Strive for green

We try to reduce and re-use as much as possible in our apartment, but as everyone knows, it is pretty much impossible to not generate waste (especially in our culture of mass consume/mass dispose). We buy in bulk, purchase milk in refillable containers, bring our own bags to the supermarket, etc., but by the end of the week we always have a sizable bin-full of recyclables which I sort into the containers outside our building.

As I took out the recyclables today, I was stopped in my tracks by the dentist at the office next to our building. As I lifted the lid to the container for paper, the dentist asked me “what are you doing?” I replied, “Recycling” to which he informed me these were his recycling containers. Incredulous, I suggested there was no harm in dropping my recyclables in the containers as they are owned by the City of Berkeley. Apparently, he has to pay the city, and has had problems with the containers getting overfilled by occupants of my building.

So, I figured my building MUST have its own recycling containers – this is Berkeley, right?

Wrong! I first asked one of the building maintenance guys who I see on a regular basis, and he told me there are no recycling bins for our building and to just throw it all into the trash. Yeah… NO!

I live across the hall from the managers of my building, and they informed me that the landlords (Everest Properties) do not want any recycling bins because they will get in the way of paid parking spaces.

Next I called the City of Berkeley Recycling and Refuse center (510-981-7270) and talked to a very nice lady named Rowella. She informed me that recycling services are provided free to businesses and large apartment buildings in Berkeley (the dentist was either mis-informed or lied, but I think the former). In order to set up recycling, my landlord simply has to call them and they will provide us with bins.

So the obvious solution is to just ignore the dentist and recycle after business hours, but I want to be a good neighbor and not contribute the the over-stuffing of his bins. So now I need to convince the landlord that there is space next to the building for our own recycling bins! I never imagined there would be large apartment buildings in Berkeley of all places that still do not have their own recycling containers!

This time of year in Tahoe (and elsewhere) yellowjackets become a major nuisance to those who like to eat outdoors and even a threat to people with allergies. The aggressive little critters have ruined many a breakfast on the deck and afternoon BBQ’s! We also got a huge nest of them in our attic this year, and hoped to find a way to avoid using horrifically toxic products like Raid. When you go to the hardware and grocery store, you can generally find traps that cost about $7, but they work very slowly and waste materials and money! Check out our home-made method to eliminate yellowjackets:

1. The first step is to get your materials together: an empty carton/bottle, string, dish soap (Oasis works great), a chunk of fish, and scissors.
   
2. Start by cutting the top off the plastic milk bottle so you have a cylindrical container.
   
3. Next, poke four holes in the container which you will use to attach string to.
   
4. Cut four equal lengths of string.
   
5. Tie the string into the container and together so you can hang the container.
   
6. Tie a piece of string through the fish, making sure the meaty side of the fish is facing towards toward the bottom of the string.
   
7. Hang the fish in the center just over the top rim of the container.
   
8. Fill the container with water, and add about a tea-spoon of soap (the soap breaks the surface tension of the water so when the yellowjackets hit it, they get trapped).
   
9. Hang the trap anywhere you want and soon it will look like this:
   

As you can see, we got about 100 in there, and we only had the trap up for about 12 hours! The nest in our attic has been mostly cleared out and we can now actually use our deck again!