PrincetonPrimer

Winter's Souvenir

2012-02-12T09:50:00.002-05:00

With snow on the ground yesterday morning, there was no time to waste. Winter's visits can be as fleeting as snow shadows cast by trees.

A S.W.A.T. family--Snow Division--answered the call to stage a snowball fight on the Westminster Conservatory lawn.

By afternoon, winter had largely melted away, but not before leaving behind a souvenir.

Light Recycling

2012-02-11T09:42:00.000-05:00

Finally, some snow! There's been a real drop in light recycling this winter, compared to winters past. Which is to say that snow has been scarce, and instead of light getting bounced around on white surfaces, it's been swallowed by the drab browns and grays of a snowless landscape.

This impacts the earth's energy budget, as well as our light-starved psyches. Energy secretary Steven Chu encourages people to install white roofs so that sunlight will be reflected back into space rather than absorbed and turned into heat energy. Snow serves that purpose well, when it's around.

A light snow also makes an excellent energy detective, telling you where heat is escaping from your house. This roof shows an apparent gap in insulation, where indoor heat escapes and melts the snow on the roof.

Energy Event at Library--Review

2012-02-10T13:19:00.000-05:00

As part of an energy event during the Princeton Environmental Film Festival's second weekend, volunteer Lindsey Kayman helped kids roast marshmallows using what was supposed to be a solar heater. Given the clouds, a spotlight served as surrogate for the sun.

Even on cloudy days, a hand generator can get light bulbs glowing. The compact fluorescent on the right was a lot easier to light up than the incandescent. Some exercise gyms have picked up on the human generator theme and purchased exercise machines that generate electricity.

These are handy devices for exploring how much various electronics use in your home. Knowledge is power, or, rather, knowledge leads to reducing the need for power. Here, the meters compare the energy drain of two different kinds of cell phone chargers. The one on the left is an older design that has a big coil in it that uses 3.4 watts of energy even when it's not recharging anything. The one on the right doesn't draw power except when it's actually being used.

You can buy this sort of meter for $20 online, or hopefully the library still has some available for borrowing--a gift from the Princeton Environmental Commission.

The Kill a Watt meter has limitations for measuring home energy consumption. To track electrical energy use by your A/C, furnace, oven, electric dryer, and other appliances without standard plugs, you need a whole-house energy monitor. One such device that's easy to install is produced by a local business whose website is at wattvision.com. Worth taking a look at.

Public Swimming at JW Middleschool

2012-02-10T13:04:00.000-05:00

One stealth service provided by the Princeton regional schools is public access to the swimming pool at JW Middleschool. I went a few times with my daughter a couple years ago. Plenty of open lanes, and though the water is kept cooler than the YMCA pool, one can get used to it. Cost is $40 for ten swims. Hours are 8-9pm, M, W, Th, when school is in session. More info here.

Environmental Film Festival's Last Weekend

2012-02-10T05:19:00.000-05:00

Highlights this weekend at the Princeton Public Library include two films by Ian Cheney on Saturday at 4 and 7pm, and a presentation by underwater photographer Stan Waterman at 3pm on Sunday.

Sustainability initiatives at local schools will be presented by the students on Saturday. Here's info:

Please come to the Next Generation Environmental Fair Feb. 11, 11am-1pm,
free at the Princeton Public Library, where student delegates from public
and independent, elementary, middle, and high schools will be sharing
their school's sustainability initiatives. This fair is sponsored by the
Princeton Environmental Film Festival and organized by the students of the
Environmental Action Club (EnAct) at Princeton Day School. Please forward
this information to adults and students of all ages.

Full schedule here.

Bus Stop For Bottles

2012-02-09T15:42:00.000-05:00

A street drain serves much like a bus stop for trash. This is where bottles, cans and various insundries wait to catch a ride to Harry's Brook, which takes them down to the main line--better known as Carnegie Lake and the Millstone River. I'm sure service is slowed by lots of stops along the way, but eventually they get dropped off at the Atlantic Ocean, for destinations that include the Sargasso Sea.

These newer grate designs prevent bottles from launching on that journey, and for better or worse also make life harder for raccoons.

Recycling Televisions and Other Electronics

2012-02-03T12:52:00.002-05:00

The state very quietly passed a law about a year ago banning televisions from the trash, in part because of all the lead and other toxics in them. One still sees TVs put out on the curb, but I've noticed the trash haulers often adhere to the law now and don't take them.

There are several options for recycling televisions and other electronics. One is to drive out to one of three Mercer County recycling events this year, the first one being March 10. A friend sent me a link to Best Buy's offer to take all manner of TVs, whether you bought it there or not. That might be the easiest option, if you're out at the mall anyway.

Princeton Township accepts computers at its location at Witherspoon Street and Valley Road, but by appointment only, and no televisions. The Mercer County recycling website may be of general interest, since they handle all curbside recycling in Princeton.

Note: Here's another friend's suggestion if you're headed up to Ewing. "I confirmed in Jan. 2012 that the Goodwill store in Ewing (1628 N. Olden Ave; 609-392-2865) will take all sorts of electronics for proper recycling, including CRT-based TVs and computer monitors. The Donation Center is open Mon-Sat, 9am-8pm, and on Sundays (check hours)."

Videos of Recycling Sorting Plants

2012-02-01T10:14:00.004-05:00

If you're curious about where Princeton's curbside recyclables go for separation at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), there are a few pictures at the Colgate Paper Stock Company's website. For a more dynamic rendering of the very impressive sorting technologies now being deployed, there are many videos on the web that give virtual tours of various recycling processes. They are likely analogous to the Colgate plant.

Here's a new sorting plant built by Waste Management in Philadelphia.

If you like a tour with a British accent, try this video from Northumberland, UK.

Environmental Film Festival in progress

2012-01-28T10:14:00.002-05:00

In case people don't already know, there are lots of great environmental documentaries over the next three weekends at the Princeton Public Library. Go to www.princetonlibrary.org/peff for a schedule.

Recycling Update

2012-01-27T11:26:00.010-05:00

An announcement sent out by Princeton Township, apparently in reference to a column I had published in the Jan. 13 Princeton Packet, has caused considerable confusion. Over the course of a week, I made multiple attempts to reach township staff for a clarification, but heard nothing back. The announcement, sprinkled with capital letters to add emphasis, says that "Plastics marked #3-7 ARE NOT COLLECTED OR RECYCLED through the curbside recycling program." My research showed that these plastics are indeed collected and recycled. What the township announcement probably meant to say is that their official policy is to collect only plastics #1 and 2. Whether its leaf pickup or recycling, policy and realities on the streets of Princeton often part company.

The township announcement goes on to say, "While the facility accepts the materials, they are shipped overseas, which is not environmentally friendly." Experts I've spoken to question these assumptions. In fact, one told me that the availability of plastics 3-7 has prompted businesses to spring up in NJ to make use of them, whether to make plastic timbers or some other use. Even if the plastics are sent overseas, they likely ride in otherwise empty ships that were delivering products to the U.S., and whether they are used in an environmentally friendly way would be hard to determine.

The recycling business is very complex and constantly evolving. The truth, or some semblance thereof, takes a lot of digging, and it's all too easy to speak with an air of great authority and be completely wrong. Years back I was told with conviction by Princeton Township recycling staff that I must keep tearing those annoying cellophane windows out before recycling envelopes. This was contradicted by an expert I tracked down at the NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection. The misinformation remains on the township website to this day.

For years, most residents have been putting all manner of plastics in the curbside bin. I contacted the hauler to ask if they've ever complained to Mercer County (which administers Princeton's curbside recycling service) about the lack of adherence to the list, but got no response. I'm aware of no attempts to enforce the limitations imposed by the county list, which is hard to find both via google and via the county website. The township's concern about people placing plastics beyond #1 and 2 in the bin, then, is coming a bit late in the game.

So, for those who worry about doing the right thing, be happy. You don't have to tear those silly windows off of envelopes, and if you happen to accidentally drop a plastic #3-7 (or aluminum foil and trays, or an empty aerosol can) in the bin, like many of your oblivious neighbors are already doing, the good news is that it will get recycled. Maybe someday policy will catch up with practice.

Of course, the best thing to do is to somehow avoid buying unnecessary packaging, and thus minimize both one's garbage and one's recyclables.

Dinky Debate Updates

2012-01-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

Press the "The Dinky Debate" tab at the top of the page to see a couple personal updates on the Dinky issue. I assembled information about the proposed move of the Dinky station on the premise that conflicting views might in part be due to misinformation or lack of information. Improve awareness, reduce acrimony. Though people are very busy and distracted, and may sustain misconceptions no matter what, I had two conversations recently in which worry about the proposed move of the station was based on misinformation about where the new station would be located.

Contrasting Recycling in Montgomery and Princeton

2012-01-23T14:31:00.003-05:00

A recent newspaper article announced that Montgomery, Princeton's neighbor to the north, accepts plastics #1-5 and 7 curbside and also pizza boxes. Somerset County runs the recycling program for Montgomery and other municipalities and, unlike Mercer County, runs its own separation plant (a Materials Recovery Facility, or MRF). They ask that homeowners take the plastic lids off of containers, but it's okay to put the lids in the bin.

Princeton contracts with Mercer County for curbside recycling service, which by contrast requests that residents recycle only plastics 1 and 2, and throw plastic lids and pizza boxes in the trash (apparently because the tops get caught in machinery and the grease on the boxes is thought of as a contaminant in paper recycling). This limitation to plastics 1 and 2 may have to do with their contract with Central Jersey Waste and Recycling, which hauls the curbside recyclables to a MRF. If you throw plastics 3-7 in the curbside bucket, it will probably get recycled, but Mercer County is only paying to have plastics 1 and 2 picked up. There's also a question as to whether plastics 3-7 are recycled in an environmentally responsible manner.

Hopefully, all this confusion will end when it comes time for Mercer County to sign a new contract with its hauler, which, given the area trend towards expanding recycling of plastics, could well include plastics 1-7.

Event Tuesday: Waste NOT in Schools, 4:30p

2012-01-23T14:31:00.001-05:00

Establishing and maintaining effective recycling programs in schools is an extraordinary challenge, given the many pitfalls of low administrative priority, a distracted population, and under-motivated custodians. I certainly encountered these and other impediments in the process of helping Princeton Regional Schools revive its recycling programs. The high school was perhaps the hardest to make any progress with, though with great effort we were able to lift the school's recycling program, at least for awhile, above many others in the area (according to a truck operator who did pickups of recyclables at various businesses and schools.)A list of lessons learned from the effort, applicable to recycling in any building, can be found at www.recyclingcontainers.blogspot.com.

OASIS is making as much progress as anyone in overcoming entropy and apathy. Should be an excellent program. OASIS announcement below:

EVENT IS THIS TUESDAY 1/24 4:30pm --Great speakers!

OASIS (Organizing Action on Sustainability in Schools) and the Princeton
Public Library

Waste NOT in Schools

Did you know that the average American creates 4.4 lbs of garbage every
day?

What are schools doing to reduce waste, to teach students about waste, to
help us understand that we can't throw it away because there is no "away"?

Learn from some of New Jersey's experts at a panel discussion featuring:

Dr. Kevin Lyons, Rutgers University
Norm Torkelson, Hopewell Valley Regional Schools
Dr. Joy Barnes-Johnson, Princeton High School

Jan. 24 at 4:30 in the Princeton Public Library Community Room.

Refreshments graciously provided by The Bent Spoon.
A prize will be given to the school with the most participants.

Losing Recycling Strategy at Jadwin Gym

2012-01-14T10:01:00.002-05:00

At Jadwin Gym last night, the Princeton women extended their winning streak to five, beating Cornell by a 2:1 margin.

The cheerleaders look very confident this year as they build themselves into high pyramids and come falling back to earth knowing someone will be there to catch them.

The audience got an "A" for attendance.

The tigers in the pep band were kept well caged. The band was particularly notable for its unusual instrumentation, with bagpipes (not in photo), cello and a bizarre brass instrument or two.

But what's this? The facilities staff completely dropped the ball with the trash and recycling. Time and again, recycling containers were left unguarded by trash cans, insuring a mixing of trash and recyclables. And the nearly look-alike cans required close inspection to tell which goal was which.

The whole setup was meant to mock the rules of the game. Most of the receptacles in the lobby were of the "I know I say recycle but really I'm for trash" variety.

Fundamentals are SO important. Rule number one is pair each recycling bin with a trash can. I know that in basketball the opposing baskets are spread apart, but in the game of recycling, trash and recycling receptacles need to be TOGETHER.

And their best player, clearly labeled and with small holes on the top to discourage trash, was off to the side where no one would use it--a needless waste of talent. You've GOT to recruit more containers like this one and position them in key spots, like at the top of the stairs. People will be going for the hoop with their empty gatorade bottle at the first receptacle they encounter on the way out. By the time they reach the lobby, it's too late. Control the lanes. That's the way to win at recycling.

The game was a blowout. Trash 100%, Common Sense, 0. It's back to the drawing boards for Facilities Team Jadwin.

Step #1: paint over those silly green recycling triangles on the old, poorly designed receptacles. They just confuse people.
Use all of those old containers for trash. Buy new recycling containers with attitude, that say recycling from head to foot. The star players, like the blue one in the photo above, are cheaper than the attractive but poorly designed losers.
Put your best players in key spots and, I repeat, pair them with trash cans. For a demonstration, and links to a manufacturer, click here.
Since the bottles accumulating in the clear plastic bag help show that the receptacle is meant for recyclables, don't empty the bags until they're nearly full (not after each game).
Princeton University is an educational institution. Does it really want to be inviting people to a basketball game (or a football game) to learn yet again how NOT to recycle?
And, come on team, play this game to win.

Note: Ten recommendations for starting and sustaining a successful recycling program in the workplace can be found here.

PU Art Museum Hosts Sustainability Games

2012-01-13T16:53:00.000-05:00

The Princeton University Art Museum hung the community's clean laundry out to dry on the campus green last night as part of a "Sustainability Games" event. Given that an electric dryer uses 4000 watts when it's on, air-drying laundry is one of the best ways to reduce your home energy use, so there's considerable substance to go with the symbolism here.

