Easy composting...in your apartment

As many advantages there are to living in Los Angeles (well, Santa Monica, technically), the possibility of having one’s own house and yard is smaller than in other places – unless you sell a few screenplays. Which we haven’t. Yet.

But until then, we grow our own vegetables and herbs on our patio and now, thanks to NatureMill, we can still compost our food waste. The new NatureMill XE Pro ensures there are sufficient temperatures to correctly compost your kitchen waste. It’s a fairly simple process: you put your food waste into the top section – meat waste (not bones, however), veggie waste, cheese rinds, even dog poo and kitty litter. That’s it: every 2 weeks, you can extract your extra-rich organic fertilizer and spread it on your plants. You may have to add some baking soda or pellets occasionally, but really, the composter will handle the rest.

It’s a small unit, so it can fit in a cupboard or closet. It will work fine in an apartment, and of course houses too. If you would rather keep it outside, it will handle cold temperatures, so you can put it on your patio or in your garage. It circulates the air through a filter, so it shouldn’t emit any odors. It does use energy, but apparently about the same as a refrigerator light bulb.

If you need be reminded of why composting is necessary: landfills give off methane, which is a significantly stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. Which means putting compostable trash into your garbage is contributing to global warming. In it’s lifetime, the XE Pro should keep 2 tons of trash from landfills.

$400

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Lighter Duty XE Plus comes with only 1 year warranty and only in black, but does all the same, basically, for only $300

Cook faster and greener

Pressure cookers are an old school (well, from, like, the 80s) technique used to cook things…quickly. Which is precisely why we’re giving it (though we have no authorization to do so) the green thumbs up award. Shorter cook times = less energy = less CO2…you get the idea.

Did we mention quickly? Yeah, that’s nice. Cook beans in half the time – if you’ve never had beans (like navy, great northern, pintos, black) cooked from dried before, it’s a massive improvement over canned. No comparison.

You can also cook meats, a technique that is renowned (in small circles, granted) for making a crispy outer layer (like the chicken skin) and keeping the meat inside most and tender because the pressure of the cooker doesn’t allow it to evaporate and seep out of the meat as it would if cooked in the oven or on the stove top.

This particular model by Fagor is great because it is large enough to also do your canning. Preserve the harvest by jarring up your tomatoes, making pickles, preserving your beans…and support locavorism – what could be more environmental, and tastier, than that.

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7 soda bottles are in this bag

I have this problem vis-a-vis  getting groceries on my bicycle. You see, I have a messenger bag (more on this sooon…), which is great, but it’s not altogether suited for carrying groceries – especially if I have other stuff (like my macbook pro) as well.

So, I have been thinking about buying a backpack. But (a) I’ll only use it when I plan to go to the grocery store because I like my messenger bag and (b) I don’t want to spend a fortune and want to carry it as an extra bag, not as my main bag.

Enter these recycled PET (each one is made from 7 soda bottles) bags. You can carry them with you (they zip up into a nice size) and whenever you need an extra bag – that can act as a backpack – you’re set. Perfect. This problem solved, as well as many others as you may have figured out for yourself.

And…they have a recycled aluminum caribiner for clasping spare bags onto your messenger bag (or…?), they have a 1 year warranty, can carry up to 25 lbs., has lycra bottle pockets, aren’t ugly, and are machine washable (cold), so they are actually something you can have around for a while and actually, well, reuse.

$30.

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Turn your old jars into ... new stuff!

Let’s be honest, a lot of the “environmental” or “green” products out there are still just crap. Sure, they’re made from recycled this and that and will 100% biodegrade if we accidentally leave them in our cars. But are we supposed to throw away all of our non-organic sheets so we can sleep in shade-grown organic bamboo ones?

Here is a product that makes sense and really does help the environment: lids that turn old jars (spaghetti, pickle, whatever) into utilitarian kitchen devices like pitches, cruets and shakers.

Now that’s an idea that allows us to buy less (sacrilege, I know) and really help the environment, yet still live with style and panache.

Plus, my Chinese mother would be proud. No more Pah-sung!

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