5-14-2017

Interested in replacing your lawn or garden so that it doesn’t turn brown and die in the middle of summer, or guzzle endless amounts of water, but not sure where to get started?

Southern California Public Radio (SCPR) compiled a list of seven lawn alternatives to turf grass and evaluated each one based on how much water they require, their estimated installation costs and other environmental impacts.

Here’s what they found: Two low-water options that maintain greenery in your yard are a garden with local plants native to California and a drought-tolerant garden with plants from other arid environments such as Australia or South Africa. Native gardens rank as slightly better for the environment since native plants promote local biodiversity, such as the health of local bee populations. However, both cost anywhere from $3.75-$18.00 per square foot, including labor, to create these gardens, depending on the plants you select. Also, both can reduce the heat your yard generates in sunlight. For comparison, traditional grass lawns cost around $3.00 per square foot to install, SCPR estimated.

Looking for a plant-free, low-maintenance yard? Mulch, artificial turf, gravel, concrete and decomposed granite are all lawn alternatives that require no water. Mulch is the cheapest and greenest option, starting at $2.50 per square foot and allowing water to absorb into the ground to replenish local aquifers. Its heating effect is neutral. The other options, however, provide little to no benefit to local wildlife and contribute to the urban heat island effect. Most artificial turf and concrete products are also not permeable, so they don’t allow water to replenish aquifers. Costs to install these types of plant-free, no-water gardens range from gravel and decomposed granite at the low end — $3.50 per square foot, not including labor — to concrete and artificial turf that can run up to $15 per square foot, including labor. Read more about these lawn alternatives here.

While SCPR provided an approximate cost to put in these seven lawn-free options, it didn’t estimate the price to maintain the yards over time. However, a nine-year study from the City of Santa Monica found that, when comparing two identical test gardens — one with native plants and the other with grass — the native plant garden used 83 percent less water and required 68 percent less maintenance than the traditional lawn.

Ready to get started? Here are more resources to help you plan your perfect garden:

• Need more ideas for your new garden? Get inspiration from others have replaced their lawns to save water.
• Pick your plants: Search the California Native Plant Society’s list of plants suited to Stockton.
• Get rebates: Visit SaveOurWater.com for information on how to get a rebate from California’s Department of Water Resources for replacing your turf grass with low-water or native plants.

5-7-2017

Mother’s Day is around the corner, and with over 80 million mothers in the U.S. alone, we have a lot of women to show gratitude to. In fact, this gratitude adds up to over $2 billion in flower sales nationwide each year.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans celebrating Mother’s Day do so by purchasing flowers. However, you might consider an alternative, more eco-friendly gift — most cut flowers arrive in our shops and markets after being shipped internationally in refrigerated containers, because they are so perishable. Between water, pesticides and greenhouse gas emissions, flower sales have an alarming environmental impact.

If you’re attached to the idea of giving flowers, try giving a living plant instead of cut flowers, or find locally grown blooms through Local Harvest. If you receive flowers on Mother’s Day, remember to recycle the plastic wrap with plastic bags and compost the flowers once they’ve wilted.

4-28-2017

There’s something about spring that encourages folks to clean out their homes. Considering the name Marie Kondo gets tossed around as a verb these days, it’s easy to see that decluttering your life has become a popular undertaking.

Decluttering might not be everyone’s favorite task, but now is not a bad time to “spring” into action and tackle the clutter that builds up in our abodes. Not only can you improve the atmosphere and organization of your home, you can pass along unneeded items to those who can really use them — check out this list of local donation locations. When items are no longer usable, their materials can often be recycled for reuse.

Here are 8 reasons to part ways with your clutter. Donate or recycle the following:

1. Items that aren’t something you would go out and buy now.
2. Items that are a duplicate — you have something similar that serves the same purpose.
3. Items that are broken and you have yet to try and fix them.
4. Items that are kept for sentimental reasons, but when considered in light of all of your other sentimental objects, seem unnecessary or excessive.
5. Items that you haven’t used within the last year.
6. Items that you don’t have a plan to use — a real plan, not a hypothetical one — or that you don’t know how to use.
7. Items that you wouldn’t notice if they were gone.
8. Items that don’t fit your personality or living space.

For more inspiration, check out this list of 116 things you should get rid of by PopSugar or this article in The Atlantic on the economics and psychology of decluttering.

4-23-2017

City of Stockton residential garbage customers, let’s “Recycle Right!” Did you know that placing garbage in a recycling or green waste cart requires the whole cart to be thrown out as garbage? Despite what people think, the recyclable material in contaminated bins cannot be separated and end up in the landfill. You can help reduce contamination in the recycling and green waste carts by picking the right sized cart for your household’s needs.

