The Green Sanctuary Team Blog

How to Reduce Your Water Footprint

firstuugreen — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:27:49 +0000

By Betty Dabney, PhD

Water may become the most precious natural resource in our lifetime. Only 0.3% of the water on earth is available for drinking, and unfortunately its location does not always occur where the populations are that need it. While we tend to take safe and adequate drinking water for granted, that is not the case in many areas of the world. Currently 1.1 billion – one out of seven – people in the world do not have access to treated drinking water.

San Antonio is one of the most progressive US cities in water conservation. This has been necessitated by our historic drought. The Stage 2 water conservation rules have recently been relaxed to Stage 1 by the San Antonio Water System (SAWS), but the need to conserve water still exists.

The US EPA says that the average person uses 100 gallons of water a day. But the indirect usage, including water used to grow and process our food and to produce our electricity, can be TEN TIMES that much! It would follow that one of the most effective ways to save water is by saving electricity – more about that in a future column. We encourage you to be mindful of your personal water consumption, and to look continually for ways to reduce it.

Here is a breakdown of direct water usage (without conservation) by an average US household. As you can see, toilets are the largest use. Because of their importance, we will talk a lot about toilets later in this article. You will become an expert on toilets, not to mention a great conversationalist at parties!

And here is how much water it takes to produce various consumer items:
• 1 glass of orange juice: 50 glasses of water
• 1 tomato: 30 liters
• 1 chicken egg: 450 liters
• 1 steak: 13,000 liters
• 1 ton of steel (1 car): 225,000 liters

This does NOT take into account the substantial amount of water required to generate electricity. When this and other indirect uses are added to our direct consumption, the average person uses over 1,100 gallons of water a day, according to H20 Conserve.org.

You can calculate your total water usage and find many ways to save water at the H2O Conserve’s Water Footprint Calculator. Here are some other suggestions:

• Don’t leave water running when you’re not using it. Duh! To most of us this is obvious, but what about the more subtle things such as water wasted while you’re waiting for hot water? You can put a bucket under the faucet and use this otherwise wasted water to water plants or for pets.

• Fix all leaks, especially the toilet. A leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons of water a day! SAWS has a pioneering “Kick the Can” program to provide FREE low-volume toilets to residential consumers whose toilets date prior to 1992. Please take advantage of this program if you haven’t already and can qualify for it.

• When remodeling, consider installing a dual-flush toilet. (Half-flush for the small jobs, whole flush for…well, you know.) Some municipalities such as San Francisco already require these in new construction. Typically the user can push one of two buttons on the top of the tank for the desired flush:

ROUS Dual-Flush Toilet

For more information on low-flush toilets, including infrastructure requirements, go here.

• If you want to go a step further, you can modify the top of your toilet tank to be a handwashing sink. Caroma sells such a toilet, which automatically dispenses clean water for hand washing when the toilet is flushed. The water then drains into the toilet tank for the next flush:

Caroma’s “Profile™ 5 with Integrated Hand Basin” toilet –
Saves both water and space

Then there is the ultimate water-saving toilet: the Clivus Multrum composting toilet that converts human waste into rich compost without using water:

We might as well get used to it – such technology may become standard in the future. I have seen composting toilets at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s headquarters in Annapolis, MD. To answer the obvious question: they don’t smell.

Granted, these toilets are not for everybody, but they are examples of how we can be innovative in saving water and space.

Here are some other tips:

• Don’t run partial loads in the washing machine and dishwasher.

• Replace existing shower heads and faucets with more efficient ones as they wear out. The EPA has a “WaterSense” label to help you identify fixtures that use at least 20% less water than conventional ones.

• The drinking water system in the US is poorly designed in that it uses finished (drinking-quality) water for all domestic uses. You don’t need to use pure water for non-drinking purposes. If you are building a new home or remodeling an older one, consider designing the plumbing to recycle the gray water (water from sinks and tubs) into holding tanks for further non-drinking use such as flushing toilets, washing your car and watering.

• And for those of you who drink bottled water, consider this before you take another sip of it. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, bottled water is 240 – 5,000 times more expensive than tap water. More than 95% of the cost is the bottle, label, lid and transportation. The bottled water market is $100 billion per year; HALF this amount could provide infrastructure and water treatment to the world. It generates 10 billion plastic bottles per year (purwater.com). Plastic for bottles uses 1.5 million barrels of oil per year, enough to run 100,000 cars. Plastic water bottles can take 1,000 years to biodegrade in landfills and also contribute to pollution in the oceans. It takes 1.3 gallons of water to rinse the plastic dust from a new -gallon water bottle. Finally, the bisphenol A in the plastic bottle may be harmful.

These are but a few things that can be done to reduce water usage. Perhaps you can do even more.

Our future depends on it.

Two Screenings of the Documentary Film “Gasland”

firstuugreen — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:25:00 +0000

The Green Sanctuary Team invite you to two free screenings of the documentary film Gasland as part of our ongoing Environmental Justice Film Series:

Friday, January 27, 2012, at 7pm, in the FUUCSA Fellowship Hall (Channing-Murray Building)

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.

firstuugreen — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:15:10 +0000

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

firstuugreen — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:26:06 +0000

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.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/living_green_sa/article/Christmas-tree-recycling-urged-2436495.php#ixzz1iVsC2OSh

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.

Shared | Rebecca Scott: Sustainable coffee, sustainable dollars, sustainable lives

firstuugreen — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 02:42:59 +0000

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.

Shared | Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

firstuugreen — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 02:19:07 +0000

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?

firstuugreen — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:44:02 +0000

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!

firstuugreen — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:31:02 +0000

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

firstuugreen — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 05:33:51 +0000

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

firstuugreen — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:18:22 +0000

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