Green Infrastructure

If only I spent the time, setting up the right kind of personal green infrastructure, I would not be struggling so much everyday. Many times, when I fail on my promises, it’s because I am not set up well, to begin with. I look at Green Guru and I see how much ground work he has done to get our family off to a good start, building a green house, insisting that we buy a hybrid car, stocking up on spare FCBs, insisting that we adopt green practices, like unplugging our appliances, turning off the lights, minimizing the use of our dryer, . . . Green Guru deserves his name. He’s got green embedded in his blood. Following in Green Guru’s footsteps, I started to think, what is it that I need, personally, on top of what he’s already put in place ? Here is the beginning of a list: a bike, a helmet, a clothes line, a composter, a registration with Green Dimes.

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Compost

When it comes to green, I am rather passive. I wait for Prad to take the lead. One good example is compost. The remains of our uneaten salad do not belong in the garbage bin, I know it and it just does not feel right. Yet, I routinely dump all our organic waste straight into the garbage bin. I can think of many reasons why. When we built our house, we planned for recycling, and installed a separate recycling bin. And we forgot about compost. I could correct the problem and take upon myself to set up a system. I could, but it feels like such a daunting task. It seems so complicated, scientific almost. There are composting seminars, books on compost, special containers to buy for the stuff. Things were much simpler, back in the days of my grandparents. At the farm, I remember, my grandmother would store all the vegetable peels in a bucket, and throw them onto the “fumier”, a huge pile in one corner of our backyard, by the fig tree. The “fumier” was where my grandfather went, when he needed fertilizer for the vegetable garden.

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Two Mango Peels

It is not good to dispose of waste in the garbage disposal, anymore. I heard it from my friend Pauline, several months ago. Pauline is an authority in the field of environmental education at University of Hawaii. All that organic stuff ends up in the water stream where it releases a bunch of nasty compounds that are not good for the environment. Prad read an article about it this week, and decided we (that’s me, him, and our four kids) should all take action, and put all our waste into the garbage until we get a composter. I did it a few times, until today. Those few mango peels couldn’t possibly do too much damage, and so I went ahead and grinded them. Small crime, nobody will know, until now. I still haven’t figured out this compulsion I have of going through with these small things I know are bad for this earth.

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