Two Screenings of the Documentary Film “Gasland”
January 13, 2012
The Green Sanctuary Team invite you to two free screenings of the documentary film Gasland as part of our ongoing Environmental Justice Film Series:
and
Sunday, January 29, 2012, at 12:20pm following the Sunday service, in the FUUCSA Fellowship Hall (Channing-Murray Building).
Refreshments will be available at both screenings for a donation, and a short discussion will follow each.
A little about Gasland:
“The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.”
Josh Fox has won many awards for the film and it was an Academy Award nominee in 2011. It is unrated but would probably get a PG-13 rating for language.
Please join us!
Email Alexandra or David if you would like to request childcare.
As Rebecca Scott discussed in her TEDx talk, each time we purchase a product or service, we are “voting” with our wallets. We don’t have to wait until the next election cycle to make informed decisions about how we will be represented; we can start by taking a look at the companies and products that we allow into our lives and homes. Do we vote with our dollars for companies that support our shared values such as environmental sustainability and social justice? Or for companies that abuse the environment and mistreat their workers? How can we find out?
If you have as many questions as I do, here are two helpful websites shared by Green Sanctuary Team members that research well-known companies and their products and provide rankings in categories such as care for the environment, attention to human rights, healthiness, and community involvement.
Better World Shopper (www.betterworldshopper.org)
Good Guide (www.goodguide.com)
Have you used either of these guides? How do you feel about values-based ranking systems such as these? Share your thoughts with us!
Photo by Tom Raftery
Holiday Tree Recycling and Mulch Pick-Up
January 4, 2012
If you celebrate the holidays by decorating a fresh-cut tree and would like to recycle it to be turned into mulch, the City of San Antonio is offering an opportunity to do so. You can also take home the mulch for your garden while supplies last–great for adding nutrition to the soil, maintaining soil moisture, protecting roots from frost, and preventing weeds.
From the San Antonio Express News:
San Antonio residents have several opportunities this month to recycle their fresh-cut Christmas trees.
Twenty locations around the city will accept trees for recycling from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. January 7, 8, 14, and 15.
Residents should remove decorations, stands, nails and wrappings from the trees, and those more than 6 feet tall should be cut in half.
For more information on the recycling sites and instructions, visit www.sanantonio.gov/swmd.
While supplies last, participants can obtain mulch at the recycling sites.
Follow this link for a list of drop-off locations and map: http://www.sanantonio.gov/swmd/documents/Christmas%20Tree%20Program%20Flyer.pdf
Looking for environmentally-friendly alternatives to traditional fresh-cut trees for next year?
Click here for an article from The Daily Green for some creative ideas.
Rebecca Scott believes that most intractable social problems aren’t actually intractable — we just need to be far more creative with our solutions.
In this talk at TEDxCanberra, Rebecca Scott talks about where the dollars go when we buy our daily cup of coffee, and how thinking and acting in a more sustainable way can make a measurable difference all the way from the farmer to the barista – especially when that barista used to be a homeless youth.
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).
What can go in our new single-stream recycling bin?
December 21, 2011
The Green Sanctuary Team is happy to announce that FUUCSA will be receiving our single-stream recycling bin any day now, which will allow us to deposit all of our accepted recycling materials in one place for collection service. Hooray!
The bin will be located next to our other dumpsters by the back parking lot, and a collection truck will empty the bin twice a month.
The following items may all go into the bin:
Aluminum, steel, and tin cans
Cardboard
Catalogs/Magazines
CD cases
Glass bottles
Hanging files
Laundry detergent containers
Mail
Newspaper
Paper – copy paper, flyers, brochures, envelopes
Peanut butter containers
Phone books
Plastic #1-7
Soda and water bottles **Plastic bottle caps can go in the bin, but they must be removed from the bottles first!
The following items may NOT go into the bin:
Aluminum foil
Carbon paper
Electronic and computer scrap material
Floor sweepings
Food
Furniture
Plastic bags and plastic shrinkwrap
Hazardous waste
Hangers
Plastic-lined containers (such as juice boxes and milk cartons)
Plastic utensils
Styrofoam
Tape
Trash
Used paper plates and paper cups
Wet materials
Wood
Yard debris
Paper products can still be recycled through our existing Abitibi paper retriever bin, and we will be determining whether or not to keep that bin now that we have a bin that collects mixed items. Please do not put any materials other than paper products in the Abitibi paper recycling bin.
We will continue to update information on recycling on campus through the announcements and on our blog. As this is a new ongoing project, there will be plenty of things for us to learn and share with everyone! If you have a question about the bin or what materials may go in the bin, please talk to Alexandra or David.
Easy Recycling Comes to First UU!
December 16, 2011
Now we will have a recycling bin that takes many more categories of items. How about catalogs, milk jugs, peanut butter containers and soda bottles? All these and more, a complete list will be posted on the bulletin board in the foyer of the Fellowship Hall.
Green Book Reading for 2012
November 18, 2011
Plan your 2012 reading list and join the Green Book Reading Discussion Group!
We will meet on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 6:30pm in the Channing-Murray lounge to discuss Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis by Cynthia Barnett (Beacon Press, 2011). Since this is a Beacon Press publication, look for a copy in the Emerson Book Shop or at the San Antonio Public Library. This book is scheduled to be the focus of a conference phone call with the author through the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) in mid-March 2012. This also follows the UUSC Justice Sunday 2012 theme of the Human Right to Water. Recommender: Diane Duesterhoeft.
February 2012: Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth by Curt Stager (Thomas Dunne Books, 2011). Available at 6 branches of the San Antonio Public Library. Recommender: Jeanna Stephen.
March 2012: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (Bloomsbury Press, 2010). Available at 6 branches of the San Antonio Public Library. Recommender: Alexandra Neville.
April 2012: Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson (Trinity University Press, 2010). Available at 3 branches of the San Antonio Public Library and several local university libraries. Recommender: Marilyn Stavinoha.
Recycling CFL bulbs and other materials
November 15, 2011
Home Depot has a receptacle near the register near the exit for accepting used compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). They have clear plastic bags near the container in which to put the expended CFLs. While we didn’t find information on the Home Depot web site about this program, the container was at the local store. Has anyone seen such a receptacle for used CFLs at any other stores?
Also, if anyone wants a review of the materials accepted in City of San Antonio curbside blue recycling carts, here’s a list of what’s acceptable and what’s not:
http://www.sanantonio.gov/swmd/CartCollection/autoRecycle.aspx
For materials the City doesn’t accept, but that are recyclable elsewhere in the area, there is a drop-down menu that will provide locations for recycling drop-off centers at
http://www.sanantonio.gov/swmd/Recycling/locations.aspx
Green Sanctuary Team meeting, Wednesday, November 2, 7pm
October 31, 2011
Join the Green Sanctuary Team meeting
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
7pm, Fellowship Hall, Channing-Murray Building
