings, you have to heat a lot of air to sustain a comfortable temperature at people level during the winter.

Homes were built for easy maintenance. New Zealand has a labor shortage. (An island nation, they don't have desperately poor neighbors who will do their dirty work for them for next to nothing.)

Everyone saved their kitchen scraps for composting. The hostess of the townhouse pictured above had a very compact compost system that originated in Japan. (If I could get it in the US, I could fit them in my side yard and still have room to walk by. I gotta figure out a way to get a pair of those.)

Many people grew vegetable gardens. Even in small yards, people would tuck some edible lettuces or a few tomato plants among the flowers. They used their home-made compost. They talked about the thin topsoil and high winds in New Zealand and the need to constantly amend and improve their soil. They talked about soil in terms of stewardship of a precious resource. We hose our soil down the storm drains in the city and I am going to leave ranting about American farm practices to others.

New Zealanders import every drop of oil that they use. You won't find many gas guzzling cars on NZ roads. (Though you will see many diesel-powered camper vans like the one we rented; they are surprisingly economical with fuel.) Lacking a domestic car industry, they had no problem recently banning the importation of large trucks and SUVs.

About 2/3 of their electricity comes from hydroelectric projects. Another fraction comes from geothermal sources. Electricity is enormously expensive to store, and impossible to store on a large scale. Thus, electricity costs vary greatly by time of day. Homeowners are highly incentivized to use electricity after peak demand hours. One host family heated water only after 9 pm. If they use up the 240 liters they heat up each night before the following night, too bad. They plan their daily activities so that they don't run out of hot water.

Imagine that. Planning your daily activities in advance. Prioritizing energy and water use. Doing your own dirty work.

Doesn't the first picture of Iris remind you of the ads that energy companies in the US run? She already lost her new glasses. They were adorable, as you can see.

Green Party

I found this on the Prius' windshield after lunch today. An identical one was placed on it a few weeks ago, when it was parked near our house. The (glossy, non-recyclable) flyer promises, "Drive a hybrid and save more than the planet."

Why does this bother me? Let me count the ways.

This is nothing more than marketing gimmickry. "Green" is just another affinity group and market segment to these folks. This guy is trying to sell car insurance (which is required in CA), but most "green" marketeers are trying to sell goods that people don't really need. The greenest choice is NOT TO CONSUME SO MUCH STUFF. But, then, what would all the marketing folks do for work?

Most "green" marketing is fairly transparent, and this is no exception. Flip the car over and there is a guy washing his SUV in the driveway. (I already wrote about the environmental damage caused by driveway car washing.) Why would an advertiser shoot himself in the foot like that? Not terribly bright. Is this the kind of guy you would want for your insurance agent?

A t-shirt on the cover of a 'back to school' circular said, "Green is the new black". The young girl/woman wearing the shirt looks so cute and happy in that shirt. And why shouldn't she? This has become a common catchphrase. (Type it into your search engine of choice and you will see many articles, some quite thoughtful.) But I feel uneasy about all this green consumerism. Buying a shirt made of organically grown cotton won't help the environment as much as wearing out the clothes that you already own (and using a clothesline instead of a dryer). The best thing we can all do is to consume less, a lot less.

Thomas Friedman put it most eloquently in the Ideas and Consequences page in the Atlantic:

I am not a skeptic about global warming. It’s happening. I am a total skeptic that we are really doing anything about it. I think we are in the middle of a huge green bubble …
[snip]
Did you ever study a revolution in history? You ever seen a revolution in history where nobody got hurt? That’s the green revolution. In the green revolution, nobody gets hurt—we’re all winners … Exxon’s green. They give $100 million to Stanford … Dick Cheney’s green. He’s for alternative fuels, yeah. He’s for liquefied coal. Dick Cheney’s green. We are all green now. Welcome to the green revolution, where nobody gets hurt.

… This isn’t the green revolution, friends. This is a party … [snip] And ladies and gentlemen, today the old-legacy industries, they control this story; they control that policy mechanism in Washington. They are tough, and they will fight dirty. They are not going anywhere.

And that’s why we are having a green party, not a green revolution. Do not kid yourself for one second.

If you follow the Ideas and Consequences link over to the Atlantic, you will see billionaire Richard Branson at the top of the page, talking about his new commercial space venture, Virgin Galactic. Branson is no stranger to green marketing. His airline, Virgin Air, will sell you carbon offsets with every plane ticket. How many trees will need to be planted for every joy-ride into space?

This is not an idle worry as lifting things into space takes enormous expenditures of energy. There is a reason why space launches are so expensive. But marketeers pick their target price point and design their product around that. So, how do they bring the price of the ride down to $200,000? For starters, they get someone else to pay for the infrastructure.

Oh, I digress again. This is a post about seeing through feel-good green marketing. But I can't resist this quote from the above article.

Carol Garcia, 52, of Las Cruces, said: “It’s just a rich man’s dream that he needs us to help pay for. If it’s your dream, build it yourself.”

