Daily Loaf

St. Petersburg College now offers a Bachelor of Applied Science Degree in Sustainability Management. The program provides relevant and specialized training in:

- Energy and environmental management
- Sustainable enterprise planning
- Sustainable business strategies
- Triple bottom line management
- Resource management
- Sustainability in the natural environment
- Green construction and urban planning
- Legal aspects of sustainability
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Here are numbers 5 and 6 from my list of 12 ways to start living greener and smarter.

Picking up trash on the ground is part of living green, if we all took 10 minutes a day and cleaned up the waste and trash we walk over, everyday, it would make a difference, not only in our environment but in taking pride and investing in our communities.
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You may only have thought of mushrooms you buy at the supermarket, “psychedelic mushrooms”, or maybe even wild gourmet mushrooms, but have you thought about how they grow and what benefits mushrooms contain, not only nutritionally, but environmentally?

Mushrooms can save the world, I think they can, and so does author Paul Stamets, who has dedicated the last 30 years proving so. Over this time he has discovered 4 new species of mushrooms and pioneered countless techniques in the field of edible and medicinal mushroom cultivation. In 2008, Paul received the National Geographic Adventure Magazine’s Green-Novator and the Argosy Foundation’s E-chievement Awards. He was also named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” in their November–December 2008 issue.
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You might be interested to know that Greenpeace has come to town and has just opened an office in Temple Terrace. They held their first press conference last Wednesday, the 27th, at the Florida Aquarium. Greenpeace, known for their environmental campaigning and non-violent action, dropped a bomb on Florida.

Matthew De Vlieger, the Florida Field Organizer at Greenpeace, declared Wednesday that “Florida emitted more global warming pollution per capita from 1960-2005 than 164 countries, including Denmark, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom!” Read the rest of this entry »

Woken up this morning at 7:30 again by my neighbor’s “yard guys” with their gas-powered leaf blowers, mowers and edgers (a.k.a.: power tools for the yard). I cant help but wonder why they have to come out, seemingly once a week, to groom his bright green lawn. How is this sustainable? Not only are they soaking their grass with drinking water and chemical fertilizers, but also using gas powered tools to keep it in check, every week!

Michael Manlowe, owner of Twigs & Leaves Florida Native Nursery & Garden Center has a solution: “dig it up, lose your lawn and plant native, it makes sense.”  Florida native plants require a fraction of the water and no mowing or fertilizers.

Native flowers and berries sustain wild life like butterflies (the nursery is swarming with butterflies), birds, bees – a whole native ecosystem will thrive here with little help from us humans. Left to its own, a Florida native landscape reseeds, provides habitats and becomes a beautiful, self-sustaining ecosystem. Native yards allow for free time and much less yard work, compared to a typical labor-intensive lawn. Read the rest of this entry »

These are the 1st and 2nd things we can do to live smarter from  my list of 12 ways to start living greener and smarter.

Composting: a simple process that continuously occurs in nature, often without any assistance from us. Eliminate food and yard waste with compost piles and worm bins.

The average New York City household discards two pounds of organic waste each day—adding up to more than one million tons of organic material a year. When we discard this “waste,” we lose a potential resource that can help beautify our parks, gardens, and blocks, even our window boxes and houseplants. That’s why the NYC Department of Sanitation set up programs to recycle organic material through composting.

Start a compost pile easily with a chicken wire “U” against a fence or wall. Even if you just toss it into a pile in the corner of the yard and throw leaves on it every now and then, you will be reducing waste you have bagged, picked up and incinerated, while adding essential enzymes, nutrients and minerals back to our starving soil. You will notice seeds sprouting up all over, tomatoes, eggplant and squash from your compost. I plant and grow these “volunteer” seeds with good results. Some people have issues with “volunteers” from non-organic food because these seeds could be genetically modified to produce sterile plants and seeds. Read the rest of this entry »

Green Cities™ Florida hosted in Orlando was last week (May 20th & 21st) at the Orange County Convention Center. The overall focus of the event was to bring businesses and municipalities together to achieve green goals to save the planet, increase profits, and to qualify for possible federal funding. The Green Cities™ conference “demystified ’sustainability’ and provided tools, steps and resources from top experts and educators”.

There was a ribbon cutting ceremony and official “Flipping the Switch” for the new 1 MW Solar Electric System atop the Orange County Convention Center. This is the largest installation of its kind in the Southeast US, and one of the largest outside of California and the Pacific Northwest. This installation was installed with the help of a $1.8 million grant from the state of Florida, an example of the kind of partnerships that Green Cities™ Florida advocates. Read the rest of this entry »

The greening of our community starts with you. Here is a brief outline of 12 things you can do immediately to live smarter:

1. Turn your food scraps and yard waste into compost to replenish your starving soil.

2. Start a worm bin, worms eat food waste (garbage) and turn it into nutrient rich, organic soil.

3. Collecting and use rainwater, graywater and air conditioning runoff to water your plants.  Also, conserve the water you use by being conscious when you have the water running. Read the rest of this entry »

The horrifying and tragic shooting death of 8-year old Paris Whitehead Hamilton this past month sparked a wellspring of grief and outrage among neighbors in Bartlett Park’s south St. Petersburg neighborhood.  In a move to heal and renew the community, members of Green Florida have launched a new project in Paris’ memory to transform front yards in the neighborhood into gardens integrating Florida native plants and vegetables.

Working with residents, including Paris Whitehead Hamilton’s family members, the first Paris Gardens are being designed with donated soil, plants and volunteer labor to take dying grass lawns and replace them with drought tolerant landscaping and money-saving vegetable gardens.  “Our neighborhoods need to provide for our needs!  The Paris Gardens can help provide food, work and job training opportunities, a way for neighbors to get to know each other, water savings and a beautiful, peaceful place to live”,  says Andrea Hildebran of Green Florida and Bartlett Park Community Garden.

Green Florida Potluck Supper and Organizing Meeting – Wednesday, May 13th, 6:00 pm Read the rest of this entry »