Since one size does not fit all, Stockton residents can choose between three (3) sizes for their garbage cart: 32-gallon (holds about 3 tall kitchen bags), 60 gallon (holds about 4 tall kitchen bags), or 90 gallon cart (holds about 5 tall kitchen bags). The 60-gallon recycling cart and the 90-gallon green & food waste cart are provided at no extra charge. When the waste haulers service the carts, they collect and transport the garbage to a landfill, recyclables to a recycling processing facility, and green & food waste to a composting facility. Waste haulers can’t deliver trash-contaminated loads to recycling and composting facilities. It is important that carts are used only for the correct material.

Since contamination of green waste and recycling carts has become an increasing problem in Stockton, the waste haulers (Republic Services & Waste Management), in collaboration with the city’s Solid Waste & Recycling staff, have proposed a pilot project to bring attention to the situation. The project will begin with a content study of a green waste load from a selected residential route. The load will be weighed, the contamination removed and weighed, and the results documented. Educational information will be mailed out to the residents in the pilot area. Inspectors will observe the green waste carts for a number of weeks and place tags on carts that are contaminated. If contamination continues and the carts are tagged three times, the green waste cart will be removed.

After 6 to 8 weeks, another content study will be conducted to examine the amount of contamination in the green waste load from the pilot area. The results will be compared to the first study to gauge improvement in the quality of the load. Residents can help reduce contamination by requesting the right size garbage cart and not placing garbage into the recycling or green waste cart.

4-16-2017

Good news, contact lens wearers! Now you can recycle your contact lenses and blister packs. Thanks to the partnership of Bausch + Lomb and TerraCycle, you can mail any brand of used contacts and their blister packs to the Bausch + Lomb ONE by ONE Recycling Program.

Contacts may seem too tiny to bother recycling, but over 30 million people in the U.S. currently wear contact lenses. With disposable and daily contacts, not to mention their packaging, the waste adds up quickly.

You can learn more here, or click here to request a free shipping label. Note: Don’t ship cardboard contact boxes — these can be recycled with paper.

4-9-2017

Spring is all about new life and new beginnings, which makes it the perfect time for egg hunts. One thing we don’t normally associate with spring? Trash — but sometimes it’s difficult to avoid at holidays, even Easter. So what can you do? Check out these tips for reducing waste from the biggest Easter culprits:

Plastic Eggs

Need new eggs this year? Consider avoiding plastic ones, which tend to be made from plastic #7 and may contain BPA. A safer plastic option is Eco Eggs, which are made from plant-based plastic but would need to be industrially composted. There are also non-plastic options — wooden eggs are easy to find online or in craft stores, and these can be hand-painted. These dyeable ceramic eggs are pretty neat, too. Or, there are hollow wooden eggs and cloth eggs that you can fill with candy or other treats, though you might not find these in a local store.

If you already have plastic eggs, reuse them from year to year. You can also consider repurposing plastic eggs if you no longer need them. You can find seemingly endless ideas online for upcycling plastic eggs; this article details plentiful creative plastic egg projects.

Real Eggs

When it comes to using real eggs at Easter time, there are a few ways to green your activities. Choosing locally sourced, pasture-raised eggs will mean your eggs have a smaller carbon footprint and likely a higher nutritional value, too. If you like to blow out eggs, remember to use the raw yolks and whites for cooking. If you hard-boil your eggs, check out these recipe ideas — that way you won’t be faced with the quandary of how to make yourself eat dozens of plain old hard-boiled eggs. If you don’t eat your dyed eggs, be sure to compost the leftovers.

Although the probability of health hazards from egg dye seems low, consider looking into non-toxic egg dye, or making your own with this how-to from ABC News.

Basket Fill

Plastic grass cannot be recycled curbside, and it doesn’t decompose easily. If you already have some, reuse it, but if you don’t, there are alternatives. Raffia is a great option, because it looks like dry, tan-colored grass (think hula skirts), it’s made from strands of tree leaves, and it can be found at craft stores. Shredded paper and tissue paper would be eco-friendly choices, too.

Candy

Easter candy is a lot of fun, especially when you have little ones, but it can generate a lot of waste, too. The biggest thing you can do to reduce its impact is to choose minimal packaging. Paperboard or foil packaging are greener choices than plastic, but unpackaged candy from the bulk section of a grocery store would be even better.

4-2-2017

In the springtime, a lot of us dig out our lawn and garden supplies and strategize what we’re going to do with our yards this year. This is usually when we realize that we need to replace our garden hoses. Whether they froze when they still contained water, got run over by a car or lawn mower, or broke down over time, hoses just don’t last forever. Although you might think garden hoses are recyclable, you need to throw them away.

Why? Garden hoses are one of the most dangerous items to accidentally toss in your recycling. They are long and unruly, and can wrap around sorting machinery. This not only can damage the machinery, but it also endangers the workers who have to try to untangle them. Toss them in the trash, or, if you’re feeling resourceful, check out these ideas in the recycling guide for repurposing them.

3-26-2017

The next time you shop for light bulbs, you may notice a Lighting Facts label on the package, almost like Nutrition Facts for lighting. Required by the Federal Trade Commission since 2012, the new labels are meant to help you better understand what you are buying and choose the light bulbs that are right for you.

