Daily Loaf

We are told that we must recycle. So we put our cans, glass and plastics in our curbside bins. Or we collect our bits and drive them to the nearest recycling station. Maybe we even take old electronics to swap shops to keep the chemicals from leeching into the ground.

But what about the less obvious stuff? What about recycling our own hair?

Think about it. We’re always shedding it, and our heads always (sometimes) replenish it. If it doesn’t get tossed in the waste bin, it gets washed down the shower drain where it creates an icky clog that the eeeevil commercials tell us we need to use chemicals to unclog. So save your hair (and your drain pipes) and try some fun ways to keep using it.

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One of the largest producers of excess carbon dioxide — the cement industry — might get a green facelift in the next few years.

It is estimated that manufacturing conventional cement creates about 5 percent of global CO2 emissions (even more than the airline industry) by heating limestone and other ingredients to super-high temperatures. Some new cement companies are looking to change the process significantly and either lower or counter their CO2 production.

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Back in 2007, when Congress passed a law setting more stringent rules on the manufacture of light bulbs, a lot of people sounded the death knell for Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb. Australia got rid of them, along with a few other countries, and news articles and blog entries in the United States dubbed the planned phasing out as a full-on “ban.” Now, with President Obama’s most recent call to make lighting more efficient in homes and businesses, it again seems that the incandescent bulb will go the way of the dodo in the name of energy savings.

Or will it? It seems that some folks are instead using this governmental push for efficiency as the kick in the pants they needed to finally stop making outdated products. Read the rest of this entry »

I love vodka unapologetically. I’ll mix it into sodas as readily as college co-eds do so with rum. I would pretend it was water in my glass during a rough night bartending. If it’s a good enough vodka, I will happily swig it straight from the bottle and cut out that pesky middleman of a glass. If I could somehow justify it to myself, I’d probably pour vodka on my breakfast cereal instead of milk. To me, it’s its own food group.

After years of “refining my palate” (read: “drinking copiously”), I’ve gained an appreciation for a quality vodka. For a long time, my go-to vodka was Boru — Irish (like me!), quintuple distilled, delightfully inexpensive ($19.99 for a handle at ABC), and dang tasty. But now I think I have a new vodka, and to make it even more wondrous, it’s “green.” Read the rest of this entry »

Disclaimer: I am not a wine aficionado — I can be pretty picky, and I might have a bias against some styles. Don’t completely take my word for it here — get out there, try your own organic wines, and find your new favorites!

Being green doesn’t mean you have to give up your vices. Organic wines are growing in popularity, and that means there’s more variety for you to enjoy your sweet, sweet vino without feeling any green guilt.

The requirements for earning the title of “organic” differ from country to country, but here in the United States, it essentially means that no fertilizers or pesticides are used on the farmlands, and no sulfites have been added to preserve what’s inside the bottles.

The real fun is in wines produced through biodynamic farming. Based on the principles of the late Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner, biodynamics use animals for pest control and fertilizer, just like with organic farming. But here, planting and harvesting are based around the moon cycles, as well. The Emiliana wine family took its three best vineyards and converted them to organic and biodynamic farming, and Emiliana Organico in Chile’s Valle Colchagua is a prime example of a biodynamic farm. Chickens eat bugs and crap out natural fertilizer. Ladybugs fly around to also control insect pests. Llamas and ducks even plod around the vineyard, chewing up weeds and providing yet more fertilizer. Read the rest of this entry »

The story of the What About Blue? organization starts with the tale of how the name came about. A group of three Tampa Bay friends wanted to raise awareness about the global water crisis. Kevin Lilly, Jesse Landis and Missy Hurley wanted to form an active group to make a positive change. “We were trying to think of names,” said Lilly. They definitely wanted something easy for people to remember them by. They realized that color-branding just might do the trick. “When I say ‘pink,’ you think of breast cancer awareness. When I say ‘green,’ you think of the environment,” Lilly said. The group started playing around with that concept, and suddenly Lilly blurted out as a color possibility: “What about blue?” And that started it all. Read the rest of this entry »

People know all about recycling everyday items, right? Glass bottles, aluminum cans, newspaper, steel cans (where accepted), plastic bottles — these are pretty simple things to keep track of. How about those items you use every day but don’t really think about chucking until they’re dead? Television sets, DVD players and computers are all items we pretty much use on a daily basis, but when they stop working or you’re hankering for an upgrade, what should you do with them?

No matter what, do not throw them in the regular trash. Many of those circuit boards probably have lead or cadmium on them. (Sure, it could be zinc, copper, or something else less nasty, but do you really want to risk it?) When such elements aren’t disposed of properly or reused in a safe way, they can leach into the ground and cause all sorts of problems to the soil and water table. When life depends on water and a clean aquifer, this resonates with everyone who lives in Florida.

But fear not, intrepid recyclers! There are spots throughout the Tampa Bay area just itching to take in your old electronics, grind them up into their separate components, and redistribute the metals and chemicals as they can: Read the rest of this entry »