Waste Couture and Made in LA

Wardrobe Refashion posted a link to Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry. The Environmental Health Perspectives article pulls together a great deal of information about the social and environmental cost of fashion, especially fast fashion. It is really worth reading. One of the photos accompanying the article showed a 10 year old boy using a sewing machine with the factory owner threatening him with a club. The boy works every day, 10 hours a day, for about $1/day, in order to bring relatively rich people in the west cheaper t-shirts.

Tonight, PBS will air Made in L.A. Check your local TV listings for time.

Like Lupe, Maura and María, many immigrant women around America struggle to make a better life for themselves by working in garment factories with low pay and unsafe working conditions. P.O.V. asked activists and policymakers in the fields of immigration and labor to comment on the film and on the opportunities and setbacks that immigrants encounter in America.

The same subject has been popping up in the media lately. The NYT published Love It? Check the Label, an article describing how both nativists and liberals have been searching out clothing made in the U.S.A. While I applaud the movement, I think the rationale of some of the customers profiled is shaky. Buying locally produced clothing changes the carbon imprint of the clothing very little. As Waste Couture points out, 60% of the energy used in the life cycle of a t-shirt is from laundering and drying.

[I use a clothesline and treat myself to that long-staple cotton from South America or Africa. I also help women around the world help themselves. Iris and I are very fond of the Bolivian Co-op sewn clothes sold by Dharma Trading at Fair Trade prices. It is difficult to describe their irresistible softness. They come both undyed and colored now! The only downside is that Iris is on the tall side and the clothes are better suited for petite kids.]

Archives:
How 'Green' is Your T-shirt?
Goodie Bages and the Wealth of Nations

Clothesline Again

Wash day at my sister's is awfully pretty. Wash day at my house is more mundane, unless I have been up to some tie-dyeing or shibori.

I didn't knit at all this weekend. Instead, I have been gardening and doing laundry. Like several commentators said, we hang our clothes inside out on the line. We also wash them inside out to minimize fading and wear on the clothes. Shirts are tumbled in the dryer for a few minutes and then hung up damp.

In Boulder, we lived in a house wired for electricity circa WWI. Plugging in an iron without tripping the circuit breaker involved unplugging everything else in the house except the refrigerator first. I figured, if ironing ate up that many watts, then not ironing would be the patriotic and green thing to do. I thought of this 15 years before Thomas Friedman wrote about it.

We smooth the plackets, collars and hems down by hand while the shirts are damp and look slightly rumpled most of the time. We are scientists after all; people find us more credible when we look rumpled. We iron only when attending special functions and, of course, when I am sewing.

Isn't the clothespin bag in the shape of a dress and apron adorable? I bought it from an elderly lady near Chama, New Mexico. I spotted a sign in her front yard that said, "Quilts For Sale" and made Mark stop. The quilts were polyester doubleknit, her handmade dolls were exquisite and priced accordingly, but the clothespin bags were the perfect souvenir.

The Siberian irises are abloom in the front yard. A friend and neighbor gave me the irises when she divided her corms. I like it when neighbors share plants and seeds. It makes a neighborhood a neighborhood. I have a bunch of flower and vegetable seeds to give away if you drop by the house. If you bring a bucket, you can dig up some anemones, too.

Peonies are abloom in the bedroom. Mark is really a good sport. He sleeps on pink sheets and our bed faces pink (really, plum blossom) curtains, and he has never complained. Come to think of it, he might not have noticed yet.

Iris got the butterflies set with a matching blue and green lava lamp. Iris put the green heart up for Valentine's day. We like it too much to take it down.

Orchids are abloom in the bathroom. I would like to turn the bathtub we rarely use into a greenhouse so that I can collect more orchids.

How to Use a Clothesline

Skills are usually passed down from parent to child. But, what happens when a skill is lost and your parents don't know how to use a clothesline? Then people turn to search engines or the media.

Today, the NY Times ran an article entitled, to fight global warming, some use a clothesline. Unfortunately, the pictures show her using it wrong. The LA Times ran a similar article a few weeks ago in which the pictures also showed the writer using the clothesline wrong.

If you hang your shirts up right side up and clip them at the shoulders, you will have funny-looking peaks at your shoulders. Is that really what you want?

• Hang your t-shirts up-side down so that the clip marks are in a less noticeable location. You wouldn't want to have to iron your shirts to get those marks out. Irons draw a huge amount of wattage, negating some of your energy savings from using the clothesline in the first place.
• Smooth out your clothes while you hang them up to minimize ironing.
  
• Fold the top of your towels and sheets over the line slightly. That will make them more secure and less likely to blow off the line. Use more than 2 clothespins for heavy items.
  
