3 30 17 boulderganic

SPRING/SUMMER 2017

Bringing self-sufficiency and sustainability home

TM

Stash Trash the

Prevent trash from traveling from streets to creek Secure trash, recycling and compost in cans with

Trash travels! Put a lid on it.

Trash travels! Put a lid on it.

Stash

Prevent trash from traveling from streets to creeks.

Secure trash, recycling and compost in cans with lids.

IT HARMS STREAMS Trash in our creeks can impact habitats, spread chemicals and harm birds, fish and other wildlife.

IT RUNS OFF

When it rains, trash from roads and parking lots washes into storm drains that lead directly to creeks!

IT ADDS UP

Each year, enough trash is picked up along Colorado highways to fill almost 8,500 dump trucks.

www.KeepItCleanPartnership.org

‘cause WE’RE ALL DOWNSTREAM

AFTERLIFE? Your old laptop could have a rich afterlife,

BUT ONLY IF YOU RECYCLE IT. When you recycle your electronics, you give a second life to materials, save natural resources and keep toxic metals out of soil and water.

And, thanks to a partnership between Eco-Cycle and Blue Star Recyclers, you also create recycling jobs for people with autism and disAbilities. Just 16 computers a day equals one new job!

good for people good for the planet

CHaRM

www.ecocycle.org/charm

Eco-Cycle / City of Boulder Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials 6400 Arapahoe Rd., Boulder

Information on fees and guidelines for materials accepted at the CHaRM available at www.ecocycle.org/charm, or call our Recycling Hotline at 303.444.6634.

ÂŽ

TM

Spring/Summmer 2017

Susan France

Staff

Publisher, Stewart Sallo Special Editions Editor, Caitlin Rockett Associate Publisher, Fran Zankowski Director of Operations/ Controller, Benecia Beyer Circulation Manager, Cal Winn

Editorial

Editor, Joel Dyer Associate Editors, Angela K. Evans, Amanda Moutinho

Sales

Retail Sales Manager, Allen Carmichael Senior Account Executive, David Hasson Account Executive, Julian Bourke Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Inside/Outside Account Executive, Andrea Ralston Marketing Manager, Devin Edgley Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar

Production

The

Production Manager, Dave Kirby Art Director, Susan France Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman

Boulderganic lifestyle

S

pring is a time of transition; the earth shakes off the sleep of winter and gets down to business. Suddenly everything is sunshine and flowers, spring breezes and afternoon showers.

The change can spark a similar renewal in us as well, stimulating new growth, fresh perspectives and a sense of optimism about the future.

These are the feelings we hope to convey through Boulderganic.

Boulderganic is more than a magazine — it’s a lifestyle. It’s about more than what you eat or how you exercise, but those things are part of it. We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that eating less meat is better for the planet, or that riding your bike is a great choice for

2

your body and the environment.

But that’s the easy stuff. Boulderganic tackles the intricate stuff as well.

It’s about how you interact with the world on a daily basis. It’s about getting to know the green businesses in town — the ones that work to preserve our precious planet and not just their bottom line — and then giving them your patronage. It’s about being familiar with the resources your town offers that can help make your life more sustainable, whether that’s a class on landscaping your yard with native plants, learning where to take those hard-to-recycle items, or a municipal program that shows you how to get tax rebates on things like solar panels.

The Boulderganic lifestyle encourages you to get to know your local

General & Administrative Assistant to the Publisher, Julia Sallo Office Manager, Evangelina Papastergiou

farmers and join their CSAs. We’ve got a handy guide tucked into this edition to help you know just how to pick a CSA that’s right for you.

There are a lot of handy guides and tips in this issue, actually, from sustainable choices in transportation to starting your own worm composting system at home to learning how to forage for food in urban areas.

Yeah, you can actually do that.

We’ve put a lot of time into creating a magazine that helps you find the best you — that helps you live the most Boulderganic lifestyle you can.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Boulderganic magazine, and don’t forget to check out the Boulderganic section in Boulder Weekly every week.

Circulation Team, Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama 17-Year-Old, Mia Rose Sallo For comments or questions contact us at editorial@boulderweekly.com

Sustainability — 5 Environmental Issues — 10 Food & Garden — 15 Business — 28 Sustainable Resource Directory — 35

Get Healthy! Get Balanced!

Get Happy!

Get Happy!

Get Healthy! Get Balanced!

The World is Changing … Come Take Charge of Your Life!

6th ANNUAL

Evolve Expo teaches you how to create positive, proactive choices in your life with hands-on experiences, live demonstrations, and great exhibitors! Learn how to empower yourself through new ideas and simple solutions for a balanced, healthy, happy & sustainable lifestyle.

SPEAKERS FOR THE 2017 EVOLVE EXPO INCLUDE:

MAY 6 & 7, 2017

Saturday 10am - 6pm • Sunday 10am - 4pm National Western Complex • 4655 Humboldt St, Denver

New Ideas & Simple Solutions for Balanced, Healthy, Happy Sustainable Lifestyles!

Barbara Marx Donna Tracy Revell &Terry Chriswell Gregg Moss Daniel Glynda Yoder Hubbard

The world is changing, but you make choices about the way you live.

You create your life with the choices you make.

Come to Evolve Expo and Take Charge of Your Life!

Denomme

Health Health and Wellness and Wellness

Gutierrez

Healthy Food & Cooking Healthy Food & Cooking

Hands-on Gardening

Jon Cooper

Consciousness & New Science

17_evlv_expo_na_ad_3_17:Layout 1 3/16/17 3:46 PM Page 1

Hands-On Get Healthy!Gardening Get Balanced!

Consciousness & New Science

Get Happy!

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BOOKING SPACE FOR YOUR Sponsors BUSINESS AT COLORADO’S POSITIVE LIVING| EVENT YOU CAN Hours: Saturday – 10:00 am - 6:00 pm • Sunday – 10:00 am - 4:00 pm The World is Changing … Come Take Charge of Your Life!

GET MORE INFORMATION AT WWW.EVOLVEEXPO.COM $15 Evolve Expo teaches you how to create positive, proactive choices in your life with hands-on experiences, live FREE At the National Western Complex FOR • 4655 Humboldt St, Denver, CO BOTH demonstrations, and great exhibitors! Learn how to empower yourself through new ideas and simple solutions PARKING DAYS for a balanced, healthy, happy & sustainable lifestyle.

MAY 6 &7, 2017 $15

SPEAKERS FOR THE 2017 EVOLVE EXPO INCLUDE: This Year’s Speakers Include:

FREE

FOR BOTH DAYS Barbara Marx Hubbard

Donna Denomme

Parking!

Tracy Revell

Terry Chriswell

Gregg Moss

Daniel Gutierrez

Glynda Yoder

Jon Cooper

© 2017 • Journeys For Conscious Living • All rights reserved

Find out more @ www.EvolveExpo.com Phone: 303-731-6695 or 303-469-0306 Health and Wellness

Hands-on Gardening

Healthy Food & Cooking

Consciousness & New Science

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sustainability

Shrink your water footprint Understanding Colorado’s most precious resource

by Christi Turner

Y

ou’ve probably heard it said that water is Colorado’s most valuable resource. Yet somehow, sometimes, it’s still forgotten that despite relatively high precipitation in the mountains, Colorado is a semi-arid state. Like much of the West, Colorado has been able to develop only thanks to advanced (and controversial) water engineering projects that have dammed up, redistributed and otherwise managed water to allow people to live where they want to, even if that’s far from where the water is. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of Colorado’s water is found west of the Continental Divide, while 80 to 90 percent of the population lives east of it. The Front Range population continues to swell, and climate change continues to affect water availability both here and across the state. As more and more people make their way here, joining the ranks of non-native Coloradans and increasing the gap between water supply and demand, it’s worth reminding ourselves — often — that water is a scarce and precious thing.

As winter turns (quickly) to spring, we’re not going to lecture you about how irresponsible it is to leave the water running while you brush your teeth and wash your dishes; how unattractive it is to take long showers; how much your neighbors will judge your overwatered lawn, etc. You know that already. Instead, below you’ll find what we hope will be a helpful guide of next-level resources you can use to grow your water knowledge and deepen your commitment to being a water-savvy Coloradan.

KNOW THE PLAN

You already know water is Colorado’s most important resource; hopefully you also caught the news that the state passed its first-ever statewide water plan in late 2015. In a nutshell, the water plan is designed to guide water-related decisions to ensure the state’s water is still here for future generations. Although the plan has its critics, some see it as a strong step forward for the state, and other Western state governments are even using the plan as a blueprint to develop their own. Sounds like something you should read up on, right? In the process, you’ll up your personal waterconservation game, and maybe impress other eco-minded folks at parties with your water knowledge. www.colorado.gov/pacific/cowaterplan

UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM

As your water-knowledge grows and your water use improves, you’ll want to understand the basics of how the right to use water works in Colorado. For starters, memorize this phrase: “First in time, first in right.” That’s your go-to shorthand for the system of prior appropriation, upon which Colorado water use is built. An “appropriation” is basically

the act of using water for some “beneficial use,” and the ability to appropriate water is based on seniority — i.e., who got there first — and a water source that is “over-appropriated” basically has more water rights tied to it than it actually has water.

That’s all just a teaser to whet your thirst.

Dive in. water.state.co.us/surfacewater/swrights/ pages/priorapprop.aspx www.colorado.edu/geography/class_ homepages/geog_4501_s14/readings/CGLaw2004.pdf

Wikimedia Commons/Alex Anlicker

HARVEST THE RAIN

Remember when it was illegal to catch rainwater in a barrel in Colorado? Well, as of August 2016, rain barrels are now legal in the state. This means that households can now collect up to 110 gallons of rainwater for home use, and experts have shown that it will have no consequential impact on overall groundwater availability. But before you go buy a giant tub and start collecting water for your garden, know the rules and understand why it was controversial in the first place (see previous point on “prior appropriation”). The Colorado State University Extension program has a great fact sheet to give you all the info you need to safely and legally harvest your own water from the sky. extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/natural-resources/ rainwater-collection-colorado-6-707/

Shrinking your water footprint is about more than just turning off the tap when you brush your teeth or taking shorter showers. Understand Colorado’s statewide water plan and get familiar with how the West allocates water.

