"Water: Our Most Undervalued Resource"

This morning, Sustainable Princeton will host another in its excellent series of Great Ideas Breakfasts at the Princeton Public Library. This month's program is about water that comes through Princeton in all its forms: precipitation, runoff, drinking water, wastewater. And those are just the liquid forms of that most magical of substances we take for granted. I'll be leading one of the discussions at the event, which prompted going back through the hundreds of posts on this blog and finding the ones particularly relevant to the issue at hand. Together, they show how connected are all these sources of water in our community.

INFO ON PRINCETON'S DRINKING WATER

Where Our Drinking Water Comes From--Canoeing the Mighty Millstone: A kayaking adventure downstream to where Princeton's drinking water is drawn from the confluence of the Millstone and Raritan Rivers, treated and pumped some 20 miles to our faucets.

Princeton's Drinking Water: A writeup on what watersheds supply Princeton's drinking water, and what chemical is used to treat it (usually not chlorine).

Where Princeton's Drinking Water Comes From: Some of Princeton's water used to, and occasionally still does, come from wells in a nature refuge.

INFO ON PRINCETON'S WASTEWATER

Where Princeton's Wastewater Goes: Princeton's annual electrical bill for wastewater treatment approaches $1.5 million dollars.

Save On Sewer Rates: How to reduce your sewer bill and, while you're at it, your water bill.

Reduce Your Water and Sewer Bills:

Practical Dreaming: Atlantic City Lives Part of the Future Today: Windmills, solar panels, a green roof, and treatment good enough to restore nearby shellfish beds.

Willow School: Where the World Starts Making Sense: Cisterns to catch and reuse rainwater, and off-the-grid wastewater treatment by wetlands, are just a few of the sustainable features of this private school to the north of Princeton.

UTILIZING RUNOFF

Sump Pump-ageddon: Sump pumps can be a tool for good or mayhem, depending on where they pump your basement water.

Philadelphia's Waterworks: How Philadelphia used to pump its water to the top of the hill where the art museum now stands, and let it gravity feed to neighborhoods.

Clean Water and Recycling: The Connection: The fate of plastics that fall into the street.

RUNOFF AND HABITAT

A Great Blue Heron Pays a Visit: Backyard miniponds + goldfish = surprise backyard guest

Native Floodplain Wildflowers and the Pollinators They Attract: Many posts can be found on the beauty and rich habitat that runoff can sustain in a backyard. This link was created by typing the word "boneset" into the search box at the companion blog, PrincetonNatureNotes.org. Try typing in names of other plants or insects to find additional posts.

Retention Basin Beauty: Converting the retention basin "turfpit" at Farmview Fields in Princeton to warm-season native grasses.

Habitat for Education: Another retention basin converted into a rich wetland with frogs, crayfish, wild rice, and thirty other native plant species, at Princeton High School.

Use a Prius as a Backup Generator

For anyone considering buying a generator to run portions of the house during power outages, consider the hybrid car option instead. Though a gas generator can be bought for under $1000, they are noisy, polluting, and will prove undependable if not properly maintained. I overheard a hardware store manager speaking very pessimistically about the life span of the generators he sells. Natural gas generators hooked permanently to the house are quieter and more dependable, but are much more expensive, may require that larger bore gas pipes be installed, and also cannot be guaranteed to start when needed. A generator, after all, requires substantial investment in a machine that will be used very rarely.

One couple I know is considering using their money instead to invest in a Prius for their second car. Devices are available to convert a Prius (and perhaps other hybrids as well) so it can serve as a quiet, dependable generator to sustain vital home functions during power outages. The engine in a Prius is designed to automatically turn on and off to keep the battery pack charged. Here's one brochure on the subject. Definitely worth researching as an option.

Saturday's Pancake Breakfast Benefits the Princeton Rotary

The Rotary Club of Princeton is one of those organizations that works quietly to do a lot of good. I've been getting to know the club's members through their efforts to help save the historic home of the visionary mathematician Oswald Veblen, in Herrontown Wood.

They are a group with a can-do attitude, who find pleasure and satisfaction in serving the community, and have international service projects as well. Their annual Pancake Festival at Palmer Square makes it easy to support their work. Come by tomorrow, Saturday, May 24, for food and jazz, then catch the Memorial weekend parade down Nassau Street.