• Hang your clothes in the shade. Sun fades dyes. Our grandmothers knew to hang their clothes in a covered or partly covered area so that their clothes did not fade. It also gave them more time to get the clothes inside in case it started to rain.
• Keep an eye on pollen count. If someone in your household is allergic to pollen that is flying at the time, hang your clothes inside or use your dryer. I give you permission. In our household, we dry all bedclothes and sheets inside because of our allergies.
• Wipe down your clothesline before each use. Pollution, pollen and dust cling to them.
• Indoor clotheslines make a great deal of sense in areas with afternoon thunderstorms. In fact, I knew two families in the Boulder foothills who hung their laundry indoors as a way to save energy and to humidify their homes. Who cares if you have laundry in your living room if you are at work or school?
  

The NY Times article was written by a woman who evidently lives less than 10 miles away from me. Her electricity bill hit $1,120 in a single month last summer. In contrast, mine is $50-60 $35-$45 per month. I've written plenty about lifestyle choices in energy use and I won't belabor the point here. (Amended to reflect lower bills after we zapped energy vampires around the house.)

She also complained about how the wooden clothespins she initially bought fell apart quickly. I took a picture of clothespins you will find in my house. The one on the left, with the pom poms glued to it, is the style you will find most frequently in the stores. They are made in China and extremely cheap. The other two are made in the American Midwest and harder to find. They cost twice as much as the ones from China.

I have used the one on the extreme right since 1990. I bought the one in the middle about two years ago. The American-made ones come from McGuckin Hardware in Boulder; they don't even bother to stock the cheap imported ones.

Compare the gauge of the metal used in the spring that holds the clip together. The cheap imported ones are used in my household for Iris' art projects, hence the pom poms. We would never entrust our wet and heavy laundry to the cheap clothespins. (We learned this the hard way.)

Anyway, our local Home Depot only stocks the cheap ones that you don't want to use. In case you do not live near McGuckin Hardware, you can go to your independent hardware store. Our local owner stocks only the cheap Chinese-made ones but will special order the American-made ones for you. It takes a few days, but it is worth the wait. Maybe if enough people insist on the better American-made ones, the default item stocked in stores will be the American ones.

The writer of the article also bemoaned the 7 minutes it took her to hang up her laundry. Perhaps she is one of those people who drives to the gym to lift weights. Think of it as an upper body workout.

She should also not worry about her neighborhood clothesline police. Since the California electricity crisis of summers of 1999 and 2000, the state legislature has passed a law preventing homeowner's associations from punishing clothesline users.

It is interesting that she wrote,

“It looks beautiful,” she said when we stepped back. “It looks like we care about the earth.”

I do find hanging laundry beautiful. But we should do it because it makes sense, not to signal our environmental convictions.




Addendum (8 Nov 2009)
I learned that Penley, the maker of my old sturdy wooden clothespins, has discontinued domestic production. They now make their clothespins in China. I have no idea if the quality is the same. McGuckins hardware sells both the Penley wooden ones made in China, and a plastic variety.  Has anyone used them?  Do they hold wet, heavy laundry?

I have no use for the high-style ones mentioned in this story:

Nowadays plastic clothespins are available in endless variations, including a new one that has gone into widespread production, Zebra’s “sweet clip,” made with both hard and soft plastics, using a dual-injection manufacturing process. The hard plastic is in the long handles, while two softer cushions sit where the pin grips the clothes. Zebra developed a dual-plastic toothbrush 15 years ago, applied the principle to clothespins in Europe in the late 1990s, obtained a worldwide patent, and captured 8 percent of the global clothespin market. The pin is sold in North America under the name Urbana.

     “We love to target stupid products,” says Xavier Gibert of Zebra. “When you walk into a megastore, most of the time you see stupid products, boring products. You buy them because you need them. We target basic products to make them come alive, able to talk to people.” And what does the Urbana clothespin say? Something along the lines of “I’ll be gentle.”

     “The key of this peg is not to be able to hold very heavy clothes,” says Gibert. “It’s much more dedicated to sensitive clothes.” Response to the pin has been enthusiastic. “People were attracted by the design. They said, ‘Wow, we love the shape.’”

If we want to save carbon and achieve energy independence, we will need a clothespin that can securely hold heavy and wet laundry.

More about clotheslines:

• Clotheslines Again shows how I hang my laundry.
• Clothespin Extinction discusses the end of clothespin production in the US. A reader offers her own favorite clothespins and source.
• The comments for this post offer many tips.

Stick That Up Your Light Socket

Southern California Edison wants to give me $200 for allowing them to install a remote control on my air conditioner. Oops, they will not be giving me $200 because I do not have an air conditioner.

This is akin to their program in 2001 that gave people rebates if they decreased their 2001 electricity usage (relative to 2000) by some percentage---I believe it was 10 or 20%. Of course, I didn’t qualify then because I had already reduced my electricity usage in 2000.

You see, California was being gamed by the likes of Enron during the summer of 2000. We had rolling blackouts. I was also at home, pregnant and on bed rest. It got hot up there on the second floor, especially because it was an unusually warm and muggy summer. I already mentioned that we don’t have an air conditioner. The sea breeze was weaker than usual that summer. It wouldn’t have made much difference, as I often had to close the west-facing windows anyway. My neighbor to the west didn’t want to smell up his apartment so he smoked outdoors, 5 feet away from my windows.