LANDSCAPE DIFFERENT

Did you know that Denver Water, the oldest and largest water utility in the state, coined the term “xeriscaping” in 1981? That means Front Rangers should probably do it.

“Xeriscaping” basically means landscaping using native plants that promote water conservation because they’re adapted to the climate. It also encourages the use of compost, which can further improve water efficiency, not to mention improving plant health and reducing runoff.

Done right, xeriscaping can reduce your residential water use by up to 60 percent. Although it won’t look like a big green lawn, neither must it look like a sagebrush desertscape (although some of us think that’s pretty beautiful). And we should get over our strange attraction with perfectly groomed, totally unnatural green lawns anyhow, especially in a state where they tend to do more harm than good. coloradowaterwise.org/XeriscapeColorado www.denverwater.org/Conservation/Xeriscape/ 5

sustainability

Green smarts

CU Boulder students continue an environmental legacy

S

by Ximena Leyte

tudents at the University of Colorado Boulder have been the heart of the university’s recycling program since 1976. While the Environmental Center (E-Center) was started six years prior, it wasn’t until a group of environmentally passionate individuals gathered the necessary funding that recycling became a priority on campus.

They first set up in the areas that generated the most waste and put dumpsters in a parking lot to sort through the materials and dispose of anything harmful to the environment. Since then, student involvement has remained the driving force of the recycling center at CU Boulder.

Ximena Leyte

CU Boulder’s E-Center started in the ’60s, and it’s still going strong today.

6

In recent years, CU has made “zero waste” a campuswide goal. This requires transitioning from a traditional waste disposal system — garbage and wastewater predominantly — to what’s known as a cyclical resource management system where materials return safely to either the environment or back into the industrial cycle to be used again.

CU Boulder has a goal to redirect 90 percent of materials away from the landfill by the year 2020. To do so, the E-Center uses student-powered teams to go out

and educate other students on how to reduce, reuse and recycle.

The Zero Waste Outreach team at CU Boulder has become one of the leading forces in this mission by hosting events like Scrape Your Plate and I Scream for Recycling.

“It was progressive students who saw this need and created the program,” says Dan Baril, recycling program manager at the E-Center. “It was built off the back of students, and we like to keep our students integrated into the recycling program even to this day.”

While students working and volunteering at the E-Center have the opportunity to work in various areas, most students start out on the line at the Recycling Operations Center on Colorado Avenue. Here, students sort through materials to clear the recycling stream of anything that could contaminate the process.

Chicago-native Hanna Danetker, a senior in environmental studies with a minor in sociology, has been a member of the E-Center for a year and a half. By starting as a sorter on the line and then becoming the special materials manager, Danetker says her involvement with the E-Center is a productive way to build a career aimed at creating food justice in marginalized communities.

The monopolization of the agricultural industry has affected low-income communities the most. With these neighborhoods often located in food deserts, affordable, healthy food is often inaccessible. But food justice programs give these communities the power to grow, sell and eat healthy food.

As a volunteer during the summer for Gardeneers, a Chicago program working with schools to create garden education programs, Danetker strives to incorporate her knowledge of environmental studies and sociology to contribute in the fight against the structural problem of food injustice.

An interest in serving communities is also a driving motive for CU senior Lupe Avalos. Although majoring in technology arts and media, Avalos has integrated her environmental awareness with her field of study

sustainability

Students get a hands-on experience with the recycling process through jobs at the Recycling Operations Center.

by creating informative videos and games for the public about recycling and composting. Last semester, she developed an online game where players can toss common items seen on campus into the landfill, recycling or compost basket. She also created a short video explaining the importance of zero waste and how the concept can be incorporated into everyday life.

Avalos has held various positions at the E-Center but does most of her work with the Zero Waste Outreach team. She’s involved with ECO Visits, a free service helping students living off-campus reduce their energy bills by installing energy saving devices like LED light bulbs, pipe insulators and water-smart showerheads. And she helps with Foundations for Leaders Organizing Water Sustainability (FLOWS), which allows CU students to help low-income communities in Boulder adopt sustainable lifestyle behaviors.

Programs like these are effective in achieving energy-efficient methods and green-building practices, but a lot of our waste comes from what we end up disposing from our food plate and the materials we use to consume our food. Students like Zach Huey have also made it their responsibility to educate staff and students on campus about the consequences of food waste.

Although Huey has always been environmentally conscious, his work in the food industry really highlighted the amount of food waste we generate. While still a first-year student in political science, Huey is aiming to implement policies that combat climate change, and organize social groups to educate the public about recycling and compost.

“The real issue with waste in society is that it’s not made a public

issue — it’s a personal thing,” Huey says. “I go out to eat, I get food and I throw my waste away. Other people do what they want with their waste, but waste is still everywhere — on the street, in people’s houses, on campus. So I don’t think it’s a private issue and it needs to be addressed.”

Huey is actively involved in various outreach events in the dining halls and the University Memorial Center (UMC), making sure fellow students and staff know in which bin to toss their waste. In the dining halls, he works with the Zero Waste Outreach team for events like Scrape Your Plate Day, where volunteers direct students to dispose leftover food into compost bins. Students and staff are able to witness how much food is wasted when absentmindedly grabbing larger portions, as the volunteers weigh the food scraped into the compost bins.

During one program called I Scream for Recycling, students pledge to “reduce, reuse and recycle” by adopting eco-friendly practices such as printing only when necessary and bringing non-plastic bags on shopping trips. All who agree to pledge can either shout, “Go now and recycle, do it for the children!” or share their act on social media to receive a free treat from Boulder Ice Cream.

The Lug Your Mug event, also run by the Zero Waste Outreach team, encourages students to ditch disposable cups and instead bring their own non-plastic ones to receive free coffee on campus. With students running on little sleep and high stress, coffee cups made out of polylactic acid (PLA) plastic are one of the most predominant items on college campuses, but they are also one of the most wasteful because they are non-recyclable.

Ximena Leyte

With these programs and many others, the E-Center provides all its volunteers a chance to pursue their interests. For some, like Michelle Roby, that includes behind-the scenes work on awareness and conservation conferences. As a junior majoring in environmental studies and Spanish, Roby is most interested in programs like Bioneers, where innovators from all over the world gather at CU Boulder to discuss practical solutions to environmental matters.

Roby enjoys working at the ECenter because it is a great way to stay informed on what the campus is doing in partnership with the City of Boulder. As an active member of the Zero Waste Outreach team, Roby has helped those living in multifamily units understand the zero waste ordinance the City recently made mandatory, requiring recycling and composting be available for all tenants.

“We have a fresh mindset,” Roby says of students working through the E-Center. “We understand how students work and are able to come with fresh ideas on how to go at different things.”

••••••• “The real issue with waste in society is that it’s not made a public issue — it’s a personal thing.”

—Zach Huey E-Center student member •••••••

7

sustainability

Free yourself from parking lot frustration Sustainable options for transportation in Boulder County

by Ayako Itoi

I

f you go down to Pearl Street, you may find yourself circling around the area looking for a parking spot. According to the City’s 2015 Transportation Master Plan, approximately 49,000 cars drive into Boulder each day, with another 20,000 leaving.

Vehicles alone account for 23 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. So consider ditching your car and looking into one of Boulder County’s alternative transportation options to free yourself from parking lot frustration.

Ayako Itoi

Companies can purchase an annual EcoPass for all full-time employees, with an option to include part-time employees. The pass is tax deductible for employers and tax free to employees. Pass holders can use all RTD services an unlimited amount of times.

A collection of residents can purchase Neighborhood EcoPasses. These users typically apply with 50 or more households in order to keep the fee to approximately $150 per household.

The City of Longmont offers the Ride Free program, providing fare-free rides on all four local buses inside the City. Residents of Nederland are also eligible for an EcoPass to use around town.

Boulder County Transportation is working with RTD on RTD’s Transit Pass Update Project to explore the feasibility of a community-wide EcoPass for all County residents. To provide the County with your thoughts and comments on a community-wide EcoPass, visit: www.bouldercounty.org/ roads/transit/pages/rtdtransitpassupdate.aspx.

Bike

Boulder B-Cycle makes getting around Boulder by bike both easy and affordable.

8

EcoPass

www.rtd-denver.com/EcoPass.shtml According to a 2005 Boulder Valley Employee Survey conducted by the City of Boulder, an employee with an EcoPass is nearly nine times more likely to have commuted by bus in the last year than an employee without EcoPass.

Once you’ve got your pass, use the RTD Transit Watch on your smartphone to keep track of departure times and delays to ensure you get where you need to go on time.

https://boulder.bcycle.com If you want to stay fit and not worry about bike theft, B-cycle is a great option. Those are the red bikes you see at stations around Boulder. You can choose from four different pass types to best suit your biking needs.Visitors should choose the Day Tripper pass for unlimited 30-minute rides for a single day. People’s Pedaler is a monthly pass that also allows unlimited 30-minute rides. Republic Rider passes allow unlimited 60-minute trips for a year. You can also just get a single use pass for $3. Users can check the availability through B-cycle’s mobile app, rent a bike with a membership card, or credit or debit card, and return the bicycle in any available docking station. The City of Longmont is starting Zagstar, a bicycle rental system with computers

Ayako Itoi

installed in individual bicycles.

And don’t forget about Boulder County’s extensive system of greenways and bike paths.

