With ever growing fuel prices on the minds of many Americans we look for alternatives. Now even some of our alternatives are causing trouble with the food market (making biofuels made from waste veggie oil so much more important). Whatever the reason - high fuel costs, increased demand for food crops for fuel leading to lower supply, increased demand from economic development in previously poor nations, poor growing seasons - food costs are rising and much of the world has already reached crisis level. All of this cost and crisis draws attention to our own waste. We are cutting back on driving to save fuel, just as we should be more mindful about buying only what we will actually eat and taking good care of it to keep it from spoiling.

Many of us have the best of intentions. We don’t have money to throw away. You would not purchase food just to throw it away but that is exactly what happens to a lot of us, isn’t it? You load up your cart with delicious fresh looking fruits and veggies but by the end of the week you’ve only made it through half of them and the rest are already rotting. It is not just you and I, my dear reader! It is not even just our wasteful American culture. It is a problem across the globe.

This image is from a campaign in Brazil to raise awareness and decrease waste. Artist Mihail Aleksandrov designed this handout, please click on the image for a larger version.

So, we know there is a problem with keeping the produce we buy.. we know eating more fruits and veggies as opposed to meat and dairy is more environmentally friendly.. we know eating more fruits and veggies is better for our health… we know we are just wasting money and perfectly good food this way.. so what do we do? How do we save money on food and help it last longer? There are a couple of strategies here:

1. Buy locally grown produce
2. Start a garden
3. Buy less more often
4. Store your produce properly and strategically

1. Buy local: Buying locally grown produce will not only support your local economy and farmers, it will also save you money. With the huge cost of fuel transporting produce across continents is not practical and will be reflected in the price of the food. Buying local eliminates that cost and allows you to get fresher fruits and veg that will in turn last longer when properly stored. Also, by buying local you are saving the environment from all of that extra pollution that would have incurred during transport. Double whammy! Here are some local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) groups that will provide locally grown/organic produce as well as some farmer’s markets in the Phoenix area.

• Crooked Sky Farms: local organic produce with several pick up locations in the Valley
• Downtown Phoenix Public Market - Local produce, and other goods by various local vendors.
• Tolmachoff Farms - Glendale, pick your own produce.
• Tucson Community Supported Agriculture.
• Agua Linda Community Supported Agriculture.
• Flagstaff Community Supported Agriculture.
• Prescott College Community Supported Agriculture.

2. Start a Garden: I know you may think this is not practical for most of us and that nothing will grow in the desert but you are wrong. With the proper techniques you can grow all kinds of great stuff here. Even with limited space or poor soil you can make a great container garden. We will be doing some more posts here once we get our garden going. We do not have green thumbs by any means but it can and will be done! Now is not the best time to start a garden but you could start getting your soil in shape and at least start dreaming, take a class or two from the Urban Farm and get some organic seeds. Growing your own produce allows you to eat it when you feel like it, you can cut lettuce off as you need it for tonight’s salad and it will continue to grow. There is nothing better than a home grown organic tomato and you can just pick them at their peak. You can harvest a couple of onions, beets, turnips, etc as needed and they will be the freshest and most affordable you can get!

3. Buy less more often: We are all busy people but making time for an extra grocery trip during the week can mean the difference between wasting 1/3 of what you buy and making good use of it. Try making a menu for the week and plot out what you need on your grocery list. If you can break that into two or more trips (assuming you do not live a great distance from the grocer) and make your second trip once you have used up your first batch of goodies it just makes sense that you will have fresh produce more often and less chance for waste.

4. Store your produce properly and strategically: As plants decay they give off ethylene gas. Some more than others, and some are sensitive to it (which is why if you have an unripe avocado you can place it in a paper bag with an apple and it will quickly ripen). With that in mind you should only store certain fruit and veg together, some is better suited to the fridge while others are best left on the counter, some in a cool dry pantry while herbs and asparagus are best stored like fresh cut flowers, just snip the ends and put them in some water in a glass. Here is a helpful chart put together by Liza Barnes, Health Educator and Stepfanie Romine, Staff Writer for SparkPeople.com

Use this coded key along with the chart below:

• Store unwashed and in a single layer
  
• Store unwashed and in a plastic bag
  
• Store in a paper bag
  
• *Ethylene producers (keep away from other fruits and vegetables)

Click here for an easy to print PDF version of this table.