Learn more about the Rotary at http://www.princetonrotary.org/community.html.

The Aroma of Sun-Dried Bedsheets

I've encountered these pullies before--rusted, crumpled on the ground--and wondered what they had been used for. Here's one in working order, holding up a clothesline in a friend's backyard. She hangs sheets and pajamas on it. She had worried the neighbors would mind, but that's not the case. The pulley system allows her, or a housekeeper, to hang up all the laundry while standing in one elevated spot on the backyard deck.

Interesting is the story she told of the appealing aroma of sun-dried laundry. She thinks it's the wind that makes it smell so good. She has vivid memories as a child of crawling into bed with freshly cleaned and air-dried sheets. She continued the tradition with her own children. When her kids were young, there was one item (a security blanket?) that one of the kids would only allow to be washed if it was dried out on the line. I like to think of the air-dried sheets as sails whose aroma does the transporting.

This deep sensory connection, of falling asleep to the aroma of the wind, captured in the bedsheets, has an added dimension when it comes to energy. In the photo is our "whole house energy meter", which all houses should come with. The first photo shows our house being powered by nature (air-drying of clothes). Only 90 watts are being used. The consumption skyrockets to 4000 watts if the electric dryer is being used. A clothesline, then, is a way to be solar powered without the expense of panels.

As important as the pulley at either end of the clothesline is the mechanism that allows the clothesline to be easily tightened, particularly when it's new and is stretching out. This little device locks the rope in place after you pull it through.

One note of caution: It may be important to keep the clothesline away from shrubs and other perches, as birds are most likely to lighten their load while perching or at the moment of takeoff. At our house, we use folding racks indoors to dry laundry, with the exception of towels, and an outdoor line under an overhang for sheets in the summertime.

Update: Here's my friend's experience with clotheslines and birds:

"When I started using the clothes line more than 40 years ago I decided that if I had bird droppings I would spot wash the item if I needed to. Surprisingly enough, I have had very few problems over the years even when I still had some wild cherry trees in my back yard, and some of the bird droppings left some very purple markings on my deck. But not on my clothes!!! You just have to have faith."

OnStage Performs Locally Harvested Stories This Weekend

(Also posted at PrincetonNatureNotes.org) 

OnStage, the 55+ community theater group I joined two years ago, will be performing locally harvested monologues and scenes at the Arts Council of Princeton this Saturday, May 17 at 7:30pm. Directed by McCarter Theater's Adam Immerwahr, we create original documentary scripts gathered from interviews within the community. This year's show, "Live With That", has to do with "the decisions we make, big and small, that have shaped our lives--everything from starting college at age 40, to moving a parent into a nursing home, to dealing with a daughter’s less-than-ideal date."

More info, including a video, can be found at www.onstageseniors.org. Tickets can be bought online, and there may be some at the door.

Rummage Weekend

Princeton's Unitarian Universalist church is packed again this weekend, that is, with furniture, books, and who knows what else, ready to sell during its super sized rummage sale on Saturday, May 10. Funds raised are given to a long list of local nonprofits.

 Here are the details.

I took the opportunity to deliver a few items rescued from the curb that still had some life in them.

Looks like they'll be going headboard to headlamp against another annual rite of redistribution, the flea market hosted by the Princeton First Aid Squad at 237 North Harrison Street, next to the Shopping Center. That one's 9-1.

Some Environmental Events

Today, 4:30pm at Guyot Hall on campus, "That's Not Funny! A panel on environmental comedy. A subject near to my heart. Jenny Price, visiting professor at the Princeton Environmental Institute, has organized this event.

April 24, Great Ideas Breakfast, "Stories of Waste and Hope", Princeton Public Library,  8:30 am: Find out where your curbside recyclables go, and where your food waste might go in Trenton for composting in the future. Other speakers as well, and food.

May 17 SOLAR JAM at Princeton High School, a collaborative venture and contest organized by O.A.S.I.S. (Organizing Action for Sustainability In Schools) and PSE&G. Registration deadline was April 15, but you might be able to plead your case, and blame me for not getting word out sooner. With a solar car race and solar-related exhibits, it should be a great event. See more info below:

Solar Jam Overview
This event has two main elements. The first is a solar-powered car race,
in which students use vehicles they have built. The second is an
‘open’ solar science fair, for which students can display any project
that uses solar energy – such as solar ovens, sundials, reconfigured
electronics, etc. There will be food available from local vendors, but we
are aiming for a “Zero Waste” event, so participants and spectators
will have to bring their own beverage containers.