Carpool Way to Go and VanGo

www.waytogo.org nfrmpo.org Do you like to chat with new people? Then carpooling is a great option for your commute. The Way to Go program offers a regional ride-matching service for carpools, vanpools and schoolpools. They also help organize Bike to Work Day and provide resources and tools for biking, walking, public transportation, car-sharing and work schedule options (such as telework, flexwork and compressed work week). Similarly, VanGo can help you find a carpool, vanpool or even a biking partner.

Cars are stationed in a central location or at a driver’s home, and drivers pick up riders along the way. The cost depends on the distance; however, you can drive and maintain the cars and get a discount. In emergencies, these carpool systems guarantee transportation home.

around Boulder County yet, but Jared Hall, Boulder County’s senior transportation planner, says it might not be far off. Google’s parent company Alphabet is at the helm for the Waymo project, which is testing out fleets of self-driving cars in four American cities: Kirkland, Washington; Mountain View, California; Phoenix, Arizona; and Austin, Texas.

eGo CarShare is a nonprofit organization providing more than 40 cars and trucks around the Denver metropolitan area.

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environmental

Bear necessities

How to protect Boulder’s bears and yourself

by Billy Singleton

••••••• There appears to be a direct link between our behavior, the presence of bears and bears being killed. The good news? That means we can do something about it.

•••••••

I

n 2011, Brenda Lee received a major wake-up call.

On a morning walk through the University Hill, the Boulder resident noticed piles of trash lining several consecutive alleyways. She flagged down a garbage truck and asked the drivers what had happened.

“They jumped out and said, ‘Oh yeah, they’re bears. We see them all the time, and we can tell you which alleys they’re on on which day of the week because [the bears] know the trash schedule.’ It was very matter-of-fact to them,” Lee says.

Having heard about bears being killed in town, Lee was indignant. She would later go on to found the Boulder Bear Coalition, an organization aimed at reducing human-bear conflict.

“It was so obvious,” she says. “Secure the trash. Bears don’t want to come into town, and you don’t have officers coming into town and killing the bears.”

The prevalence of black bears in Boulder isn’t just a safety issue for humans. It’s much more dangerous for the bears. According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) spokesperson Jennifer Churchill, an estimated 100 bears are relocated statewide each year — and 100 bears are killed.

“And that’s separate from bears that are hunted, killed by landowners or hit by cars,” Churchill says. “We have to make sure that people are safe in our state, and unfortunately, wildlife will pay the price for that.”

According to CPW’s statewide policy, informally known as “the two-strike rule,” bears that are determined to be a nuisance are tagged and removed, if possible. If a bear wearing a tag returns, it will typically be killed.

With this rule in place, failing to secure our trash becomes a virtual death sentence for bears.

“They’re all about food in the fall — they need to eat 20,000 calories a day. That would take all day to eat from a berry tree,” Lee says. “If instead they can cruise an alley, eat for an hour and sleep for the rest of the day, that’s what a bear’s going to do.”

There appears to be a direct link between our behavior, the presence of bears and bears being killed. The good news? That means we can do something about it.

TRASH

10

Lee says that the most important thing Boulder residents can do to help bears is to secure their trash — either storing trash in a secure enclosure or using bear-resistant trash cans.

e lani Me

Hill

In 2014, Boulder enacted Ordinance No. 7962, requiring all homes and business west of Broadway and south of Sumac Avenue to use bear-resistant trash cans. Failure to comply comes with a stiff fine — $250 for a first offense and up to $1,000 for repeat offenses.

But bears do cross Broadway. Bears that travel east of Broadway often find themselves in even more danger — they’re likely to encounter traffic, and without an easy escape route they’re much harder to scare off. With that in mind, people who live east of Broadway are just as responsible for their trash, even if not legally mandated to do so.

Bear-proof trash cans are available through Western Disposal Services (WDS) and at several hardware stores in the Boulder area. WDS repairs damaged trash cans for free.

OTHER ATTRACTANTS

According to the National Park Service, bears have one of the best senses of smell in the animal kingdom.

Conservative estimates say that bears can smell food up to 2 miles away, while some say they can pick up smells from up to 20 miles away. In any case, reducing attractants in city is essential for keeping bears out; even if food is inaccessible, from 5 miles away bears won’t know the difference.

environmental

Bird feeders are a major bear City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks attractant. Whether they contain seeds or sugar water, bird feeders mean easy calories.

When asked what residents should do about their bird feeders, Churchill says, “Take them down. ... Birds have access to all kinds of natural food during the spring and summer months, when bears are active. You can use flowers or bird baths to attract birds to your home if you enjoy seeing them. But putting out bird feeders or hummingbird Our contact with bears is feeders with sugar water is certainly a problem and will a privilege that places responsibility on residents attract bears.” to reduce potential harms.

Fruit trees are another ideal food source for bears.

Harvesting ripe and fallen fruit in one’s yard is a good way to prevent bear visits.

“While eating apples is healthier than eating trash, it still brings them into town, and into potential issues with people and wildlife officials,” Lee says.

Community Fruit Rescue organizes volunteer fruit harvests in the Boulder area — those with fruit trees can host harvests at their homes. Much of the fruit is then donated to homeless shelters in the Boulder area, while the inedible fruit feeds bears at wild animal sanctuaries.

DETERRENCE

Boulder will always be attractive to bears. Removing access to food is a great way to make sure that they don’t take up residence here, but Boulder’s creeks and irrigation ditches, its proximity to the mountains and its food smells will always make it a likely destination for some bears.

Churchill says it’s our job to make sure they don’t get comfortable. While bears might inspire sympathy, Churchill says that tolerance sends the wrong message.

“We need to enjoy that moment, take a few pictures, but then get out pots and pans and bang them, get out an air horn and scare the animals off,” she says. “If we encourage them to take up residence in our back yard, then the next time we want to go out and have a barbecue — guess what? That is now that bear’s habitat, not your back yard.”

While black bears are not aggressive, they can be territorial. After a bear spends a few days in someone’s yard, moving it can be dangerous. The key is to act quickly.

“If people choose to tolerate them up to a certain point, and then say, ‘Oh, it’s too much now. You need to move the bear.’ We’re really putting those bears in harm’s way,’ Churchill says. “Our hands are forced as far as what we can do, trying to get a bear to leave what it now thinks is its territory.”

Whether or not one should contact CPW varies. Bears that aren’t bothering anyone and look like they can find their own way out typically don’t warrant a call.

“If you’re concerned or an animal has been hanging around for many days, or seems to be deep into town, we probably want to see if we can get that animal to move along,” Churchill says.

Wherever people come into contact with wildlife, she continues, there will be conflict. But we can reduce harm by being informed and active in our communities when it comes to bears. Ultimately, she says, our contact with them is a privilege.

“They’re beautiful — I love seeing them. It’s awesome that we have so many in our state. People have to understand the responsibility that comes with wildlife living near us,” Churchill says. “Be good neighbors to our wildlife.”

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We’ve all got to go some how, so why not go green?

environmental

Even after life, you can make sustainable choices

by Christi Turner

R

eligion and tradition aside, the idea of my fully dressed dead body spending eternity in a sealed wood-and-metal box lined with fabric has always been... unsettling. Even as a young spitfire, the idea was incredibly strange. Why inject me full of chemical preservatives to stave off natural decay, cram my stiffened limbs into an outfit deemed somehow appropriate for the occasion, then lower me into a hole while others look on in grief, horror, relief, whatever? Plus, with all us humans crowding the planet and our irritating tendency to die, it’s always seemed like a colossal waste of space. I decided at a young age that I have to protect my body from meeting such an end, and made it known that in the event of my untimely death I wish to be cremated. My parents were of course thrilled to hear their elementary school student make such an announcement, probably in front of the neighbors.

As I’ve grown, a desire to step lightly on the earth — to live a more “green” life — has infiltrated my strong opinions, even those on dying. It’s been disturbing to realize just what a high toll “traditional” burials, and even cremation, take on the environment. And it’s been (disturbingly?) exciting to discover how many “green” options exist for disposing of one’s body at the end of its earthly life — to die a more green death, as it were. Here are some intriguing end-of-life options to consider, some of which aren’t quite available yet, but may just be when your time comes.

CERTIFIED NATURAL BURIAL

This is basically my story above, except no carcinogenic embalming chemicals (harmful to workers and the environment), a simple shroud for cover and a biodegradable box made from natural fibers. As defined by the Green Burial Council, who sets the standard for natural burials in the U.S., a green or natural burial “furthers legitimate environmental and societal aims such as protecting worker health, reducing carbon emissions, conserving natural resources and preserving habitat.” This is an option you can exercise in cemeteries or funeral homes in 39 states, including at least three cemeteries in Colorado. www.greenburialcouncil.org

URBAN DEATH PROJECT

Compost your body! That’s basically what this organization plans to allow you to do. In their words: “The Urban Death Project has created an innovative new model of death care that honors both our loved ones and the planet Earth. At the heart of this model is a new system called recomposition that transforms bodies into soil so that we can grow new life after we die.” Key phrase: “transforms bodies into soil,” which is exactly what doesn’t happen naturally when you’re sealed in a varnished box and pumped full of embalming chemicals. That soil, created

in the project’s “recomposition centers,” is made available for use in parks, gardens and green spaces.

What better way to seal your eternal connection to the earth and its life cycles? www.urbandeathproject.org

BODY FARMS

This is not where bodies are grown, but rather where they are studied in their post-death state.

This imperfect popular term actually refers to “outdoor forensic anthropology research laboratories,” where experts study how bodies decompose in order to better understand cause and time of death, as well as what happens to a body after death in various situations, including when scavengers, bugs and barnacles are part of the process. That’s because, as a Forbes report on the matter says, “while the general process of decomp is biologically universal, the rate of it is significantly affected by variables like temperature and humidity, not to mention by the method of disposal of the body.”

The six university labs reported to have outdoor forensic anthropology research laboratories: University of Tennessee Knoxville (this one’s the oldest, est. 1981), Western Carolina University, Texas State University, Sam Houston State University, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and there’s even one here in our state — Colorado Mesa University. Contact the facility of your choice to donate your body to their research.