The event, put on by students, was cleverly conceived. We "earned" pieces of pizza by first learning which of its ingredients can be grown locally, and then went on a sustainability scavenger hunt on campus that led us to a key on the steps of Nassau Hall. Take the key back to the museum and you got to open a chest full of free water bottles to take home. Free food, free bottle--my daughter was quite pleased. And she even learned some factoids, like that India is one of the world's leading producers of bananas.

The art museum invites the community in for special events every other Thursday evening, and will be collaborating with the Arts Council of Princeton, Labyrinth Bookstore and other local businesses for a second Art Walk on March 1. My jazz trio, the Sustainable Jazz Ensemble, will be performing at Labyrinth as part of that event, probably starting around 6pm.

Recycling in Princeton

2012-01-13T16:33:00.002-05:00

The Princeton Packet published an "As I See It" column I wrote entitled The Struggle To Improve Recycling. For those seeking the lists of accepted curbside recyclables mentioned in the column, here's a link.

Note: Thanks to a reader for notifying me that one of the links here was wrong. It should work now.

Curbside Foodwaste Pickup in the Borough

2012-01-13T16:27:00.001-05:00

One of the easier and more satisfying ways to reduce the amount of trash you put out for pickup is to compost food scraps in the backyard. This bucket costs about $20, prevents any odors in the kitchen, and is still like new after 15 years of service.

Backyard composting is the most ecological approach to dealing with foodscraps and yard trimmings, but there's another option available in Princeton. For nearly a year now, Princeton township has been offering curbside collection of foodwaste to residents. Though pickup of kitchen scraps, often mixed with garden trimmings, has been practiced in cities like San Francisco and Seattle, Princeton township is reportedly the first town in New Jersey to offer the service. The program has about 250 participants thus far.

This service has recently been extended to borough residents, though few have heard about it. Hopefully, consolidation will provide a means to greatly expand the number of people taking advantage of this service. Presumably, after consolidation there would not be an extra charge for the service. Full participation would bring a reduction of 30% in the trash Princeton generates.

Below is some QandA with the township recycling coordinator, Janet Pellichero:

Q: What is the cost for borough residents to participate?
A: It is $20.00 per month for weekly collection of organics. Collected every Monday.

Q: Where is the foodwaste taken for composting?
A: It is taken to Peninsula Compost Group, in Wilmington Delaware. It is marketable compost in 80 days. (meat, fish, bones, pizza boxes, waxed cardboard, shellfish, oils etc. anything that grows goes)

Q: I've heard the program would have to be terminated if not enough households participate. How long is it guaranteed to continue?
A: It is a permanent program.

Q: What is the best response to people who have worries about flies and odors?
A: There have been NO complaints regarding flies or odors. The containers have a snap lock lid.

More info and contact info can be found here.

Philadelphia Story, Part 2--Waterworks

2011-12-17T11:06:00.001-05:00

The first post entitled Philadelphia Story, as some readers may remember, was a tragicomic tale of the hazards of parking in the historic district. That drama took place on the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin Bridge, Penn's Landing, Delaware River side of town, where I-95 streams through. That was the only part of Philadelphia I knew until recently, other than WHYY's inauspicious Shadow Traffic reports, which detail the endless permutations of rush hour congestion.

One beautiful fall day last month, some friends introduced me to Philadelphia's flip side, west of the Delaware and just beyond the Art Museum, along the Schuykill River. A google-eyed view of Philadelphia shows the Delaware and Schuykill rivers looking like two sides of a vase, with downtown in the middle. Traveling the I-95 corridor and occasionally straying downtown, one sees only one side of the vase.

To visit the Schuykill River side, then, is akin to getting a glimpse of the far side of the moon.

We owe the lovely vista in this photo to the water pollution that, by the late 1700s, forced Philadelphia to seek a cleaner drinking water supply. The Schuykill River was dammed in 1822, and land upstream was purchased to prevent polluting development.

All that land is now the long and lovely Fairmount Park, with bike trails extending all the way westward to Valley Forge. The impoundment is used for rowing races.

Until 1909, the dammed water passed through a Waterworks, turning big drums that in turn pumped fresh drinking water up the hill to a reservoir. From there it was piped down into the city. All very elegant and sustainable. You can see the whole layout in the photo, just as it once looked, except that the Philadelphia Museum of Art is perched on the hill where the reservoir used to be (upper left), and the downtown in the distance has sprouted skyscrapers.

Inside the Waterworks is a first rate, federally run interpretive center that explores all matters having to do with water. You can learn where wastewater goes after it leaves one's house, how the city is trying to reduce stormwater runoff,

and how the shad that once migrated upstream in enormous numbers each spring to spawn played a critical role in keeping George Washington's troops alive at Valley Forge. (Presumably the dam has fish ladders to allow them access these days.)

Along with the appealing ingenuity and sustainability of 19th century technology was a greater valuing of public spaces, and a belief that beauty and utility can cohabit in architectural design.

All in all there was much to cheer about during this visit--a beautiful public space on a beautiful day, and we found our car just where we had left it.

Are Rollout Bins Right For Princeton?

2011-12-10T10:38:00.001-05:00

If New York is the city that never sleeps, Princeton has become the town whose streets are never clean. The dumping of yardwaste in the streets is now year-round. Municipal fear of taxpayer outrage may be the reason that ordinances meant to control the dumping activity, and to bring Princeton in to compliance with state regulations, go unenforced.

There are places in America that have clean streets. I know because sometimes I jump on my horse and ride towards the horizon to see how other people live, and can say definitively that we can rescue ourselves from this self-imposed squalor.

Take San Francisco as an example. Once a week, three rollout bins are placed at the curb. Gray is for trash. Blue is for recyclables. Green is for a combination of foodwaste and yardwaste.

Because the yardwaste is containerized, collection is efficient and the streets remain clean. Of course, this neighborhood has fewer trees than Princeton does and thus less generation of leaves and brush. But there are many tree-packed municipalities that don't allow dumping of leaves on the street, and instead expect residents to compost most of them in the backyard and place the rest in rollout bins and yardwaste bags at the curb.

This sign shows what goes in the green bin: food-soiled paper, food, and yard trimmings. All of this gets composted outside of town. Princeton township began offering this service last year, and recently extended service to anyone in the borough willing to pay $20 a month. (More on this in another post.)

One of the benefits of rollout bins is that their contents are mechanically emptied into the trucks. Princeton's recyclables and the borough's trash are lifted manually into trucks, which puts workers at risk of back injury. The lack of rollout bins also means that residents must do heavy lifting to get their trash and recyclables to the curb.

Some trucks can actually grab the rollout bin at the curb and dump its contents without having a worker on the street.

When in the past I've recommended that Princeton shift over to rollout bins, the idea was reflexively rejected due to concerns about the cost of this sort of truck. Imagine my surprise when I saw one of these trucks collecting trash in Princeton township. Midco, one of the private haulers township residents can contract with, has obviously seen the cost savings in this approach.

Consolidation of Princeton township and borough into one entity offers an opportunity to reshape services. Rollout bins have worked elsewhere and are now being utilized by private haulers in the Princeton area. It's time the municipality look at ways to put them to use.

What's Recyclable and Where Our Recyclables Go

2011-12-05T14:41:00.005-05:00

If you live in Princeton, you may occasionally wonder what items are supposed to be going in the green and yellow recycling bins residents put at the curb every other Monday. Though local government websites are useful, they may not for various reasons be able to provide the most up to date information. Here's what I was able to find out recently:

Mercer County: The county, not Princeton township or borough, is in charge of the curbside recycling program. The county's list of recycling do's and don't's can be found here.

That list is useful to some extent, but the private company that the county contracts with to pick up the recyclables posts its own list, which I've pasted below in quotes. (If you like pictures, here's a downloadable flyer.) The hauler lists several additional items as recyclable, which I've marked in red, that the county does not include on its list.

(The list below is from the Central Jersey Waste and Recycling website)

"The following material can be recyced ONLY if they are clean (free of food waste.) A good rinse should be sufficient for most items!

• Plastics marked with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 7 (no #6)
• Aluminum cans
• Aluminum trays and foil (cleaned)
• Aerosol cans
• Steel and tin cans
• Glass jars and bottles
• Lids to bottles, jugs, jars and other containers
• Newspapers and inserts (remove plastic sleeves)
• Magazines, catalogs, phone books
• Office and school paper
• Cardboard
• Boxboard (cereal boxes, etc.)
• Brown paper bags
• Paperback books
• Paper-only junk mail"

Why the contradictory lists? It turns out that the county is reluctant to expand its list, in part because any change requires an amendment to the Mercer County Solid Waste Management Plan. The county also wants to make sure there is a longterm market for any item it adds to the list.

Where our recyclables go: The hauler (Central Jersey Waste and Recycling) takes the recyclables down to Trenton, then transfers them to semis to haul them up to the Colgate Paper Stock Company in New Brunswick, where all the various recyclables are separated out. Colgate is a so-called MRF (materials recovery facility) that has its own list of items it accepts or rejects for recycling. That list includes plastics numbered 1-7.

Plastic lids: I always thought that, since there are rings on the plastic bottles that are made of the same material as the lid, then the lid must be recyclable along with the bottle. The Colgate sorting plant, though, makes it clear they don't want plastic lids. What I've been told is that the rings are detached from the bottle by the plant that makes new products from the bottles.

Plastic bags: Many bins put curbside have recyclables in plastic bags. A representative of Colgate told me that plastic bags occasionally gum up their sorting machinery. He also said that though they accept all numbered plastics 1-7, the plastics 3-7 end up getting shipped out of the country, to destinations and fates unknown.

Styrofoam: Some residents put styrofoam (#6) out for recycling. I've heard contradictory opinions about its recyclability. This link, which has info on what various plastics are used for, says styrofoam is one of the more useful plastics to recycle. But obviously it's so bulky that it's hard to transport efficiently, which may be why the Central Jersey hauler excludes it from its list.

Princeton Township has a web page with lots of links to info on recycling, though its list, like the county's, does not include all the items that are accepted by the private companies actually doing the recycling.

Cargo Bicycle On Princeton's Streets

2011-11-30T10:52:00.000-05:00

Of all the vehicles that parade by my house on busy Harrison Street, this one stood out as distinctly different. Two big rollout bins on a trailer being pulled by a bicyclist. Having long imagined a world in which bicycles are adapted to fill varied transport needs, I decided to head off in pursuit to find out where this one-man sustainable parade was headed. He was moving along at a good clip, but I caught up with him on Valley Road, and learned that the vehicle is owned by the Whole Earth Center grocery store on Nassau Street.

Every year, staff vote on what to buy with the accumulated loose change found on the floors during cleanup. Last year, they bought this bike and trailer.

It often carries their food up to the farmers market in good weather, but on this particular day, it hauled a week's worth of salvaged plastic packaging to the municipality for recycling.

At the same location (corner of Valley Road and Witherspoon Street), the township makes yardwaste bags available for residents, and you may be able to recycle your electronics there as well.

Free B Expanded Service

2011-11-26T21:52:00.001-05:00

The Princeton Packet reported this past Friday that the Free B shuttle will now run on weekends for the Christmas season. The "Free B Jitney Shuttle" link on the princetonboro.org website does not tell the whole story, since the Free B now apparently runs straight through from 5:30am to 9pm. These two links

http://princetonboro.org/jitney.cfm
http://princetonboro.org/inc/cf/polImage.cfm?doc_Id=872&size_code=Doc

along with the text below, borrowed from a public library newsletter, should tell the whole story of the stealthy shuttle's current schedule.

"Starting at the Suzanne Patterson Center at 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. and 12:30, 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, the free jitney will stop at Elm Court, Palmer Square, the library, Princeton Shopping Center, Community Park Pool, Princeton Community Village and many popular intersections throughout Princeton. Thanks to Princeton Borough, Princeton Township, Princeton University and the Community Transportation Coordination Initiative for extending this service on a trial basis."

It really takes conscious effort to change one's habits and take advantage of this service, which is not exactly advertising its existence in a big way. This photo was taken back in February, at the Dinky station, where I searched in vain for a posted schedule.

Princeton's Downtown Scarcity of Recycling Receptacles

2011-11-26T14:47:00.002-05:00

You're looking at the only downtown location I know of where recycling containers can be found on the streets, at Hinds Plaza next to the public library. They are expensive stainless steel models, but their design could be improved to better distinguish them from the trash containers they are, or should be, paired with.

I've informally explored and documented recycling receptacle designs--which vary from effective to self-defeating--in Princeton and elsewhere, many of which are posted at www.recyclingcontainers.blogspot.com. A post about how the Hinds Plaza containers could be retrofitted to improve their function can be found here.

Princeton's Community Park Pool--Endings and Beginnings

2011-09-11T12:42:00.000-04:00

Princeton's Community Park Pool, poised for the wrecking ball beginning tomorrow, September 12, cast quite a spell on longtime Princeton residents. For most of my seven years as a member, it seemed serviceable but not extraordinary in any way, except of course for Larry Ivan's signature closing refrain. Only when I began hearing the eloquent testimonials, delivered at public meetings about its planned redesign, did I begin seeing this unassuming pool complex in a new way.

Surprisingly, it was the changing rooms, which looked like dull boxes from the outside, that received the most rhapsodic treatment by residents at the meetings. Inside, they were lavishly spacious, with large portals to the sky. The building breathed effortlessly, and like a deep breath conveyed to those within a feeling of expansiveness and relaxation.

If there was a theme that permeated the complex, it was the way it played with light. Lap swimmers had plenty of time to notice the infinite patterns of light dancing on the bottom of the pool. The buildings, as if to emulate the water, would allow light to pass through open beams, or portals in the roofs, casting shadows whose angles would shift through the day--quiet reminders of the sun's arcing passage across the sky.

The complexity of patterns in the water was mimicked by the weathering of the wood.

A new, redesigned pool complex will emerge in coming months, to open next summer. It will no doubt have more efficient pumps, better filters, and make more efficient use of space. Solar panels may sprout on the rooftops. A waterslide will entertain.

But for now, I'm grateful to have caught a glimpse of something soulful and profound beneath the old pool's simple facades.

Another homage to the pool, with more photos and text, is posted at http://princetonnaturenotes.blogspot.com/2011/09/homage-to-swimming-pool.html.

