Use Less. It's a big campaign from Miami Dade County right now. You've probably seen the billboards. And now they've gone social media crazy, too. 

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Will Miami Dade Commissioners
Gamble Away our County Budget?

Dear Friends:

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The song Big Yellow Taxi, most recently heard from the Counting Crows, has inspired this post. Originally written and performed by Joni Mitchell in 1970, this song has as much significance today as it did over 35 years ago.

Let’s go through some portions of the lyrics:

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin’ hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

This sounds like Miami, especially with the pink hotel, boutique and hot spot! You’ll read about it in the papers, hear about it at commission meetings, and see it every day on your way to work: The developers vs. the environment. We’ve got no where to grow with the ocean on one side and the Everglades on the other. I do believe that we can grow the city in a smarter way. I know people are working on it. But I also believe that if even more people realized, "that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone," we’d be on a better road to the future.

More lyrics:

They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them

I visited Fairchild for the first time recently, on the last day of the Chihuly exhibit. Fairchild has the world’s largest and most diverse palm collection. If that’s not a tree museum, I don’t know what is. And I paid a lot more than a dollar and a half to get in. But that’s not Fairchild’s fault. They are part of the solution. As stated in last week’s Miami Today interview with Michael Maunder, Director of the gardens, "We have some of the rarest plants in the world here in our collection - rarer than pandas and more difficult to breed, some of them." Some plants that supported a specific species of butterflies, for example, were all destroyed in the wild…so then what happens to the butterflies?

Lyrics:

Hey farmer, farmer, put away your DDT
I don’t care about spots on my apples,
Leave me the birds and the bees
Please

DDT, a pesticide now banned, is just one example. This section is really talking about organic. Now, up to even a year or so ago, I didn’t really care about organic. Here’s the thing. Pesticides are on our food. They also are in our farm land, which affects our water. They are extremely toxic to the people administering the chemicals. They also kill everything…and then we won’t know what we’ve got til it’s gone. When you buy organic, your veggies aren’t going to be flawless. That doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with them. In fact, flawless food should make you wonder what it took to get the food so perfect. Do you remember how good tomatoes used to taste? And how they taste now? Leave me the birds and the bees.

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Welcome to Dishwashers 101! Today we’ll run through everything you need to know to cut down on your work in the kitchen, and save energy and water to boot!

Many people have the misconception that you can not put dirty dishes into the dishwasher. This is absolutely false.

Pre-washing dishes is not necessary. The key to receiving clean dishes at the end of a dishwashing cycle is to A) load the dishes correctly in the first place, and B) scrape off excess food from the plates.

Miami-Dade County says:

Save up to 15 gallons per load if you run your dishwasher only when full; select dishwashing cycles that use the least number of washes and rinses and avoid unnecessary rinsing of dishes before loading them into the dishwasher.

GE Appliances Support says:

Check the dishwasher loading. Make sure dishes are loaded properly to insure that water can reach all of the soiled surfaces in both racks.

Scrape dishes before placing them in the dishwasher. It is not necessary to pre-wash your dishes, just scrape off the big chunks.

Here are some common loading guidelines for assistance:

• Be sure that larger items do not block smaller items from the wash action.
• Place all items in both racks so that they are separated and face the center of the dishwasher. This will help to ensure that water reaches all soiled surfaces.
• Place glasses with the open end facing downward to allow proper washing action.
• Do not place glasses over the tines, but rest between the tines. This will allow the glasses to lean toward the spray arm and will improve wash performance. It also promotes dry performance by reducing the amount of water remaining on the top of the glass after the wash cycle is complete.
• Do not allow allow flatware to nest. This prevents proper water distribution between the surfaces. Load flatware, except knives, with some handles up and some down to prevent nesting. For safety, knives should always be loaded handles up.
• Avoid placing items over the retractable tower area in the lower rack. This tower provides wash action to the upper rack.
• Do not block wash system parts including spray arms and towers located in the lower and/or upper racks.

So give it a try - at least once or twice, and you should see that it works.