TIBETAN SKY BURIAL

This is my favorite, but probably not my mom’s. A Tibet tourism website describes sky burial pretty perfectly: “Sky burial is simply the disposal of a corpse to be devoured by vultures. In Tibetan Buddhism, sky burial is believed to represent their wishes to go to heaven. It is the most widespread way for commoners to deal with the dead in Tibet.” I am not Buddhist, but I can appreciate a good allegory. I would much rather my body become food for raptors than have it tease the worms and other soil-dwelling decomposers from inside my box, forever. Plus, it’s taboo for family members (or strangers) to attend a sky burial, so one’s final wishes to be absorbed into the food chain can happen in peace.

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Worm your way into vermiculture

food & garden

A how-to on composting with red wigglers

by Caitlin Rockett

C

omposting is nature’s recycling system and • Worms — Eisenia fetida, or, less esoterically, red wigyou should get on board with it. Here’s why: gler worms According to some stats from Boulder • Worm food — Chopped up fruit and vegetable scraps, County, almost 20 percent of the county’s banana peels, corn cobs, coffee grounds and filters, tea waste stream is plant trimmings and fruit bags, eggshells, used paper towels and bread (even if it’s and vegetable scraps, all of which could be recycled as moldy). compost. Composting creates high-quality soil amend• Do not add meat, bones, dairy, dog or cat poop, ment (nutrient-rich material that can be added to soil) and excessive citrus rinds (should be about one-fifth of the total it reduces landfill methane. Methane, for the record, has scraps), twigs or branches or fatty foods. roughly 80 times more heat-trapping power than its betterknown greenhouse gas counterpart carbon dioxide. LandABOUT THAT BIN fills produce methane because the buried waste doesn’t You can purchase a bin specifically for worm compostreceive oxygen so it undergoes anaerobic decomposition. ing, either online or, like the local-business supporter you Compost, however, undergoes aerobic decomposition and are, from a local hardware store. (McGuckins has them produces carbon dioxide instead of methane. Yeah, yeah... for around $100.) Many of these will be multi-tray setups.

CO2 sucks, but the Environmental Protection Agency and Worms will migrate upward into new trays allowing you to the U.S. Composting Council both conclude that emissions harvest their castings (read: poop) from the lower trays. from aerobic composting are considered part of the natural You can also make your own bin out of untreated carbon cycle and do not contribute to CO2 emissions. wood or a plastic container. Red wigglers like shalChances are some of you have already tried composting low, dark bins, somewhere around a foot to 2 feet deep, at home. If so, you know it stinks. Like, it really reeks. It’s depending on how large your family is. (Larger families best if you have the space to keep a composting bin outside need larger containers.) Wooden bins breathe easily and on a patio or in a garage, or even better yet, an entire backabsorb moisture, but they’ll eventually start to rot. If you yard where you can create a compost pile. You put this pile go the plastic route, purchase a container with a tight of rotting veggie scraps and yard stuff away from anywhere fitting lid, no more than 12 inches deep. Since plastic you want to hangout or eat, basically. doesn’t breathe, drill quarter-inch holes in the lid and You’ve got to turn compost regularly, and you can’t avoid around the top edges of the bin. it because it stinks; it’ll smell even more when you do finally WORMS continued on page 16 get around to aerating it. Unfortunately, this method of composting is not always practical Wikimedia Commons/Toby Hudson for many of us living in apartments.

But hope is not lost, apartment-dwelling eco-warriors. Vermiculture — aka worm composting, aka harvesting worm poop — can make all of your small-space, low-stink composting dreams come true.

Here’s a little how-to on setting up a worm composting system, and some resources that will help get you going.

••••••• Vermiculture — aka worm composting, aka harvesting worm poop — can make all of your small-space, lowstink composting dreams come true.

•••••••

Red wiggler worms are the driving force in your vermiculture composting system.

Harvest their poop to fertilize your flowers.

SUPPLIES

You’re not going to need a lot: • Bin — Plastic or wooden with a tightfitting lid and air holes • Bedding — Shredded newspaper is a good start (now you know what to do when you’re finished with that Boulder Weekly), but you’ll also want some coconut coir (more on that later).

• Potting soil and/or compost — You need some to get the compost party started.

15

food & garden

WORMS continued from page 15

You can create your own multitired bin (here’s some help: www. instructables.com/id/Multi-Layer-Vermiculture-Bin/) or you can create a single-level bin. You can still harvest the castings, it’ll just take a little more effort, but more on that later.

BEDDING

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Take that Boulder Weekly you’ve been saving and cut it into streamerstyle strips and then use a spray bottle to moisten the strips until they feel damp, but not wet. Place the damp bedding into the bin with a few handfuls of soil or compost to get the party started. You should use about the whole paper, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 pages.

Do not use glossy paper.

I’d strongly recommend purchasing coir, also called coconut fiber, and mixing it in with the newspaper strips. Coir holds water while remaining breathable. It adds up to less maintenance of the worm composting bin, and a better environment for the worms.

Liz at Big Text Worms sends worms through the mail with some of her handmade bedding that includes coconut coir and peat moss. Added bonus: she sends instructions. And she’s really good at this. www.redwormcomposting.com/ the-share-board/big-tex-worms Chop the veggies and the rest of the worm-safe stuff you want to add to the compost into small bits and then mix the scrap into the bedding.

Worms will eat smaller foods more quickly, and the mixing ensures worms can get to the food. It also cuts down on fruit flies.

JUST ADD WORMS

You’re going to need some worms to add to that bin. Here are some local(ish) laces to buy worms: • The Flower Bin, Longmont (www.theflowerbin.net) • A.B.C. Composting, Denver (www.abccomposting.com) • Paulino Gardens, Denver (www. paulinogardens.com) • Rocky Mountain Worm Company, Colorado Springs (rockymoun-

tainwormcompany.com) • High Yield Organics, Colorado Springs (highyieldorganics.net) There are about 1,000 worms in a pound of worms (a fact I never thought I’d know), and 1,000 worms can live it up real nicely in a 10-gallon bucket. To put it in other terms, you need a square foot of surface area for every pound of worms. Their container need be no deeper than 2 feet, because the worms won’t burrow any further down than that.

Now just add the worms to the bedding you’ve made. They’ll wriggle their way down and get comfortable.

FEED THOSE WORMS

Warning: These suckers can eat!

That pound of worms can consume about a half a pound of food scraps a day, so be prepared. Always chop the veggies into small bits. Depending on the size of your bin, feed the worms once a week to every two days with about a cup of scraps. Keep track of how fast the worms are eating so you can adjust timings, amounts and varieties. If the bin stinks, you’re probably overfeeding. Tuck scraps 3 to 4 inches deep to ward off fruit flies, and rotate the bin to ensure even composting.

LOCATION, LOCATION

A 5-gallon bucket (good home for about a half a pound of worms) will fit nicely under most kitchen sinks, which is a perfect place for your worm bin. Your wiggly friends like it dark and cool, between 55 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. A basement, cellar or a garage will work too. I suggest taking measurements of under-thesink space before heading out to buy materials to create your bin. Make sure you have the space you need/materials that will fit the space you have.

HARVESTING

There are several ways to harvest your compost: • Pyramid method: Spread a plastic tarp out in the sunshine. Make a pyramid from your pile-o-worms and

Wikimedia Commons/ Quadell

Wikimedia Commons/Rowan Adams

Left: The structure on the right is a multi-tray wormery, meant for easy compost harvesting.

Right: The inside of a plastic worm composting bin. The worm castings are visible on the sides.

allow a few minutes for the worms to burrow deeper. Harvest compost from top of the pyramid.

• Screening method: Get a screen made for masonry work. Move gently to separate fine compost from big chunks of food and worms.

• Migration method: This is basically how the multi-tray systems work.

Provide fresh food to cause the migration of earthworms from the old pile to the new food source. The old pile is your compost.

For more tips on harvesting visit: www.cropsreview.com/harvestingvermicompost.html

TROUBLESHOOTING

If you create healthy bedding for your worms, feed them well and keep them adequately damp, they’ll never try to leave the container; everything outside of the container is Death Valley for worms.

That doesn’t mean that despite your best efforts something won’t go wrong. If their habitat is less than ideal, worms may try to escape... or they may die.

• Sprinkle/spray water on the bedding every other day. The bedding should feel like a wrung out sponge.

• The bedding also can’t be too wet. Add shredded newspaper, cardboard or coconut coir about once a month or as needed. This helps to balance the moisture. You’ll notice that the material in the bin will disappear quickly — replenish it.

• A light in the area where your bin is located can also keep worms from trying to escape.

• Speaking of escaping, the bedding could be too acidic (remember how you can’t add too much citrus?).

Roast and then grind some eggshells to counterbalance the acidity.

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17

food & garden

Heroes on bikes

Volunteers at the Boulder Food Rescue take donations directly to those in need

by Carolyn Davidson

Daniel Fickle

Boulder Food Rescue delivers perishable food, which would otherwise go in the landfill, to those in need.

18

I

n an alley behind Whole Foods, Jim Kastengren, a long-time volunteer with Boulder Food Rescue, is showing me the ropes. In front of us are boxes of fresh produce the store can’t sell. Kastengren’s rule of thumb, he tells me, is that if he wouldn’t personally eat the donated food, it goes in the compost bin. The rest of it goes directly to people in need around Boulder.

I heave a bag of potatoes up from the donation pile and plop them into the trailer attached to Kastengren’s bike.

We start piling the rest of the food on top of it — apples, oranges, yogurts. We save the bananas for last, balancing them in between boxes.

I could barely lift the single bag of potatoes, but Kastengren is about to bike uphill pulling more than 100 pounds of food toward Attention Homes, a nonprofit that provides resources for at-risk youth. Boulder Food Rescue delivers, on average, 1,300 pounds of food a day.