For more on the event, and lots of links about building solar vehicles, click on "read more".

LEDs Dip Below $10

Not many years back, these compact fluorescents (CFLs), now $5 for 4, were just dipping below $10 each.

Now, LEDs have dipped below $10. These have an interesting flat design, and their neck is narrow enough to fit into sockets on some light fixtures where only incandescents would fit in the past. This particular sale is at Home Depot, hopefully ongoing.

The packaging said they last 22.8 years, and that despite their flat appearance they broadcast light evenly in all directions. If we trust the predicted lifespan, the lightbulb could outlast the lamp its screwed into. LEDs also have the advantage of being dimmable and instant on. The CFLs take a minute to reach full brightness.

Smooth Asphalt = Deep Sleep

After winter's heavy dose of freeze/thaw and road salt took its toll on the roads, it's out with the old and in with the new. The proliferation of potholes on our busy town street had one small benefit: pulling out of the driveway became easier, as drivers intimidated by a particularly dense clustering of potholes at Harrison and Hamilton slowed enough to create a nice gap in the traffic. Even a Humvee, which you'd think had been bought in part to dominate such rough terrain, was seen slowing to a crawl.

When the new asphalt was laid down, I knew my neighbor would be sleeping better. Even before this winter, he was frequently being awakened by the noise of trucks hitting the potholes in front of his house.

Clean Water and Recycling--The Connection

There's a stream cleanup along the canal this Saturday, April 5, from 1-3pm, meeting at Turning Basin Park off Alexander Street. The cleanup is organized by the Stonybrook-Millstone Watershed Association. It makes for a good family outing.

Though picking up trash doesn't necessarily improve water quality (discarded oil cans and batteries being exceptions), it does improve appearance and reduces the amount of plastic that becomes problematic as it breaks down and gets inadvertently consumed by wildlife.

Most of the littering is likely accidental, as trashcans spill or bottles fall out of the small, uncovered green and yellow recycling buckets Princeton residents have used for many years. Many communities use rollout bins that have greater capacity and lids that reduce the risk of recyclables spilling during the collection process.

Whoever originally bought this shamrock-like bow had no idea it would later be poised to slip down into the stormwater system and join all the other plastic down along the canal, on its way down the Millstone River, then out to the ocean to make life a little more dangerous for aquatic life.

Two other posts about the connection between recycling and water quality can be found at this link.

Books for the Dumping

Princeton High School is "giving" away lots of books.

Better hurry.

(At least they're in the recycling dumpster.)

Note: The HS media folks say the books were recycled due to being moldy and therefore unhealthy for further use.

Model Policies for Cleaner Streets

This post is a companion to the previous post, which showed 20 violations of Princeton's yardwaste policy along three blocks--not an especially unusual number in my neighborhood. If anything, the situation with ongoing violations and perpetually dirty streets has worsened over the years.

Princeton allows you to dump loose leaves and brush on the street, but supposedly no more than one week before scheduled pickup. Princetonians ignore the second part of that sentence, partly because the schedule is very complicated, and partly because the rules are not enforced.

This is an extremely convenient service for homeowners and landscape companies, who can and do dump leaves and brush on the street any day of the year, but the resulting mess, street hazard, and the high cost in man-hours, equipment and fuel for collection and composting are a considerable price to pay.

Princeton also picks up bags of yardwaste, on a different schedule. Here are some that were getting blown around in recent winds.

A popular alternative in other towns is to not allow any loose dumping of leaves in the streets. People either grind the leaves up with their lawn mowers, compost them in piles in the backyard, or put them out for pickup using a 96 gallon rollout bin augmented with yardwaste bags as needed. The rollout bin is easier to fill and maneuver around the yard than yardwaste bags, and pickup days are on a specific day every week. No complicated schedules.

I researched the cost of the hydraulic hook that needs to be fitted on the truck to lift and empty the rollout bin. It costs $5000 to retrofit a truck with a hook, and the mechanical lift reduces the sort of heavy lifting that can injure workers.

