Dirt cheap

Posted on 4 February 2012 by Jean-François

It’s normal to worry about your children — especially if you’re a new parent. Are they getting the right food? Are they too hot, or too cold? Is there excessive stress in their lives? Are they getting too much exposure to the sun? There’s just so much to get right.

Man's best friend

But here’s something that never occurred to me: it seems that it’s normal to worry about your worms too — especially if you’re new to worm husbandry.

Until last Sunday, I barely gave worms any thought. Before then, they were just little creatures I avoided stepping on after a good rain. I didn’t have the responsibility of having worms under my care … nor did I face the prospect of nurturing a colony of red wrigglers through its next few generations.

That all changed when Bonnie Lee and I attended Dig into Dirt, the first of five Sustainable Sundays events at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. We were there to learn about soil, and in the process we learned a whole bunch about worms and composting, something we’ve been meaning to look into for a while.

The session started with us handling a few worms, and starting to appreciate what interesting little creatures they are. Mine was feisty, a lovely shade of red, surprisingly strong, and fascinating to watch move. I’m not ashamed to say that I felt a kind of affection for the little fellow-gal (she-he is both, as are all his-her brethren), and a sudden desire to bring a few red wrigglers into my home.

Of course, this wasn’t just about discovering an appreciation for worms; keeping worms and composting simply make sense. When you think about it, an ecosystem is an amazing thing. Fed by energy from the sun (usually), it cycles stuff (minerals, carbon, and such) through various forms — forms as fascinating and varied as red wrigglers, Rafflesia arnoldii, naked mole rats, Tiny Tim, and orchid mantises. Whenever we throw things away, we take stuff out of the ecosystem we belong to, and give it to whatever ecosystems thrive in toxic (to us) landfills and sludge. Given how much we throw away, it stands to reason that, eventually, the ecosystem we belong to will run out of stuff; the first thing on that list looks like it will be phosphorus.

Worms can be our partners in helping keep the stuff we need to live available for us to reuse. They produce castings and worm tea which you can use in your garden, not only saving you money, but also quite literally turning the things you throw away into food… and they’re kind of cute in their own way.

Some fun facts about worms and worm composting:

Worms eat one half of their weight every day.
You can compost indoors — and no, compost doesn’t stink; it smells sweet.
Composting can be cheap; all you need to start are some red wrigglers, two Rubbermaid containers, and a drill. (If you don’t mind spending the money, and you’d like something more attractive, there are a few options out there.)
A study of 16 households that compost in Vancouver found that the average household avoided putting 915 pounds of waste in the trash each year.

Do you compost? If so, feel free to share tips here — we’ll need them. If not, what’s stopping you?

Eating green

Posted on 1 February 2012 by Jean-François

Last April, I bought some carrots.

I had just moved to the United States, and unlike the thick, woody carrots at our local market in Japan, these were small, organic, and topped with lush greens. They smelled earthy and fresh, and in the tradition of millions of grocery unpackers before me, I twisted the greens off to keep the carrots fresh longer. I was about to throw those greens away when a question stayed my hand:

Are carrot greens food?

Moving to California (a land of cheap, fresh food sold in massive quantities) had made Bonnie Lee and I keenly aware of how easy it would be to waste food here — something we were determined to avoid — and a quick search on the Internet told me that carrot greens are one of the many foods most people feed to the bin rather than to themselves. It’s a shame. Although they lack many of their bright orange roots’ charms, carrot greens have a distinctive bitterness that can add an unexpected accent to a meal, and which balances nicely with other strong flavours.

The first bunch of carrot greens I rescued ended up in some chicken soup stock — and that’s the way I use them most often. They add a layer of complexity to stock, and a healthy greenish tinge, though you still end up with solid waste when you use them that way.

My latest experiment with carrot greens was the Purée of the Whole Danged Carrot Soup (recipe below) that I made for lunch yesterday. I balanced the bitterness of the carrot greens with a good dose of white pepper, and some cider vinegar and honey. I decided not to blend the soup completely, so that little specks of green and orange would still be visible. That gave the soup a bit of crunch and freshness that I liked, but I can see some folks being put off by the texture. For a smoother version, I would suggest throwing a couple of ounces of cooked potato into the mix, and blending the soup more throughly.

Carrot greens also make a good addition to salads, and there are a few recipes for carrot green pesto out there (though I’ve yet to try those). Feel free to share any carrot green recipes, or improvements to my recipe, in the comments.

Purée of the Whole Danged Carrot Soup (1 serving)

Ingredients

Carrot greens are food too

1 tsp olive oil
4 oz carrots (diced finely)
3 oz onion (diced finely)
1 clove garlic
1 cup chicken stock
Greens from carrots used above (diced finely, except for 1 sprig to be used for garnish)
1 tsp honey
1 tsp cider vinegar
¼ tsp white pepper
⅛ tsp salt (or to taste)

Directions

Sauté the garlic, onions and carrots in the olive oil over medium heat, until the onions are translucent.
Add in the chicken stock and carrot greens, and heat until carrots are tender.
Remove soup from heat, and purée using hand mixer or blender.
Add in the honey, vinegar, salt and pepper; stir well, and warm soup back up to serving temperature.
Plate and garnish with carrot greens.

*Associated reduction in the 222 million tons of waste produced annually*
Per serving	about 1 oz (the weight of the greens, assuming you would have eaten the carrots anyway)
If you eat this once a week	3¼ pounds per year
If everyone in the US eats this meal once	over 9,500 short tons
If everyone in the US eats this meal once a week	close to 500,000 short tons per year

222 million tons

Posted on 25 January 2012 by Jean-François

222 million tons — according to a 2011 UN study, that’s how much food consumers and retailers in industrialized nations waste every year, mostly by throwing away perfectly edible food. Just to put that number in perspective: it’s almost equivalent to the net food production in sub-Saharan Africa, and area about two and a half times the size of the United States.

It’s huge.

If you’re the average North American or European consumer, you throw away between 210 and 250 pounds of food each year (if you want to picture that better, 250 pounds is the weight of 1000 Quarter Pounder™ meat patties before they’re cooked — or the weight of over 1300 cooked patties). If you’re the average North American or European consumer, you can do better.

Our neighbors in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia waste less than 10% as much as we do, throwing away an average of 13 to 24 pounds of food a year. That seems like a good target. And helping people reach that target is what this blog, and the 222 Million Ton project, are all about.

In this blog, we will share tips and tools that can help people adopt more sustainable practices, and hopefully spark conversations that will lead us in directions that we haven’t anticipated, and that our team and our readers can learn from.