Oh, yeah, back to electricity and the summer of 2000. I was trying to do my bit for California by using as little electricity as possible. Also, like many pregnant women, I was very sensitive to heat. I went after every heat source in the house. I replaced the light bulbs we used most often with compact fluorescent bulbs (CFBs). I turned lights off whenever I left the room. I made Mark hang our laundry out on the clothesline. I put power strips everywhere so that I could shut off energy vampires (electronics) not in use. (They also protected the electronics from power surges, which happened frequently that summer.)

For all this effort, I got no reward---unless you count Governor Schwarzenegger. ;-) If I had been wasteful in 2000, then I would have been financially rewarded in 2001. If I had put in an air conditioner when we replaced the furnace, SCE would have given me $200 today. Oh, well.

Now, California’s legislators are talking about banning incandescent light bulbs altogether. There are so many more productive ways they can spend their time. Where to start?

First, CFBs cannot completely replace incandescent bulbs. Most CFBs hum when used in dimmable light fixtures. The few (and expensive) dimmable CFBs on the market do not have the same dynamic range as incandescent bulbs. Since CFBs take up to 15 minutes to reach maximum brightness, you wouldn’t want to use them for lights that are used only for short periods of time--say in a closet, a refrigerator or a bathroom.

There are also aesthetic considerations. Many things look more appealing under incandescent lights than under CFBs. This argument is becoming weaker as the CFBs continue to improve. In 2006, our first CFBs burned out and I replaced them with new ones. Because I had the old and new bulbs in the same room, I could immediately tell that the new ones gave off a more pleasant color spectrum than the old, first generation ones.

In my sewing room, I have 1 halogen, 1 incandescent, 1 CFB and 2 Ott-lights (“full-spectrum” fluorescent lights used by crafters). When working after dark, I like to check my color choices under all the different light sources. I also find that mixing the light source types produces less of a color bias.

If my overall electricity usage is much lower than that of most of my neighbors, why take away my choice to use incandescent light bulbs in a few places?

Slight digression
We have tiered electricity rates in California. I.e., the cost per kilowatt-hour goes up in a tiered fashion as energy usage goes up (baseline, 130% of baseline, 200% of baseline, etc). However, the baseline depends on where you live. Take a look at the baseline region map. The people who live near the coast subsidize the people who live inland because we don’t “need” air conditioners as much.

This is insane. People who live near the coast already pay a huge housing premium, and live in older and smaller homes on smaller lots. Yet we are forced to subsidize the electricity for all the new huge McMansions being built inland with their soaring cathedral ceilings and large lots. (Electricity use climbs with total volume of air that is cooled. Taller ceilings and more square feet = more total volume.) Why aren’t our elected officials debating that in Sacramento?

Links

• SCE FAQs about Baseline
• SCE Baseline Allocation Chart (click on the Baseline Region Map)
• The Power of Less The cheapest energy source is the one that you didn't use. You must read this wonderful article about energy conservation pioneer, Art Rosenfeld. That's only one of the 25 Brilliant California ideas (many green) in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of California Monthly.
• Procrastination and Climate Change thoughts about work, climate change, and my personal involvement.
  
• Spectra of Fluorescent Light Bulbs from the LED Museum. See for yourself that some light bulbs are more "full spectrum" than others.
• Tokyo Air Conditioners Heat Up Outside Air. The second law of thermodynamics applies to air conditioning use. "A study by scientists at several scientific institutions in Tokyo has found that the heat waste from office air conditioning units is causing a 1º - 2 º C temperature increase in the Tokyo office areas. This heating promotes the heat-island phenomenon in Tokyo on weekdays." The link goes to the current American Meteorological Society, AMS, Science Highlights. The paper is in the January 2007 AMS Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.
• Setting future energy consumption targets based on past profligacy is counterproductive and unfair. I previously wrote about it in On Time and MPG. That's also the Kyoto Protocol's major flaw. If you were not a developed (major energy consuming) nation in 1990, would you sign the treaty?
  
• There are medical reasons why people need to avoid fluorescent lights. While the level of UV light emitted by fluorescent lights is safe for most people, it causes skin cancer and/or burns on people with a rare disease called Xeroderma Pigmentosum. The daughter of some friends suffers from this disease; they cannot use any light bulbs in the house more powerful than a 50 watt incandescent bulb. While the Australian law gives medical exemptions, would they have to bring over their own light bulbs when they come over for a playdate?

Errata
I get my CFBs at Costco and IKEA. They carry a selection of CFBs at very reasonable prices. IKEA accepts used CFBs for recycling in their customer service area. When buying multi-packs at Costco, I buy several sizes and split the packs with other families. That way, we each get the wattages we need. We put the used CFBs in the box for hazardous household waste in the garage. Because of the density in coastal LA, services like IKEA and hazardous waste collection sites are always nearby.

Serendipity

We didn't get it together in time this morning to attend the Family Festival at the Getty Center today. In fact, by the time we got there, we couldn't even get off the 405 because of the line of cars backed up trying to get into the Getty Center parking lot.