This resident in Durham, NC, really didn't want to compost leaves in the backyard for some reason, so went to the trouble of bagging them all up. Only ten bags will be taken each week. For most people during most weeks of the year, the rollout bins are enough.

The rollout bins have an added advantage of being useful not only for leaves/yardwaste but also for kitchen scraps. Ann Arbor, MI, long in the forefront of recycling (I helped with a pilot program back in the late 1970's there) has an excellent website that combines policy with education, and details the kind of program that could work very well in Princeton. They offer residents very reasonably priced rollout bins in various sizes.

Whereas Princeton's foodwaste pickup requires trucking the scraps 70 miles south to Wilmington for composting, Ann Arbor composts a combination of yardwaste and food scraps just outside of town, at a location no more remote than the Lawrenceville Ecological Center where Princeton's yardwaste is taken.

In these programs, there are various ways for residents to pay for the optional service of yardwaste pickup. Here's some language from Durham, NC's program. Residents pay a small charge, while residents who opt out pay nothing. 

"Yard waste collection is an optional fee-based program. For a $60 fee, residents are enrolled into the yard waste program from July 1 to June 30. The service fee does not include the cart rental fee. If a cart is at your residence and you apply for service you will be charged an $18 leasing fee." 

Currently in Princeton, everyone has to pay the $1million+ pricetag for leaf and brush pickup whether we make use of it or not.

For brush pickup, bundling is a common requirement, and Ann Arbor organizes neighborhoods to assist elderly neighbors with their yard cleanup.

The result is a good service, municipal savings, and clean streets.

Princeton's Yardwaste Policy Widely Ignored, Uninforced

Sometimes it's necessary to go over the top, or over the curb, to make a point. Princeton's Guidelines for Brush, Log, Loose and Bagged Leaf Collection are largely ignored, and have been for years. Along three blocks during a dog walk, the street was littered with violations of the town's rules. Being in Section 5, no brush is supposed to be in these streets until April 7--a week before the scheduled pickup--and no leaves until April 21. But neither professional landscape crews doing spring cleaning nor neighbors had a clue. I counted more than 20 violations, and though it seems a bit much to photograph them all, there really needs to be documentation of the disconnect between policy and reality.

The timing of all of these piles violate guidelines, and often their size and placement as well. The photos are matched with the quotes from the guidelines that they conflict with.

"Branches must be cut no more than 3 feet in length". (These were more than ten feet long)

"Please do NOT place within ten feet of a storm drain..." (Hmmm)

According to the schedule, these piles will sit on the street for a month.

"Logs must be...a maximum of six inches in diameter." (more like ten inches)

"Loose leaves are to be placed in piles...NOT MORE THAN THREE FEET WIDE EXTENDING FROM THE CURB." (The CAPS in quotes are the town's. It's common to see leaf piles extend 6 feet or more out from the curb, like these, which according to the schedule will remain here for four weeks until the next pickup.)

A little glob for the giant claw to pick up.

etc.,

etc.,

Brush and leaves are to be "placed IN SEPARATE PILES..." (Here, brush and leaves are mixed, another common sight. I doubt it makes much difference, but the town says it's important.)

etc.,

etc.,

etc.,

etc.,

etc.,

etc. Again, all of these were put out with complete disregard for the stated pickup schedule.

Passion Divide Brings Democrats Together (in the same room)

Princeton Democrats converged on the Unitarian Universalist Church en masse Sunday night to vote for which two of the three candidates for town council would get endorsement and favorable placement on the ballot.

By the time I arrived, having tromped across rain-soaked ground in search of the entrance, there wasn't much of a view.

A big screen offered a more impressionistic effect.

The heavy rain of letters in the local papers and internet sites, supporting Sue Nemeth or Jo Butler, with Bernie Miller seeming a shoe-in, had been falling for weeks. Sometimes the local politics make me feel like I'm in a family where my beloved siblings have begun arguing heatedly and I can do nothing to stop it. I know and respect people on both sides of this passion divide. Though I haven't followed council meetings, I did work at various times with both Sue and Jo on commissions, and found them both to have capability, depth of knowledge, passion, and good judgement.

