Recycle an old refrigerator

If you have an old refrigerator or freezer, it is probably wasting energy. Through New Jersey's Clean Energy program (njcleanenergy.com or 1-877-270-3520), sponsored by the Board of Public Utilities, you can arrange to have your old fridge or freezer picked up and hauled away for recycling. This type of old appliance costs on average $150 a year in utility bills, and to sweeten the deal you get a $30 rebate. Please mention that you heard about this program through Sustainable Montgomery, and the town will get something out of the deal, too. If we refer twenty people to this program Montgomery gets $300.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday with family and friends.

Today I am especially thankful for my husband, who made cranberry sauce and stuffing and bought a local all-natural free-range heritage breed turkey and stuffed it and put it in the oven. Admittedly I do not eat either turkey or stuffing due to dietary restrictions, but I would still want to make them for my family if he didn't. We will round out the feast with gravy and organic kale, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes, plus mushrooms and olives. For dessert we will have a choice of homemade pie from homegrown berries or persimmon pudding from locally-gathered native American persimmons.

I am also thankful to have my children to share the holiday with us, and thankful to know that my other relatives have friends and family with them to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner together where they are.

I am thankful that we were able to donate to a couple of canned food drives for holiday dinners for other people less fortunate than we are.

This morning I read that here in the USA we waste 40 percent of the food that we have. Much of that is wasted in processing, but more than half is wasted by consumers. That is an average of 1400 calories wasted per person.

Producing this wasted food takes one quarter of America's freshwater consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year, about four percent of our total oil consumption.

At the same time, 6.7 million homes in the US sometimes run short of food due to financial problems.

At a minimum we need to "reduce, reuse and recycle" a lot more in our kitchens. After the turkey sandwiches are finished, put those bones in the freezer so you can make turkey soup on some cold winter day.

Streambank Restoration

I hope you are wondering how the stream bank restoration planting went on October 24th at the Village Elementary School in Skillman Village. A small band of dedicated volunteers worked for about two and a half hours in intermittent light rain and planted most of the plants, covering all of the area in the plan. Fortunately, Alyssa Gartenberg (the girl scout who has made this her gold award project) took advantage of the beautiful weather the previous Thursday and Friday to get some planting done after school with a few volunteers who were not available Saturday. Stakes were also placed around the edge of the area to keep lawn mowers and pedestrians from accidentally damaging the plants.

Right after we planted, it rained about three inches, and there has been some erosion. This occurred mostly in the area that was already eroded: a narrow strip where all the water from the parking area and driveway comes pouring down to the stream (see first photo). I recently drove over to the school and placed chunks of sod, which we had removed when we put in the plants, in the eroded spots. I hope they will prevent erosion during the winter and that in the spring the new plants will fill in any remaining bare spots.

I wish I could show you photos of a beautiful stream bank covered with flowering plants, but it is the wrong time of year for that. The photos I have posted show what some of the plants will look like when they bloom. Next spring and summer the stream bank should start to look beautiful. It is unfortunate that some of the plants will bloom during the summer, when there are no students in the school, but a few will flower during spring and fall. Next year I will post photos, and I hope some of you will drive through Skillman Village and stop and take a look.

I want to thank the volunteers who planted and the businesses and friends who donated plants. Thank you! You've helped a girl scout, beautified a school, provided food for caterpillars, butterflies, and birds, and cleaned the stream. And especially, thank you Alyssa, for all your hard work and your vision!

One Person Can Make a Difference

My friend Kim Giles is moving away, and I will miss her. Even if you don't know her, you will miss her too, because she did so much for Montgomery Township. Kim Giles was on the Environmental Commission and she chaired their subcommittee, the Steering Committee for the Sustainable Montgomery Initiative. She was an incredibly devoted volunteer, keeping us all organized and on track and doing all sorts of work behind the scenes. She also hosted most of the meetings and provided lovely refreshments.

Here is a picture of Kim recycling in the town where she now lives.

Kim was especially inspired by the issue of recycling, which became a focus of a lot of the work of our subcommittee. We all had stories about businesses that didn't recycle, but it turns out that recycling is required for all businesses in New Jersey. In Somerset County some small businesses have been able to get permission to use the County's recycling pickup, but other businesses must arrange recycling with their private waste haulers. They are then required to report to Montgomery Township how many tons of materials they recycle each year. Hardly any businesses reported this information, and the municipal employee in charge was too busy to pursue the matter because that office was shortstaffed (to keep taxes down, Township employees who leave are not being replaced). Kim discovered that towns receive money (state funds distributed by the county), proportional to the tonnage that they report is annually recycled by businesses. This gave her a great incentive to investigate recycling at businesses and work out a procedure for the municipal Recycling Coordinator to get the tonnage reports from the haulers instead of the businesses, and report the results to Somerset County. The procedure that she started has made many thousands of dollars for Montgomery Township, and proved that becoming more sustainable doesn't have to cost money; it can make money!

Kim also organized the Steering Committee in various fun activities involving recycling: we visited the Somerset County Recycling facility; we arranged for mixed plastics recycling at the Public Works Facility on Harlingen Road for a few months; and we produced an exhibit on recycling that has been seen at the Mary Jacobs Library, the Montgomery Township Schools, and the Hillsborough Library. We also attended films on sustainability.

Kim worked with the High School Environmental Science classes and the teachers and administrators in their efforts to become more sustainable. She gave talks at the Otto Kaufmann Senior Center on various aspects of sustainability.

As our Steering Committee worked together, we shared our successes and failures, frustrations and motivations. We became friends, and when Kim announced that she and her husband were moving out of town to pursue new jobs, we all felt bereft. Kim, our loss is Connecticut's gain. We hope you will visit often and continue to inspire us with stories of your recycling exploits.