We decided to go one exit further to the Skirball Center. However, despite years of Hebrew school, Mark forgot that the Skirball is closed on the Sabbath.

"In art school, I couldn't stop myself from drawing clothes on all my nudes. I realized I was more interested in the clothes." --Costume designer.

We decided to keep heading north on the 405 and exit at Ventura Boulevard to find lunch somewhere nearby. While driving along, Mark got the idea that we could go to the Red Line Park and Ride and catch the subway to Hollywood for lunch. Somehow, he promised Iris a burger at Hamburger Hamlet at Hollywood and Highland.

That turned out to be another nightmare because we all forgot about the Oscars. It was a madhouse. Hamburger Hamlet was closed. We ended up waiting (and waiting) in line for a burger at Johnny Rocket's because Iris would not be denied a burger after such a long journey. Burgers are such a rare treat for her.

Mark said he would post about the Oscars later, after a work deadline.

Serendipitously, we ran across the Los Angeles-Italia Film, Fashion and Art Fest. An Italian designer, Milena Canonero, was up for best costume design for the film, Marie Antoinette. Several dresses were on display and the security guard let me photograph them with the flash turned off.

I made a collage of the dress photos.

I also took pictures of the dress details. Leave a comment if you think I should bother posting the full-resolution pictures on Flickr.  (I did post a MA slideshow on Flickr and wrote a follow-up post here.)

I don't know how we could have forgotten about the Oscars. Mark and his team had even won the Oscar edition of O'Brien's Irish Pub Quiz last Wednesday night. Take a look at their team photo. You wouldn't want to run into them in the dark alleys of Pasadena and Cambridge. They might make you play trivial pursuit against them for the contents of your wallet.

Paper or Plastic?

It doesn't matter as long as there is meat in your bag.

It's not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that's the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water...

Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation...

Researchers at the University of Chicago compared the global warming impact of meat eaters with that of vegetarians and found that the average American diet – including all food processing steps – results in the annual production of an extra 1.5 tons of CO2-equivalent (in the form of all greenhouse gases) compared to a no-meat diet. Researchers Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin concluded that dietary changes could make more difference than trading in a standard sedan for a more efficient hybrid car, which reduces annual CO2 emissions by roughly one ton a year.

"It doesn't have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan," says Dr. Eshel, whose family raised beef cattle in Israel. "If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you've already made a substantial difference."

You don't have to become a complete vegan. Simply consume fewer animal products and you will dramatically reduce your carbon footprint. Read Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet in the Feb 20 edition of the Christian Science Monitor.

I will repeat myself. You don't need to hang out all of your laundry on a clothesline. If you just hang out the stuff that takes forever to dry; like towels, jeans, sweaters and t-shirts; you have cut down dramatically the amount of energy you consume for laundry.

In addition, when you take a bath or shower, it would be a shame to let all the energy you used to heat the water go down the drain. Leave the water in the tub to release the heat into your house during the winter. Conversely, in the summer, drain hot water immediately to keep your house cool. This will suffice until we all remodel our houses with heat exchanger coils for incoming and outgoing water. ;-)

If you would like to avoid the whole paper or plastic debate at the grocery store, read on for directions on how to make your own reusable cloth bags to take with you to the grocery store.

I was going to write a full-blown tutorial, but that is not necessary because Nancy Restuccia, author of Hold It!: How to Sew Bags, Totes, Duffels, Pouches, and More, has beat me to it here.

I learned how to make my own bags by reverse engineering totes that I already owned, browsing the LL Bean website for functional tote sizes, and reading her book. It is a wonderful book that has gone out of print; I recommend snagging a used copy of it before they become extremely scarce.

I don't use straps all the way down the sides as Nancy recommends. I attach the straps to the top while I hem it. Then I turn the handles up and sew it down again in a box with a X across it.

I do reinforce the bottom.

I bought the canvas and denim from SAS Fabrics in Lawndale. SAS sells leftovers from factories (cheaply) by the pound. I bought a roll of the cotton webbing from Random, a fantastic store on State Street in Santa Barbara. They sell closeouts from businesses and salvage from places about to be torn down or remodeled. Once, we visited when they had piles of art deco tiles and glass blocks from a hotel about to be demolished. It was bittersweet.

How 'Green' is Your T-shirt?

Can Polyester Save the World? touched on many issues dear to my heart (link to the NYT article published 1/24/07 and good for 7 days) . I had never before read a full analysis of the energy impact of a cotton t-shirt and a polyester blouse.

The pop up graphic on the left side, How 'Green' is Your T-shirt?, is particularly interesting. Before adding in the impact of laundering, the energy use for both the polyester blouse and the cotton t-shirt is nearly identical. Although I have a few quibbles with the assumptions used in the calculation, the results are close enough to the energy impact analysis for "Paper or Plastic?" that they make intuitive sense to me. (Our household receives both Chemical and Engineering News and NRDC's OnEarth magazines.)