Communiversity and Recycling

2011-09-07T12:08:00.001-04:00

Princeton borough just received an $18,000 "tonnage grant" from the state. This is an annual grant, fluctuating year to year, to be used for recycling in the borough. In the past, the borough has simply used the money to help pay the county for routine curbside recycling service, but the money can also be used for initiatives that would actually improve recycling in town. Here's a post started back in April that shows one of the many ways recycling could be improved in Princeton, through a mix of education and smart placement of receptacles.

Traffic streeeeetched all the way to Moore Street,

as Communiversity 2011 drew some 40,000 people to downtown Princeton.

It was a fun party, and everything appeared to go smoothly, except for the traditional lack of recycling. I'm sure that outdoor events in Princeton have to conform to various rules and regulations, and one of them should be that, when an event includes vendors selling beverages in recyclable containers, receptacles for recyclables need to be paired with all trash cans.

When people have a clearly marked choice, they recycle, as shown here in a borough park.

And We Shall Go A' Sharrowing

2011-08-30T11:50:00.002-04:00

Aye, if roads they are

a' narrowing,

and bicycling

grows harrowing,

try sharrowing.

-- Burma Shave

Background Info On Campus Sculptures

2011-06-17T09:34:00.000-04:00

Anyone seeking edification about the various sculptures to be encountered on the Princeton University campus, click here for photos and short descriptions on the PU website.

Climate Ride 2011 Passes Through Princeton

2011-05-17T20:17:00.000-04:00

(The post below is from 2009. Climate Ride came through town this past Friday. I saw they had their tents pitched at the YMCA, but didn't have my camera. Saturday they biked to Philadelphia. You can read their daily accounts here.)

What is a tent village doing in the YMCA field? My daughter wanted to know. We stopped to inquire, and learned that Climate Ride was coming through town. Bicyclists, including a family with an eight year old, rode yesterday from New York City to Princeton, on their way to Washington, D.C. via Philadelphia.

The purpose of the ride is to draw attention to the need to confront the increasing impact of climate change on spaceship earth. They have a website, climateride.org, that includes live feeds of the five day journey.

Long before there were cars, Princeton served just as it is now for the bikers, as a rest stop halfway between NY and Philadelphia.

Princeton's Energy Use

2011-04-13T12:37:00.001-04:00

Remember all those nice sounding goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by this or that percent by such and such a year? Whether it's 50% reduction by 2050, or 80% reduction by 2020, or 100% reduction by 2100, the numbers were meant to stir action, but instead serve as place holders for good intentions while life goes on as usual.

Princeton's contribution to goal setting came in 2007, when mayors Miller and Trotman signed the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7% from 1990 levels by 2012. Though the founders of Sustainable Princeton got some potentially useful data for 2006, no one knows how much energy Princeton used back in 1990, and no one's looking at how much energy we're using now.

Numbers matter, particularly those that slowly build and build, just below the radar screen of the news media until suddenly we have a brand new crisis on our hands. In an effort to at least track some of Princeton's contribution to a global problem, I looked into how we could get numbers from PSEG for Princeton's consumption of electricity and natural gas. It turns out that PSEG can provide these numbers back to 2007. With some help from municipal staff and the chair of the Princeton Environmental Commission, I was able to gather all the information needed by PSEG for them to provide energy use data for Princeton's residential, business, industrial, public school and municipal sectors.

Now it's a matter of waiting until PSEG provides the numbers.

Current Public Transportation to the Dinky Station

2011-04-06T11:47:00.003-04:00

In Princeton, it's possible to travel to farflung places without getting in a car. I have tested this a couple times, most recently back in February, for a trip that included four trains to get to the Philadelphia airport, one plane, and another train to get within two blocks of my destination in downtown Cleveland. The trains to Philadelphia are well-timed so there was very little wait inbetween.

When I returned, using the same combination in reverse, I arrived at the Dinky station at 5pm--what seemed like an auspicious time to catch the FreeB shuttle (click to follow link). That would have dropped me just a block from my home--truly a public transit advocate's dream. But the sign was buried in a snowdrift, and I couldn't find any schedule posted, so asked a woman who also seemed to be waiting for a shuttle.

She was waiting for a Tiger Transit shuttle, and was checking the website with her cellphone to see if one would arrive soon. Turns out the public is welcome to use Tiger Transit shuttles at no charge (that's what one university rep told me, anyway.) And you can even track their movements on TigerTracker, which could prove to be even more exciting than reality TV, and more useful. One of their routes appears to reach within a short walk of the Windsor Green Shopping Center (Whole Foods, Staples, etc.) out along Route 1.

Not knowing when the FreeB might arrive, or if it even still existed, I ended up making the mile and a half walk home, which in scenic Princeton can be a pleasing thing to do, even with a suitcase in tow.

A 2009 post on the FreeB can be found here.

Arts and Transit Neighborhood Letter To the Editor

2011-04-05T12:40:00.010-04:00

The Dinky has been giving Princeton quite a ride, in more ways than one. Though I ride it occasionally to get to the main line, I had been avoiding hitching a ride on the debate over its 460 foot move to a new station as part of the university's proposed Arts and Transit Neighborhood. Given how much community brain power was being brought to bear, the Dinky's dilemma was sure to be propelled to a win-win solution.

That the result was, and may still be, looking more like a lose-lose shocked me into seeking out opinions. The result was a letter to the Princeton Packet and the Town Topics, and the page of Dinky Q and A above, accessible via the tab entitled "The Dinky Debate".

Below is the letter:

Catch a ride on the Dinky opinion train and you will find that, like the Dinky, it sweeps you vigorously from one terminus to the other, with no stops in between. Respected friends will have opposite views, delivering you either to the conclusion that a rail line really should reach up to Nassau Street, or that the best chance for sustaining the Dinky is to move it 460 feet down the hill, as the university now says it will do, regardless.

   The debate about the university’s proposed arts and transit neighborhood would be greatly expedited, and needless ill will avoided, if people would look at the university’s proposal as a whole, not just one aspect. The Dinky, though its horn sounds like a cross between a tugboat and a mourning dove, has taken on the qualities of an elephant being intently scrutinized at too close a range. Some aspects of the beast that I’d like to mention are these:

   The 460 Feet: Having made the locally famous 460 foot, two minute walk to the proposed new Dinky station location, I found it to be a surprisingly minimal change. For those parking at the nearby Lot 7 university garage (free to the public after hours and on weekends), the new location will actually reduce the walk by that same 460 feet. Though the university plan would lose the appealing interface with University Place, it offers improvements for traffic congestion, parking access, and train station facilities.    Extending tracks to Nassau Street: If extended to Nassau, as would reportedly still be possible via Alexander if the university’s proposal goes forward, the Dinky or any other heavy vehicle (“light rail” is not necessarily lightweight) will encounter steep inclines that could substantially reduce energy efficiency compared to the current relatively flat route. The combination of steep inclines, longer route, more stops and interactions with streets could affect the most important factors determining Dinky ridership: dependability and frequency. Though a train stop on Nassau Street has symbolic power, even with more downtown density most Princetonians would still live well beyond the 10 minutes people are supposedly willing to walk to a train stop.

   It’s important that we defend town traditions and dream of an even better Princeton. Sustainability, whether environmental or in reducing the Dinky’s dependency on state subsidies, is a vital part of any vision for the future. The danger comes when the strong sustainable, cultural and civic aspects of the university’s proposal are ignored due to focus on 460 feet. Nor is it fair to delay the university’s vision for years while the serious logistical and budgetary challenges of alternative proposals are indefinitely explored.

   If people agree on a foundation of facts as they can best be determined, look at the big picture, and are as skeptical of their own opinions as those of others, then there’s hope this four-year opinion ride can finally pull in to a pleasing destination.I have assembled a summary of information about the university proposal and the Dinky at http://princetonprimer.blogspot.com/p/dinky-debate.html.

Free Jazz Performance at the Arts Council

2011-04-02T09:45:00.000-04:00

A fine series of upcoming performances and movies at the Princeton Arts Council includes a free performance by top-flight jazz musicians this Sunday. Info from the Arts Council website below:

Sunday, April 3 | 3 pm | Solley Theater | FREE
Anthony Branker & Word Play
The Arts Council of Princeton and the Program in Jazz Studies at Princeton University present Anthony Branker & Word Play, featuring Ralph Bowen (tenor & soprano saxophones), Kenny Davis (acoustic bass), and Adam Cruz (drums). The title of the program is "Dialogic" and will include special guest pianist Jim Ridl. Funding is provided by the Program in Jazz Studies at Princeton University, Bloomberg, and the Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation.

Carpooling for Old TVs

2011-03-29T06:55:00.000-04:00

My friend Steven delivered this urban harvest to Saturday's Mercer County electronics recycling event. I had put word out that we were making a run, and several residents enthusiastically dropped off electronics to add to our cargo.

Electronics and Chemical Waste Collection Day, March 26

2011-03-22T13:29:00.001-04:00

Mercer County has three of these electronics and chemical waste collection days every year. The first one is this Saturday from 8am to 2pm. Since it's illegal to put TVs and computer monitors out on the curb for trash pickup, this is the main opportunity to get rid of them. There can be a line later in the day sometimes, but the lines move quickly. Dropoff is past Quaker Bridge Mall a short distance. More info here.

The urban farmer delivering his harvest.

Where Princeton's Drinking Water Comes From

2010-12-07T15:37:00.000-05:00

In preparation for a canoe trip down the Millstone River, I researched which local watersheds serve as the source of Princeton's drinking water. A post on the subject can be found on another of my blogs, here.

Zip Codes Relevant To Princeton

2010-12-02T09:58:00.000-05:00

A bit of info about zip codes in Princeton, obtained while trying to get energy use data for the town.

08540 Princeton township and borough, except Palmer Square
08542 Palmer Square (one business district in Princeton borough)

08541 is ETS (an educational institution outside of town)
08543 PO Box section (post office itself) (not necessarily Princeton residents)
08544 Princeton University

Philadelphia Story

2010-07-19T12:06:00.009-04:00

This is a story of growing affection cut to the quick. The affection, for Philadelphia, happened to inhabit me, nurtured by the slow accumulation of good impressions. There is the creative way the city reconnected to its river, by building parks over top of I-95. There are the gallant old ships at Penn's Landing, which we recently explored on a "pay what you want" Sunday morning. The city's approach to environmental needs like recycling sounds progressive. The tour I took of Independence Hall some years back was unexpectedly moving. And then there's the pleasure of walking through the historic district, and the ambiance of a bohemian cafe on Chestnut Street we keep ending up at.

When friends fly in to Philadelphia Airport, we stop in Philadelphia on the way to or from New Jersey. That's what we did yesterday, to soak up some history, late on a relaxed-seeming Sunday afternoon, before dropping my friends at the airport. I pulled in to a parking space on Market Street, and while trying to make sense of the small print on the signs that explain parking regulations, a man approached me. "Don't pay any attention to the signs," he said. "They never check the parking." His voice sounded friendly and authoritative enough to believe, though in return for providing some local wisdom that could save me some parking meter money, he asked if I could spare a couple bucks for a sandwich. I gruffly said no, and went back to getting what we needed from the car.

As we walked towards the Independence Visitors' Center, my teenage daughter informed me that I had been less than friendly towards the man, and that he had seemed upset afterwards, grumbling under his breath. Yes, I thought, maybe I should have been generous and given him some money on the chance that he was indeed a fine man down on his luck, who likes to help out confused tourists in his spare time. I had entered Philadelphia thinking I was an American interested in my country's history, but the encounter with the street fellow had left me feeling like a caricature: affluent, stingy, indulging in idle curiosity on a Sunday afternoon while others struggle just to get by. My daughter also mentioned that she had left her camera in the car. Doubts about whether I had remembered to lock up, and whether the parking space was legal, caused me to go back and move the car.

I drove down a side street, found what looked like a legitimate parking space, then caught up with my friends at the visitors' center. An hour later, looking for a restaurant, we noticed a parking meter man walking down a street. So much for the street man's wisdom. I went back to check the car only to find that it had disappeared. "Is your car gone, too?," someone asked. Thus began an adventure that led me far from my affection for the city. We concluded that everyone's cars had been towed, rather than stolen, though the distinction would begin to dissolve over the next hour. An initial call to the phone number on the parking sign got an answering machine. No car, and no idea where it could be.

I made haste to the restaurant, where my friends reminded me that they couldn't take a taxi or train to catch their plane, because their bags were in the trunk of my car. By chance, a man out in front of the restaurant knew all about what he called "the towing racket," saying he has a case pending with the parking authority. He gave me the phone number and location of the impoundment.

Returning to the scene of the towing/theft, I found the others preparing to drive to the impoundment. They offered a ride, and explained that they were a church group from Illinois that had come to Philadelphia to install new roofs on the homes of people who had applied for help. Somewhere in the scriptures, surely there is a quote to the effect: "Let no good deed go unpunished." The irony was thick as we drove through a desolate industrial area near Ikea in search of our impounded cars. Adding to the irony was a sign at the entryway to the Philadelphia Parking Authority impoundment, displaying the initials PPA, with the A in the shape of the Liberty Bell. The bell, which we had gazed upon just an hour earlier, was starting to symbolize not freedom defended but liberty taken--with our cars and our pocketbooks.

Now, I am not a great defender of cars, or of car culture. If it were up to me, cars would never have been invented, and we would all be walking or riding bikes to nearby stores, or hopping on trolleys and trains. If there were no cars, there would be no concrete wastelands, no stripmalls, no fast food to make us fat, no car insurance or repair bills to pay, no aggressive towing scams, and a whole lot less chance the world will be destabilized by global warming. Impounding all the cars in the world would have its benefits.

But there was the small matter of getting my friends on to their plane, which was now scheduled to take off in not much more than an hour. My teenager called for frequent updates, as the man behind the counter demanded my driver's licence, license plate number, registration and proof of insurance. I managed all but the latter, which took a long wait on hold to retrieve from my insurance company. On one side of the counter were employees joking among themselves. On the other side were people desperate to get their cars back, and sick at the thought of having to pay hundreds of dollars in towing fees and parking fines in the process.

Mindful that the employees were not the architects of this nightmare, I kept my patience, at least until the very end, when the man informed me that the $150 I had just paid was only the towing fee, and that my additional parking fine could be found in the envelope he had just handed me. "Jesus Christ!!", I blurted, as I steamed out the door to finally retrieve my car. Having heard that one couple there was facing a $250 fine, plus the towing fee, I expected the worst. In retrospect, I interpret my utterance to be a calling out of warning to the son of God, lest he be planning a return that involves parking in downtown Philadelphia.

