Pyramid of Conservation

Found this on treehugger and thought I’d share.

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Going Green

go green

I had to come up with a blurb about “going green” for print in the local phone directory, so I thought I’d share it with you.  Some items may or may not be relevant, depending on whether you live in The Bahamas, or not :P

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Going green doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. There are lots of simple ways to go green that add up to make a big difference! Save the earth (and money) at the same time! Who wouldn’t love that?

Water Conservation

• Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth or wash dishes.
• Be aware of the length of your showers. Cutting down your shower time by just 2 minutes can save 10 gallons of water or more!
• Install low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators. These products add air to the water, giving you the same amount of pressure while using less water!
• Flush toilets less by adhering to the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down” philosophy in your home.
• Plant native, drought-tolerant plants in your garden as they require little to no watering.
• If you must water your lawn, do it during the cooler hours of the evening and night, when less moisture is lost to evaporation.

Energy Conservation

• Turn off lights and fans when you leave a room.
• Unplug unused electronics (computers, hair dryers, small appliances, stereos, etc) as even when not being used, they draw “phantom energy”, increasing your electricity bill.
• Wash your clothes in cold water, and then use the sun to dry your laundry outside!
• Carpool with your neighbours! And make sure that tires are inflated to get the most miles per gallon of fuel.
• Switch from outdated incandescent lightbulbs to energy efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs! They last up to 10 times longer, and use only a fraction of the energy!
• Invest in a solar water heater. Electric water heaters are estimated to account for 30% of your home’s energy usage, and with more than 300 days of sun per year, there’s no reason the sun can’t do the work!

Reduce waste

• Buy locally grown produce when available. Not only are you supporting local farmers, but local produce tends to have minimal packaging, cutting down on waste! Local produce also doesn’t travel as far to reach the market, therefore cutting down on the energy used in transportation!
• Compost food scraps and other organic waste such as grass clippings and fallen leaves. Compost is a great natural fertilizer, rich in nutrients which feed the soil and plants. Composting also reduces the amount of waste being placed in landfills where it decomposes without oxygen and produces the green house gas, methane. Green house gases trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere, causing global climate change.
• Recycle glass bottles like Vitamalt, Kalik, Sands, Guiness & Heineken! You even get a few dollars back for every case you return!
• Recycle your aluminium soda cans by dropping them off at a Cans for Kids collection depot! Money earned from recycling the aluminium goes back to local schools.
• Invest in reusable canvas shopping bags! Disposable plastic grocery bags end up in landfills after only one use, or worse, end up in oceans where they choke and kill marine life!
• Print double-sided and reuse scrap paper to cut down on your paper use! Also sign up for paperless statements and online bill-pay when available to cut down even more!

BTC Directory

“Going Green”

Going green doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. There are lots of simple ways to go green that add up to make a big difference! Save the earth (and money) at the same time! Who wouldn’t love that?

Water Conservation

1- Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth or wash dishes.

2- Be aware of the length of your showers. Cutting down your shower time by just 2 minutes can save 10 gallons of water or more!

3- Install low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators. These products add air to the water, giving you the same amount of pressure while using less water!

4- Flush toilets less by adhering to the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down” philosophy in your home.

5- Plant native, drought-tolerant plants in your garden as they require little to no watering.

6- If you must water your lawn, do it during the cooler hours of the evening and night, when less moisture is lost to evaporation.

Energy Conservation

1- Turn off lights and fans when you leave a room.

2- Unplug unused electronics (computers, hair dryers, small appliances, stereos, etc) as even when not being used, they draw “phantom energy”, increasing your electricity bill.

3- Wash your clothes in cold water, and then use the sun to dry your laundry outside!

4- Carpool with your neighbours! And make sure that tires are inflated to get the most miles per gallon of fuel.

5- Switch from outdated incandescent lightbulbs to energy efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs! They last up to 10 times longer, and use only a fraction of the energy!

6- Invest in a solar water heater. Electric water heaters are estimated to account for 30% of your home’s energy usage, and with more than 300 days of sun per year, there’s no reason the sun can’t do the work!

Reduce waste

1- Buy locally grown produce when available. Not only are you supporting local farmers, but local produce tends to have minimal packaging, cutting down on waste! Local produce also doesn’t travel as far to reach the market, therefore cutting down on the energy used in transportation!

