Vanishing Lunch Meat

This ad jumped out at me. First you see this:



Then you turn the page and you see:



Did you notice anything?

The trail of packaging left behind the vanishing lunch meat is a given; we are not supposed to notice it. It says so right there on the page. “Now you see it… Now you don’t.”

I don’t?

Is there any value in taking the time to notice the assumptions embedded in these kinds of messages before they wash over us like a morphine drip? For example, what do ads for kitchen garbage bags, a stopover for those invisible lunch meat packages, assume? Kitchen scraps are garbage. It follows that your kitchen garbage stinks (Buy the scented bags...). It's unsightly (There's a new "blackout" bag you can buy...) and it's messy (Good news! You can buy bags that are strong enough hold a piano...).

These ads wouldn't fly without a widely accepted assumption that kitchen compost is garbage. Without it, those pine fresh nylon-reenforced roles of plastic would join the Bacon Genie in the Hucksters Hall of Fame.

• Hefty Blackout Bag Commercial - Video
  
• "The Smell is in your kitchen" - Video
  
• Hefty Ulta Flex Bags - Video
  
• Hefty Steel-Sak Bags - Video
  
• Jackie Chan Hefty Ad - Video
  
• 9 News Colorado - Garbage Bag Face Off - Video

It's difficult to escape the Kitchen Compost is Garbage message. The other night, Brian and I were watching a documentary where a subject in the film pitched an overripe mango in the trashcan. Brian immediately looked to me for a reaction and he got it.

"Someday, we'll look at that and say, 'You're kidding? People did that?'"

Learning to Manage Food

Has our wealth completely killed the instinct to preserve and cherish the stuff that keeps us alive?

We waste an embarrassingly amount of food in our house. Brian brings home a carton of blueberries and I think, “Let’s be honest. Just put them in the compost pile.” Or, if the last leaf of lettuce ends up in my lunch with the last slice of bread, I make an announcement as if recognition were in order. Now I’m on the Daily Show telling the world, “Keep your herbs in a glass of water. Better yet, grow your own!”

In reality, we are far from model citizens. We waste a lot of food even though I’d rather admit to skipping out on my own wedding to shoot heroin and watch COPS than tell you that I wasted a carrot. Realizing that it takes two years to grow a pineapple sharpened my sensitivity to that vague uneasiness most of us feel deep in our gut when the apple in the crisper gets mushy. So, I’m trying to learn better food management skills.

As it turns out, storing the parsley in a vase of water resulted in a slimy gag-inducing concoction. And mistrusting the bread crumbs I dried for – stuffing? – I gave them to the sparrows after a full week of pretending that I was Julia Child. On the other hand, the bruised tomatoes made a decent salad dressing. So, John Stewart should be calling any minute.

What are your tips for food waste prevention?

• Keeping Herbs Fresh Bouquet-Style
  
• Recipes using breadcrumbs
  
• Fresh Tomato Salad Dressing
  

What have you learned from the dirt?

The garden teaches patience and faith in small steps. It assures us that something is happening, even when it doesn’t feel like it. What have you learned from the dirt?

Stay cool, put the shades down

Yesterday, when my friend Laurie mentioned that she was in a rush to get some things done in the garden before the heat wave came, I realized that I haven’t been paying attention to weather forecasts. So, it’s going to be hot. I don’t want to know the number. I’ll just keep the shades down. I also have some left over reflective insulation I used behind the radiators last winter (it reflects heat back into the room instead of letting it be absorbed into the walls). I’ve already covered one window in the attic with it. Maybe it could be used elsewhere in the house?

To see how much of a difference shades can make, I measured surface temperatures with my handy little Black & Decker thermal leak detector, a birthday gift that might rival the View Master I got when I was a kid. This morning the shades on the south window were already down. However, one window on the east side was not shaded, letting a little bit of sun in to hit a chair. At about 9:10 a.m., the shaded part of the chair was 80.6 ⁰ F and the sunny part of the chair was 95.5 ⁰ F.

"Like" it to help Rachael "get" it - Compost is not Garbage

Recently, I asked Rachael Ray, the host of the very popular 30 Minute Meals, if she would please consider referring to her “garbage bowl” as her “compost bowl.” For convenience, Rachael keeps a “garbage bowl” on the counter to discard food scraps while cooking. It’s a good idea. However, it sends the wrong message. Rachael might be receptive to my request, especially if she could see there is a lot support for it.

So, I created a Facebook fan page that includes my letter to Rachael. You can help by clicking the “Like” button here:



Eventually, I would like to see every state represented in the support for this. Here is how it is shaping up so far:



I am a fan of Rachael Ray's and hope that she will take my suggestion kindly.

[Added June 22, 2011]

Here are some flyers you can post.

• Half sheet flyer (2 per page, PDF)
  
• Full sheet flyer (1 per page, PDF)
  

If only big media shared small media values

Brian will banish himself to the basement or flee the house entirely before he would ever be subjected to an episode of The Antiques Roadshow or even five seconds of the local news. His aversion to the Roadshow is a mystery. But if he hates it the way I hate game shows, who can blame him for his abrupt departures? On the other hand, his animated grumblings about the “news” are easily triggered for a reason. Here are the teasers from WCCO yesterday:

Little Dominique makes a horrible discovery in the alley…

A zoo surprise! A Mexican wolf on the loose…

...What you need to know about sunscreen…

This MADtv clip is hardly an exaggeration.

Comparatively, MTN, the Minneapolis public access station, is far more useful. Who else is covering things like the 2011 Twin Cities Sustainable Communities Conference and making these resources available on the web? Instead, it’s murder, sports and weather with a dash of reality TV promos and a helping of product placements from the mainstream media. It’s hard not to imagine what the potential of our media infrastructure holds for building a strong sense of community and solving real problems, if only the resources were used for such an aim. Clearly MTN is making a stab at it.

Spring Cleaning

Wire hangers are breeding in my garage. While searching for a new home for them and a host of other odds and ends that cannot be picked up at the curb (Pallet, anyone?), I found Earth 911. Don't do your spring cleaning without it.

Hangers could go to a metal recycler or if they're in good condition a dry cleaner might reuse them. The UPS Store can reuse the box of clean packing peanuts I discovered in the rafters. The Styrofoam that came with the computer monitor we bought four years ago looks like it can be recycled nearby. Aveda will take bottle caps and Whole Foods will take the #5 plastic that piles up because I haven't mastered the art of yogurt making and bringing our own containers to the deli isn't a habit yet.

Brian has noticed that throwing stuff away in our house is requiring more and more effort. Good. If more of us were hassled by our waste, manufacturers might respond to consumer demand for minimal packaging that can be recycled or reused. (You can always tell where industry is feeling the pressure by looking at their ad campaigns. See Procter and Gamble Compacts Laundry Detergent to Reduce Packaging). More importantly, letting ourselves be inconvenienced by our discards can wake us up; it can make us be a little more thoughtful about the quality of what we're buying in the first place.

Setting aside a system that essentially subsidizes the marketing campaigns of excessive packaging, my mind goes to organizing with my neighbors. I imagine there would be texting. "Taking inkjet cartridges to recycling for raptors on Saturday."

Earth 911 couldn't help with the jar of rubber bands we have thanks to two newspaper subscriptions. Ditto for the broken coffee pot and the miracle mop that we bought from a State Fair huckster. Maybe I'll find takers on Twin Cities Free Market or Craig's List.

Related Article:
Blaine company's twist on recycling.