Though at first reluctant to reveal the tally, the leadership finally divulged that Miller received 216 votes, Nemeth received 197 votes, and Butler received 165 votes.

All three will be on the June primary ballot, in that order.

The process indoors appeared peaceful. Anyone looking for dramatic head to head conflict would have encountered it not at the meeting, but instead afterwards in what looked like a very serious collision down the block, at 206 and Cherry Hill Road. While close attention was being paid to Princeton politics, someone in the driver's seat wasn't looking where they were going.

OnStage Community Theater This Weekend, March 29-30

Our OnStage community theater group debuts a new show tonight and tomorrow afternoon at Passage Theatre in Trenton. After not paying too much attention to theater for most of my life, I joined this group two years ago, and have found the process of taking on another character to be revelatory. Our director, Adam Immerwahr of McCarter Theater, is first rate.


Description:
Drawn from interviews with area residents, “Live With That” examines decisions that have shaped and reshaped lives–everything from starting college at age 40, to moving a parent into a nursing home, to dealing with a daughter’s less-than-ideal high school date.

Tickets purchased online or at the door are $15. Purchase your tickets AT THIS LINK.

Passage Theatre is just off Route 1. Take the Market Street exit to the right, turn right on Stockton, then left at the light on Front Street. The Theatre's a block or two down on the left. Patrolled on-street parking is available on S. Montgomery St, Front Street along the park, and in the Artworks parking lot.

Great Ideas in Sustainability Breakfast This Thursday

This looks like a great event:

Innovative Energy Solutions

Thursday, March 27, 8:30 am
Princeton Public Library

Please join NRG and local entrepreneurs to explore the clean tech journey – from the first seeds of innovation to development of full-scale enterprises in the energy sector:

• Moderated by NRG COO Mauricio Gutierrez
• Local Entrepreneur Presenters include
  • Kyle Teamey - CEO and co-founder of Liquid Light, a technology that converts CO2 waste to revenue. Kyle developed and incubated the company while an Entrepreneur in Residence at Redpoint Ventures. He has extensive experience in renewable energy and clean technology investments.
  • Eden Full –  inventor of the SunSaluter, a low-cost mechanism that optimizes solar panels while providing clean water for rural, off-grid communities in nine countries. Named one of the 30 under 30 in Forbes’ Energy category three years in a row (2012-2014) and Ashoka’s Youth Social Entrepreneur of the Year (2012), Eden is a junior in Mechanical Engineering at Princeton University.
  • Nathan Haley, co-founder of the Comet project, which seeks to create the world’s first cruiser-style production electric motorcycle. Nathan is a student in the Department of Economics at Princeton University.

We hope you will be inspired and amazed by the hopeful inventions being developed here in Princeton.

Share your interests while enjoying a free, sustainable breakfast provided by a local eatery.

Sponsored by Sustainable Princeton and Princeton Public Library

Weather to Bother and Bewilder

(sung to the melody of Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, by Rodgers and Hart)

It's cold again,
Late March! Again!
There's even a forecast of snow again,
Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I.

Got some sleep
Cold's good for sleep
The cold that won't let winter fall asleep,
Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I.

Tell me that climate's cooling.
That's the least they could do.
Now I hear that it's weirding
Because of what we do.

A pill it is.
This chill it is.
The jet stream gets drunken until it is
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered
Like me.


Some background:
(The "drunken jet stream" is a description of the more exaggerated, less predictable behavior of the jet stream that used to do better at keeping arctic air in the arctic. As I understand it, the jet stream--the powerful winds that blow west to east above the U.S.--is driven by the difference in temperature between polar and more equatorial air masses. It has become weaker as the arctic heats up faster than the rest of the planet. As it weakens and slows, the jet stream meanders more, allowing arctic air to bulge down into the mainland U.S. and remain for longer periods. It's a bit like a very, very large hernia.