2- Compost food scraps and other organic waste such as grass clippings and fallen leaves. Compost is a great natural fertilizer, rich in nutrients which feed the soil and plants. Composting also reduces the amount of waste being placed in landfills where it decomposes without oxygen and produces the green house gas, methane. Green house gases trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere, causing global climate change.

3- Recycle glass bottles like Vitamalt, Kalik, Sands, Guiness & Heineken! You even get a few dollars back for every case you return!

4- Recycle your aluminium soda cans by dropping them off at a Cans for Kids collection depot! Money earned from recycling the aluminium goes back to local schools.

5- Invest in reusable canvas shopping bags! Disposable plastic grocery bags end up in landfills after only one use, or worse, end up in oceans where they choke and kill marine life!

6- Print double-sided and reuse scrap paper to cut down on your paper use! Also sign up for paperless statements and online bill-pay when available to cut down even more!

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Harmony Hill

I dunno if I’ve mentioned it before, but Benji & I are buying a house! My (late) grandmother’s house! From my Dad! In 6 months-ish (when his tenants move out…) And we’re really really really really excited! :)

The house is in a neighbourhood called Harmony Hill (cute, right?) and we really love the feel there, and the location. It’s super central to all the amenities one could need, and not so far east that we have to battle an hour of traffic every weekday (we’re good & sick of that routine…) That traffic is so bad, it’s actually the reason why we invested in scooters; cuz you can just zip right down the middle of the 2 lanes (cautiously of course cuz scooters are pretty dangerous…)

my red rider :) and benji's in the background

Speaking of dangerous, yesterday, Benji actually had a little accident on his scooter. He was going down the first hill leaving my neighbourhood, and there were these pigeons in the road, and you know how pigeons always wait til the last second to flit out of the way? Yea, well this one didn’t move, so Benji overreacted and slammed on brakes (instead of hitting the damn thing), and lost control of the bike, was thrown from it down onto his shoulder, did a lil army roll and caught himself. Thank goodness he was wearing his $500 helmet, or who knows how much worse it could have been! But he was really shaken up nonetheless, cut up his palms pretty bad, and says he heard his shoulder “pop” when he hit the ground :(

grim reaper?

So he went to the doctor and had an x-ray and turns out he has a sprained acromioclavicularAC joint, and just needs some anti-inflammatory drugs and some rest. My strong man will be back to lifting heavy things in no time ;)

Wow, anyway, I got way off topic! The reason I was writing this post was to tell you that yesterday we met with the structural engineer at the house in Harmony Hill about the renovations that we want to do! He (Adrian) was really cool, and seems to have a good understanding of our vision for the property. We also told him that we want to renovate as green as possible, and he was pretty excited about that! As soon as the stupid, ass-backwards Bahamas passes the new energy policy, legalising the use of alternative energy (can someone explain to me what sense it makes for solar panels to be illegal in the Bahamas??? where we have over 300 days of sunshine annually?! ugh!), my house is gonna be covered in PV (photovoltaic) panels!! I’ve even been researching wind turbines to see how viable an option that might be for supplementing our power usage. And of course we’ll practice rainwater harvesting and I’m looking into these wastewater treatment and reuse systems so that we can recycle treated wastewater for use in irrigation or flushing toilets, etc.

SOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!

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Exuma Trip

Well, in follow-up to that last post (like 3 weeks ago…) I did in fact swim. I did not get struck by lightning. The waterproof iPod shuffle was awesome. And my arms were sore the next day. All in all, a very positive experience. Which makes it difficult to explain why I haven’t done it again? Hmm….Life just gets away from you some times, and before you know it, months have gone by! Oh well. I’ve been having a good time nonetheless!

Last week, Benji’s 2 best friends from college were in town, and I’d never met them, so that was fun! We made a super fun trip down to Exuma for 2 nights, slept aboard the NanSea (Benji’s Dad’s new 56ft Ocean Yacht) and had an all-around great time!!

ze NanSea

The area of Exuma where we stayed is part of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, and is absolutely stunning! I actually read a scientific article somewhere that said the clearest water in the world, is found in Exuma! It’s a no-take marine reserve too, so you see tonnes of wildlife! And there are lots of secluded cays and creeks and special places where you can have total peace and privacy; never seeing another soul.