I have personally heard some people sneer that polyester is made with petroleum and cotton is made is renewable. Well, it depends on whether one counts the petroleum used in farming (fertilizer and pesticides), transporting and processing the cotton. Cotton T-shirts, like paper grocery sacks, are heavier than polyester blouses and plastic grocery bags and, thus, require more energy to transport. (Let's not even go into the energy expended to move trucks of bottled water around to places where tap water is plentiful and safe.) Additionally, I have read in several other places that more pesticides are applied to produce cotton than any other crop in the world. I also know, from living in California, that cotton is an enormously water and energy-intensive crop. Water is heavy; pumping water around is also very energy-intensive.

Several of the assumptions in How 'Green is Your T-shirt? may not apply to you. They certainly do not apply for our household. For both energy and safety reasons, we set our water heater to 130 F. After Iris' birth, we lowered it even further to 120 F. We wash most of our laundry in warm and cold water. We also use a clothesline for our synthetics, t-shirts, towels, jeans and other items that take a long time to dry in the dryer whenever the weather is amenable.*

What can be done about this problem? We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us. I cleaned out my closet last weekend and was shocked at how my wardrobe had multiplied like bunnies in the darkness of the walk-in closet. The fashion cycle moves so fast, it is dizzying. It is also so easy and inexpensive to buy disposable fashion now. Moreover, like food, we can buy clothing in more venues than in the past.

The end of the article gives me some hope for change, but also shows how far we still need to go in terms of changing people's attitudes:

And so Marks & Spencer is thinking about whether its customers will be willing to change their buying habits, to pay more for less-fashionable but “sustainable” garments. After all, consumers have shown a willingness to pay more for clothes not made in sweatshops, and some are unwilling to buy diamonds because of forced labor in African mines.

On a recent day outside Marks & Spencer on Guildford High Street, where everyone was loaded with shopping bags, Audrey Mammana, who is 45, said she was not “a throw-away person” and would be happy to lease high-end clothing for a season. She would also be willing to repair old clothes to extend their use, although fewer shops perform this task.

But, she added: “If you cut out tumble-drying, I think you’d lose me. I couldn’t do without that.”

It is good to read that such a large retailer believes that there is a market for sweatshop-free clothing. It is not so heartening to read that the consumer cannot make her own clothing repairs. I am especially disheartened to read that she rules out line-drying her clothes.

Links:
I joined Wardrobe Refashion for a two-month period. I wrote about refashioning clothes and sweatshops previously in I want to be let alone. I wrote about how using a clothesline can save you time (and energy) in Another Way.

Read Joel Achenbach's article for the WaPost entitled Another Way, and the subsequent discussion. Joel, too, also categorically ruled out using a clothesline even though he admitted to using one in childhood.

Sigh. You don't have to give up tumble drying altogether. You need only tumble dry less. One good thing, maybe the only good thing, that came out of the electricity crisis in California is that the state legislature made it illegal for homeowners' associations to penalize residents for using a clothes line in places where it is against the Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&R's). How can it be legal to waste energy and be illegal to conserve energy?

* The weather forecasts that are pretty darn good. Use them to plan your laundering around non-rainy days. During el Nino years, we have long stretches where we use the dryer more than usual. However, we hang our jeans and towels on in indoor rack. Even cold weather can freeze-dry your clothes. ;-)

That's all folks.

Why Diets Don't Work

I have realized that decluttering my home before the start of the new lunar year is about as unrealistic as miracle weight loss. It takes time, energy, and discipline to lose "stuff" weight. I have made some real progress, but it will be a slow process.

While cleaning up the sewing and craft room, I found Exhibit A. What kind of person keeps one of these lying around? Someone who was taught to always be prepared! You never know when you might need to send something into the stratosphere.

Unfortunately, this one has expired. Latex this old is unlikely to survive for long at sub-freezing temperatures. (As long as we are on the subject, have you checked the expiration dates on your other common household latex consumables lately?)

I really don't need this anymore. I have 50 fresh ones in my office. If anyone wants a weather balloon, leave me a comment and I will send it to you, domestic postage only.

Our whole family culled our bookshelves for books we no longer need and Dave's Olde Book Shop gave us $20 credit for them. The few books he rejected went to the local library along with many old periodicals. We will read the back issues on line from now on. Goodwill accepted a small table and many bags of toys and household items. I feel lighter already.

Two books that we didn't need to take to Dave's were Apartment Therapy by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh. I borrowed the former and read the latter in the store so these books will not be adding to our home's clutter. I am not sure if the books actually caused me to get rid of more stuff than if I had skipped the reading and gotten straight to work.

Don't be put off by the title; Apartment Therapy (AT) is a very useful and inspirational book. It explains how to explore your home with all five senses, diagnose it's ills and then fix them. I never thought to feel the walls of my home before. If I had, I might have noticed a damp/termite problem before the little critters did so much damage. A friend might have noticed her drainage/mold problem earlier and saved herself much grief as well.