If the arctic air is down here, that means it's not somewhere else. As an example of how this drunken jet stream is turning temperatures upside down, the high temperature today in Princeton, NJ and in Anchorage, Alaska, is similar, even though Anchorage would normally be fifteen degrees cooler than NJ this time of year, according to tables at weather.com. )

Garbage Disposal Mysteries Solved

And now for another episode of  "Don't try this at home" Home Repair. Some months ago--we will not say exactly how many--the garbage disposal under the sink stopped working. Some, faced with a non-functioning garbage disposal, would yield to an impulse to replace it. The resident repairman chose instead to pursue what some might interpret, and probably did interpret, as an inexplicably extended period of procrastination. During this time, we (first person singular form of "we") were forced to resort to periodically giving the disposal a quick manual turn from below whenever the water started backing up in the sink, replicating in the kitchen sink a level of functionality comparable to the way the U.S. Congress has been run for many years now. For the sink, if not for Congress, this approach worked unexpectedly well, feeding the procrastination. It helped that most food scraps end up in the compost bucket rather than the sink.

A generous reading of the resident repairman's inaction would be that he was allowing the garbage disposal an opportunity to repair itself, as had occurred with some appliances in the past. He found validation for this approach when the disposal did in fact begin to work again, about a month ago, though this repaired state regrettably lasted for only a few minutes.

We may never know what finally prompted him to tackle this lingering kitchen sink enigma. Why one day and not all the others? Perhaps he was able to take a deep breath somewhere in his psyche, unlocking a previously untapped confidence that the known unknowns might not be as unknown as he had long assumed them to be.

He seized the day, or at least a moment when his daughter was in the kitchen and could call to him when he had turned the relevant circuit off down in the basement. It was also an opportunity to explain to her that the house has many different circuits, each servicing different plugs and sockets. This bit of real world education just wouldn't have happened if we had called an electrician in.

With power off, and after removing the protective plate and doing some investigation of the wiring behind the switches, involving various teasings and proddings, each of which required trips to the basement to turn the circuit on to test the result, then off again to try something else, it became clear that a wire coming from the relevant switch was loose, and that all that was needed was a larger wire connector to keep an unusually thick cluster of wires tightly clasped.

Such an oversized part, he learned by trial and error, could only be found by journeying to the deepest canyons of Big Box Retailand, several miles south. Coordinating errands so as to burn a minimum of gas and time, he found the part, installed it along with a gleaming new switch plate, and felt at last that sense of pride in achievement.

Time allotted: X months of contemplation followed by 1.5 hours of action.
Level of difficulty: Hard to fathom, but ultimately easier than expected.
Savings: Face, along with whatever a new garbage disposal might have cost.

Climate and a Deepening Contradiction in our Lives

(An early February letter to the editor)
If the planet is warming, then why have we been the ambivalent recipients of recurrent snowstorms and the coldest January in ten years? A brief tour of the globe via internet reveals just how much of a bubble we’ve been living in here in Princeton. While we had the 8th snowiest January in 120 years of record keeping, California has been suffering through a record breaking drought. Alaska has been unusually warm. Intense use of air conditioners during a 100 degree December heatwave in Buenos Aires, Argentina led to extended power outages, which in turn led to demonstrations. Australia, too, is suffering yet another extreme heat wave.

Our unusually cold winter was brought to us in part by the warming arctic’s apparent impact on the jet stream, whose increasingly erratic behavior allowed a bulge of arctic air to settle for a prolonged period in the eastern U.S. This bit of global weirding allowed for four days of skating on Lake Carnegie. Very pleasant, but the planet continues to warm overall.

Ironically, the increasingly erratic weather in NJ and throughout the world is being caused by the very fossil fuels that deliver consistency to our daily lives. We depend on them for clearing our streets, keeping our homes comfortable and delivering us to work each day. And yet the impact of that stability is a destabilization of weather and sea levels that will only grow more radical with time.

As well-meaning, generous people, we should not stand for this deepening contradiction that continually forces us to choose between present and future, and demand of ourselves and our leaders, in Princeton and beyond, a steady and expedited squeezing of these star-crossed fuels out of our lives.

Cleaning Up Princeton's Streets--Some Lessons Learned

If you care about clean streets, now is the time to be trying to change policy. In spring, summer and fall, when yardwaste, leaves and brush, and even grass clippings (supposedly illegal), are being cast out loose upon the streets without concern for pickup dates or ordinance requirements, it's too late. Now, too, is when we usually forget all about what happens in summer and fall. Thus, nothing ever changes.