Thanks to a helpful taxi driver I asked for directions, I got my friends to the airport in time. And the experience proved good fodder for conversation on the drive home, during which my daughters and I discussed the in's and out's of trusting strangers. With a $50 parking fine, I was $200 lighter, and most definitely freed of any guilt for being unthankful to the man on the street for his unsolicited advice. Armed with my new street smarts, I'd guess he gets by on kickbacks from the towing company.

In the heat of the moment, I vowed to deprive Philadelphia of any more of my visitor's dollars, to make the city pay for its rude treatment of well-intentioned people. If I had time, I'd try to find out where all that money ends up, or maybe I'd suggest the Independence Visitor's Center develop a new exhibit: "Shakedowns Through the Centuries."

Primary Election Choices for Princetonians

2010-06-03T10:39:00.003-04:00

A great surprise came yesterday when I, likely a typical Princeton resident who has paid little attention to the upcoming primary, decided to google information about who is running in next Tuesday's election. Google always comes through, I thought, but in this case I found nothing.

What followed was a call to the Mercer County Clerk to the Board, who referred me to the Superintendent of Elections office, which referred me to the County Clerk, who confirmed that there is NO INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET about who is running or what their views and records are, other than what is generated by the candidates themselves and whatever newspaper articles one might eventually be able to dig up.

The clerk kindly sent me an email with info about what choices I might face in the voting booth, but to learn about their positions on issues I was encouraged to seek out their respective websites. Seems harder than it should be.

Citizen Group to Present Concerns about Borough Budget

2010-02-08T11:41:00.002-05:00

The Citizens Finance Advisory Task Force will be making its first presentation to borough council tomorrow, Tuesday at 7:30. Members of the task force have been digging through borough budgets past and present and have documented the particulars of how expenditures have been growing faster than inflation, population and the natural tax base.

Though I hope to provide some input to the task force on environment-related expenditures, the group's current priority is providing input prior to this year's negotiations of salaries. The task force has found that Princeton Borough pays its employees more than Princeton University does for similar work, and provides better benefits. Ways to bring the borough's pay structure more in line with the private sector will be discussed.

Single Stream Recycling Begins in Princeton

2010-01-04T10:34:00.002-05:00

It's a new morning in Princeton, as recyclables wait expectantly at the curb for their first commingling experience. Mercer County, which runs curbside recycling for the township and borough, has just switched to single stream recycling. This means that all recyclables will be tossed in the same truck. Improvements in sorting technology at recycling plants makes it possible to reduce the number of trucks coming by your house from two down to one.

According to a Dec. 31 article in the Princeton Packet, this streamlining of recycling pickups is expected to save $53,000 for the borough and $176,000 for the township over the next three years. The article says the savings come from "fewer trucks, reduced manpower, fewer personal and other things like required maintenance on the vehicles." Most important for the future of the planet will be a reduction in fossil fuel use.

Leaves--Small Victories

2009-11-11T15:24:00.005-05:00

This homeowner used to pile leaves out on a busy street. Now she has her landscapers put them in metal corrals and, when the corrals are full, piles the rest loose in the woods. By doing this, she enriches her soil, does her part to reduce flooding in the local streams by making her soil more absorbent, and leaves (no pun intended) the street and sidewalk open for their intended uses.

Last year, this street leading to Little Brook Elementary was choked with piles of leaves. This year, I was able to convince the homeowners to have their landscaper instead pile the leaves in a back corner of their lot. Bicyclists and cars now have enough room to navigate on the street during busy dropoff and pickup times.

STREET LEAVES--A Mess to Address

2009-11-11T14:50:00.009-05:00

It's roundup time here, way out in western NJ. Urban cowboys strap on their leafblowers and set to drivin' all the wayward foliage streetward.

Eventually, the township will rustle up all these leaves with big convoys and haul 'em off to the big leafyard outside of town, where they'll be civilized into compost. Nice compost, but what a production.

Even folks who live in the woods feel the autumn urge to push leaves out onto the country road.

What's going on here? Do we secretly wish to see all roads revert to soil?

Streets are not the safest place to put leaves. These skidmarks suggest a truck slid on wet leaves into Snowden Lane.

This photo was taken just after a mother retrieved a boy from a leafpile that, naturally enough, he really wanted to play in. Leaves are such a delight for kids. To pile them in the street turns a joy into a hazard.
(Update, 2011: This homeowner has become an enthusiastic composter of leaves, helped along by the free leaf corrals the township made available last fall.)

Here, the landscaper carefully kept the leaves out of the street, piling them instead on the sidewalk. They've been sitting there for more than a week, killing the narrow strip of grass and inconveniencing pedestrians.

A Step Backwards for Residential Water Meters

2009-11-11T12:39:00.001-05:00

NJ American Water installed a new water meter at our house over the past year. Unfortunately, the new meter only measures in 1000 gallon increments, which renders it pretty useless for helping us track whether any water conservation measures are actually working. It's hard enough to track energy and water use in a house, and the new water meter design just made it a little harder.

Faulty Utility Bills

2009-11-11T12:30:00.004-05:00

If your PSE&G gas/electric bills have had some mistakes on them lately (one of mine tried to bill me for the last three months, even though I'd already paid for two of those), it may be because they are still working out the kinks in a new computer systems for billing.

Leaves and Flooding

2009-11-09T21:56:00.005-05:00

Ever notice how heavy wet leaves can be? They're heavy, of course, because water is heavy, and the leaves can absorb a lot of water. Now, look at the mountains of leaves that people place on the street this time of year. Are these not essentially giant sponges that we are asking the city to haul away? And what happens when a heavy rain falls upon land that has been deprived, year after year, of these large helpings of spongy material? The water, with nothing to absorb it, flows into streams, increasing downstream flooding.

Princeton Recycling Goes Single Stream

2009-11-04T05:11:00.002-05:00

Princeton's curbside recycling costs are going to drop in the near future, due to a small but significant change coming in 2010. Up to now, we've been required to put cans and bottles in the yellow container, and mixed paper in the green container. This is known as "dual stream".

Starting in January, 2010, however, Princeton will kick off the new decade by going single stream. This means that only one truck will come by, and combine all the bottles, cans, paper and cardboard in one load. Residents can continue to sort recyclables between the two containers, or combine it all together.

The county, which runs Princeton's curbside recycling pickups, says the single stream approach will reduce the township's annual recycling cost from $183,000 down to $129,000, a savings of $54,000. I don't have figures for the borough as yet. Last year, the borough says it was billed $67,000 for curbside recycling pickup, so the new bill should be less than that.

Another advantage of the new approach will be that only one truck need lumber by your house on recycling day. Single stream recycling has been made possible by more sophisticated separating equipment at the recycling plant.

Waste Management, which serves the public schools and many businesses, went single stream at least a year ago.

Illegal Street Leaves--Whose (As)Fault Is This?

2009-11-02T10:07:00.006-05:00

A typical scene in Princeton this time of year--a car swerving to avoid a pile of leaves. This one's on Snowden. Nice clean lawn, leaf-clogged street. Most of the dumping is done by out-of-town landscape crews who are unaware of or openly indifferent towards the township leaf ordinance.

These leaves were dumped in the street ten days before it was legal to do so. Within a couple days, other neighbors had put their leaves out, too, since it's easier to copy one's neighbor than check the township website.

The township, responding to a state mandate, passed an ordinance that strictly limits when leaves can be placed in the street, and how much of the street they can block. But township staff are so busy scrambling to pick up the illegally dumped leaves that they have no time to enforce the ordinance. Fear of rousing anger from highly taxed residents also suppresses enforcement. In a brief survey, I counted twenty violations on just two long blocks of Magnolia and Clover.

Most of the residents in this neighborhood of large yards could easily find a weedy corner for a pile of leaves that would, as it settles back into the ground, recycle nutrients, absorb rainfall, and suppress the weeds underneath. Instead, the leaves are blown into the street, where they become a public hazard and burden.

Below is a partial description of the ordinance, quoted from the township website.

http://www.princetontwp.org/brush_log.html

"Residents should have their loose (un-bagged) leaves placed on the paved roadway not more than 7 days prior to the date of collection and must be out for collection before 7:00 a.m. on the Monday morning of the scheduled week. After your section has been collected you are prohibited from putting any yard material on the Township Right of Way until your next scheduled collection. (The Township Right of Way is the paved area and the area ten (10) feet behind the edge of pavement or curb line.)"

Landscape Crews Creating a Hazard

2009-09-27T06:04:00.012-04:00

About this time of year, I start feeling like I'm in the movie Groundhog Day, in which the character finds himself living through the same nonsensical day over and over again.

This photo appears to be a peaceful autumn scene in Princeton. Kids playing after school, a crossing guard waiting to help.

But look again and you may see an accident waiting to happen, and a metaphor for how private interest dumps its problems on public space. A landscape crew has just cleaned a client's lawn by blowing all the leaves on the street. The township ordinance forbids putting leaves on this street until a month from now, but the landscape crews are oblivious.

It may not seem like a big deal, but here's a photo from last year. Add a little rain, a hurried driver, and you get a car skidding out into an intersection crowded with schoolkids twice a day. You also get nutrient pollution in local streams when the leaves start to decompose.

Add to that the constriction of the road, where cars and bikes try to maneuver between piles of leaves, and you have a problem.

I've spoken to all the homeowners on this street. All are open to the idea of utilizing their leaves in their yards, rather than putting them out on the street. But in the meantime, the landscapers they pay to do their yardwork are doing what they've always done, which is to create a hazard by illegally dumping leaves on public space.

Construction Sites and Recycling

2009-08-18T07:03:00.004-04:00

A typical sight in Princeton is a construction dumpster full of recyclable items headed for the landfill. This one's at Westminster Choir College, but it could be most anywhere that construction projects are running behind schedule and no one takes the time to sort out recyclables.

It would be nice to think that all the cardboard, paper and scrap metal is sorted out at the transfer station, but I doubt that's the case.

Money For Old Refrigerators

2009-08-02T13:55:00.002-04:00

You can now get paid $30 for your old (still working) refrigerator, and have it taken away for free. The NJ Board of Public Utilities just started the program, which works something like the federal cash-for-clunkers program and is designed to get inefficient older refrigerators out of people's houses and safely recycled.

Wonder if there will be a similar program for all of us codglings when we get old and inefficient, ala Monty Python.

More information at:
http://www.njcleanenergy.com/residential/programs/refrigerator-freezer-recycling-program. "Call 877-270-3520 to schedule a free pick up of your old refrigerator or freezer."

Princeton Battlefield

2009-07-11T09:47:00.002-04:00

One of the finer ways to spend a July 4 afternoon is on the grounds of the Princeton Battlefield. Chances are, you'll see Historian John Mills, who in stature, bearing and voice seems the very embodiment of 1776, offer a detailed account of the Battle of Princeton.

After the attending militiamen execute some impressive shots from a cannon, John then dons authentically imperfect spectacles to read the Declaration of Independence.

Where Princeton's Drinking Water Comes From

2009-06-07T07:04:00.004-04:00

If only a simple question had a simple answer. The borough, township and Princeton University all get their water from the Elizabethtown Division of the NJ American Water Company. NJ American Water Company is a largely foreign-owned (German, I believe) business that reportedly provides water for 75% of New Jersey. (Update: In 2010, the water company became American-owned.)

Our drinking water is drawn from two watersheds: the Raritan and the Millstone. The Raritan River extends north almost to interstate 80, while the Millstone extends south nearly to interstate 195. That means that a raindrop falling anywhere in that vast expanse of real estate could flow downstream and eventually end up in our drinking water.

All of Princeton's stormwater runoff--from streets and rooftops--as well as its treated sewage, ends up in the Millstone River, which flows north to the Raritan. Most of the Raritan's water then flows east to the Atlantic, but some is drawn out, treated to drinking water specifications, and piped the 20 miles or so back to Princeton, where it emerges from our faucets. Water treatment consists of filtration, followed by disinfection with ozone, which kills any bacteria. Ozone is an excellent disinfectant, but because it breaks down rapidly, the water is then given a small dose of chlorine, which remains in the water during its journey to our taps.

About 5% of our water comes from wells rather than a river. The wells are located in Rogers Wildlife Refuge in Princeton, down along the Stonybrook. Every now and then, I am told, the water that flows from Princeton's taps is particularly cold and good tasting. At those times, we are receiving local well water rather than the surface water from the Raritan.

At Communiversity this year, the student organization WaterWatch had a water tasting table, where two brands of bottled water and Princeton's tap water were available for comparison in unidentified containers. Though I'm no gourmet, I found the tap water to taste as good as either of the bottled varieties.

Spirit of Princeton Parade

2009-05-25T06:54:00.007-04:00

Memorial Day weekend in Princeton brings out many a fine ensemble.

First down the pike was a formidable assemblage of bagpipers. Perhaps there's a tradition of leading with the bagpipes, as it triggered memories of a movie in which the Scottish army of long ago put its bagpipers out front on the battlefield, where they got summarily gunned down by the enemy. It didn't seem like good military strategy, but it speaks to how musicians often fare in the music business.

Following close on the bagpipes was a very disciplined and dignified fife and drum outfit.

There were also some marching bands--one in the classic Music Man mode, the other a group from Trenton with some fine rhythmic drumming. A third band was fronted by four girls carrying wooden guns, which they shifted back and forth from one hand to the other. Unexpectedly, responding to a cue from the music, the girls launched into ballet steps, lifting the guns gracefully into the air as they leaped forwards. Ballet with guns made for a memorable image.

The Patriotic Bike Brigade came out in force, doing right by the nation and the planet.

Then came a long line of firetrucks and emergency vehicles, followed by a tiger-bedecked calliope playing steam-powered patriotic tunes.

Bringing up the rear was the borough's beloved pair of parking meter patrol vehicles.

Afterwards, it was down to Palmer Square for an outdoor pancake feast and jazz of the "I left my home in Indiana" variety.

Cost-effective Recycling Container

2009-05-18T10:56:00.002-04:00

With new recycling receptacles arriving in township parks, I sent an email to the borough to ask if they could also begin recycling again in borough parks. A week later, maybe by coincidence, these buckets showed up, hooked to existing trash cans.