The organization was founded in 2011 by a group of friends who did some research in collaboration with Community Food Share and learned that enough food goes to waste every day in Boulder and Broomfield counties to feed every food-insecure person living in these areas.

Hana Dansky, co-founder and current executive director of Boulder Food Rescue, says that what makes the program unique is the model, which cuts out the middleman between food donations and recipients.

“Some of the reasons why the food isn’t getting to these people is because with the traditional food bank model, by the time you take perishable items like fruits and vegetables to the warehouse, sort them and then redistribute them, days can pass and they can go bad,” she says.

With Boulder Food Rescue, this time frame is dramatically reduced. Volunteers pick up donations from local grocery stores (and a few local restaurants), sort through the food to make sure that it is all still edible and fresh, and then bike it directly to a neighborhood where people lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

The organization aims to fill the gap left behind with the traditional food redistribution model by focusing on perishable foods. They leave shelf-stable items to the traditional food banks in town, which Dansky says are best suited for that kind of food donation.

And using bikes seemed like a natural fit for delivery, as the founders were already bikers, and they wanted to minimize their environmental footprint as much as possible.

“We’re doing something really positive for the environment in that way (trying to reduce food waste) and so driving cars seemed kind of silly,” Danksy says. “Most people think that riding bikes full of food is sort of silly, but we kind of had this other approach to it in that way: It doesn’t make sense to drive a car when food is being thrown away blocks from where people need it.”

Boulder Food Rescue prides itself on listening to the people who get the donations, and allows each community to use the donation how they see fit.

“What the Boulder Food Rescue is doing differently is breaking down that barrier of people having to go to the pantry to get food,” says Kate Eno, volunteer coordinator.

“There are multiple barriers there: There’s the geographic barrier, there’s the mobility barrier and there is a stigma barrier.”

And removing the middleman allows for communities to have a certain amount of autonomy with the donations they receive.

“We go straight to a low-income housing site where there’s lots of people that want access to healthy fruits and vegetables that they wouldn’t have otherwise, and residents there redistribute however they want,” Dansky says. “It’s their program, so we just support them on the back end.”

Most of these communities set up no-cost grocery programs, but each is unique.

Now, five years in, roughly 100 volunteers run more than 70 shifts a week, Eno says. On the website, volunteers can sign up for or give up shifts, and log their deliveries.

food & garden

Michael Benko

Biking has been important to Boulder Food Rescue since its foundation. Volunteers sometimes pedal more than 100 pounds of food on one trip — rain or shine.

Michael Benko

Rebecca Stumpf

Not only has Boulder Food Rescue grown dramatically as an organization, it has also inspired other cities to form similar programs and led to the creation of the Food Rescue Alliance.

Dansky describes the group as a peer-learning network that shares documents, stories, practices and resources. Boulder Food Rescue puts on workshops every two months on subjects requested by members. Dansky says that the leader of a workshop may be an organization within the alliance or an outside source.

No matter where a member of the alliance may be, Dansky says certain core values, such as healthy foods, stay the same, even as the model changes to adapt to a city’s specific set of challenges. She believes in many ways Boulder Food Rescue is an individual model, and other cities need to adapt it to find a system that works best for their home.

For example, “Being bicycle-based has been huge for us in terms of volunteer engagement, but in Colorado Springs, that looks a lot different because

that city is a lot more sprawling and there’s not as big of a bike scene,” Dansky says. “So they might not do bike-based stuff but they do something else really well.”

Kastengren has been volunteering with Boulder Food Rescue since the year it was founded and says he keeps coming back, not only to volunteer and help people, but also as a reminder to stay humble and appreciative. Behind that Whole Foods, Kastengren reflects on just what makes this work important to him.

“I appreciate the idea of taking food that would otherwise go to a landfill and have it eaten by someone who can really use it and appreciate it,” he says. “We’re so affluent in Boulder in general, and we don’t tend to appreciate what we have. And this is something that points out how much we have. This was just waste; it was just going into a dumpster before... And we take it to places where if it weren’t for this, these people wouldn’t have good food to eat.”

••••••• “I appreciate the idea of taking food that would otherwise go to a landfill and have it eaten by someone who can really use it and appreciate it.”

— Jim Kastengren, volunteer, Boulder Food Rescue ••••••• 19

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food & garden

How to urban-forage for your own food

by Christi Turner

E

Daniel Fickle

ver felt like shopping at the supermarket is a dedicated to teaching others to bit too easy, too removed from food’s natural identify the edible plants that grow origins, too supportive of wasteful food conaround them. She finds food all sumption habits? If you’re sick of the store but around her — on medians, along not quite ready to rescue food via “dumpster sidewalks, on public lands — as diving,” then you may want to try some “urban foraging” she makes her way through the city. instead. It’s a less messy, but no less adventurous, substitute for a trip to the grocery store, and a way FallingFrut.org to reconnect with where food comes from.

Don’t know where to start your urban forage? Here are some tips.

THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT

There’s a way to start your foraging adventure that requires neither a map nor skills in botany or dendrology — just a smartphone onto which you’ve downloaded an app created by a group called FallingFruit.org. Falling Fruit is a nonprofit organization that formed for the purpose of creating an open-source map of the global urban harvest, and in just a few short years they’ve done an impressive job of it.

You may not be surprised to learn there’s a Boulderite behind FallingFruit.org. The organization was started by Caleb Phillips in Boulder in 2013; his other food-related social endeavors include co-founding Boulder Food Rescue, which picks up and redistributes edible food around the city, by bicycle.

Boulder was ground-zero for the Falling Fruit map, and nowadays, users from dozens of countries around the world use it. The app has been downloaded thousands of times, the revenues of which fund the organization’s website maintenance. It has more than 1.2 million points of data, each one representing a tree or bush or other plant with forage-able food growing in the urban environment. More than 9,000 registered users, plus more than 140,000 unique visitors last year alone, populate the map with these edible data points, or use the map to find them.

Download the app, grab a basket and you’re ready to forage. www.fallingfruit.org

TAKE A FORAGING WALKING TOUR

Want a more hands-on experience than an app? Kate Armstrong of Denver, known as the urban forager, is

She incorporates this food into her everyday diet, and she’s passionate about teaching others how to do so as well. Kate is also a trove of knowledge on things like where pesticides have been sprayed, when it’s OK (or not OK) to forage in public parks, and which areas are private property — trespassing is a definite no-no when foraging. Her knowledge of what’s-what in the plant world goes back generations: She still recalls being a child and walking alongside her grandparents as they identified plants along the way. Kate used to teach urban foraging classes through Feed Denver, an organization whose doors closed in 2015. Reach out to Kate via her blog or Facebook page, and she may just still teach you the ropes. www.facebook.com/TheUrbanForager whatgrandmotherknew.com (Kate’s blog)

With the help of apps and guides, newbies can get some inside help with urban foraging.

21

food & garden

Eat less meat, save the world

Eating a vegan diet can help fight climate change dramatically

by Preston Bryant KD Angle-Traegner

I

f the reality of climate change frightens you, there is something you can do right now: Change your diet.

According to a recent study from the Oxford Martin School’s Future of Food program, if everyone in the world went vegan, we could cut food-related emissions by 70 percent.

Analyses by the World Resources Institute and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization estimate that agriculture is responsible for between 14 and 18 percent of all heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

The vast majority of this comes from animal agriculture, particular cattle production.

While this number may seem low, a 2014 study from the University of Minnesota, St. Paul found that the growing worldwide demand for meat is expected to be a major contributor to a roughly 80 percent increase in global greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector and global land clearing.

In the last four decades, meat consumption has increased at a rapid rate in the United States. According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD), the average American consumed around 198 pounds of meat in 2014. By 2024, these numbers are expected to surge to nearly 208 pounds.

That is a lot of meat, especially when compared to the rest of the world at an average of 78 pounds per person. But Americans may simply be unaware of the power of veganism.

In a recent study conducted by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, a group of 500 Americans were asked about certain individual actions they were willing to make to combat climate change. Only 6 percent of them recognized the effectiveness of switching to a plant-based diet — even though that transition could reduce the costs of climate change mitigation by as much as 50 percent by 2050.

Animal rights attorney and long-time vegan Larry Weiss says the reason Americans are unwilling to switch their diet is simply because it demands a drastic change in their lifestyle. So, people tend to shift the blame.

“It’s not just, ‘They did it over there — the industrialized companies are ruining our air.’ No, it’s us,” Weiss says. “And this is hard for people to hear sometimes because it calls for a very radical change in 22

their lifestyle.”

Of course, not everyone agrees.

According to Shawn Archibeque, a cattle nutrition expert at Colorado State University, although the average American should certainly be weary of overconsuming animal products in their diet, he thinks they play a critical role in sustainability and human health.

“Do we need to have a prime rib steak at every dinner? Absolutely not,” he says. “Do I think that animal protein is a key component of a good, healthy lifestyle, and sustainable use of the resources we do have? Yes I do.”

Archibeque says the climate change issue we are facing right now has nothing at all to do with diet.

“I don’t see that veganism or high animal protein diets, either one of them, is going to completely solve the problem,” he says. “The best [solution] is somewhere in the middle.”

But agriculture is a big business in the United States — one of which Archibeque, as a cattle expert, is a part of.

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported 935,000 U.S. farms had cattle. Of these farms, 62,500 were dairies.

“The value of production for cattle and calves was roughly $37.0 billion. In addition, the value of milk production was about $31.5 billion,” the report reads.

In the same year poultry industries were valued at around $34.7 billion.

For some billion impoverished people around the world, the growing demand for meat represents an opportunity to make money through livestock farming.

Climate change is one of the dangers we all face on the planet today, and the science backing up animal agriculture’s role in the acceleration of climate change is undeniable.

So are we as human beings denying the individual power we have to reverse it because we prefer to have more meat on our plates?