1. Select the short cycle for washing, and see if it gets the job done. It may work on some lighter loads, while you find that really dirty loads need the normal cycle.
2. Check your owner’s manual for proper loading instructions for your particular model. Many manuals are now available online from the manufacturer.
3. Don’t run water to "pre-wash or pre-rinse" your dishes. Scrape off the excess food, and load directly into the dishwasher. (If you’d prefer, I find that a wet sponge just wiped over the surface of various plates does the trick as well…without running the water.)

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I’m very excited to report that the Florida Everglades is featured on the newest TreehuggerTV video. John Adornato, from the local National Parks Conservation Association, talks about a recent court decision regarding rock mines that are sucking water out of the Everglades. They also discuss the Everglades Skyway, Melaleuca, and restoration. I’d like to thank m_ss_ng p_eces for involving GreenerMiami in this project, and congratulate everyone involved!

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As I was watching the City of Miami television station the other day, they discussed the use of federal funds in order to finally remove some of the boats sunken by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. The real deal is that the boat owner is responsible for boat removal. I believe that it is not reasonable to rely on the boat owner to remove their sunken boat from the water…at least not the way the system is currently set up. Supposedly if an owner does not remove the vessel, they are subject to criminal charges, but I don’t think that’s what happened with these hurricanes.

During the hurricanes we saw pictures on the news of sunken houseboats, sailboats, motorboats. Debris floating away, and I’m sure, chemicals leaking into the water. These boats sit there forever, causing a big mess, until somehow, someone pays for the removal.

The Derelict Grant program, which "has" funds for this kind of thing, did not receive funds for the 2004-5 or 2005-6 fiscal years. Also see the Derelict & Abandoned Vessels FAQ.

My idea: Require boat owners to place a deposit in a secure fund (bank) that would cover such removal. Basically, pre-pay. They could even pull out the interest every year for all I care. It just seems that the current system isn’t working. Years can pass before lawsuits finish and a governmental organization finally offers up some cash. If a person owns a boat, they need to be able to afford to deal with the worst consequences.

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Not much, right? 2 aluminum Coke cans, a little bit of product packaging, the outside piece of "throwaway paper" from the Netflix envelopes, a banana peel, squash skin, and a napkin or two. We even had a guest arrive, who is staying with us. Not bad, except for the fact that we ate out last night, and I flew solo at lunch and just snacked. (We’re often 2 people for lunch, 2 for dinner.)

Today I want to take a quick moment to talk about my organic waste again. Yesterday I had a ton of it. When I lived in Mexico (2002-2005), we didn’t have garbage disposals, and I missed them so much. I hated putting that stopper in the drain and then having to clean it out with all of the gook that wound up sitting inside of it.

Then, last year, we came back to the US. I figured that it must be a good way to get rid of organic waste - doesn’t go to a landfill, right? But now I find that everywhere I look, water conservation guides tell me not to use it. From the County website: Minimize the use of the garbage disposal. They are unsanitary, use tons of water and clog pipes. And I assume that all of that stuff in the water adds more process to the water treatment? (I have no idea, just a guess.)

So, that is why you see most of my organic waste in the trash, and not down the drain. I still use it a tiny bit, so as to avoid the whole "gook" situation…but I try to utilize water that would already be going down the drain.

Note: It seems to me that I should be analyzing how much of my trash is product packaging, in addition to what I’ve been looking at. (I just checked the definition in Wikipedia.) I’m not sure how I’ll measure it, but in my inventory, I think I’ll make a "PP" annotation to the side of something that is Product Packaging. Maybe also at the end of the week I can separate it all out to get a sense of the "size" impact.

City      County

No          No        Organic Waste

No          No        (PP) Paperboard: cream cheese box & other small boxes, paper napkins

Yes        Yes       Netflix paper

Yes        Yes       (PP) Aluminum Cans (we use these for the occasional guest or craving, because we found the 2 liter bottles just go to waste)

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Head to Davie this weekend to check out Broward’s Water Matters Day!

Saturday, March 11, 2006, 9am - 3pm

Tree Tops Park, Davie

Park Admission $1/person, kids under 5 free

Bring your own bucket and receive free mulch! Also free native trees and rain gauges.

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