These receptacles, wired to the trashcan to prevent them from "walking away", are a much less expensive approach than buying stand-alone recycling receptacles.

Their presence doesn't mean that recycling is actually happening, though. We can hope that park users will pay attention and put recyclables in the right container, and that the staff that collect the recyclables will keep the recyclables separate from the trash. There are plenty of points in the necessary chain of events where recycling can go amiss. But at least a functional receptacle is in place.

The "Princeton free B" Shuttle

2009-05-06T09:59:00.004-04:00

Scattered around town, hidden in full view, are these boxes of flyers with information about how to get a free ride downtown and to the Dinky.

From 5:30 to 9:30am each weekday morning, and 5:30 to 9pm each weekday evening, a free shuttle plies the streets of Princeton. It runs every 25 minutes or so, up Nassau St. and down the StreetOfManyNames (Hodge/Robeson/Wiggins/Hamilton), from Library Place eastward to Harrison Street, with a spur down to the Dinky. You can find specifics about its route at www.princetonboro.org.

A May 1 Trenton Times article reported that in its first year of operation, it carried 4,851 riders. Funding this year will be 50% by NJ Transit, and 50% by the university. Anticipated expense from April, '08 to June '09 is $174,000.

The borough is planning to expand the hours of service, to see if that increases ridership.

Communiversity and Sustainability

2009-05-03T06:39:00.006-04:00

Heading to Communiversity past a line of strange contraptions that seem to be holding their occupants prisoner. On my bike, fortunately, riding past each vehicle, I feel a wave of heat emanating from idling engines. Only 0.3% of the energy these contraptions consume actually is used to move the occupants. The rest is spent moving tons of steel and producing heat. You could say, then, that while we think of cars as transportation, their primary function--99.7%--is to hasten global warming. Somewhere far overhead, traveling through the universe to monitor progress, the unrepentant members of Planet Killers Annonymous must be watching our folly with glee.

At the festival itself, a booth offered a good demonstration of how plastic bottles can be converted into blankets, which apparently were headed to people displaced by natural disasters. They said it takes 70 plastic water bottles to make a blanket.

Meanwhile, continuing the tradition of dysfunctional recycling at Princeton festivals, there was a complete lack of accommodation for recycling at Communiversity. Lots of drink containers being sold by vendors, but only trash containers to receive them after their ten minutes of service to society. Princeton has a recycling ordinance, it has two recycling coordinators, it has good intentions--all to no avail.

Doesn't anyone find this strange?

I did, but then of course there were some positive aspects: good music, a strawberry smoothie, friends. Maybe the sustainability movement in town will bring some changes next year.

New Recycling Containers for Township Parks

2009-04-30T11:00:00.003-04:00

New recycling containers are showing up in township parks. Paired with trash cans, and with small holes on the top, they stand a good chance of working.

Borough parks, as far as I've been able to tell, are completely lacking in functional containers for recycling.

John Williams--Telling Stories on Guitar

2009-03-24T13:36:00.007-04:00

John Williams performed at McCarter Theatre last night. Not the John T. Williams of movie score fame but the John C. Williams of classical guitar fame. I know him mostly through his phenomenal recordings of the music of Paraguayan composer Barrios.

The house was packed, the stage nearly empty but for a chair and two mics. Seems like the fewer people in the band, the more people in the audience. Perhaps people think that large bands don't need as much company. Williams walked out, gave a quick bow and smile, and set about weaving delicate fabrics of sound, making it look deceptively easy as he coaxed all manner of tone qualities out of the instrument. "He tells stories!", my companion declared at intermission, in awe at what an acoustic guitar could evoke.

As he re-tuned his guitar inbetween tunes, Williams gave descriptions of the compositions in an understated, humorous way that I'll guess goes back to his Australian roots.

I would have been more transported by the finely wrought tapestries and tales if not for the percussive accompaniment provided by the audience. It's been a cold spring in Princeton, and Mr. Tickle was getting mischievous with quite a few throats. Williams made a good humored request for more self-control after his first tune, with good results, but the Tickle Monster had a reprise in key sections of Williams' heartfelt performance of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe's "Djilile" in the second half, bringing winces from the master, and a diplomatic but firm request for silence that tamed the monster for the rest of the program.

Memories were triggered of classical performances at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, years back, repeatedly sabataged by deep winter communal hacking, until finally copious supplies of cough drops became a standard presence in the lobby. (Four flavors! Try them all!) A small basket of them was out in the lobby at McCarter, but I wish there had been a seventh string Williams could have plucked that would have blanketed the audience with medicinal magic.

A more common problem with musical performances (not at McCarter fortunately) is that the musicians are overamplified and the audience lacks not cough drops but earplugs. Even with the coughs occasionally shattering the miraculous fabric of sound, I was glad for the kind of music that draws you in rather than bowls you over, and the chance to see a master of the artform at work.

PUBLIC MEETING ABOUT SUSTAINABLE PRINCETON PLAN

2009-03-07T14:27:00.001-05:00

An important meeting for the environmental future of Princeton is coming up on Wednesday, March 11. The public will get a chance to learn more about and comment on the Sustainable Princeton Plan. This is the document that will guide Princeton's community-wide shift towards greater sustainability. Everyone--residents, schools, businesses, local governments--has both a stake and a hand in this effort. Please come to this event, to learn and give input.

At the March 11th workshop (7 p.m., Suzanne Patterson Center behind Princeton Borough Municipal Building, One Monument Drive), the draft document will be summarized, general comments will be made, and then the participants will break into small working groups to discuss how to carry out specific actions of the plan. Light Refreshments will be available.
For further information, please contact the Princeton Planning Director Lee Solow: 609/924-5366 or lsolow@princeton-township.nj.us

Additional information:

Sustainable Princeton Steering Committee, composed of municipal officials, representatives of Princeton groups and institutions, and local residents invites the public to participate in a Tuesday, March 11th, 7 p.m., workshop at the Suzanne Paterson Center , 1 Monument Drive, Princeton to review and comment upon the Sustainable Princeton Community Plan (SPCP). The draft plan outlines the goals and objectives of the Sustainable Princeton Initiative. The workshop will provide the input needed to finalize the SPCP and to launch the community on a course of achieving – and sustaining - a green and greener Princeton. Copies of the draft are available at the municipal buildings, the public library and online at http://www.princetontwp.org/Sustainable-Princeton-Draft2-5.pdf

The SPCPoutlines goals, identifies the sectors of the communities that would be implementing these goals, and presents action plans for fulfilling the goals, as well as strategies for measuring/tracking progress. The six goals are: green the built environment; improve transit/transportation; build local green economy; protect health and natural resources; curb greenhouse gases; foster community. The sectors - schools, businesses, residents, government - would be tasked with implementing specific action plans.

Sustainable Princeton had its roots within the Princeton Environmental Commission, which asked the municipalities to form a Sustainable Princeton Steering Committee two years ago and to hire New Jersey Sustainable State Institute (NJSSI) to help the municipalities embark upon a cohesive and effective plan to make the Princetons a model of sustainability in New Jersey. With a grant from the Municipal Land Use Center of New Jersey, the municipalities were able to sustain the Sustainable Princeton Initiative and to develop the Sustainable Princeton Community Plan on which the public is being asked to comment.

Breakthrough in Home Energy Monitors!

2009-03-03T18:01:00.002-05:00

If you've been wanting to reduce your home energy use, to save money and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, you've no doubt wondered how much electricity various appliances use. Without that knowledge, it's hard to know how to most strategically cut back. Incredibly, a $500,000 home gives its owner less feedback about its workings than a $500 car.

When I first explored this issue, I bought a Kill a Watt meter that can measure the energy use of most anything that plugs into the wall. But it couldn't measure the real energy hogs, like central air conditioners, electric dryers, recessed lighting or dishwashers. So I bought a $150 T.E.D. meter that provides a real time measurement of your home energy use. With that device, I learned that my A/C unit uses 3500 watts of electricity when on, and the electric dryer uses nearly 4000. But energy meters like the T.E.D. are potentially dangerous to install, because there sensor has to be attached to the fuse box.

So, I wondered, would it be possible to design a device that could be placed on the electric meter outside, where it could measure how fast the dial turns and transmit the measurement to a handheld device inside the house? Lo and behold, such a device has finally been made available by Black and Decker! It's safe and legal for any homeowner to install, and costs less than the other whole-house energy monitors (about $100). After an hour spent installing it, you'll be able to walk around the house with the handheld monitor, turn various appliances and lights on and off, and see how much energy each one uses. With this knowledge, it's much easier to make decisions about how to cut back on consumption.

UPDATE, Jan. 13, 2010: The Black and Decker model has some drawbacks, primary among them is that the meter only tracks energy use in 100 watt increments. A CFL lightbulb may use only 14 watts, so if you turn several of them off, the meter won't show any reduction in energy use. My house generally uses so little energy that I couldn't even get the B&D model to register anything. It may work best for houses that use lots of appliances. For now, I'm using my T.E.D. meter, which, though trickier to install, tracks energy use in 10 watt increments and is much more accurate.

For informative reviews, go to:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/B001ELJKLE

Skating on Carnegie Lake

2009-01-27T11:27:00.002-05:00

Here's the website where the township provides up to date info on skating conditions at three locations in Princeton: http://www.leaguelineup.com/welcome.asp?url=princetonrecreation. You may have to scroll down a ways.

For a "review" of the lake's two days of glorious skating, see www.princetonnaturenotes.blogspot.com.

Adopt a Sidewalk

2009-01-23T09:04:00.006-05:00

One of the disadvantages of being tall is that you serve as a walking early warning system for tree limbs growing out over sidewalks. By default, you may find yourself taking on the role of "first responder", arriving on the scene with a pair of loppers to clear the pedestrian lane of pesky impediments. In this particular case, I must have ducked under this limb a hundred times before heeding the call to public service.

Have to say, though, that it makes for a great before and after shot. All our actions should lead to such clear improvements.

Princeton Public Library Getting Greener

2008-12-22T13:29:00.007-05:00

Of many small steps is a functional recycling program composed. The Princeton Public Library cafe, whose look-alike trash and recycling containers were preventing adequate separation (previous post), has retrofitted its recycling container with a new top. The contrast in color, the smaller opening, and the pairing of the trash and recycling containers all should help prevent the recycling container from being contaminated with trash.

The library has also improved other aspects of its recycling program.

Some Princeton residents have raised concerns about the library's energy consumption. According to the building manager, he has replaced most lights with fluorescents, and reduced the brightness of the bulbs lighting the stacks from 75 watt to 50 watt. Only fluorescent lights are left on after the building closes, to allow the custodians to clean up.

Some additional steps that might be taken would be to have the custodians only light the story they are cleaning, rather than having all three floors lit during that time. And it should be possible to program the public computers to go into standby mode when not in use. The lights embedded in the sidewalk, which shine up on the columns, make for a nice effect, but are not exactly a model for energy efficiency and reducing light pollution in the night sky.

Ideally, such a flagship public building would announce its green features to all who walk in, as a demonstration.

Community Park Elementary Recycling Improves

2008-12-22T09:58:00.005-05:00

Success! A recent check of the bins behind Community Park Elementary show the school has brought its recycling rate up to that of other schools like Little Brook and Riverside. Two full 96 gallon rollout bins of paper each week seems to be the typical production of an elementary school with a functional recycling program.

The recycling regimens instituted last year through a big push by volunteers and staff look to be holding up and even improving. Each school room has three bins--one each for trash, bottles/cans and paper. Each day, students take the recyclables to larger containers in a central location, such as the cafeteria. Custodial staff then empty these larger containers into the rollouts out back.

From what I've heard, functional recycling programs in NJ's schools are more the exception than the rule, which makes Princeton's achievement all the more impressive.

One thing that would make the recycling programs even better would be if the schools tracked how much they recycled each week. Might be a good math challenge for students to come up with totals for the year, with calculations of the environmental benefit.

Philadelphia on the Environmental Forefront?

2008-12-12T09:12:00.003-05:00

I've been hearing some good things about Philadelphia's environmental initiatives lately. Reportedly, Philadelphia used to have a very inconvenient curbside recycling service. It was every other week, with shifting schedules that didn't coincide with trash pickup. The recycling rate was down around 7%, or some such.

But all this has changed. Recycling curbside pickup is now weekly, on the same day as trash pickup, and residents can throw all recyclables in one container, rather than sorting by type. The program is called "All Together Now!", with a snappy website to go along with it (http://64.78.36.115/res_main.asp). The website includes a recycling game in which you race the clock while clicking and dragging various items to a recycling or trash bin on the screen. I recommend playing it with the sound (an obnoxious siren) turned off.

In any case, compare the convenience of the Philadelphia system to that of Princeton, where recycling is every other week, and collection is still dual stream. Though Princeton just signed a contract to continue with the current system for another year and a half, it will be worth researching options in the future.

I've also heard that Philadelphia's energy company has recently completed installing smart meters citywide. Smart meters are frequently mentioned as a top priority if we are to dramatically reduce our energy use. In New Jersey, PSE&G installed a few demos here and there, but has reportedly abandoned any large scale conversion. Instead, the utility is said to be investing heavily in wind energy off the coast.

Reading a Snowy Roof For Heat Loss

2008-12-11T09:18:00.010-05:00

While engaged in a snowball fight with my daughter recently, I glanced up at the roof of our house. What were those strange patterns in the snow? The vertical white lines are the rafters, whose thick wood reduces the roof's exposure to the warmer air inside the attic. Chances are the dark spots, where all the snow has melted, coincide with where light fixtures stick through the ceiling, allowing hot air to escape into the attic from living areas.

Using patterns of snow melt to figure out where you have leaks in your top floor ceiling is in the same category as a post on this website one year ago (12/17/07) about how to use indoor spider webs as energy detectives.

The way to stop all that hot air from escaping through the ceiling is to build boxes around the light fixtures, up in the attic. I've heard from an insulation contractor that the boxes can be made of cut pieces of drywall or styrofoam, and should be no closer than several inches from the light fixture, since the lights can produce a lot of heat.

Another approach is to replace the fixtures with the kind that don't leak and can have insulation pushed right up against them. These are quite inexpensive, but they require fiddling with wires during installation. More info can be found elsewhere on the web about this.