According to Weiss, not only can everyone make the switch to a vegan diet and help the planet in doing so, it can be extremely empowering.

“It’s within their own power. You don’t have to pass it to Congress. You don’t have to win a court decision.

You can do it.”

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The term “veganism” has become trendy and between 14 and 18 percent popular in modern culture, but according to Weiss, of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, a majority of which it shouldn’t be looked at as a trend at all. Flaunting comes from cattle production. your veganism is sort of like flaunting your selfrighteousness these days. But underneath the label, there seems to be a pragmatic reason for the switch, a reason that is embedded in a compassion for animals and the world around us.

“This is not a fad diet,” Weiss says. “It’s a change in outlook about our relationship to our world.”

As Weiss glares off into the middle of his yard, watching the squirrels and birds interact with an eco-system that may not exist in the years to come, his voice grows tender. His hope is that the American population rejects the idea that what we eat on our plates is more important than the health of our planet.

“The main thing is to get people in touch with [their] compassion. There’s something deeper in life than just eating a bunch of food and living high and then dying,” he says.

“Kindness is a beautiful thing. And that kindness will spread from animals to people, and from people back to animals.”

As a recent article in Scientific American quite accurately said: “Behaviors may inform knowledge as much as knowledge informs behavior.” People who tend to eat meat may be defending their bias. And the very same can be said about vegans and vegetarians. Biases aside, the science is clear: Eat less meat.

A full list of sources for the graphic above can be found at: www.yourdailyvegan.com/environment 23

food & garden

How to choose the right CSA for you

by Carolyn Davidson

Susan France

J

oining a CSA for the first time can be intimidating, especially with the many options we have here in Boulder County. Here are some things to consider when choosing the right one

for you.

First of all, what exactly is a CSA? It stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and is essentially a subscription box with a local farm. For a flat fee, you will receive a weekly box of the freshest foods (usually vegetables).

By purchasing these boxes, the community helps with the start-of-season costs, creating a symbiotic relationship between the farmer and the consumer.

Mark Guttridge of Ollin Farms, whose been running his CSA for seven years, says a main benefit of a CSA is making “a commitment to

Susan France

eat healthier.”

“You get in the routine of having fresh food and it can change your eating habits,” he says.

With a CSA, you and your family will have consistent access to healthy and fresh ingredients. Some people may even receive vegetables they aren’t familiar with, which means you can expand your culinary horizons.

With a CSA you’ll be getting a weekly box of vegetables, so it’s important to make sure you actually enjoy cooking your meals, or else the food (and your money) may be going to waste.

It is also important to consider location and convenience when choosing a CSA. Some farms offer a delivery service or a drop-off point, but most require that you go to the farm

Veronica Diaz, from The Diaz Farm, gathers fresh eggs daily, while Pepe Diaz sells bread and vegetables at the farm’s store.

CSA continued on page 26

25

food & garden

Susan France

Susan France

Susan France

••••••• With the plethora of CSA options here in Boulder County, the right option for you is certainly out there.

•••••••

Left: Miller Farm in Boulder County supplies fresh vegetables to local markets. Right: Ana (Kena) Guttridge of Ollin Farms in Longmont.

CSA continued from page 25

to pick up your weekly box. Make sure you’re choosing a farm you can get to regularly and with ease if that is the case.

Before choosing which farm’s CSA you want to join, it is important to consider what you can afford, as well as how much food you’ll need.

Many farms offer different-sized subscriptions from small- to familysized. It may also be a good idea to have a person whom you know might want excess food if you run into a week where you can’t finish off the box.

One of the most rewarding benefits of a CSA is getting to know the farmers and picking the brain of the person that is actually growing your food. Take advantage 26

of their knowledge and experience.

More than anyone else, the farmers running their CSAs will be able to help you understand what you’ll be getting from this service. Guttridge adds that getting to know the farmers is a great way to make sure that the farm’s values and ideals line up with your own.

A CSA can help provide individuals or families with a steady stream of fresh and healthy options. Guttridge says a large inspiration for his farm’s CSA was “want[ing] to give these people the healthiest food possible; that’s how Ollin Farms started.” With the plethora of CSA options here in Boulder County, the right option for you is certainly out there.

Susan France

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business

Go Green at your local salon

Green Circle Salons provides an environmentally friendly waste disposal solution

by Amanda Moutinho

E

Susan France Green Circle Salons collects hair, metal waste and chemical residue and disposes of it in an environmentally friendly manner.

28

very industry has its blind spots when it comes to the environment. A restaurant owner might throw away pounds of uneaten food, while an auto repair shop might not realize all of its recycling opportunities.

And then there are hair salons, using chemicals squirted from metal tubes and multiple foil sheets in a standard dye job. And don’t forget the heaps of hair each salon throws out every day. While a haircut and dye job might seem like an inconsequential drop in the green-living bucket, companies like Toronto-based Green Circle Salons are making each hairdo count.

Salons can send their waste to Green Circle, which will then dispose of it through a variety of environmentally friendly channels.

By collecting hair, metals, residual chemicals and more, Green Circle Salons is able to divert all that waste from landfills.

Entrepreneur Shane Price started the company in 2009. “[Price] was simply a regular consumer that went for his haircuts just like everybody else does,” explains Jennifer Henry, director of global brand strategy for Green Circle.

“But being an environmentalist, he asked the question of his stylist, ‘Where do all the waste products of the salon go to?’

“He found out during that appointment there are really no solutions available to the industry for responsibly disposing of their hair, their foils, their chemicals, their color tubes, their aerosols — so many waste products that are re-purposable or recyclable.”

As of December 2016, Green Circle has collected more than 2.1 million pounds of salon and spa waste since opening, with a mission to make the salon industry in North America sustainable by 2020.

There are more than 1,400 participating salons across Canada and the U.S., with almost 20 salons in Colorado,

including Boulder’s Voodoo Hair Lounge.

Owner Jesse Castro started the hair salon with his wife in 2010. Since the beginning, Castro says he wanted green practices at the forefront of running his business. “[The Boulder mind-set] really pushes you into environmentalism and making sure you’re running a clean business and doing the right thing by your community and by your planet,” he says.

Castro says he’s always been environmentally inclined — serving as a rock climbing guide and mountain rescue aide — and community-oriented as a paramedic and a firefighter. His eco-centric mindset carried over into Voodoo, where glass cups replace paper ones, LED lighting displaces conventional bulbs, and a hot water recirculation system conserves our most precious resource. But he never knew what to do with the unrecyclable toxic waste until he connected with Green Circle Salons last October.

“We’ve been waiting for something in our industry like Green Circle to come along for a really longtime,” Castro says.

By implementing the Green Circle practices, the normal routine of a hairstylist alters very little; mostly it simply changes the location of where items are thrown away.

Before, hairstylists would discard residual dye and chemicals in the trash or down the drain. But now, whatever amount is leftover goes into the hair color by-product receptacle. A peek inside the bin and you’ll see a candycolored swamp of hazardous materials — all of which could have ended up in our sewer system. Green Circle also provides recycling bins for hair and for metal waste, foils and tubes, which aren’t able to go through normal recycling lines due to the chemical residue.

Once the bins are full, employees put the contents — all of which are double bagged and separated — into a bigger box, which is then shipped off to one of Green Circle’s processing centers. Voodoo estimates they send out four boxes a month.

“Green Circle has purchased carbon offset credits to offset the carbon emissions from that shipment,” says Addison Messick, Voodoo’s salon director.

After sending off the boxes, the materials go through various processes. The chemicals collected go through a centrifugation process, where the liquid portion is spun out and neutralized into salts and water, which can then be returned to the wastewater system. The solid components that are left over and contain chemical compounds, such as lead acetate, are then sent to a landfill designated for hazardous waste.

Recycling the chemical-laden metals isn’t difficult, Henry says, it just requires the extra step of removing the chemicals, which is a service Green Circle provides. Through high-heat incineration in a closed loop smelting process, the metals are

business

separated from the chemicals, and the waste is either neutralized in a hazard waste storage tank or used to create additional energy.

The hair, on the other hand, is used to offset environmental disasters.

Green Circle repurposes waste hair for use in oil booms, containment systems used to reduce the spread of contamination after an oil spill.

This was a major discovery Price made during Green Circle’s founding, Henry says.

“I think a lot of times, as hair stylists, when we put our hair in the garbage can we kind of think it’s gonna break down. It’s an organic material; it’s gonna go in the landfill; Susan France it’ll compost, right?” she says. “What we don’t think about is when you put it in a bag that doesn’t get light or air, it does what every other organic material does, even lettuce: it creates methane.”

So when Price realized this methane-producing waste product could be used to clean up oil spills, he was galvanized to create change with Green Circle.

“This needs to happen; we need to create a movement,” Henry says. “We need to create hairdressers that are committed to capturing this material and putting it into the hands of people who are dedicated to making sure it gets to the front lines of oil spill clean ups.”

And Green Circle’s excitement has trickled down to the salons that use their services.

“Hair is naturally very porous and absorbent, so when you put it in these oil booms, it’s amazing to see how much it absorbs,” says Messick.

“Your hair is made to absorb oil,” Castro adds. “So we’re putting it to Mother Nature’s ultimate use. It’s a true upcycle.”

Green Circle is also working with various organizations, including Virginia Tech, to find other uses for hair, such as creating a plastic-like material that can be made of up to 40 percent hair.

“They’re actually looking at

making the hair bins out of them,” Messick says. “So if you can imagine: A hair bin made out of hair!”

On top of the main salon waste, Green Circle also takes salon’s vinyl gloves and appliances.

To join Green Circle Salons there’s a one-time start-up fee and a recommendation to charge a $1-2 ecofee for each hair service that generates waste. Castro says in the six months they’ve implemented the fee only two out of roughly 12,000 patrons haven’t paid. He stresses the point to other salons who might see the fee, as a deterrent for their customers.