I explored one such spot on Hawksbill Cay; a small creek, inaccessible by boat. It wasn’t the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever seen, although it was beautiful. But what really made that afternoon special was how alone  and peaceful I felt; how connected to nature and life I felt surrounded by pure silence and beauty. I wish I could feel that every day. So serene.

entrance to the creek

meandering thru the flats and mangroves

the water is so shallow and warm, like bath water!

just my footprints in the sand

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Legit!

In case you doubted the legitimacy of taking your blog carbon neutral so easily, check out this email I got this morning!

Hi Laura,

thank you so much for participating in our initiative and making your blog carbon neutral! Your tree will be planted this month by the Arbor Day Foundation. The scheduled start plant date was Monday, April 19 and the trees will be planted by a contracted crew. The roads are being plowed, all contracts solidified, and twelve shipments of 150,000 seedling each are being assembled. We thank you for the support!

There are still some trees looking for a sponsor. So if you know some people who have a blog or website, pass it on and we’ll make their blogs carbon neutral too!

Best,

Melanie
“Make it green”-team

DO IT ALREADY!!

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Carbon Neutral

How cool is this? All you have to do to get a tree planted is write a post about your blog being carbon neutral! It really couldn’t be any easier!

We should all know by now the importance of reducing our carbon emissions. Carbon = A greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere = Climate change (NOT “global warming”). Climate change = all kinds of crazy bad things. Think hurricanes, floods, droughts, famine, extinction, sea level rise. All. Very. Bad.

So do me a solid. If you have a blog, do what I did and write a short post about being carbon neutral and get a tree planted in your honour!

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Herbalicious

I said I was gonna do it, and goshdarnit, I did it!

Witness! MY HERB GARDEN!

Ta Daaaaa!!!

Waaahh Waahh…..slightly underwhelmed, no? Well, bummer as it may be, the nursery only had what you can see here. And what you’re looking at (left to right) is basil, rosemary, native thyme and mint.

Would you believe that stupid plastic fake terracotta thingy cost me $32! THIRTY TWO DOLLARS!!! The Bahamas is so ridiculously overpriced! Anyway, the herbies smell divine, and I can wait to cook with them!

I’m proud of me, and I know you are too! I tried something! :) Now let’s see if I can keep them alive!

close up of the little herbies

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Back on the Wagon

Wow. Random. I suddenly had a bunch of blog views on my post about dog breeding…which unfortunately never happened! Not with Shera at least. We’re hoping that if Brees turns out to be as great as we think he will be, we will breed him. But seeing as he’s a male, we wouldn’t have a whole litter, we’d prolly just get pick of the litter…but I’d be fine with that :-)

kisses for mumma!

On to other things now. I haven’t really been trying much of anything lately…which is maybe why I haven’t blogged much lately. I’ve decided, however, that today I am going to start a herb garden. Yup. AND, I’m going to get my composter back up and running (oops, did I not mention that I’ve been neglecting it the last couple weeks months? teehee) Now that our horrible, evil housekeeper “H” no longer works for us, it shouldn’t be as difficult to maintain. I swear I told her on a daily basis, no grapefruit, no banana peels, etc. And yet, they ended up jamming my poor composter EVERY DAY! Ugh! Seriously though! To the point that it actually broke, and I had to email NatureMill for them to send me new parts! And believe me, it’s no fun installing those new parts into the dirty stinky composter! Yeck!

Also, I discovered this cool new blog today called Herban Lifestyle! (so clever hey?) That’s actually what inspired me to start my herb garden tonight. But anyway, the point I was getting at was that she posted a recipe for Mulberry Pie! How cool is that?! If you’ve ever read my blog, you may recall that I have several mulberry trees in my yard! So I’m uber excited to try this new form of mulberry goodness!

My prospective list of herbs…and some non-herbs: (provided that the nursery has them in stock)

• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Basil
• Oregano
• Parsley (flat-leaf/Italian)
• Bay Leaf
• Mint
• Neem
• Lavender
• Garlic
• Arugula

SO. Do we think it’s a bit over ambitious? I’m not sure…

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New Job, amazingly…

Good news to report!