This year, amazingly, some residents fed up with the perpetual mess are seizing the moment, carpe diem-like, and calling for a new policy that will make our streets a source of pride, rather than a dumping ground. Below are some insights I've gained after years of fighting this battle for change:

• Education without ordinance enforcement has not been effective in the past: In my experience, and as the main author of Princeton's pamphlet detailing the problems with and solutions for dumping leaves and yardwaste in the street, a focus on education has unfortunately not worked. We had an initiative to give away free leaf corrals, we've distributed the pamphlets, yet more organics get dumped now than ever before. Why is this? Because our education efforts are competing with the most powerful message being sent--that when it comes to dumping organics in the street, anything goes. A focus on education places the burden on those who care (preparation of pamphlets, distribution of leaf corrals, etc), and asks nothing of those who don't care. An ordinance that is well constructed and consistently enforced is the best education. 
• People do what they see their neighbors doing. Because backyard composting--the best means of keeping streets clean--cannot be seen by neighbors, there is no means of spreading the practice through imitation. By contrast, dumping of yardwaste, leaves and brush on the street is a highly visible statement, which is then imitated by neighbors thinking that it's the right thing to do. More people are joining Princeton's program for collecting foodwaste in part because of its strong visual (the green rollout bin on the curb). Backyard composters need a similar icon to put in their front yards, as evidence of how they use composting to help keep Princeton's streets clean. I had at first thought it could be a small sign saying "Another Clean-Streets Backyard Composter", but a small icon-like object might be better. It could be pyramid-shaped, maybe 6" high, with the words "clean, streets, backyard, compost" on the four faces, and the point flattened to accommodate an "=" sign, as in "backyard composting = clean streets". The town could have a design contest, with a prize going to the winner.
• Take advantage of improved communication. Emailed reminders of when collections will take place, particularly when combined with some enforcement of the regulations, would greatly reduce dumping of yardwaste on the street weeks before the next scheduled pickup. The town sends out emails any time the website is updated, but there doesn't appear to be a list specifically for collections.
• Take a comprehensive approach. Particularly because a promise was reportedly made that no services would be cut as a part of consolidation, resistance to changing the existing organics collection will be reduced if the changes are part of a larger rethinking of services that includes additions to balance any changes perceived as reductions.
• Highlight lower visibility services. Leaf/brush/yardwaste collection is one of the highest visibility services provided by the municipality. In a town where property taxes are high and many people are unaware that town taxes are a small percentage of the total, it is very hard to cut back on what is essentially an unlimited freedom to dump organics in the street. If streamlining collections would provide significant savings or allow other less visible services to improve, that would be a useful argument for changing the status quo.
• There's a need to fully document costs of the current approach. If we don't know how much the status quo is costing, we can't calculate how much could be saved using a different approach. Responding to a request from the Princeton Environmental Commission, the town recently reported that $640,000 was spent on staff time for organics collection in 2013. But other big ticket items have not been given a dollar figure as yet. Important expenses to measure are composting costs (2006-7 borough data showed that sale of compost did not fully cover the costs of the composting operation), plus fuel (both for collection and composting--fuel consumption at the composting center is huge, according to past borough data), plus all the equipment costs (e.g. parts, maintenance, replacement). Since there is a large variation year to year in expense, depending on what storms come through, data from more than one year will be needed in order to have good numbers to work with. 
• Beware of a quick dismissing of ideas. For good policy to emerge, there needs to be an information gathering stage, during which people keep their minds open as to which policy is best. I'm always surprised how quick people are to dismiss ideas. We owe it to ourselves to explore all ideas without summarily dismissing any one of them. Having an open mind also means coming into a discussion being ready to be wrong. Ideas should be stripped of ego and bias, and considered for their own sake, regardless of their source. Those with scientific training often have an advantage here, both in having practiced keeping an open mind until adequate data is collected, and in developing radar for questionable assertions. One quick way to kill an idea is to highball its likely cost. I've seen this tactic used repeatedly over the years.
• Reflexive dismissal of the rollout bin option: I've heard the idea of using rollout bins as part of an overall collection program dismissed, and yet they are a popular option with other towns and cities. The private haulers of trash and recyclables, for whom profit and efficiency is particularly important, have largely switched to rollout bins. Lawrenceville reportedly saved $100,000 the first year by switching to rollout bins for trash collection and going from twice weekly to once weekly pickup. Judgements need to be made after collecting sufficient evidence, not before. 
• Plastic vs. combustion: Environmentalists often passionately object to plastic. Plastic is visible, while carbon dioxide emerging from an exhaust pipe is not. One argument given against using rollout bins to containerize yardwaste is that they represent a large investment in plastic. Plastic is made from fossil fuels, but as a friend in the EPA pointed out to me, plastic is sequestered carbon. If a collection program is made more efficient by utilizing plastic containers, that means less burning of fuel, which means less carbon escaping into the atmosphere over time. 
• Resistance to change is short term, benefits are long term. Changing policy will inevitably lead to some angry phone calls that town staff are understandably not savoring the prospect of dealing with. However, there are examples of towns that have shown the courage and foresight to change their policies and weather the controversy, for the sake of long term fiscal and environmental improvement. Resistance to change can be strong at first, but it fades as people adapt to a new system. 
• Exploring connection between leaf collection and tree planting: Since trees produce leaves, people's views about leaves and leaf collection can influence how they feel about planting trees to shade the street and their property. This suggests that both the shade tree commission and the environmental commission need to take an interest in leaf collection policy.