Recycling Containers and Body Language

2008-12-04T22:48:00.011-05:00

(My other posts about recycling containers can now be found at www.recyclingcontainers.blogspot.com)

The string of posts below serve as critiques of a wide variety of recycling containers used in places frequented by the public. That many of them, including those that cost as much as $1000 each, fail to serve their intended purpose points to the need for this "course" in container design.

Containers matter because they are the first in a row of dominoes, helping determine whether a recycling system functions or collapses in a heap. If the trash is mixed with recyclables, custodians throw it all away, and use the contamination as an excuse to eventually not bother recycling at all. This "recycling in name only" in turn breeds cynicism, further eroding participation by the public. The dysfunctional containers remain long afterwards, in libraries, stadiums, on city streets--like gravestones to good intentions.

A functional recycling container 1) provides abundant visual cues to the user, and 2) is paired with a trash container. These two rules are very simple, but through indifference or some stubborn belief that people carefully read signs and behave rationally, they are frequently ignored.

Though recycling in concept has broad, perhaps almost universal support, most people are surprisingly oblivious about what they do with an item they wish to get rid of when out about town. Refuse or recyclable, it goes in the first trash-like container they encounter, regardless of labeling. As described in one of the posts, our big brains don't want to be preoccupied with small things. Unfortunately, countless small actions add up to large consequence, as we've seen over and over--in nonpoint source pollution, global warming, and the voting that serves as the foundation of democracy.

Most recycling container designs fail for lack of the right visual cues. People don't stop to take note of the nice recycling logo, but respond instead, in their state of distraction, to subliminal messages--the body language of the container.

Recycle Containers in Princeton Parks

2008-12-04T12:52:00.012-05:00

The typical approach to recycling outdoors is to not provide the recycling option, which characterizes most town streets.

In Princeton parks, 35 gallon yellow recycling bins have been common. Though they work pretty well if paired with trash cans, their large openings make contamination with trash more likely.

A more expensive approach was tried at Turning Basin Park, where many pairs of wood-framed trash and recycling containers were installed for a total of $12,000. They're built to last, and won't walk away, but their subtle visual cues--particularly the similarly sized holes--are problematic. Contamination seemed minimal when I checked, but I have since heard they aren't working as well as hoped.

Transparency in Recycling Containers

2008-12-04T05:55:00.008-05:00

Transparency--being able to see the bottles and cans in the container--works on multiple levels. It gives abundant visual cues to the user, and it lets the custodian know when the bag is full. With a small hole on top, there's very little chance that these will get filled with trash.

The first one is a bit flimsy, but handy for events. It can be obtained at http://www.cleartainers.com/index.asp.

The second photo was sent to me by a NJ municipality that makes these out of PVC pipe. Sand is put in the lower portions of the piping to increase stability. If you want the specs for this, email me from the "about me" box in the right column of this blog.

The last photo shows a "Cannable" (on the left), which is a sturdy version one can buy. They can be used with or without clear plastic liners.

Recycling Containers in Nearby Cities

2008-12-03T09:40:00.012-05:00

Here's a decent setup in Central Park. A rollout bin has been modified for recycling bottles and cans, with a trash can strategically located right next to it to reduce chances of contamination.

In the subways of New York City, they claim that recyclables will be separated out from the trash. Certainly simplifies things on the collection end. There have been a lot of advances in separation technology.

The last photo was taken at the skating rink at Penns Landing in Philadelphia. Great place to go, by the way, but their trash/recycling duo is doomed to failure. True, they are paired, and the recycling container looks different, but the wide mouth insures that the uncaring masses will contaminated it with trash.

Adapting Recycling Containers So They Work

2008-12-03T02:52:00.013-05:00

As previous posts (below) have shown, good looks often defeats the goal of recycling. There are attractive recycling containers that are completely dysfunctional, ugly ones that serve the purpose, and all manner inbetween.

These three photos show modifications of existing containers. The first one is in an informal cafe, showing off once again the limitless versatility of cardboard in its service to humanity. Have a wide-mouthed trash can that you want to convert so people will only throw bottles and cans in it? Cardboard and felt pen to the rescue!

The second photo shows another, more weather resistant way to convert a trash can into a recycling container. Simply cut a hole in a plastic lid and add a small laminated sign. Note that it's paired with a container for trash. Otherwise, people would be tempted to throw trash in it, despite the small size of the opening.

The third photo is a clever, minimalist modification of a regular trash can at Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve in Pennsylvania. One makes pie-shaped slits in the lid, through which people push the can or bottle.

As far as I know, there is no manufacturer of this simple kind of recycling retrofit for trash cans. Makers of trash cans do not sell lids separately, much to the disgruntlement of hardware store owners, who find that lids tend to disappear from their shelves, leaving them with lidless trash cans they can't sell.

Princeton University Recycling Containers

2008-12-03T02:26:00.011-05:00

The older, poorly designed recycling containers, including those in the previous post (below), are slowly being replaced on campus by better designs. The first photo here shows one of the older designs that, though paired, still are problematic because the trash (left) and recycling containers look so similar.

A newer design has been installed at the new soccer stadium, as part of an effort by the unversity's rec department to improve recycling at all stadiums on campus. The recycling bin is on the left, with a small hole for cans and bottles, made vertical so that rain doesn't get in. All of these are paired with trash cans, and probably work well. It would be better if the container was not completely opaque, i.e. if the container made it easy to see if the bag inside is filling up and needs to be emptied.

The third photo shows the kind of container that's becoming common inside buildings, with different shaped holes for trash, paper and cans/bottles. These, too, look like a big improvement.

Dysfunctional Recycling Containers--Part Two

2008-12-02T10:45:00.015-05:00

One day, after a lunchtime talk at Princeton University on global warming, students, faculty and some locals were milling around, finishing their lunch while avidly discussing how to save the world. As they left, they were far too distracted by their lofty thoughts to notice they were stuffing their paper plates in a recycling container for cans and bottles. A container labeled for trash was just outside the door, but nobody could be bothered to seek it out.

And so it goes with much of human life. Our big brains are more taken with big ideas than the nitty gritty, small acts that cumulatively determine our fate on this planet.

It doesn't help that these containers are poorly designed. The big opening in the recycling container is begging for refuse, and there is no visual cue beyond the subtle labeling to distinguish it from the trash can (2nd photo). If environmentalists don't bother to read the labeling, who will?

The custodians told me that if there's any contamination in the recyclables, they throw the whole batch in the trash.

Recycling Contest At Princeton's Football Stadium

2008-12-01T05:12:00.015-05:00

There's a hard-fought contest going on every day at the Princeton University football stadium. The Bad But Beautiful are duking it out with the Good But Ugly in the Regional Recycling Division.

Whose going to win? In the first photo is the Bad But Beautiful, featuring stylish stainless steel design and subtle distinctions between the trash (left) and the recycling container (right). I'm betting the recycling container will fail bigtime, because it's too far from, and looks too much like, the trash container.

Sure enough, the second photo shows the Bad But Beautiful recycling container is getting filled with trash.

"Taking the field" on the stadium's south side are the Good But Uglies, who aren't winning any beauty contest but definitely look like a contender.
A small hole for the bottles/cans, angled to keep out the rain, discourages trash even when they aren't paired with a trash can. They are soft-spoken--the lettering is hard to see--but in a game where body language matters more than labels, these containers are sending a message--NO TRASH HERE!

Check out the complete lack of trash contamination in the last photo. I think we have a winner!

Dysfunctional Recycling Containers--Part One

2008-11-30T16:23:00.023-05:00

(Note, 11/09: Since this post was published, the library has improved its recycling containers.)

They say you can't judge a book by its cover. This recycling container looks perfectly sensible, clearly labeled as to what should be thrown into it. But in practice it fails miserably at its intended use, and has been doing so ever since the Princeton Public Library's cafe opened several years ago.

A functional recycling container would 1) provide abundant visual cues to the user, and 2) be paired with a trash container. The absence of either of these attributes almost always insures the "recycling" container will get filled with trash.

Designers of buildings and plazas typically choose aesthetics over functionality, which often means the trash and recycling containers are both expensive (as much as $1000 each) and stylishly similar in appearance. The library cafe's recycling container fails because it is placed far from the trash container and looks just like it (2nd photo). Though the container is labeled, no one stops to read labels, and the container's wide mouth is an invitation for trash.

Here you have a high profile public building in a progressive town, no doubt run by people with environmental sympathies, and everything but cardboard is being thrown in the trash dumpster out back.

You'd expect institutions like schools and libraries to use recycling as a way to educate children to be good environmental stewards, but my experience has been the opposite. Far from being unusual, this "recycling in name only" is more the rule than the exception in public places, institutions and businesses.

Only an extremely persistent volunteer effort was sufficient to get recycling up to speed in Princeton's public schools last year. This fall, multiple emails over several months to the library have at last yielded a recognition by the library's management of this and other recycling problems in the building. Princeton township and borough have mandatory recycling ordinances, but these by themselves do not make recycling happen.

In the plaza outside the library are some more gleaming containers, sometimes paired. The openings are at least different--for those that still have tops--but there's a good chance that people don't distinguish, and that all contents get carted off to the landfill.

Solar Retrofit For A Garage

2008-11-22T14:53:00.007-05:00

It seems such a shame to have all that wonderful solar energy glancing off the sides of the house all winter. If all homes had passive solar designs, we'd be well on our way to solving our share of the global warming crisis.

But they're not, so what to do? I cleaned the windows on the south and west sides, and took off the screens, to be as welcoming to the sun as our windows allow. A small gesture, but it's surprising how much heat comes in on a sunny day.

One spot that offered greater possibilities was the garage, which, incredible as it may sound, used to be used for storing cars. Because it's located under living space, a cold garage will make for a cooler floor in the rooms above. It didn't help that the garage door allowed outside air in freely around its edges.

What followed was a long period of cogitation intermingled with what I like to call strategic procrastination. The vague plan gained more momentum and clarity when a friend gave me some old aluminum storm windows. Then, as the sun conveniently began dipping low in the sky to flood the garage with light, some 2X3s got purchased and eventually cut to size, screwed together, and finally fitted with my friend's storm windows. Below is the end result. It cost next to nothing, and can easily be removed during the summer.

Note the leaf pile, meant to deter incoming cars.

Harvest Gone Wrong--2008

2008-11-21T14:32:00.006-05:00

Each weekday morning, kids and parents stream down Abernathy Street to get to Little Brook Elementary School. This time of year, leaves on the street make the morning and afternoon rush hours a little more dangerous, as leaves piled on the street constrict traffic flow and turn slippery in the rain.

The township, responding to a state mandate, requires that leaves not be put on the street until one week before the monthly pickup, and that the piles extend no more than three feet out from the curb. This pile, a common sight, was set out two weeks before scheduled pickup, and extends ten feet out.

As often is the case, this was the work of a landscape crew from out of town that seems oblivious to local regulations.

The second photo, dramatizing the hazardous aspect of leaves dumped in the street, gives evidence of a car skidding through a stop sign on rotting leaves, in a busy intersection crowded with kids twice a day.

The third photo shows a small victory for sanity. A homeowner who used to have the leaves in her woodlot blown into the street every fall has had a change of heart. She now piles some in three wire bins, and spreads the rest in a well-defined area under the trees, enriching her soil and leaving the street clean.

Grocery Bags and Good Intentions

2008-11-18T09:03:00.007-05:00

I have consolidated all our cloth grocery bag holdings, which have maintained their size and number despite the shrinking stock market. Seven, all told, with rumors of others floating around--acquired by various family members with good intentions to stem the flow of disposable plastic bags through our hands and into the landfill. Next step is to redistribute the bags to strategic locations--the back seat of the car, the hallway closet--where they stand half a chance of being remembered for the next trip to the grocery store.

They work great, I must say, accommodating the groceries nicely, and it feels good to be holding something of quality on the walk back to the car, rather than a flimsy plastic bag that begins its useful life with one foot in the landfill.

Funny, though. I've used them only once, otherwise managing to think of them only when I arrive at the checkout counter, when it's too late.

It's an appealing idea for the world's greatest consumer nation: save the world by buying more stuff. But the world will only be saved when we change our behavior, and despite our reputation as a highly adaptable species, that seems the hardest task of all.

One alternative approach: Stick a few disposable plastic bags in your pocket before going to the grocery store, not to recycle but to reuse, with their final use being as a liner for the trash can under the kitchen sink.

Recycling Containers--Do's and Don't's

2008-11-18T02:58:00.006-05:00

This post will evolve over time, as I collect photos of recycling containers. There are beautiful ones that are completely dysfunctional, ugly ones that serve the purpose, and all manner inbetween.

Here's one in the latter category, showing off once again the limitless versatility of cardboard in its service to humanity. Have a wide-mouthed trash can that you want to convert so people will only throw bottles and cans in it? Cardboard and felt pen to the rescue.

The second photo shows another, more weather resistant way to convert a trash can to a recycling container. Simply cut a hole in a plastic lid and add a small laminated sign. Note that it's paired with a trash can. Otherwise, people would be tempted to throw trash in it, despite the small size of the opening.

As far as I know, there is no manufacturer of this simple recycling retrofit for trash cans. Makers of trash cans do not sell lids separately, much to the disgruntlement of hardware store owners, who find that lids tend to disappear from their shelves, leaving them with lidless trash cans they can't sell.

2nd Annual Green Home and Garden Tour Saturday

2008-11-10T14:58:00.001-05:00

Anne Neumann of the Princeton Environmental Commission sends this information:

The Princeton Environmental Commission's second annual Green Home and Garden Tour is this coming Saturday, November 15, from eleven o'clock till four.

Simultaneously, Hopewell Township's Environmental Commission will hold its first "Greener Living" tour. This year's tour-goers can see twice as many examples of living sustainably. Last year's Princeton tour won a 2008 New Jersey Environmental Achievement Award. The two free, self-guided tours will feature area homes, gardens, commercial buildings, and a school. Together, they demonstrate the major kinds of environmental sustainability recommended by the U.S. Green Building Council through its LEED standards (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

The tours are designed not only to show area residents practical ways to live sustainably. They are also intended to forward our area's economic sustainability by showcasing the local architects, builders, suppliers, and landscapers who can help tour-goers realize their environmental goals.

Maps allowing you to take these tours can be downloaded soon at www.princetontwp.org and at www.hopewelltwp.org.

