Daily Loaf

Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. For one night only, the Roaring Twenties are back, so grab your flapper dresses and fedoras and head out for a night at the theater.  Next weekend’s event features the 1920’s silent film Souls for Sale, about an ordinary girl’s rise to Hollywood stardom. There are also vaudeville acts, a 1920’s costume contest (for those of you who didn’t get enough of dressing up at Halloween) and raffle prizes.

Come out for an night of fun and contribute to the community by making a $5 donation or bringing three nonperishable foods or dried goods to benefit RCS Food Bank. Thurs., Nov. 12, 6-9 p.m., St. Petersburg College Clearwater Campus Teaching Auditorium, 2465 Drew St. Clearwater; contact honors.college@spcollege.edu for more info. Sign Language interpreters provided.

The Issue
Most of us spend more waking hours while at work than at home, we might as well be eco-aware while doing so.

Be Part of the Solution
What can we do to be more sustainable?  How about:

Turn off you computer at night!  A computer left on 24 hours a day costs your company between $115 and $160 in electricity annually!

Don’t use screensavers.  Instead, set your monitor to turn off automatically after 10 minutes of non-use and set computers to sleep/hibernate after 30 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

If you don’t understand the definitions of each of the terms, you may not end up buying what you are looking for!

Here’s what you need to know…

The USDA enforces proper organic production and categorizes the terms in the following manner:

-Products with the “100% Organic” seal include products with 100% organically produced (raw and processed) ingredients.

-Products with the “USDA Certified Organics” seal are made with 95% or more organic ingredients. Read the rest of this entry »

The Florida Gulf Coast Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council will sponsor a Green Living Expo and Sustainable Science Fair Saturday, Oct. 24, from 10AM to 3PM at the Science Center of Pinellas County.

The Expo portion of the program focuses on homeowners and other interested parties.  The Science Fair is aimed at middle school students.

There will be several education sessions planned, some of which include:

• Tax credits and incentives
• Sustainability 101 for middle school children
• Greening your home’s interior, including interior design products and cleaning products
• Greening your home’s exterior, including landscaping and lawn care
• Energy efficiency, what it means to be energy efficient and the savings benefits to becoming more efficient
  Read the rest of this entry »

The Issue

We try so hard to make eco-minded decisions for ourselves that we forget about man’s (and woman’s) best friend!

-Typical dogs produce 274 pounds of waste each year, and each pet litter bag take up to 100 years to biodegrade!

-We wouldn’t eat low quality foods, so why should our pets? Read the rest of this entry »

The Issue:

Environmentally friendly and humane residential pest and rodent control.

The Larger Issue:

-Researchers have linked the ingredients in the typical residential aerosol pesticides to cancer and other diseases.

-Mosquitoes can carry and transmit diseases and viruses like Malaria, Encephalitis and West Nile Virus.

-Typical ant-killers may cause nervous-system issues in dogs, cats, and birds. Read the rest of this entry »

The Issue

Only 5% of pesticides reach target weeds, the rest ends up in our water supply or the air we breathe. Runoff from fertilizers pollutes streams and lakes and cause algae blooms, depleted oxygen and damage to aquatic life.

Research has found that dogs exposed to herbicide-treated lawns can double their chance of developing lymphoma and bladder cancer.

Of 30 commonly used pesticides: 16 are toxic to birds, 24 to fish, and 11 to bees.  In the U.S. alone, pesticides poison approximately 65 million birds each year.

Prolonged exposure to pesticides can cause increased incidences of cancer, certain organ damage, asthma and allergies. Read the rest of this entry »

St. Petersburg College Sustainability Club members, Dynamet, Inc. and Gateway Organic Farm have partnered with High Point Elementary School students, teachers and a gardening expert to develop a garden which will have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.

The garden is located on the High Point Elementary School grounds at 5921 150th Avenue North in Clearwater. It covers about 1,700 square feet, but may be enlarged later. Read the rest of this entry »

In the era of ever increasing utility bills and shrinking storage space, tankless water heaters seem to be all the rage.  Let’s take a minute to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of going tankless.

Conventional water heaters require a great amount of time and energy to warm.  Tankless water heaters provide instant, unlimited access to hot water.  In fact, when installed at each hot water faucet, tankless water heaters can be up to 40% more energy efficient than the conventional water heaters and run at 99% efficiency (while brand new conventional heaters are at 80%). Read the rest of this entry »

Eco-adventurer David de Rothschild plans to sail 11,000 miles from San Francisco to Sydney by way of the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch on his 60-foot catamaran called the Plastiki.  That in itself is a big deal, however the amazing thing is that the catamaran is made of used two-liter plastic bottles!  “Our philosophy of throwing everything away has to change,” says de Rothschild. “I want to use the Plastiki as a platform to help people think of waste as a resource.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here are two upcoming lectures on environmentalism, sustainability, and conservation, one presented by a St. Petersburg College professor, the other hosted at St. Petersburg College.

The first presentation will be held Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 7:30 until 8:30pm at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve’s Lake Maggiore Environmental Education Center, and led by SPC Professor Christopher Nichol.

During the talk Professor Nichol will discuss the Tampa Bay Estuary, the largest open-water estuary in Florida.  He will present the multitude of unique habitats and their inhabitants, threats to the bay, and some of the things that people are doing to ensure that this beautiful resource will remain productive for many years.

Lake Maggiore Environmental Education Center is located at 1101 Country Club Way South in St. Petersburg.  For more information, please call Boyd Hill Nature Preserve at (727) 893-7326.