With the price of diesel shooting up by the day this could be a good time to start looking at home-brewing biodiesel. This is a great way to save tons of money on fuel, but it requires a significant investment of your time. For some people it is worth the time to be able to save money and to run a fuel that is more environmentally friendly than regular diesel. Pretty much your only monetary costs will be for parts to make a processor (a lot of which you can find for free), methanol and lye. You’ll also need to make sure you can secure some sources of free waste vegetable oil from local restaurants around you. Without a source of waste oil you are pretty much out of luck.

Does home-brewing biodiesel sound like it is for you? How do you even get started? Well it’s your lucky day because Hans Huth, a Tucson home-brewer, has written a thorough 286 page manual available for free online for just such interests. He writes extensively on making your own biodiesel in Arizona with more information than you ever thought you needed. This book is aimed at making bio specifically in Arizona. The information, however, is relevant to any location, you can just skip the info regarding Arizona laws, etc. Hans starts this free manual by exploring the history of the diesel engine and basic information about what biodiesel is.

Something you’ll find missing from most biodiesel homebrewing manuals is legal considerations. Hans covers these in detail giving information about zoning laws, road taxes, firecodes, waste disposal, etc. He covers these very well and I’d recommend not skipping this if you are serious about brewing your own bio and want to be as legitimate as possible. There are particularly important issues surrounding waste disposal. While biodiesel itself is quite harmless you still need to find a responsible way to dispose of the glycerin and dirty waste water which may contain residual methanol.

From there he goes on to cover other considerations to keep in mind when switching to the use of biodiesel, such as its potential affects on your car. If you have an older diesel vehicle, say from the 80’s, you may run into problems with rubber tubing and seals being eaten away. This is largely irrelevant with newer diesels as the use of rubber was phased out in the early 90s or late 80s. Something to be aware of in newer diesels that have never run on biodiesel is that regular old diesel fuel leaves deposits in your fuel tank and lines that biodiesel will sweep out. Biodiesel has very good cleaning properties and will clean your lines thoroughly and possibly clog your fuel filter. After this initial cleaning of your fuel system you won’t have to worry about clogging up your filters anymore.

Hans also writes in-depth about building a biodiesel processor, collecting oil, filtering oil, and actually brewing the oil into biodiesel. He does this in a very practical and helpful way with pictures that illustrate the whole process. Overall this is the best manual I’ve seen for home-brewing biodiesel. I highly recommend this.

Head over to www.biod101.com and download this book for free and start brewing! If you like it send Hans a donation, Good luck!

Not interested in homebrewing but want to run biodiesel? Check out our map showing where you can buy biodiesel in Arizona. [here]

Where I live in Arizona it’s already getting hot with triple digit weather coming at us next week. Air conditioning (A/C) is pretty much a necessity in the desert and power bills of $200 to even $400 are all too common. What can we do to keep our houses cooler and use less of the A/C so that we can save energy and money? No, I’m not going to say, sell your house and build an earth ship or get a home that is actually designed to stay cool with passive cooling, thermal mass, etc. That would be nice in an ideal world, but most of us are already in conventional homes. Our styrofoam and stucco outer walls are built as cheaply as possible and designed by a developer that didn’t care much about how energy efficient the home was. If we were smart (or lucky) we at least bought a home that was orientated advantageously, with the long part of the house facing north and south. This orientation allows for the most shading of the house during those long, hot summer days as long as the roof hangs over enough to shade the south.

Also if we were smart (or lucky) we bought a house with a minimal number of windows on the east and west sides, where the morning and late afternoon sun can penetrate deeply into a house. In the picture above you can see the late afternoon sun flooding this house with heat. Here is an example of how orientation makes a difference. The City of Davis California conducted a study where for one year, they took readings from minimum and maximum thermometers inside the unoccupied units of two identical 2-story apartment buildings with one difference, one was orientated with the long walls on the north and south and the other east and west, the north south apartment stayed 24 degrees cooler in the summer, and 17 degrees warmer in the winter. This was done without the use of A/C or heating, Wow! If you are moving or looking for a house this is important to keep in mind.

Okay, so most of us aren’t house shopping and are already in our houses. We’re not moving anytime soon so we have to work with what we have. Here are some tips for doing that.

• Windows account for 1/2 of a home’s summer temperature increase. Install white mini-blinds or shutters and keep them closed when the sun is hitting the glass. These can reduce solar gain by 40% - 50%.