“I’d love for other salons to see it’s not an impediment for them to sign up. Nobody is going to flinch at a $1 eco-fee,” he says. “If we explain to them what it’s for, sometimes they want to donate more.”

Castro and Messick both say they were astonished how much salon waste gets thrown in the landfill unnecessarily.

“I don’t think I even had a concept of what we could recycle,” Messick says. “When we started it, I thought this would be cool; we can do this.”

“But you don’t realize until you start packaging and counting it,” Castro adds. “You just think, ‘Ehh, a little extra color down the sink, it’s fine.’”

Upon seeing just how often they fill up the bins, he sees it’s more than that.

With Green Circle, Castro says, Voodoo is able to recycle about 95 percent of its salon waste. And with Boulder’s recycling and composting efforts and utilizing organizations like Eco-Cycle, he puts Voodoo’s efforts closer to 99 percent.

“I don’t even know why we have a trash bin anymore,” he says with a laugh.

But Castro wants more salons to get involved.

“I think we should all be the green salon. We’d love to see our entire industry nationwide get on board,” he says. “And Boulder has this incredible example to set. This is right up Boulder’s alley.”

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More than stoner food The two women behind Sweet Mary Jane Bakery bake up treats that treat

by Emma Murray

S

weet Mary Jane Bakery — tucked covertly in an East Boulder industrial complex — smells and sounds like a holiday family gathering. Warm, rich, chocolaty aromas rise above the merry chitchat and hustle-bustle. There are two long tables in the center, separated by a few feet, with three or four people working along each side. Two men in front of me squish delicious-looking balls of peanut butter goop between two pretzels. There’s barely a trace of weed in the air.

This could be any old family-run bakery except for the security cameras positioned throughout the room; the official government-issued badges swinging from everyone’s necks; the covered windows; the giant steel refrigerators equipped with padlocks.

Karin Lazarus, the founder and mastermind behind Sweet Mary Jane Bakery, gently touches my elbow as I take it all in. “Emma! Welcome!”

She’s a small woman with full bangs that brush her round tortoise-shell glasses. In 2013, The New York Times Magazine deemed her “the Martha Stewart of weed baking.” (But now that Martha has made weed brownies with Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart is kind of the Martha Stewart of weed baking.)

As we walk around, Karin points out the divided production lines — one table produces medical products and the other recreational. Different regulations for medical and recreational marijuana denote that she must make, label and package the products separately. Around a row of supplies, two men sit at a third table in the “tincture corner” creating a variety of cannabinoid extract and oil blends.

This is the seventh year Sweet Mary Jane Bakery has been producing small-batch, high-end cannabis edibles. Her creations, which have won numerous awards (bookmark her OMG! Brownie Cheesecake Bars and Key Lime Kickers to try later), have also been featured in listicles with titles like BuzzFeed’s “17 Pretty Weed Things for People Who Love Pintrest and Pot” and Rooster’s “27 Weed-themed products to complete your 420 lifestyle.”

Now that the bakery distributes its desserts to more than 100 dispensaries across the state and sells more than 2,000 “delightfully infused treats” every week, Sweet Mary Jane Bakery has become a marijuana household name.

Only last year the bakery started baking recreational products.

“I really love the medical side of this business,” Karin says, as her focus has always been on coupling her love of baking with her unwavering belief in cannabis’ health benefits. “But after learning about how recreational was moving forward... there are tons of rec ‘patients’ now, people who have various reasons for not having red cards and just want to be able to buy and use

products.”

Cannabis’ medicinal properties have been increasingly well-documented in university and national health laboratories over the course of the past half-century. The three most common ways to ingest cannabis — raw, dried and aged, or extracted — all deliver antioxidant, anti-inflammatory Karin Lazarus and Kevin Batchelor

and neuroprotective properties. The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research based at the University of California in San Diego, for one, has determined that inhaling cannabis can alleviate both physical and psychological illnesses, such as menstrual cramps, fibromyalgia, headaches and migraines, anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and asthma, among numerous others.

In Sweet Mary Jane’s industrial

Production at Sweet Mary Jane Bakery in East Boulder.

CANNABIS continued on page 32

31

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CANNABIS continued from page 31

kitchen, all 15 employees introduce themselves and explain the task for which they’re responsible. I can’t keep any names straight. There is too much to take in: ovens, racks of cookie sheets, giant bowls, rows of eggs, bags of candy, lots of packaging. Everyone seems to be best friends. I keep eyeing those peanut butter pretzel sandwiches, known to her medical customers as True Confections. Later they’re dipped in dark chocolate and then Karin Lazarus and Kevin Batchelor

What’s a bakery without sugar?

••••••• “My love of baking is what got me started in this industry, but what keeps me going is the patients.”

— Karin Lazarus, Sweet Mary Jane ••••••• 32

drizzled with white chocolate.

I catch glimpses of thick, fudgy brownies on the medical table as a woman slides them into large opaque bags.

She laughs with a man across the table who is dividing sets of four mocha latte truffles into hard black plastic containers before snapping down the child-proof lids.

Behind me, another man pushes a white M&M-like candy into each cookie on the table. I look closer. Instead of the traditional symbol, the little chocolate disks read THC! All these products, plus the tinctures and the rest that I can’t see, are mixed, baked, decorated and packaged by hand. Each recipe is also crafted to follow Colorado’s precise and ever-evolving Marijuana-Infused Product regulations.

“It’s really hard to keep everything up [to code],” Karin says after introducing me to Lucienne, her daughter, who runs most of the customer and distribution operations and also helps style and photograph the baked goods.

“Yes, this last set of regulations were tough to figure out, but it’s just what we do,” Lucienne says. A professional rapport permeates their mother-daughter relationship and Karin is quick to say that Lucienne is responsible for much of the company’s success. A few years ago, Lucienne came back to Boulder with her boyfriend Tano after

they graduated from George Washington University. They only intended to stay for a bit, but then fell in love with the company and industry. Tano now orchestrates most of the tincture production and often works directly with patients to provide customized elixirs.

The bakery also produces “Creature Comfort,” a tincture without any psychoactive properties for pets suffering from ailments like seizures, arthritis or other joint pains.

“It’s given some pets extra years on their lives,” Karin says. “I love hearing customers get to spend more time with their pets.” Plus, all of the proceeds from this tincture are donated to Colorado’s Wild Animal Sanctuary.

With the ever-evolving marijuana business landscape, Karin and Lucienne are among a handful of particularly visionary entrepreneurs. There has been no one for them to turn to for advice because in many ways they’ve been making up marijuana’s edible history as they go along.

The rigorous and expensive stipulations, constant license renewals and intense workloads are worth it, both Karin and Lucienne agree, after hearing from customers about the real help they’re goods are able to deliver.

For many people, such as athletes or patients on supplemental oxygen, edibles and tinctures are exciting alternatives to inhaling or smoking weed. As the cannabis goes through the gastrointestinal tract, in the form of edibles, it is released in waves to the bloodstream — the reason why it may take up to two hours to notice any psychoactive effects, compared to the 20-ish minutes onset after smoking a joint. This slow release befits those with chronic or persistent ailments because it can provide up to eight hours of relief. The tinctures, applied under the tongue, can take as few as 15 minutes to activate.

Karin’s love of baking started as a child growing up in New York. Through college she dabbled in baking pot goodies, but nothing really worked — there was no precedent for how to cook with marijuana. Trial and error was her only teacher as she got more serious about marijuana later on. In one of the first brownies she ever baked, she remembers mixing in so much dried bud that the foulsmelling treat completely crumbled apart.

“It was disgusting,” she laughs.

And so weed faded from her life as she grew older, started a family and began a career as a recipe writer and tester, caterer and food stylist. Her dream to operate her own bakery, however, never diminished. She moved to Colorado shortly after Lucienne was born, and though she hadn’t used marijuana in years, the surge of research on marijuana’s medical benefits hitting Colorado newsstands in the early 2000s piqued her interest: The plant could improve lives? With Lucienne off at college, Karin applied for a medical marijuana card, indulged in more research and experimented once again with her baking.

Eventually, Karin taught herself to use cannabis-infused oils and sugars in a way that preserved her desserts’ delicious profiles while still providing a more profound and consistent medicinal effect than smoking marijuana

business

Karin Lazarus and Kevin Batchelor

DAILY SPECIALS CHOOSE TO REUSE

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2536 Spruce Street, Boulder • 303-444-8088 wwwBoulderThriftStore.com Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ARES.Thrift.Boulder Sweet Mary Jane Bakery could. While she felt pulled toward helping people uses candies as the THC with her products, she had no money for a full-fledged warning label now startup. She gave away her creations to friends and required on all edibles family. under Colorado law.

Mere months before Colorado passed HB-1284 in 2010 and fully legalized the manufacture of medicinal edibles, Karin won a $10,000 grand prize for submitting her Chocolate-Filled Pandan Dumpling recipe to Scharffen Berger’s Chocolate Adventure Contest.

Financials were no longer a problem, though she used nearly every dime to fund her dream. And Sweet Mary Jane Bakery was born.

Karin and Lucienne’s ability to adapt quickly and fluidly to new regulations has been essential to the bakery’s success over the past seven years. As pioneers in the young business market, the women have always had to take in stride what the industry throws at them.

Lucienne explains that in October 2016, a new wave of regulations included a requirement that a universal THC warning label occupy at least 25 percent of each individual treat’s surface area. The rule forced the bakery to get creative.

Hence the customized THC! candies in lieu of the unattractive stamps or unappealing rice paper stickies that other companies were testing out.

Last year packaging rules changed too, necessitating the opaque, childproof containers. “It’s such a shame that customers can’t even see what they’re buying. Who wants to buy food you can’t see?” Karin asks, sighs and shakes her head. “And it wastes so much room on dispensary shelves.”