These labels include a wealth of useful information: the bulb’s lifespan, an estimate of the bulb’s annual operating cost, the amount of energy (or watts) the bulb uses and the color of the light — from warm, yellowish tones to cool, blue tones. The Lighting Facts label also lists how bright a bulb is in lumens, a unit of measurement for brightness that most people are not familiar with.

So when you need to replace a 100-watt bulb, you should look for a bulb that lists 100 watts as the amount of energy it uses, right?

Wrong. The best way to choose bulbs is to compare lumens — or bulb brightness — rather than energy usage in watts, the U.S. Department of Energy recommends. Once you identify the amount of lumens you want, you can evaluate light bulbs across different technologies — halogen, CFL or LED — and by characteristics like yearly energy cost. If you have several choices of bulbs with the brightness you need, you can pick the bulb with the lowest energy use and operating cost to reduce your energy use and save money on your utility bills.

So how do you know the right number of lumens to look for in a bulb? The higher the number of lumens, the brighter the bulb. Here are some general guidelines for shopping for lumens:

• To replace a 100-watt incandescent bulb, look for a bulb that puts out about 1,600 lumens
• 75-watt bulb = about 1,100 lumens
• 60-watt bulb = about 800 lumens
• 40-watt bulb = about 450 lumens

Having trouble remembering that already? Watch this two-minute video from the Department of Energy:

Or you can use this chart as your lumen-buying guide.

 

3-19-2017

It might still be cold outside, but summer is just around the corner. And the beginning of summer means the beginning of gardening season.

If you start a compost now, it could be ready in three months — the perfect time to add it to a flower or vegetable bed. You can use compost as mulch around existing plants, or mix it into the top layer of a new planting bed. In addition to containing a lot of micronutrients, compost also improves the ability of soil to retain water and transfer nutrients to plants.

Want to try, but not sure where to start? Check out our composting page for tips and how-tos. Don’t have a lot of space? You could try a tabletop composter or worm farm. If you don’t have a garden, you can always give your compost to a friend who does, use it on houseplants or donate it to a community garden.

3-12-2017

Everyone knows the recycling symbol. First created in 1970, it seems to turn up everywhere these days. But did you know the recycling symbol doesn’t always mean an item is recyclable? In fact, there are multiple recycling symbols, and each has a different meaning. Let’s decipher them:

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1. Recyclable (Sometimes, Some Places)

This symbol doesn’t necessarily mean that an item is always recyclable. It has multiple meanings, and typically means that an item is recyclable somewhere. In other words, it’s possible that it’s recyclable in Stockton, but it’s not definite. Sometimes a recycling symbol will be accompanied by the phrases “please recycle” or “widely recyclable,” which means it is likely that you can recycle it curbside, but you still need to check the recycling guide to ensure it is accepted by our program.

This symbol is also used to indicate that an item is made from recycled materials. In this case, it might have a number in the middle indicating the percentage of recycled materials used to make it. Or it might say “Made from recycled materials.” Items made from recycled materials are sometimes recyclable but sometimes not.

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2. Made From Recycled Paper

This symbol, the recycling sign over a dark circle, is more specific. Used by paper products such as cardboard and napkins, this symbol means that the item was made from materials that have already been recycled. However, even though it looks like the recyclable symbol, not all products with this symbol can be recycled. Napkins, for example, are end-of-use products, meaning it’s the end of the road for those super-short paper fibers, and you’re going to have to throw them away. Cardboard, however, could still be recycled.

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3. The Plastic Resin Code, or Type of Plastic

Items with this symbol are not necessarily recyclable. The symbol doesn’t stand for recycling at all — it stands for the type of plastic the item is made from. Among all plastics #1-#7, #3 and #7 are rarely recyclable. The other types of plastic are more commonly recycled, but it depends on the local recycling program.

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4. Compostable (But Probably Not in Your Backyard)

An item carrying this symbol is compostable in an industrial compost facility. However, not all industrial compost programs accept all materials, so you will still have to check with the facility you are bringing materials to. Please note that compostable items are not recyclable. Also, do not try to compost items with this symbol at home unless the label says you can. Industrial facilities can handle items that might never break down in a backyard compost.

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5. The How2Recycle Label

The How2Recycle label is becoming more common, and it’s carefully regulated to provide you with accurate information. It indicates if an item is recyclable widely, in limited areas, not at all, or if it needs to be dropped off at a store. Since up to 40 percent of U.S. households might not be able to recycle items designated as “widely recyclable,” it’s wise to check our local guide no matter what.

The How2Recycle label also tells you what materials the item is made from, which parts can be recycled and if you need to prepare the item for recycling, such as by rinsing it out. For example, check out the instructions on the frozen food package below.

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It’s helpful to have these symbols memorized, but even if you do, they’ll never be as accurate as our local program information. Remember that you can look an item up in our recycling guide at any time, even from your phone. Try to recycle everything you can — but don’t assume that you should toss something into your recycling just because it has a symbol on it.