Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- And Now, Back to Your Local News…Since the weather’s getting better, I’m sure we’re all totally jonesing to get onto the trails, but in general, they’re a mess. It’s a bummer to see nice singletracks get trashed and widened, so like all of you, I’m grinding my teeth in annoyance while I try to be patient. The good news is that you [...] […]
- Downieville, Take ThreeOkay, well, things went pretty haywire in race promotion after the registration debacle. The organizer received so many hateful emails and comments about the mishap that it made him wonder if he should even bother putting the race on. I can’t blame him, really. In his shoes I might do the same thing. It sounds [...] […]
- And Now, Back to Your Local News…
- Edgy Veggie
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How to start seeds
Carol O’Meara gives you a shopping list for seedlings that you can get started very soon in your own home. What to buy for starting seeds:
Here’s Carol’s shopping list: Read more
The urban farming challenge — why New York can’t be all that green
There are plenty of reasons why I love urban culture. For one, I can close my eyes and do the same thing that urban planners do — imagine a really wonderfully efficient world in which I live, work and play within about a two- or three-mile radius. In fact, this is mostly accurate in my own life right now, but I’m guilty of things (like occasional travel by air) that negate the heck out of that.
There’s also the idea of urban farming. I love green roofs. I love the perseverance of people doing things like cultivating potatoes on their porches or bees in Brooklyn. I love it.
But I have a hard time when someone goes out of their way to write a whole book and make the claim that the greenest place you can live is a city like New York. Read more
Aquaponics: Fish poop makes for good vegetables
Fish poop makes good vegetables. That’s what I learned about aquaponics from the Camera this week.
You know about hydroponics, but here’s the picture with aquaponics: you’re growing veggies and raising fish at the same time:
The vegetables and the fish work together in a sustainable loop. The fish waste provides fertilizer, which is made accessible to the plants via bacteria that convert the ammonia to nitrates, which feed the plants. Once the system reaches bacterial balance, the only work is tending the plants.
That way, you’re not using chemical fertilizers, like you might in hydroponics.
Boulder’s Sylvia Bernstein uses aquaponics to grow pepper plants, six kinds of heirloom tomatoes, English cucumbers, peppers and herbs “with nothing but fish waste and trout chow.”
Trout chow! Mmm! Read more
Cool old-timey beer production video reminds us how far we’ve come
If I had the time, I’d make a remix of this wonderful video with some footage of solar arrays and other neat energy innovations in brewing on the front end — and leave the rest intact until the very final “thanks to coal” bit.
We’ve definitely come a long way from loads purely coal fueled breweries to trends toward wind and solar powered sustainable, green breweries. Brooklyn Brewery was early in the trend in 2003 when they converted to 100% wind powered energy.
Of course as we’ve posted here before, New Belgium Brewery’s 870-panel solar array is nothing to sneeze at, with Odell Brewing Company not far behind getting 39 percent of energy needs covered by their solar array.
And there are other cool energy-saving marvels, too — different varieties of heat recapturing are used at New Belgium, famously at Sierra Nevada in California, and Canada’s Steam Whistle Brewing might have one of the more unique green strategies–using a deep lake water cooling refrigeration system.
As long as you’re asking, you’ll also get people reminding you that consuming locally-brewed beer (as with consuming locally-produced anything) uses less energy, so the craft brew boom of the last decade and a half, along with changes in packaging and shipping (how heavy did those crates of bottles look in the video?) have cut down on the total energy needed.
Not only are sustainable breweries good for the environment, but they also help brewers cuts costs, which is probably a big part of why greener brewing is on the rise.
–Dave Burdick and Lindsay Gulisano
Love watching the Super Bowl? Love snacking? Consider yourself a greenie, veg-head, sustainability devotee? We have what you need.
Super Bowl XLIV | From Flickr user RMTip21
This Sunday, millions of people will sit down to watch the Colts and the Saints battle it out at Super Bowl XLIV. However, all the Boulderites out there are probably looking for a way to make their Super bowl parties a little lighter and a little greener.
From watching the game on a more environmentally friendly TV, to cooking with sustainable ingredients, to eating vegetarian, greening your Super bowl can be simple.
Here are a some guilt-free, game-appropriate recipes that will please any football enthusiast, whether they care about sustainability or not. Read more
Sustainable Super Bowl recipe: Jambalaya
Want to whip up a Super Bowl meal in the spirit of New Orleans? Try out this recipe from Boulder’s Jax Fish House for Jambalaya, which uses sustainable fish and wild-caught U.S. shrimp. Read more
Vegetarian Super Bowl recipe: Mexican chili
As part of Big Green Boulder’s Holistic Super Bowl Package, try a tasty vegetarian chili that knocks out the meat but keeps all of its hearty flavor with a secret ingredient — chocolate! Read more
‘The Cove’ nominated for Oscar
“The Cove,” the documentary film director by Boulder’s own Louie Psihoyos, just added a line to its C.V. and it might get one more. In the long list — really long list — of Oscar nominations this year, “The Cove” got a bid for best documentary feature.
The film follows a team of photographers and videographers bent on documenting a massive dolphin kill in Japan. Psihoyos says that while some progress has been made, the kill continues.
Other nominees in the category are “Food, Inc.,” “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” and “Which Way Home.”
Treehugger smackdown: Washington City Paper calls ‘em out on cans
We just posted about canned beer, so this is fun:
Mama's Little Yella Pils | flickr user walkn
… author Lloyd Alter takes a wrong step when he writes:
“Nobody a mile north or south of the American border touches the stuff in cans, it just doesn’t taste as good.”
This is wrong. Cans now hold some of the best beers in the world, or at least some of my favorites. And unlike 75 years ago, beer cans today are made with a water-based internal coating that keeps the aluminum from ever touching liquid, so if your beer tastes like tin foil, it’s probably just a crappy beer.
Damn skippy! Tasty canned beer, we salute you!
Hop on over to the blog in question to let ‘em know about your favorite protected-from-the-evil-day-star beer.
Treehugger’s point, though, is totally valid: we’re just not very good at using refillable containers here.
Raise your own chickens, sure, but be prepared!
After Longmont starting issuing permits last year to allow residents to raise their own chickens, many people, like Melissa Held, jumped at the opportunity to form a closer relationship with their food and where it comes.
While Longmont has seen few problems with urban chickens, a story in the Daily Camera shows that raising chickens may be more complicated than expected: Read more