Saving On Water and Sewer Bills

2008-11-10T12:22:00.002-05:00

Now is a good time of year to consider ways to reduce water use. Your sewer bill, which you pay through your property taxes, is calculated each year from your winter water bill. The logic is that, since you aren't watering your lawn in the middle of January, all the water you use in winter goes down the drain. A winter bill, therefore, provides a good measure of how much water you're sending to the wastewater treatment plant year-round.

If you reduce your winter water bill, you will save for the next year on your sewer bill. So, for instance, if you've been meaning to buy a low-flow toilet, put aerators on your faucets, or get a low-flow shower head, now's as good a time as any. If you don't want to replace all the toilets, just replace the one that gets the most use. Designs have improved so much that a water-efficient new toilet works far better than the old water-guzzling varieties. Consumer Reports compares some models. I've heard Eljers are good, and Toto, too. Toto has a 1.28 gallon E-Max model that is excellent. I'm sure there are many others that work well. Gravity flush is more than sufficient. No need for pressurizing chambers, etc.

Another way to save on water bills, and heating as well, is to adjust your water heater so that the water is just the right temperature for a shower. This makes for much less fiddling with hot and cold during showers, and makes it easy to adopt the "navy shower" approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_shower). Maybe we should call it an "energy security" shower.

Central A/C Uses Energy Even in Winter

2008-11-06T08:03:00.002-05:00

The energy "vampires" in your house, those appliances that draw electrical power even when turned off, include your central air conditioner. There's a small heating unit in the compressor that keeps the crankcase oil warm. I checked with someone at Redding, and was told that there is no need to have this function turned on during those months when the A/C is not in use.

To prevent this energy loss, simply trip the circuit breaker that's dedicated to the A/C, so that it is off through fall, winter and spring. Push the circuit breaker again as hot weather approaches, to allow it to warm up again before use. Saves about $10/year.

Here is some info from a neighbor with more expertise than I:
"Yes, it is true that there is a "sump" heater that keeps the freon oil warm. I actually flipped off both my compressor breakers last week at home for that very reason. Just be sure to turn it back on a day or so before you actually want to run the air conditioner so you don't push oil through the lines."

I discovered this by using a T.E.D. whole house energy monitor, which tells me how much energy the house is using at any moment. The trick is to try turning everything off in the house. If some energy is still being used, then try turning off one circuit breaker at a time to see where the mysterious energy drain is coming from. This led to the discovery of the A/C's vampire nature, confirmed by a call to the A/C repairman.

Recycling Envelopes With Windows Okay

2008-10-30T12:14:00.003-04:00

I wish I could recycle all the time I spend throwing out junk mail. If there were a conspiracy to befuddle the masses, junk mail would be one of the most insidious weapons in the arsenal. Target the population with stealth junk covered with words like "important", "last chance!", and "personal", preoccupy people's minds with semi-appealing offers, encased in envelopes whose recyclability is perpetually in question. If the conspiracy is successful, people will become deadened to all that claims to be important, personal or opportune. As our minds turn to jello, the nation will falter as it fails to respond to real crises and opportunities.

So I offer this tidbit as a public service, in defense of our great nation and its precious reserves of grey matter. Will the windows contaminate the paper recycling process? A NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection staffer who lives the business of recycling day in and day out tells me the plastic windows float to the surface in the vat of recycled paper fibers and can easily be skimmed off.

So toss those peskily windowed envelopes straight into the recycling bin, and save your quandaring for greater things.

Problems With Downtown Recycling

2008-10-26T08:24:00.005-04:00

Another example of inadequate recycling in Princeton can be found downtown, in the borough. The library, for instance, recycles cardboard, but from what I've heard and seen, all paper, bottles and cans get tossed out with the trash. The library cafe has stylish but totally dysfunctional lookalike recycling and trash containers that both end up filled with trash.

The two businesses I checked with are recycling bottles and cans, but all the paper and cardboard are getting thrown away. Email inquiries to the library and the Borough Merchants Association have not as yet gotten responses.

Again, this is a situation where local government, which gets annual grants from the state to support recycling initiatives and recycling coordinator positions, could be stepping in to make sure businesses are complying with the mandatory recycling ordinances. The merchants association, borough staff and the business owners themselves all could be playing a role in solving any logistical hurdles. The value of recyclables when compared to landfilling costs, the introduction of single stream recycling in which bottles/cans and paper can be mixed together, and the potential for businesses to team up and share dumpsters--all are ways that costs could be minimized.

What is most remarkable about the situation is that the great majority of Princeton institutions and businesses would surely say they are highly sympathetic to environmental concerns, and yet there is a breakdown in the expression of that sympathy at a nuts and bolts, day to day level.

Princeton Football Recycling-- Followup

2008-10-24T14:26:00.003-04:00

An inquiry to the Princeton University athletic department about the general lack of recycling at football games may prove to have been productive. Turns out they are updating recycling one stadium at a time. Well designed containers are in place at the new soccer stadium, with hockey and football to follow.

They have instructed their university student teams (more sustainable than my suggestion of community volunteer groups) to separate out recyclables when cleaning the football stadium, so the 2000 or so plastic bottles strewn about after games may not end up in the trash.

A larger lesson from this experience:

It's amazing how many poorly designed recycling containers are out there to be bought at great expense. The containers--stainless steel, $1000 a pop--are oftentimes chosen by the architects, who think about appearance rather than function. For an integrated decor, they choose recycling containers that look just like those for trash. Lacking visual cues, users don't stop to read subtle labeling, and so the recycling containers end up full of trash. The architects and the container manufacturers, through ignorance or indifference, sabotage the very activity they are supposed to be facilitating, and no feedback loop appears to be in place to change this.

Princeton Football Recycling Still Seeking a Win

2008-10-19T08:28:00.010-04:00

One of the most obvious breakdowns in recycling in Princeton is at sports events and festivals. I did a quick calculation after the stands were vacated at the Princeton University football game yesterday, and came up with a figure of 2000 plastic bottles laying around, all of which are probably being treated as trash by the custodial staff.

One way to spare all these bottles from the trash would be to have the sports department give free tickets and some plastic bags to a scout troop, which would then gather and recycle all the bottles after the game, during the "fifth quarter" activities. The announcer could recognize the scouts over the P.A. system.

The recycling receptacles at the stadium are few and far between, and look just like the trash receptacles except they have a slightly lighter shade of metal top. The holes on the trash and recycling receptacles are the same size and width--maybe a foot across, which means that the receptacle, though it says "bottles and cans" on it, is talkin' trash, so to speak. I checked two of them. One had mostly trash, the other, amazingly, had mostly bottles.

Venders would be able to provide better numbers on overall bottle sales, but my guess is that about 5% of, say, 4000 bottles are getting recycled during football games.

Recycling at the high school games is hit or miss. Sometimes there are receptacles, sometimes not. And, again, the recycling containers have wide tops that encourage people to treat them as trash containers.

The trash cans, it turns out, make excellent squirrel traps. Their heavy lids are the kind with hinged doors you push on to put trash in. The resident squirrels apparently know how to get in through the hinged door, but can't get out. Twice in two weeks, now, I've had to pull the lid off, then stand back as the squirrel rockets three feet straight up in the air before zipping off into the bleachers. It's like watching a cartoon.

Shopping Center Struggles With Recycling

2008-10-12T09:16:00.005-04:00

I recently inquired about how recycling is going at the Princeton Shopping Center. The Center contributes greatly to quality of life in Princeton, providing a convenient place to shop, whose proximity to residential neighborhoods becomes ever more important as we try to limit our individual carbon footprints.

Businesses are required by law to recycle cardboard, which is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. It's the township's responsibility to enforce this law and, if necessary, hand out fines for violations. However, during frequent shopping visits, I've noticed that cardboard is routinely getting thrown in trash dumpsters.

Turns out that the shopping center provides a cavernous dumpster for cardboard, but it's located at the far northern end of the parking lot, which means that any worker given the task of dealing with boxes has the choice of walking a quarter mile to the recycling dumpster, or throwing it in the trash dumpster just a few steps from the back door. It's not surprising, then, that recyclables are ending up in the trash.

Many businesses there no doubt recycle as they are supposed to, despite the inconvenient setup. McCaffery's compacts and recycles its own cardboard, and is also looking into partnering with a Pennsylvania company to have their food waste trucked away and composted. According to Jim McCaffery, the plastic bags customers return to the store are picked up by the Good Will and turned into things like benches.

Low-Flow Toilets and the Blessings of Smart Regulation

2008-09-23T09:30:00.013-04:00

Toilets don't normally come up in conversation. The last time they were in the news was back in 1997, when the federal government passed a law requiring that all new toilets use a maximum of 1.6 gallons of water per flush. The new requirement generated loud complaints on editorial pages about government overreaching, and the slew of poorly functioning toilets that ensued gave comedians some good punch lines. In fact, a little research at the time showed that government was being falsely maligned, and that a few unsung manufacturers responded to the regulatory challenge by designing effective toilets.

In searching for a replacement for the old, inefficient 4 gallon toilets in my house (3 gallons if one puts bricks or weighted bottles in the tank), it turns out that manufacturers have figured out how to use even less water than the government standard. Toto has come out with a 1.28 gallon toilet, and I've been told by a local retailer that all manufacturers will be using less than 1.6 gallons in the future. There are also duel-flush toilets, which have a 0.8 gallon flush for liquid waste, though these are more expensive. We bought a 1.28 gallon Drake with a so-called E-Max gravity flush, which works far better than any of the old 4 gallon types.

Not all regulation is so constructive, but in the case of the lowly toilet, manufacturers responded to strict limits on water consumption by making a better product, and even going beyond what the government required.

Life Speaks Out On Bike Safety

2008-09-21T10:33:00.006-04:00

On why old helmets are dangerous and why kids shouldn't wear headphones while biking:

Sometimes life speaks in such a coherent, insistent manner that I have no choice but to stop and listen. Life's latest speaking engagement commenced at the bleachers of the Princeton high school sports field, where I was sitting with my daughter, having a picnic while watching the girl's soccer team practice. This is not normal behavior, seeing as we know no one on the team, and had never visited the field before.

Two men were cleaning up after the football game earlier in the day. They took their thankless task with a sense of humor. I asked one of them about recycling--the lack there of being a pet peeve of mine. He assure me that they do, mostly, and also took note of the old bike helmet I had next to me. "You should get a new helmet," he said. I knew this, but he explained exactly why my procrastination was dangerous. The helmet had long since lost its plastic shell, which he said is very important since the plastic coating makes the helmet "slippery". Otherwise it catches on the pavement, increasing the risk of neck injury. He also said the padding inside becomes hardened over time, which reduces a helmet's ability to cushion impact. "Helmets really need to be replaced every five years," he said with a tone of voice that led me to believe him.

Having brought me an impromptu lecture on helmet safety, life gave its second, far more emphatic, speech several days later, on Franklin Street near TeeAr Place. I was riding my daughter home on the bike, with the same old helmet on, when we heard a loud thump--the sound of a student getting hit by a car just up the street. He was sixteen, riding home from the high school with headphones in his ears and no bike helmet. Riding on the sidewalk, he suddenly veered into the street, right in front of a car going the same direction. The car had no time to stop. The impact must have been substantial--the bike was totaled, the car's windshield was smashed--but the boy, though dazed, was soon able to stand up. The ambulance came quickly. They lay him down, braced his neck and took him to the hospital as a precaution. The next day, a friend of his said he was okay, though a Trenton Times article said the impact had fractured his skull.

My daughter likes the feel of wind in her hair, but maybe now she will complain less about the helmet, and I'll finally be able to corral memory, paper and pen to get that new helmet on the shopping list. When life speaks, it helps to listen, and not to have headphones on.

Document Shredding & Compost Bin Event

2008-09-14T17:40:00.001-04:00

This Saturday, September 20, 10-2, Princeton township residents can get documents shredded for free, and pick up a backyard composting bin for $20.

More info at http://www.princetontwp.org/shred_event.html.

School Recycling Pickups Temporarily Stopped

2008-08-14T08:38:00.002-04:00

As mentioned in a previous post, recycling at Princeton district schools was stopped in the summer of 2007. Last fall, students and staff worked hard to get recycling going again. This summer, I stopped by the bins at the high school loading dock to see how things were going. The good news was that the bins were packed with recyclables. The bad news was that, three weeks later, the same recyclables were sitting in the same bins, which meant that pickups had been stopped. The cardboard dumpster was overflowing, and recyclables were getting thrown in the trash for lack of any other option.

An email to staff brought a response. Pickups have resumed, but the recurring lesson is that any recycling program can fall apart at any time, and ongoing monitoring is needed, in-house rather than depending on interested community volunteers, to avoid lapses of this sort.

The other lesson of this incident is that government monitoring of school recycling, which may occur every year or two if at all, is very unlikely to be accurate, given that recycling is so dependent on the passion and persistence of students and staff who may come and go.

Article On Energy Meters in Today's Packet

2008-07-15T15:52:00.004-04:00

The Princeton Packet published an article today about the Kill a Watt energy meters that are now available for checkout at the public library. The meters were donated by the Princeton Environmental Commission. Before making them available to patrons, library staff used one to find ways to save thousands of dollars in annual energy costs. The article can be accessed online at http://www.packetonline.com/articles/2008/07/15/the_princeton_packet/news/doc487bdee245e73637553299.txt

For those seeking more info on energy use of various home appliances, scroll down to the 10/21/07 post on this website, or click on "energy" on the right of this page, to see a mix of posts focused on energy conservation.

Minimizing A/C Use

2008-07-11T12:02:00.009-04:00

In the summer heat, there are many ways a house conspires to make itself even hotter. Here are some ways to cut back on the house's heat production and reduce the need for the A/C. Most of these are minor, but their effect can add up, and they include savings of their own. I claim no expertise, only some experience and a willingness to experiment.