I’m no longer unemployed!!! Yayyyyyyz for dayz! :)

As of last week Monday, I am the new National Project Coordinator for the GEF Full Size Project in The Bahamas!

(sounds fancy, right? well…I think it does :P )

Here’s the back-story: While I was sitting on my butt at home, waiting for the Government to offer up a renewed contract so I could come back to work @ BEST, I was tipped off by a friend that BEST was accepting CVs from applicants for this position (and a few others). So I sent in my CV and got put on the list for the various positions to be filled (although this one was the one I really wanted, I was just eager to get back to work!)

SO: I interviewed for the position, which was a total disaster. First of all, they wanted to do it via Skype, cuz one of the ladies to be interviewing me is abroad at her UNEP office, and the other interviewers were very busy and couldn’t afford to leave their respective offices to come to a single location and interview me in person. I was not happy about this, but what choice did I have??

So I give them my very unprofessional Skype username, and we arrange for the call to occur at 1pm.

Well, when I received the call, everytime I picked it up, the connection would drop. This happened ohhh…I’d say about 25 times. So my friend who’s arranging the call, calls my cell like, wtf is going on? I dunno man!

The solution? I’ll call the landline, and be put on speakerphone, and all the interviewers will be on speaker from the computer and we’ll do it that way. Speakerphone to speakercomputer. Terrible.

Aside from that, I HATED the interview structure. So rigid. “OK Laura, we have 9 questions for you, please answer as succinctly as possible…” Uhhhh….ok?

“What characteristics do you think are most valuable in a leader?” (Seriously? I do not see the value in this type of interview question…such garbage…)

“Please describe a situation where you had to organise a team.”

Oh, and let me not forget to mention, 5 of the people I’m interviewing with, I worked with on a weekly if not daily basis; one of which was my direct supervisor. No room for “embellishment” in this interview…ugh…miserable. So I’m answering these horrible, pointless questions as best I can, but the Skype connections keep dropping. So after I bumble through a question, I’m asked to REPEAT my answer cause so-and-so dropped and didn’t hear it. WTF!? I can’t remember the foolishness that just spewed forth from my mouth! Oy vay…

So after the excruciating interview was over, and I felt like I had totally bombed. I texted my fried (who had also been sitting in on my interview) and was like, GOOD LORD, THAT WAS PAINFUL! To which she replied “Yea, I could hear it in your voice.”

Shit. Bottle of wine. Open. Now!

Well, I obviously got the job in the end, so I guess it couldn’t have been that bad (unless the other applicants managed to do worse than me) So, YAY ME! YAY EMPLOYMENT!

Just thought I’d share that experience with ya! :)

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Cold Showers

You might be wondering from my last post, why I would say I’m gonna shower and then “more on that later”, as if this is something unusual or interesting…But here’s why: it’s friggin’ FREEZING here the last few days!!! And yes, I know all you northerners are probably thinking something along the lines of, cold? in the Bahamas? pshht please! But it is!! And while 50’s and 60’s may not sound cold to you, in a country where homes are not built with HEATING systems, it’s EFFIN’ FRIGID! There’s nothing you can do but shut the windows, bundle up and eat hot food…

And I also say this to you thick-blooded northerners…it is still damp, and very windy…so add that to a high of 59*F and it’s prolly more like 49*F!

God damn I hate the cold. Oh, I just remembered why I was writing this. The shower. I think the cold affects my brain function…

So BECAUSE it has been so cold/non-sunny, I have been reluctant to shower because #1-with no sun, our solar water heater can’t do its job, and I have to turn on the crappy, inefficient electric water heater…and #2-Even if there IS hot water, it’s still friggin’ freezing when you get out!!!!

Lucky for me (only lucky cuz I don’t have bills to pay) my non-showered grossness has not been inflicted on the public since I haven’t had work this week. Not cuz I’m on vacay, but because my (and several other coworkers’) contracts expired on Jan 2nd, so when we went to work on Monday, they sent us home, telling us the new contracts hadn’t been drawn up or approved as yet, and to protect them and us, we should go home…Sooooo…I been straight chillin’ (literally, Brrrr!)

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