Landfills are filling up

NBC Action News recently aired a special report about landfills, and how they are filling up fast. Recycling, composting and generally better personal decision-making are part of the solution.

A Million Lights: Change a light, change the world

Did you know that the city of Kansas City, MO, is encouraging residents to switch a total of 1,000,000 incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents? Read about the city's effort here.

From the KC Star: Green projects sprout through caring kids

By MELODEE HALL BLOBAUM

The Kansas City Star

Rachel Anderson (left), 11, and Emma Crandall, 12, helped announce the idle-free zone in the school pickup lane on Wednesday at Overland Trail Elementary School.

Ask Allison Ullman what a kid can do to save the Earth, and she’ll probably point to signs that went up this week in front of Blue Valley schools.

More than 90 signs, three at each school campus, designate the pickup lanes in front of schools as “Idle-Free Zones.”

The signs resulted from an Earth-friendly Girl Scout project that continued long after troop members earned their Bronze Awards.

“Once we started, we couldn’t stop,” said Allison, 11, whose troop began the effort last year by asking Overland Trail Elementary School parents to turn off their cars while waiting to pick up students.

Allison and her fellow Scouts are part of a growing number of students who are taking it upon themselves to make their schools greener.

“The urgency of climate change weighs heavily on that generation,” said Margaret Thomas, chairwoman of the Prairie Village Environmental Committee.

Students bring a gung-ho, do-something-now urgency to efforts to save the Earth, said Matt Riggs of the Mid-America Regional Council.

“As soon as kids hear about a good idea, they want to implement it,” said Riggs, the outreach coordinator for MARC’s solid waste management district.

Often, he said, they’ll keep bugging adults on an issue until something happens.

That’s what some sixth-graders at Christa McAuliffe Elementary School in Lenexa hope will happen with their efforts to return to reusable lunch trays in their cafeteria.

In September, the school’s 20-year-old dishwasher broke down. The parts needed to fix it are no longer made, and custom-made parts would be a budget-buster, said Principal Kent Peach.

So the school began using disposable plastic foam trays until a new dishwasher could be installed over the summer. That bothered some students, who had learned in class that plastic foam fills up landfills and doesn’t biodegrade.

“We really think this needs to be changed,” said Dylan Crow, 12. “It’s a very big thing. It’s important to deal with it now.”

Some moms volunteered to hand-wash the trays with help from sixth-graders, but that wasn’t allowed because of health regulations and space limits. Peach said kitchen workers are already hand-washing and air-drying pots, pans and utensils, leaving no space to air dry the trays.

Students also tried boycotting school lunches and encouraging others to do the same, but they haven’t been able to sustain the boycott.

Now they’re researching biodegradable trays, which are more expensive but kinder to landfills.

Peach praised the students’ research and ideas. But, he said, the hard lesson they’re learning is that sometimes it’s simply not feasible to take action.

The Overland Trail Girl Scout troop’s search for a Bronze Award project turned up a simple idea: The air around their school would be cleaner if parents turned off their cars while waiting to pick up their children.

They prepared computer slide shows, made buttons, passed out fliers and installed their own signs at school.

A group of kids from Sunset Ridge Elementary had embarked on a similar project, and both groups approached facilities director Dave Hill this summer with the idea of establishing idle-free zones across the district.

The result was “Idle Free Zone Day” on Wednesday as part of Blue Valley’s first-ever Clean Air Week.

Joan Steurer, an air quality planner with MARC, said she expects to work with more young people on clean air issues.

“I think the kids are going to lead us,” she said. “Sometimes we don’t give kids enough credit. This is much more than a Girl Scout badge.”

Salt your popcorn, not the street

Green Cathedral
The Angelus, February 2008

If you have lived in Kansas City for at least one winter, you know that we get a generous amount of snow and ice every year. Local governments are responsible for clearing the streets and highways to keep them safe. Also, many of us use ice melts to keep our porches and driveways clear. Some of the chemicals in these products can be very hazardous for vegetation and sewer systems, but luckily there are alternatives.

The most damaging ice melts include sodium chloride (rock salt) and calcium chloride (liquid brine). As they melt ice and the water runs off into the ground, these products can kill grass, flowers and other plants. Other ice melts are based on fertilizers, such as potassium chloride, which can be less damaging to vegetation but will damage concrete. Even after driving on treated roads, water dripping from your car can even eat away the floor of your garage!

You can consider several environmentally-friendly alternatives that are safe for plants and concrete. Acetates, such as sodium acetate, calcium magnesium acetate (CMA) and potassium acetate, are environmentally friendly, biodegradable and non-corrosive (www.peterschemical.com). They may not be useful on sidewalks because they give snow and ice an oatmeal-like texture. Also, they can be much more expensive than other ice melts. Compare the added cost to the expense of repairing your lawn and you might find it worth a try.

Another technique for clearing ice from your driveway, if you can get away with it, is to do nothing and let the sun take care of it. This is not an option for many people, but because it doesn’t take any time, money, effort or chemicals, Mother Nature may have the best solution.

You probably can’t get this for yourself yet, but MoDOT has started using something new to help de-ice highways in Missouri: sugar beets. The product is called Geomelt and is a mixture of the liquid residue that is left after the beets are processed for sugar combined with rock salt or liquid brine. The resulting solution melts ice at a lower temperature than salt alone, and it is less corrosive for vehicles and roads. They can apply it before a winter storm to help prevent freezing, or after ice has formed to melt it. MoDOT has been testing Geomelt in parts of Missouri for a couple of years and hopes to use it statewide soon. (Read the press release here.) Hopefully, this is a trend that will help move us away from using damaging chemicals to keep things ice-free.

Welcome to the Green Cathedral blog!

This is the beginning of a bold new direction for the Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral website: genuine interaction. We hope to use this blog to expand on the monthly "Green Cathedral" features in The Angelus. You know, links to other websites, links to articles, things we've come up with, etc etc etc. Check in from time to time and contribute when you have something to add.

BE CAREFUL if you type in the address for this blog directly. It is "ghtcgreencathedral.blogspot.com" and not "greencathedral". Someone else has that one and it is not related to GHTC, or really to green issues. If you go there, enjoy, but that isn't us.

Finally, please note that while you can comment on any post on this blog, comments are moderated. That is, we have to approve them before they are posted. All comments will be approved unless they are inappropriate.