Lower the temperature of your water heater (see 1/13/08 post) to a temperature that, when you turn on the hot water for a shower, there isn't any need to dilute it with water from the cold tap. This simplifies showering as well as reduces the work your water heater needs to do.
Turn off the heating element in your refrigerator that heats the door (supposedly to reduce condensation on the door). If your frig has one, the button should be inside near the back, where the light bulb is.
Use as low-wattage a light bulb in the frig as you can, or take out the light bulb altogether. Our older frig had an incandescent bulb inside that gets searing hot during prolonged open door meditations on what to eat. This is a perfect spot for a LED light, which would not emit much heat, but they aren't available as far as I can tell.
Minimize the use of incandescent and halogen light bulbs, which get very hot. Many of these can be replaced with fluorescents (see 1/2/08 post) without sacrificing the quality of light.
When boiling water for tea, boil only as much water as you need, so that less heating is needed and unused hot water doesn't sit on the stove, heating the room. Or heat the water in a microwave with the bag inside. (Hope microwaving isn't insulting to tea afficionados.)
We usually associate attic insulation with keeping heat in during the winter, but attics can turn into cauldrons in the summer, and abundant insulation helps keep that heat from seeping into living spaces.
What does your yard's topography have to do with energy bills? Basement dehumidifiers use 600 watts when running, and often run the majority of the time in the summer. If the ground is sloping towards your house, rain is more likely to seep in next to your foundation and add humidity to the basement, causing the dehumidifier to run longer. Within four to six feet of the foundation, the ground should slope away. My house inspector told me it's okay to pile dirt against bricks, but not against wood siding.
Whole house fans: Very helpful, but ours is overpowered, which means it overwhelms the vents in the attic. The resultant high pressure actually pushes attic air down into 2nd story rooms. Not good, so having attic ventilation and fan power balanced is important. One thing that has worked well is to have a window fan that runs overnight, progressively cooling the house. Closing up in the morning as the day starts to heat up keeps the cool air inside.
I can't explain why, but we wash our dishes by hand. Maybe a bit of hand labor is relaxing; maybe the older dishwasher's noise and slowness is bothersome; maybe it's stubborn habit. It's been reported that handwashing can be more wasteful than using a newer model dishwasher, but so much depends on style. My wife uses the Niagra Falls method, in which hot water streams out of the faucet constantly until she's done. I use cold water in bursts, soaking the dishes first to soften the dirt and minimize the work. No outbreaks of the plague have been reported due to my cold water method. Even if a little more water is used in handwashing, bypassing a dishwasher saves a lot of energy and heat production.
Air dry clothes.

Tempestuous Music at Pettoranello Gardens

2008-06-15T15:03:00.004-04:00

My daughter was bored this past Saturday night, so I checked the calendar at www.princetonol.com, and was surprised to find a free concert of jazz being presented at the Pettoranello Gardens amphitheater. Surprisingly few Princetonians can tell you where Pettoranello Gardens is, fewer still know about its amphitheater, and of those only a small subset are aware of the jazz and other performances that periodically take place there.

You needn't learn how to spell the name, but it helps to know that this lovely spot is just across 206 from the Community Park soccer fields. Turn onto Mountain Ave, take the first right into the paved parking lot, then head downhill past the wooden sign until you reach a pond with a trail around it. The amphitheater is tucked into the berm that shields this oasis from the noise of 206. The calendar of jazz concerts this summer is at www.bluecurtain.org. There may be other programming as well.

Most every Sunday morning at 8am, volunteers with the Pettoranello Foundation meet at the Gardens to tend to the landscaping, as they have for some 15 years, with help from township staff.

But I digress from the events of Saturday evening, June 14, when my daughter and I rode our tandem bike towards Pettoranello Gardens to catch the end of the show, unfazed by the storm front that loomed on the horizon. We arrived at the amphitheater at dusk, to find avant-garde alto saxophonist Oliver Lake playing with a guitarist and drummer, as lightning flashed in the background and the wind kicked up.

It was the most richly metaphorical performance I've ever heard. The wind kept blowing their written music off the stage, as audience members scrambled to retrieve them--their music all the while going places no written notes could ever convey. And seeds, probably from a cottonwood tree, swirled around them as they poured notes out into the night air. Their music and the approaching storm raged as one, with one indomitable force resisting envelopment by another.

People were reluctant to run for cover, mesmerized by the drama. Finally Lake played a short melody to end, and spoke parting words into the mic. The drummer stood up, still playing the drums, and called to the audience in semi-mock urgency to run for cover. "Grab something and run!" he said, and seconds later heavy raindrops began to fall. We biked towards home in the downpour, taking refuge at Conte's, where the closed doors and A/C made the storm seem a distant dream.

Recycling in Princeton District Schools--An Update

2008-06-09T12:05:00.008-04:00

The schoolyear-long effort to get recycling going again in district schools can finally claim some success. Some schools, like Riverside and LittleBrook Elementary, quickly embraced recycling last fall and made it a part of everyday activity, as students learned to take recyclables to a centrally located bin that is then rolled out to the loading dock by the custodians. Recycle bins, paired with trash cans, are even showing up at special events like school picnics. In other schools, the throwaway culture has been harder to change, but persistent prompting has had an effect.

It can now be said that all schools are recycling. There are still incidents of contamination (e.g. eight big, thick plastic trash bags in a bin at the high school meant for bottles and cans), but both quantity and quality have continued to grow at the high school and Community Park Elementary--two schools that were having difficulty getting recycling going. The middle school had a dip in participation, but then rebounded.

A truck driver who picks up recyclables echoed my observations, and also suggested there are ways that the district schools could save a lot of money on waste disposal if they chose to, with consistent recycling being one of those means. One estimate I heard from the NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection is that a school district the size of Princeton's could save $10,000/year through comprehensive recycling.

We can celebrate the progress, while recognizing that there is still nothing built into the school system's modus operandi to insure that recycling will not backslide. No one in-house is checking the bins to monitor participation and quality. It is all too easy to imagine recycling falling apart without anyone in the administration or in building management knowing. The schools could easily return to the situation nine months ago, when some administrators thought schools were recycling when in fact they were not.

Still, the movement is very much in the right direction. Teachers and students and some custodians have shown strong interest and made the effort. If the school district as a whole sees it as in its fiscal and educational interest to make recycling a higher priority, the gains of the past year can be built upon.

Biking in the Mist

2008-05-16T10:02:00.004-04:00

One of my moments of environmental awakening came as I found myself driving my car four blocks to a town meeting on sustainability. The irony of the situation struck two blocks into the drive. Why was I using a car to transport myself four blocks to a meeting whose main purpose is to figure out how we can become less dependent on fossil fuels? As it happened, I was running late, and there was a light mist that could turn into rain--two factors that make me instinctively grab the car keys. I immediately parked the car and walked the rest of the way. To my surprise, the precipitation did not penetrate my clothes.

Since then, I have gradually expanded my tolerance for biking in mist, or drizzle, or even sometimes rain. This morning, for instance, a misty moisty morning, I taxied my daughter to school on the trailer bike, and found the mist to be even enjoyable. Another time, when the mist turned to rain while heading home, we experienced an unexpected euphoria. There can be a certain laboriousness to riding a bike, but it can also bring a sense of awakening, of being more alive.

Global Warming and the Silent Scream

2008-05-04T13:47:00.012-04:00

I'm always amazed at those who study climate change. How congenial and patient they are as they tell us of the catastrophic direction we are taking the earth. They are messengers who, like most messengers through history, are being roundly ignored by most of humanity. They must go home at night, after yet another long day of throwing compelling data at the global wall of indifference, and scream into the dark.

The Scream is a famous painting by Edvard Munch. I think of it now, and learn from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream) that its inspiration came one evening when the sky suddenly turned blood red, and he "sensed an infinite scream passing through nature." "The person in the foreground may be the artist himself, not screaming but protecting himself or itself from the scream of Nature."

That is the scream that some of us hear right now, as humanity goes about its business of slurping and shoveling fossil carbon out of the ground and spewing it from tailpipes and chimneys. How fitting that, as industrialization gained speed in the late 1800s, the source of Munch's scream was the sky, whose disturbing color may have been caused by the eruption of Krakatoa a half a world away.

Munch wrote that he was walking with two friends at the time, and that they "walked on", apparently unaffected by the scene whose visual power left Munch physically stricken. And so today we are left to ask, why do so few see and react to the emergency we face? Why do so few of us hear the scream?

Free Leaf Compost and Wood Chip Mulch

2008-05-04T08:35:00.006-04:00

If you're looking to improve your soil or put attractive, dark mulch around your flowers and shrubs, you can get composted leaves and/or twice-ground, composted woodchips for free about 5 miles out of town at the Ecological Center in Lawrence Township. Most of Princeton's leaves go there in the fall, and if you can borrow a friend's pickup or figure out some other way of carting it back, you're in luck.

For $9/yard during weekday hours, they'll load it on your truck with their front-end loader. No cash accepted. Take a checkbook. If you want it for free, take a pitch fork or shovel along.

Location is 3701 Princeton Pike (called Mercer in Princeton), and hours this time of year are 7:30 to 2:30 M-Sat. More info are at http://www.princetonboro.org/polDoc.cfm?Doc_Id=161.

According to the man on duty, the Center gets maxed out from all the leaves coming in in the fall, and does not accept the mixture of leaves and brush the town crews collect from Princeton streets this time of year. All of that goes to a private business a mile or two further down the road.

Recycling at Outdoor Events Remains Elusive

2008-04-30T06:07:00.005-04:00

Whether it be Communiversity, June Fete, or your school picnic, chances are that no one has made accommodations for recycling. Recycling bins, if they are present at all, are turned into trash cans by covering them with a black plastic bag so the identifying yellow is hard to see, and/or by placing them unpaired with a trash can.

This year, valiant attempts were made, in particular by Princeton native and Environmental Commission member Lexi Gelperin, to get Communiversity to integrate recycling into its operations, but results were mixed. Students ended up playing the role of "Roaving Recyclers", picking bottles and cans out of trash cans.

At the Princeton Environmental Commission table, we demonstrated the simple pairing of a recycling bin and a trash can. The recycling bin has a narrow top, well-marked, with a transparent body so the bottles/cans inside provide an additional visual cue that it's for recyclables only. When will we start seeing such pairings at public events in Princeton?

Robert Socolow--Climate Change and Deja Vu

2008-04-17T06:14:00.002-04:00

For thoughtfulness, clarity and deep caring about climate change and its gathering impact on the planet, I recommend a careful listen to Robert Socolow, a leading researcher on what to do about all the mischievous carbon dioxide we're pouring into the atmosphere. One serendipitous aspect of my having been transported out of previous lives and plunked down in Princeton, NJ is that I get to hear people like this talk. Below are some notes:

Having come of professional age back in the 1960s and 70s, Dr. Socolow now feels a strong sense of deja vu. The issues we are grappling with now, especially energy consumption and its impact on the planet, were being discussed back in the 1970s. (For my part, I took a course at the U. of Michigan in the late 70s called "Low Energy Living") What happened next, with Reagan's ascendence in the 1980s, was a shooting of the messenger. In the process, three decades have been essentially lost, and the problems we face have only grown deeper. Interestingly, Dr. Socolow pointed out that those of us who had come to hear his talk appeared to be evenly divided between two generations--those coming of age now, and those who came of age in the 70s.

To begin, Dr. Socolow gave an accounting of where we stand. There are now 3000 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. Air trapped in ancient ice suggests that in the 400,000 or so years before the industrial revolution, the earth's atmospheric CO2 oscillated between 1500 and 2200 billion tons. Since atmospheric measurements began in earnest in 1958, atmospheric CO2 has risen from 2500 billion tons to the current 3000.

These 50 years of measurements were made by atmospheric scientists based on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, a location believed to be sufficiently removed from the industrialized world to allow for accurate data. At the ceremony marking the 50th year, Dr. Socolow said "Never has the work of so few led to so much being asked of so many." The so few were the scientists who revealed the dramatic and unprecedented rise of CO2 in the 20th century. The so many are the rest of us on earth being asked to change our ways.

And how much do we need to change our ways to avoid the worst consequences of climate change? Whereas the burning of fossil fuels spewed 6 billion tons into the atmosphere in 1950, that figure is now 30 billion every year. 15 of those go into the atmosphere; eight are absorbed by the oceans (apparently with disastrous consequences for marine life), and the remaining 7 are somehow absorbed by the land biosphere.

30 billion tons averages out to about 4 tons of CO2 per person per year. So, just to hold even on emissions, each of us passengers on planet earth would need to limit ourselves to 4 tons. Compare that to what we actually use. You consume four tons if you:

drive a car 10,000 miles at 30 mpg
or fly 10,000 miles (oops, I used up my allotment flying to Rome last month)
or heat a typical home in an average climate
or use 300 kilowatt hours of electricity per month from a coal burning power plant, or 600 kilowatt hours of electricity per month generated by a natural gas plant.

And then there's your workplace. If you're associated with the university, your share of the university's energy use is 13 tons per year.

So, you see we're way over our individual allotments. Environmental values must co-habitate with others deeply held--democratic values, consumer values, and values of self-realization--that, for instance, slow our response to crisis, create an appetite for stuff, and cause us to burn energy as we travel to see the world.

But Dr. Socolow still sees reasons for optimism. The world is terribly inefficient with its energy use. Carbon emissions have just begun to be priced--already in Europe, and in less than a year utilities in NJ. If one goal is for humanity to actually start reducing its overall use of energy 50 years hence, it helps that most of the 2058 physical plant has not yet been built.

One of his main points is that solutions are not innocuous. Conservation can lead to regimentation. Renewable energy can compete with other uses for land. Nuclear power generates fuel that can be used in nuclear warfare. "Clean coal" has impacts on miners and land.

As often happens when you're trying to change the world, you find that the english language lacks current words to carry new concepts. Dr. Socolow proposes a new word for a new intellectual domain. Over the past 50 years, we've delved deeply into the history of the universe, the earth and of life itself. Can we achieve a comparable quantitative understanding of what human civilization will look like at various times in the future? This new discipline would be called prospicience--a combining of the words propect and science.

In contrast to Amory Lovins' talk, which seemed to imply that we can stop global warming without financial or personal hardship, Dr. Socolow sees solutions as possible but hard. He looks to the past to find comparable situations in which "What once seemed too hard has become what simply must be done." For precedents, he points to the abolition of child labor, the addressing of the needs of the disabled, and the mitigation of air pollution.

I'd suggest that the abolition of slavery is the most relevant precedent, since both slaves and fossil fuels have played the role of providing energy on demand. Only slowly do the beneficiaries of that energy explore the ethical implications of the comfort and convenience it brings.

One of the questions raised after the talk was why Mr. Socolow did not mention population as a factor. He acknowledged that population is a central aspect of climate change, and said that the severing of population from the discussion of energy had happened in the 1980s, and coincided with the shooting of the messenger.