MGR said that many people live in cluttered homes because they don't spend much time in them. They run in and out and treat their home as a place to dump stuff between outings that are their real lives. I definitely see that in our household. On weekends, when I ask Mark to help clean the house; he treats it like a huge imposition and says it is waste of time that would be better spent on another trip or outing.. Even though Mark doesn't like inspirational movies, I asked him to read AT.

It's All Too Much didn't resonate with me even though I liked Walsh's other book, How to Organize (Just About) Everything. I found the pep talk annoying. Maybe it was my mood at the time. But I am a real stickler for logical consistency.

In one part of the book, he recommended getting rid of craft supplies for crafts you never have time to do. In another part of the book, he wrote that we wear the same 20% of our wardrobe 80% of the time (no proof offered but it might be close to the mark for me). However, he recommended dressing for the life that you want instead of the life that you have.

But this is so wrong. Craft supplies are just as aspirational as clothes. Craft supplies represent a fantasy life with more leisure time and the health to enjoy it. I would ditch the aspirational clothes and keep the yarn and fabric stash. Well, maybe I could ditch some of the fabric.

My husband said that he heard Peter Walsh on KPCC while working in his lab two days ago. I asked why this was so memorable that he discussed it at home. Mark said it was because PW talked about how clutter blocks people's lives. Mark never understood before how he could work productively at home while I could not. It is a question of noticing that there is so much stuff around that needs to be put away and taken care of. One of my many doctors said the same thing happens at her house. Her husband can work from home because he feels no responsibility to clean up the home whereas she sees this that needs to be done, then that, etc.

It took another man, Peter Walsh, to get through to him. Mark is even talking about strategies for organizing our stuff in the computer room. So perhaps I should have liked IATM more. Maybe I will check out How to Organize (Just About) Everything from the library for Mark.

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. ~William Morris

Another Way

"THE KEY TO MODERN LIFE IS STRATEGIC IGNORANCE," wrote Joel Achenbach in a preceptive article, Another Way, about energy use in the Washington Post Magazine. He visited a rural enclave called Earthaven in North Carolina whose inhabitants choose to live in an environmentally sustainable way. It is a long article by newspaper standards, but it makes some excellent points.

Americans, for the most part, are woefully ignorant about their energy use.

"If everyone lived at the lifestyle of Americans," says Jim McMillan, who works on alternative energy for the Department of Energy, "we'd need five planets."

Most of the homes in Earthhaven have energy meters in a prominent place so that residents can easily monitor their current energy usage. Why do conventional homes have their electric meter on the outside and not also on the inside of the homes?

A Swedish study showed that drivers adjusted their driving style and improved their fuel economy by an average of 10% when current MPG (or liters/100km) was displayed. An internal display of real-time electricity and gas usage could similiarly influence behavior.

Secondly, sustainable living will be attractive to more people if they feel like they are gaining something rather than giving up something (or wearing a hairshirt like Jimmy Carter's sweater). I live in a dense neighborhood because it frees up time that I would have otherwise spent on commuting and running errands. Everyplace I absolutely need to go is in a very tight radius. It is both time and energy efficient and a sanity saver. Plus, if I walk or ride my bicycle, I get exercise without taking any additional time out of my day.

We use a clothesline because it saves time. We start up a load of laundry after everyone in our family has bathed and before going to sleep. In the morning, I toss the shirts and small items into the dryer and hang up the heavy items up on the clothesline. After breakfast, I pull the shirts out of the dryer and hang them up to dry the rest of the way. When I get home from work, I take the clothes off the line and fluff them up in the dryer for a few minutes. We chat while Mark cleans up after dinner and I fold the laundry. It seems to take no time at all compared to the whole days that other households spend waiting for their clothes to dry in the dryer.

Full Day(s)

True to my badmom moniker, I pulled my daughter out of school on Friday to drive up to San Francisco. We spent yesterday afternoon at Berkeley. We had a good chat with Mark's thesis advisor about science and life in general.

We also spent a great deal of time at Black Oak Books and Epicurious Garden in north Berkeley's gourmet ghetto. On our last trip to Berkeley, Iris and I shared excellent gelato in the 'secret garden'. The Valrhona chocolate flavor was the best chocolate ice cream all three of us have ever had. It was expensive, but a transcendent chocolate experience doesn't come cheap.

Also on the last trip, the book buyer at Black Oak Books told Iris that, if she took good care of her books, Iris would get more money for the books she didn't want anymore. After that, I saw an increase in respect in the way Iris cared for her books. Iris got $6.75 in trade for the books she brought in. She selected an excellent graphic novel called Babymouse: Queen of the World. Not yet 6 but she has already developed excellent taste in books. Ok, I have to stop bragging about her.

Today, we started our day at the new de Young Museum where I saw the Quilts of Gees Bend. Previously, I had bought the exhibition catalog from amazon. That catalog had good photos of the quilts and biographies of the makers. But, as a quilter, I had hoped to learn more technical information about how the quilts were made. It turns out, there is a second touring exhibition of Gees Bend quilts and the catalog for that one, Gees Bend: the Architecture of the Quilt, explains more about the technical aspects of the quilts. I probably will add that book to my collection.

