Earth Friendly Family Travel - Breakfast Milk in the Bud Light cup?

My family took a two day get-away to Duluth last week for some swimming and sight seeing. While its fun to take those trips, we are quite disgusted by the way traveling generates so much waste. Disposable serveware at meals, beverages in disposables, no recycling bins and housekeeping are all culprits in filling up our hotel trash bin.

Earth friendly family travel for us means:

• Bringing our own water bottles and thermoses so that we do not need to acquire disposable beverage containers.
  
• Bringing along a small set of dishes including a cutting board, knife, and small mixing bowl.
  
• Collecting all recyclables and toting them home- paper, cans and plastic! It is a bit easier to commingle these while on the road and then sorting them once home.
  
• Collecting all compostables and toting them home to the composter- coffee grounds, orange peels and paper with food waste are all examples. Yes, we really do this on car trips. Its not really that big of a deal once you designate a spot for compostables to go. The hotel ice bucket sure works well for this job!
• Bring along a dishwashing wand and dish soap to clean up our dishes. The kids are sure more eager to help with this job when we are vacationing.
  
• Reusing any plastic cups and plates that we do acquire. Who wants their breakfast milk in the Bud Light cup?
  
• Bringing along some food. Takeout meals means takeout food packaging. By having sandwich fixings, fruit, a bag of salad and snacks on hand we can make lunches in our room and avoid more packaging while saving some change. A few spare sandwich bags in the suitcases allows us to have the sandwiches with us on the road.
  
• Declining housekeeping during our stay. Many hotels are doing this more routinely, even promoting their "eco-business". These claims are often akin to greenwashing considering the rest of their practices are so wasteful (Where are the recycling bins exactly?). But regardless, by declining housekeeping, we minimize the amount of laundering required for our stay along with less garbage bags, plastic cups, shampoo bottles consumed.
• Bringing our own shampoo and conditioner. There is never enough in the little hotel bottles anyway.
  

Granted, we buck the disposa-society trend hard, and definitely are not within the norms set by our fellow vacationers. However, the reward of a trashcan NOT filled with clamshells, foodwaste and recyclables is motivating, and allows us to have a more carefree vacation. We are looking for more ideas, please suggest yours!

The Dino Boulevard Garden

Here is a fun garden profile called the "Dino Garden! Its located in my brother's Saint Paul boulevard and for 3 years, neighborhood kids make this little patch of vegetation a destination on walks. Kids and parents stop to find hidden dinosaurs and play with them, and occasionally parents even have to avoid this block because they are too engrossed in dinosaurs for time allotted. Even adults without kids pass with a smile. The complement of shade tolerant plants that my brother has included only adds to the prehistoric effect- ferns, solomon's seal, hosta, fairy candles, and sedges.

This is a great example of placemaking. As defined by Project for Public Spaces, "Placemaking is not just the act of building or fixing up a space, but a whole process that fosters the creation of vital public destinations: the kind of places where people feel a strong stake in their communities and a commitment to making things better." As demonstrated by this boulevard, placemaking does not have to only happen in public squares or municipal gateways. Positive outcomes in the case of the Dino Garden include an ever-changing community expression that adds beauty, traffic calming and community building as neighbors find reason to pause and ask questions and even investigate. Most of the Dinosaurs are still on duty after 3 seasons in the garden, not many have been lost or stolen. Compare how well this space is functioning to previous longstanding life as unnoticeable lawn.

Boulevards are of course city property and cities have restrictions on what you plant and you should take steps not to create a stormwater runoff issue. At the same time, they are a great space to be creative, improve your tree's health, and make your street more inviting. A practical boulevard garden guide from Metro Blooms can be found here.


Photo Credit: Amanda Hankerson

eggs dyed naturally from the icebox

This photo was snapped at my sister's photograghy studio on Easter. My kids did the eggs this year and they looked straight from Martha, in part due to Amanda's cool blue couch.

Its a process, but its about the experience, not instant results. We start with research, a plan and a shopping list for the produce section. You see, no box of dye tablets needed here, these are dyed from various natural ingredients that were brewed on our stove top. Its a bit like whipping up a potion. While we have been dyeing eggs this way forever, my eldest daughter is really into it and produced these jewels. Pretty food doesn't escape our extended family that includes a skilled set of web designers and photographers, so of course there was a photo shoot before eating.

For the gems in the photo, my daughter boiled uncooked eggs in a mixture of dye material, vinegar and water. For many batches, more color was desired, so the eggs spent the night refrigerated in the dye mixture. Here are the materials that were used:

• Dark Orange: red onion
• Yellow: turmeric spice
• Grey: grape juice
• Blue: purple cabbage