Related posts: http://princetonprimer.blogspot.com/search?q=rollout+bins

Knot Now--Nonsensical Non-Recycling

Build it, and they will ignore it. In the lobby of the Princeton Particle Physics Laboratory, the staff have built monuments to recycling--impressively edifying edifices, temples to diversion from the landfill--and put them on full display in the lobby and lecture hall.

After sipping coffee and munching on generously supplied bagels and donuts before the Science on Saturday lecture, the crowd had plenty of paper cups and napkins to throw away. The lined up containers were like a choir, calling to us to put the paper products in the receptacle for compostibles.

And where did people tend to throw their paper--this brainy bunch, intellectually curious enough to seek out a lecture on the mathematics of knot tying on a Saturday morning, and resourceful enough to find the PPPL campus despite lousy google map directions and minimally marked winding roads? (Maybe I'm the only one without GPS, or who didn't look at PPPL's directions.)Without a thought, or perhaps consumed by other thoughts, the attendees I observed completely ignored the recycling signage and the nicely contrasting containers and threw all their paper in the trash.

It may be that the concept of composting paper products is too new for people to have changed their habits. But it's also likely that brains big enough to delve into the subtleties of Reidemeister Moves and Tricoloration knot theory are not going to pause to consider the individual's trivial but measurable role in solid waste management. Perhaps each paper cup needs its own GPS to direct the user to the nearest compost bin. Otherwise, we seem to be at the mercy of an extremely primitive instinct. When it comes to awareness of what each of us litters the world with, the brain must have a convenient shutoff valve.

One paper cup tossed here or there is of course trivial, and yet the cumulative effect of something as trivial as individual snowflakes falling on the ground can bring whole cities to a standstill. It is the repetition of trivial acts, be they carbon dioxide molecules streaming from exhaust pipes and chimneys, the consequent accumulation of carbonic acid in the oceans, and the water dripping from Greenland's ice sheet, that will ultimately determine our fate. That seems to be something that most brains are cleverly wired not to understand.

British Panto Comes Alive in Princeton

Despite the impediment of multiple snowstorms, a panto production of Jack and the Beanstalk drew full houses at the Stuart Country Day School's Stuart Little Theater yesterday, with another show this afternoon.

The brain child of the Variety Theater Team--Zoe Brookes, Per Kreipke and Todd Reichart--the show features community actors of all ages in a spoof of Princeton life, replete with comic takeoffs on town/gown tensions, a highly choreographed rantfest of wouldbe mayors, a cameo by the mayor herself, songs of love and yearning, a dancing cow, an economist who lectures Jack on the "means of production" before trading a dubious but fortuitous envelope for the cow, a standout performance by Ruth Schultz as a highly gymnastic telescope,

and keystone interventions by Campus Security.

I play woodwinds in the band, which I see from the program is called "The Hokum and Hackery Consort of Yooniversity", directed by Michael Jacobsen.

The play begins with a talented mime, who is then shooed off the stage by the director, who explains that British pantomime does not fit the American definition. Thus commences two afternoons and an evening of high hilarity, many months, brainstorms, and snowstorms in the making.