The quilts were even more amazing "in the flesh" than in photos. I was drawn to all of them. They all have such graphic power; I was on sensory overload. I was drawn by a couple of details. In Annie Bendolph's "Thousand Pyramids", note the line of half square blocks that oriented in the opposite direction than the rest. The quilt achieves a sense of tension from that off-kilter detail.

The "My Way" quilts used salvageable pieces of fabric from worn out clothing. I was mesmerized by the complex visual texture achieved with the recycled fabric. I am esthetically attracted to softly variegated colors. The colors were just a by product of the recycled materials used out of necessity by the quilters of Gees Bend. I go to extra effort and expense to hand-dye fabrics and yarn to get that uneven effect.

Others have pointed out the irony. The art of patchwork was invented in an era when fabric was scarce and women's labor was cheap. Now, relatively well-to-do women who are short of time buy new fabric that looks like it is old, and cut it up in little pieces before sewing them back together. It is late now; I will post another time about a quilt I made 15 years ago from old fabrics salvaged from thrift store clothes. That quilt was always a favorite of mine. It took a long time, but we were reunited recently.

The new de Young museum is breathtaking. Iris said that the crack in the courtyard was meant to convince kids to enter the museum. I thought the crack symbolized the San Andreas fault or possibly alluded to San Francisco's location on the ring of fire. I like Iris' interpretation, though.

After that, we took Muni to Aquatic Park. My sister met us by dinghy and took us to her boat which was moored offshore with friends from her sailing club. We watched the Blue Angels aerial show with plenty of good food, wine and company. Then they surprised me with a chocolate chocolate cake for my birthday. A very full two days, indeed.

Back from Camp

We returned last night from the Lair of the Golden Bear family camp. Following Pat's example, I make one tile each year to commemorate the visit. Last year's tile looks like this.


Here is this year's tile.


While there is an official Lair packing list, it leaves out some crucial information. How were newcomers to know that they should bring wine and cheese for cocktail hour (from 5pm till the dinner bell)? Or that food must be kept in sealed, squirrel-proof plastic bins? So here is our family's list.

Lair Packing List

Bedding
• Twin sheets for cots
• Sleeping bags
• Towels: beach, bath, hand, washcloths

Things for keeping warm:
• Heating pad
• Electric blanket
• Comforter to throw on over sleeping bag

Clothing: (Dress in layers that can be peeled off)
• Hats
• Swimsuits
• Cover-ups
• Swim goggles
• Long underwear (good also for pjs)
• Sweatpants for pulling on over shorts or long underwear (2)
• Hiking shoes and socks
• Mountain biking clothes and shoes
• Anorak for wind or rain
• Polarfleece jacket
• Sweater or sweatshirt
• Sun blocking shirts, shorts, pants
• T-necks and t-shirts

General Organization: (most cabins have shelves)
• Keep clothes in clear plastic bins (66 Qt Sterilite fits under most cots), 1 per camper
• Extra plastic bins for food (to keep critters out)
• Sports equipment, 1 bin per sport
• IKEA Komplement folding drawer organizers (great for corralling odds and ends on shelves)

Home Comforts:
• Stacking plastic tables
• kids chairs
• Folding camp chairs (not needed at Oski)
• Folding table
• Clamp-on shop lights with fluorescent bulbs
• Clothes line and pins
• Laundry detergent, 1 scoop/sandwich Ziploc, encased in larger Ziploc
• 1 flashlight/camper
• Walkie-talkies
• Extension cords
• Xmas lights
• Plastic bags for trash

First Aid:
• Sunscreen for face and body
• First aid kit
• Toiletry kits
• Ice bag
• Mosquito repellent

Food
• Cocktail hour shareables
• Soda and juice boxes
• Snacks
• Trail food

Art and Leisure Supplies:
• Personal paint brushes (they supply cheap ones)
• Knitting or other handwork
• Old t-shirt or smock (throwing pottery is messy!)
• Books
• Journals and sketchbooks
• Camera

Shibori Slideshow

Last week, I attended a shibori workshop taught by Joy-Lily. We wrapped the silk scarves around cylindrical objects. As you can see, a Trader Joe's coffee can works quite well. We tied the scarves with crochet thread and painted diluted Procion H dyes on the scarves and string. (The dyed string makes interesting designs when reused later on another scarf.)


When the scarf is untied, it looks a bit like a sea-shell. This one is a chevron pleat design.



The scarves air-curing in the laundry room.


A close-up of the sampler scarf I made in class first.


The clothesline with shibori and Devore satin scarves I dyed in Procion MX and white vinegar on my own at home.


[The corn and tomatoes have grown somewhat since I took the picture. We do use a clothesline in the big, bad city. We have never lost any clothing from the line, though a neighbor did leave throw his surf towel on our line when he tossed it on the fence to dry.]

More Shibori adventures here and here.