The second lecture, sponsored by the SPC Friends of Florida Environmental Club will be held Thursday, September 10th 2009, 12:30 until 1:30 pm in the Natural Sciences Building, room SC236 of SPC’s St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus (6605 Fifth Avenue North, St. Petersburg).
Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Finding an emotional connection with our planet- Doing so allows us to look at what our needs are in life and what is of the highest and greatest importance to us and our environment.

Best of the Bay Readers’ Poll 2009: The race for Greenest Politician has Linda Saul-Sena in the lead- Who do you think should take the title of this year’s Greenest Politician in the Bay?

Clean energy and anti-offshore drilling rally in Ybor this Thursday- Thursday, August 27th, join Sierra Club, 1Sky Florida, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and other environmental groups for a real grassroots rally outside Big Oil’s staged gathering.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not easy being green, you work hard to live sustainably, and at the same time you take every opportunity to enlighten others to live socially and environmentally responsible lives, if you didn’t you wouldn’t be reading this Creative Loafing Green Community post.

Here’s an idea…

It’s nice to see the “please print only if necessary” or “please consider the environment before printing this email” messages at the bottom of emails, but that statement really means nothing.  If you are going to add a tag (signature) to the end of every email you send, consider an informative/educational message.  Think about changing your email tag to include an environmentally meaningful and thought provoking fact.

For example:
Read the rest of this entry »

Progress Energy announced that it applied for $200 million in U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) federal infrastructure funds for the development of an electric Smart Grid in the Carolinas and Florida.  The DOE grant would be shared equally between the two states.

A “Smart Grid” is a modernized digital electric transmission and distribution system that delivers detailed, real-time energy use information to customers. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Fixing sprawl and redesigning suburbia- Grant Rimbey CNU explores a possible strategy towards improving existing sprawl. Fixing the sprawl that we have, along with sprawl demolition and recycling, are strategies that could be employed in the future as a new green industry.

Nation’s largest solar facility to be in DeSoto County by next year- Florida Power and Light is currently building the nation’s largest photovoltaic plant in DeSoto County, a $173.5 million, 25 megawatt solar generating facility.

Fresh: New Thinking About What We’re Eating screening – What’s wrong with the mega-industrial food industry- Struggling small farms, problems with food safety rules and the mega-industrial food industry, and a film about all of the above.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Issue:

-During the school year, each student will create 240 pounds of waste.

-The average family with school age children will spend $594.24 on back-to-school purchases this year!

-During the school year, the average school throws away 38 tons of paper, the equivalent of 644 trees!

-Each year, six billion pens are thrown away in the U.S.!

-During the school year, each elementary school cafeteria creates 18,760 pounds of waste.

-Schools use more than $6 billion in energy every year and about $1.5 billion (or enough to hire about 30,000 new teachers) is wasted due to inefficiency! Read the rest of this entry »

The town of Arcadia in DeSoto County is currently building the nation’s largest photovoltaic plant.

According to Florida Power & Light (FPL) the $173.5 million, 25 megawatt solar generating facility should be operating by the second quarter of 2010.

In February, FPL broke ground on its DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center: Florida’s first commercial solar energy facility.  The facility is projected to produce an average of 42,000 MWh of electricity annually.  This enough to meet the needs of over 3,000 homes or over 7,000 people; nearly 20% of DeSoto County.
Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Sustainable beer 101: A guide to growlers- Benefits of refillable beer jugs far exceed the lure of fresh tap beer.

Refresh your mind, body and spirit by reconnecting with nature- Living in such a busy world these days overloaded with technology leaves little time to get back to the basics and connect with the planet we live on. Take some time out of your busy schedule and reconnect with nature, which will balance you physically, mentally and spiritually.

Ronald McDonald gets a pie in the face from PETA protester- Ronald McDonald takes one in the kisser from a PETA protester who is against McDonald’s “controlled-atmosphere killing” of chickens.

St. Petersburg College and Tampa Bay green building chapter announce partnership- St Petersburg College’s Corporate Training Office announced a partnership with the Florida Gulf Coast Chapter (FGCC) of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to provide a comprehensive sustainable building operations training course based on the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance rating system.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Issue
Hot water consumption!

The Greater Issue
Between 80 and 90 percent of the energy used to heat water is wasted.

With 110-million households in the country, that’s a lot of inefficiently used energy.

The cost of heating water amounts to 14% of your utility bill.

Be Part of the Solution
You don’t have to take cold showers, eat on dirty dishes or wear dirty clothes to conserve energy and save money.  Follow these simple steps to reduce your hot-water consumption:
Read the rest of this entry »

St Petersburg College’s Corporate Training Office announced a partnership with the Florida Gulf Coast Chapter (FGCC) of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to provide a comprehensive sustainable building operations training course based on the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance rating system.

The course will be available August 17th.

According to the USGBC, LEED for Existing Buildings: O&M is the tool for the operation and maintenance of commercial and institutional buildings.  The certification system identifies and rewards best practices and describes ways for using less energy, water and natural resources; for improving indoor environment; and for uncovering operating inefficiencies. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Celebrating Independence Day or creating environmental disaster? – Kelly Rothwell looks at the littered aftermath of Fourth of July celebrations and wonder why, instead of giving back in celebration of their freedom, people decide to light off fireworks, leaving mass amounts of debris in the water and on the beach.

Local Food: Dinner in, and from, the garden at Gateway Organic Farm – Chef Gui Alinat gives information about Gateway Organic Farm’s next “Dinner in the Garden” event, an incredible local foods experience featuring nine Bay area chefs.

Read the rest of this entry »

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
Read the rest of this entry »