• If you have curtains close them on windows that receive direct sunlight.

• Install awnings on south facing widows if the roof overhang doesn’t block all the sunlight from reaching the windows.

• Install sunscreens on the exterior of windows that receive direct sunlight to block sun from reaching the glass. These block as much as 60% - 80% of the sun’s heat from reaching the glass. Get a few quotes from licensed contractors, prices can vary quite a bit.

• If your HOA won’t let you do sunscreens or awning or they cost too much money, you can apply Heat Control Window Film on the glass to reflect much of the heat from direct sunlight. Heat control film is relatively inexpensive and reflects much of the sun’s heat.

• Check windows and door frames for any hot air leaking in and seal them with caulk or weather striping.

• Plant shade trees along the north, east, and west sides of the house to shade it from direct sunlight.

• If your house needs to be painted choose lighter colors that will reflect more heat. HOAs usually forbid certain colors, so check with them first.

• Use Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs) inside. CFLs use 75% less energy and produce 75% less heat than incandescent light bulbs which saves on cooling costs.

• Set the thermostat to as high as you can tolerate. According to the SRP’s web page every degree over 80 saves you 2-3% on cooling costs.

• Use ceiling fans or other fans to circulate air in your house. This helps you feel cooler so you can put the thermostat higher.

• Replace or clean your A/C’s intake filter once a month to allow for greater airflow.

• Use a microwave, toaster oven, stove-top or counter top grills instead of the oven during the day. The heat produced by the oven makes the A/C work harder to cool the house. You could also try a solar oven or grill and cook outside. Here are some plans for making your own solar oven very inexpensively. [solarcooking.org]

• Turn on the exhaust fan in your bathroom when taking a hot shower. This removes much of the humid air produced by the shower. As you probably know humidity makes it feel warmer.

• If it’s still cool enough at night, usually 77 degrees or less, open your windows to vent the house. Close them up in the morning to seal in the cool air. When we do this at my house the A/C usually doesn’t kick on until late afternoon. Using some sort of window fan can help bring in the cool air.

• Have your A/C serviced once a year to make sure it’s running at it’s peak efficiency.

• Keep your A/C’s condensing unit shaded to help it run more efficiently, but more importantly make sure it has plenty of airflow. The condenser in the picture to the right could use some shade from a tree or bushes

• Install a Solar Attic Fan to vent your house’s attic. If your attic gets hotter than the peak outdoor temperature, an attic fan can vent this extra heat and save you money on cooling costs.

• Upgrade the insulation in your attic. SRP has a good FAQ on whether you might benefit from more attic insulation [here].

• Install solar panels. This will cost a lot up front if you buy them outright, but after a few years they’ll pay themselves off. Leasing panels is another option. Your electric bill will be much lower for the life of the panels which is up to 30 years or so.

What else can we do to keep cool in the summer and save some energy? Leave a comment and let us know.

This rainwater harvesting vertical terrace is the brilliant idea of Ontario College of Art and Design Student Michael Tampilic and has been entered in the Rocket 2008 Industrial Design Graduation Show and Competition. The terrace connects up with a downspout from your house and stores water in a large tank to continuously water the plants over long periods of time. It does this by using cotton wicks to transport the stored water by capillary action. Not only is this great for saving water in a desert environment like most of us in Arizona live in, but it looks awesome and you don’t have to worry about watering.

Vert is a rain terrace: a rainwater harvester and vertical garden. This project establishes sustainable water practices through the harvesting of rain, and brings the advantages of a living wall to the backyard through vertical gardening. Vert alleviates a homes reliance on public utility systems while beautifying unused vertical space.

More info at the Rocket 2008 page and at Treehugger.com.

Related Post: [Rainwater Harvesting: A beginners guide.]

Being more efficient and less wasteful is great for saving money and with rising energy prices businesses are all in. This among other sustainability topics is what was discussed at the Arizona Chamber of Commerce Sustainability Summit at the Hyatt Regency in Phoenix on Friday.

“Sustainability is about making money,” said Ed Fox, vice president and chief sustainability officer for APS. “Sustainability is a business strategy.”

He encouraged business executives to “stop thinking about sustainability as a green movement,” because that “makes the finance guys think of additional costs.”

Instead, he said APS encourages employees to look for ways to save the company money, like the idea to shut down energy-wasting computer monitors when they’re not in use. The company borrowed the idea from a local school that was pinching pennies.

[Arizona Republic]