Sorters at Eureka’s MRF – photo courtesy of Eureka
The Minneapolis Public Works Department has recommended a five-year contract with Eureka Recycling to process all of the city’s recycling. Next, it’s St. Paul’s turn to decide between the local non-profit and the biggest private companies in North America for pick-up and processing. Choosing Eureka makes sense from both economic and environmental perspectives. Continue reading
Filed under environment, St. Paul Notes, work
Lettuce growing at St. John’s University, January 16, 2016
Local lettuce all winter? At St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, passive solar greenhouses grow lettuce for college food service, with farming and management by enthusiastic student volunteers. With a few dozen other folks, I visited both greenhouses on a subzero January Saturday, on the first of the Deep Winter Greenhouse Tours sponsored by the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota. Continue reading
Filed under agriculture, environment, food and farming
The finished product from the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF): bales of paper, plastic, cans.
It’s noisy in here. Crashing, clashing, grinding, headache-inducing noisy — and that’s with earplugs in. Not only earplugs: for this visit to Eureka’s Materials Recycling Facility (MRF), I’m also outfitted with a safety vest, plastic goggles, and protective hard hat. Watching a big, yellow front-end loader move across the floor toward us, I’m glad that I also have an earpiece and transmitter so I can follow the directions given by my guide, Lynn Hoffman, Eureka’s chief of community engagement. Continue reading
Filed under environment, St. Paul Notes
Outside the glass windows of the office, the incessant clatter and clashing of the Eureka Recycling‘s Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) continues nonstop. Inside, I extract the protective plugs from my ears, and sit down to talk to José Hernandez about his work at Eureka Recycling. Continue reading
Filed under environment, St. Paul Notes
While I can’t claim that I see every story, I do read a lot of news, and I’m struck by how often really important stories get less reporting and fewer readers than more sensational stuff. Three of this week’s biggest underreported stories: the Obama administration staged raids to capture and deport mothers and children back to the deadly violent Central American countries they fled ; Flint, Michigan’s cheaper water poisoned thousands of children; an on-going methane leak in California may have a bigger impact than the BP oil spill. Continue reading
Filed under environment, immigration, race, Uncategorized
A resolution supporting bees buzzed through the Minneapolis City Council last week, with the city’s press release touting it as “significant action in the fight to protect the sharply declining local bee population.” Recognizing the problem and pledging to plant more pollinator forage are good steps, but the month’s news reveals the complexity of getting city government to move in a single direction. The city council’s bee-friendly resolution did not (and cannot) actually ban any specific pesticides, and doesn’t affect the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, or other government bodies, such as the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District. Continue reading
Filed under environment
Have you ever seen a bear cry? If the Hamm’s bear could see what’s happening to the sky blue waters he used to sing about, he’d be crying today. From green scum and fish kills in Albert Lea to mining pollution in northern Minnesota and the early closure of the walleye season on Mille Lacs, our water ain’t what it used to be. Continue reading
Filed under agriculture, environment
Photo by Steven Storm from protest in Santa Barbara after May oil spill, published under Creative Commons license
A new, state-of-the-art double-layer pipeline failed last week in Alberta, causing a massive leak of 1.3 million gallons of oil, water and sand. But that’s not all: July has been a banner month for oil spills, and it’s not over yet. The entire year has seen spill after spill, from pipelines and oil train derailments. Here’s a brief recap of just those spills that made it into my files — and the Wisconsin legislature’s capitulation to Enbridge. Continue reading
Filed under environment
Eureka Recycling graphic for St. Paul recycling
People have lots of questions about recycling. Should you wash out beer bottles and jelly jars? Paper is good — but what about shredded paper? And what about light bulbs? Or window glass? What kind of plastic can you put in the blue box? And then there’s the big question: is recycling really worth it?
The Washington Post recently reported that recycling isn’t profitable any more. Whether recycling turns a profit is the wrong question. As a recent Mother Jones article points out, recycling succeeds financially if it just costs less than burying stuff in landfills. But financial success isn’t even half the story. Recycling succeeds by keeping trash out of landfills. Continue reading
Filed under environment, St. Paul Notes
Milkweed blooming in my garden
An Eden Prairie Boy Scout’s bee houses, pollinator gardens across the Twin Cities, and a bee highway in Norway highlight the urgency of preserving endangered native bees. Recent studies show that climate change, as well as pesticides and habitat loss, threatens native bees. This ongoing bee-pocalypse goes far beyond the colony collapse disorder of commercial honeybee hives that first hit the news a couple of years ago. Wild bees, hundreds of native species from big, furry bumblebees to solitary, ground-nesting andrenid bees, pollinate most of our plants, including food crops. Continue reading
Filed under environment
Mary Turck