Still, the care and precision doted upon each dessert reflects Karin’s determination to bake beyond just “stoner food,” and her unwillingness to compromise the quality of her products despite demanding industry regulations. At the bakery’s core remains Karin’s mission to “produce baked goods that are healthful and beautiful, both to eat and to behold.”

Every day, Karin says she gets phone calls from patients thanking her for all the bakery has done to help them. As she explains in her cookbook Sweet Mary Jane, “My love of baking is what got me started in this industry, but what keeps me going is the patients.”

Organic ingredients are better for the consumer, better for the environment, and better for the beer.

Cheers!

All ingredients used are organic, and locally sourced when available.

Brewery and tasting room are 100% wind powered.

Spent grain is donated to two local organic farms for livestock feed.

We use energy efficient lighting throughout our brewery and tasting room.

Biodegradable/environmentally friendly cleaning products are used in brewery and tasting room.

Waste from the brewery is recycled, composted, or re-used.

Our food vendors use compostable food ware and cutlery.

We donate kegs to raise money for local environmental non-profits and community fundraisers.

4699 Nautilus Ct. (off 63rd in Gunbarrel) 303.530.1381 • asher brewing.com 33

Susan France

The

Sustainable

Resource Directory

ENERGY n Partners for a Clean Environment (Boulder

County service): Partners for a Clean Environment provides free expert advisory services, incentives and a certification program to help businesses measure and gain recognition for their successful environmental progress in energy, waste, water and transportation. PACE Partners are businesses committed to supporting a strong economy, implementing environmentally sustainable practices and becoming leaders in our community. www.pacepartners.com

n Xcel Energy: Provides rebates, incentives and

advice for home and commercial energy efficiency. www. xcelenergy.com/programs_and_rebates

n Efficiency Works (Longmont): Rebates, incentives and advice for home and commercial energy efficiency. www.efficiencyworks.co 34

n EnergySmart (Boulder

County service): Free advice, rebates and a pre-qualified contractor pool for all home energy needs — electric vehicles included. www.energysmartyes.com

Farmer John Ellis was one of the founders of the Boulder County Farmers Market.

n Energy Outreach Colorado: Utility bill and efficiency incentives for low-income individuals and nonprofits serving low-income individuals. www.energyoutreach.org n Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy: CPACE enables cash-flow-positive energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation improvements through property assessments. The annual energy cost savings will, in most cases, exceed the annual assessment payment, and because the C-PACE assessment obligation runs with the property, the assessment automatically transfers to the next owner when the property is sold. copace.com

FARMING n Rocky Mountain Farmers Union: A progressive, grassroots organization dedicated to achieving profitability for family farmers and ranchers; promoting stewardship of land and water resources; delivering safe, healthy food to consumers; strengthening rural communities through education, legislation and cooperation; being the voice for family agriculture and rural communities. www.rmfu.org n Colorado Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association: A 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization that helps improve the business sustainability and profitability of commercial fruit and vegetable growers in Colorado of all sizes, organic and conventional, direct marketing and wholesale marketing. www.coloradoproduce.org

Space Agricultural Resources Division oversees the land, offers workshops and tours. www.bouldercounty.org/os/openspace/pages/ agriculture.aspx

GREEN BUILDING n Colorado Green Building Guild: A nonprofit trade organization representing a wide range of green building leaders. www. coloradogreenbuildingguild.org Wikimedia Commons/Mark Schellhase

n Quivira Coalition: Builds resilience by fostering ecological, economic and social health on western landscapes through education, innovation, collaboration and progressive public and private land stewardship. www.quiviracoalition.org n Natural Resources Conservation Service — Colorado: NRCS provides technical and financial assistance to help agricultural producers and others care for the land. www.www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/ portal/nrcs/site/co/home n Colorado Department of Agriculture: The CDA’s mission is to strengthen and advance Colorado agriculture; promote a safe, high quality and sustainable food supply; and protect consumers, the environment and natural resources. www.colorado.gov/ pacific/agmain n Savory Institute: The Savory Institute promotes large-scale restoration of the world’s grasslands through holistic management. savory.global n Holistic Management International: Working in harmony with you and Mother Nature to create a sustainable future. www.holisticmanagement.org n Boulder County Parks and Open Space: The County owns approximately 25,000 acres of agricultural land and leases it to qualified operators. The Parks and Open

n The Green Building and Green

Points Program (City of Boulder): Encourages the use of sustainable remodeling and building methods and technologies to conserve energy, water and other natural resources. It applies to all new residential construction, additions and remodels larger than 500 square feet. www.bouldercolorado. gov/plan-develop/green-building-and-greenpoints-program

Water is Colorado’s most valuable resource. See pages 38 and 39 for a list of organizations that can help you or your business learn more about water conservation and management.

n SmartRegs (City of Boulder): SmartRegs requires all licensed rental housing, about half of Boulder’s housing stock, to meet a basic energy efficiency standard by Dec. 31, 2018. https://bouldercolorado.gov/ plan-develop/smartregs DIRECTORY continues on page 36

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FINANCIAL INFORMATION

ALL PROCEEDS FROM OUR EARTH DAY CANDLE SALES WILL BE DONATED TO WESTERN RESOURCE ADVOCATES

PRACTICING THE ART OF AESTHETICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR 30 YEARS!

380 Arapahoe Ave. • Boulder • 303-444-0330 www.BoulderSalonandSpa.com

n Innovative Motor Vehicle Credit: This Colorado incentive benefits owners of the following: Vehicles that use (or are converted to use) an alternative fuel; Hybrid electric vehicles; Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; Vehicles with a replaced power source that use an alternative fuel. www.dmv.org/cocolorado/green-driver-state-incentives.php n Solar Rebate And Solar Grant Programs (City of Boulder): Boulder residents and businesses that have installed solar electric or solar thermal (hot water) systems on their property may be eligible for a sales and use tax rebate. www. bouldercolorado. gov/solar/solarrebate-and-solargrant-programs n Xcel Energy: Provides rebates, incentives and advice for home and commercial energy efficiency. www. xcelenergy.com/programs_and_rebates n Efficiency Works (Longmont): Rebates, incentives and advice for home and commercial efficiency. www.efficiencyworks.co n EnergySmart (Boulder County service): Free advice, rebates, and financing tools for all your home energy needs — electric vehicles too. www.energysmartyes.com n Energy Outreach Colorado:

Utility bill and efficiency incentives for low-income individuals and nonprofits serving low-income individuals. www.energyoutreach.org 1048 Pearl St. Ste 107, Boulder, CO 80302 • www.lepopsboulder.com 36

n Partners for a Clean Environment (Boulder County service): Partners for a Clean Environment provides free expert advisory services, incentives and a certification program to help businesses measure and gain recognition for their successful environmental progress in energy, waste, water and transportation. PACE Partners are businesses committed to supporting a strong economy, implementing environmentally sustainable practices and becoming leaders in our community. www.

Susan France pacepartners.com n Conservation Resource Center: In 2000, the Conservation Resource Center established the Tax Credit Exchange, the nation’s first market for transferring conservation tax credits. Since then, the Tax Credit Exchange remains the most successful tax credit program in Colorado, having transferred more than all other facilitators combined. www.taxcreditexchange.com/about-us n Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy: C-PACE enables cash-flow-positive energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation improvements through property assessments. The annual energy cost savings will, in most cases, exceed the annual assessment payment and because the C-PACE assessment obligation runs with the property, the assessment automatically transfers to the next owner when the property is sold. copace.com INDOOR AIR QUALITY n The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division: The division is working to develop guidelines and welcomes input from

The RIGHT AMOUNT of WATER at the BEST TIME The RIGHT AMOUNT of WATER at the BEST TIME Automatically maintain optimum moisture and save:

sustainable resource directory

Dry Soil

Wet Soil

time • nutrients • water • air conditioning costs Dry Soil

the public. Please e-mail questions and comments. www.ehd.org/pdf/ sources/609.pdf

n Boulder County Healthy

Homes: Learn how to protect yourself and your family from common health risks including radon, asbestos, mold and lead. www.bouldercounty. org/env/healthyhome

LAND CONSERVATION n Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts: The Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts (CCLT) is a network of more than 50 member organizations and hundreds of concerned citizens. www.cclt.org n Colorado Department of Natural Resources: Houses important Colorado programs designed to protect wildlife and natural resources. www. dnr.state.co.us; www.dnr.state.co.us n Great Outdoors Colorado: GOCO’s mission is to help preserve, protect, enhance and manage the state’s wildlife, park, river, trail and open space heritage. www.goco.org n Colorado State Conservation Partnership: The Colorado IWJV State Conservation Partnership is comprised of numerous state, federal and non-government partners that manage all-bird conservation efforts in Western Colorado. The main function of the group is to provide a conduit of communication and foster collaboration, ultimately leading to the enhancement and protection of bird habitat. www.iwjv.org/partnerstate/colorado-state-conservationpartnership n Conservation Resource Center: The Conservation Resource Center is run by conservation attorneys who have over 30 years combined experience in land conservation law and policy. Each year, the Conservation Resource Center conservation attorneys conduct numerous workshops for landowners interested in conserving

their property, typically in conjunction with a local land trust. www. taxcreditexchange.com/about-us

While increasing: Automatically maintain moisture and save: • soiloptimum life • quality • yields plant health time • nutrients • water • air conditioning costs While increasing: plant health • soil life • quality • yields Pressure pump system lets you use up to 2000 Blumat sensors.

n Boulder County Parks and

Open Space: The County owns approximately 25,000 acres of agricultural land and leases it to qualified operators. The Parks and Open Space Agricultural Resources Division oversees the land, offers workshops and tours. www.bouldercounty.org/os/openspace/pages/ agriculture.aspx

Wet Soil

Pressure pump system lets you use up to 2000 Blumat sensors.

From individual plants to large dispensaries, to multi-acre hemp farms, no plant ever too wet or too dry From individual plants to large dispensaries, to multi-acre hemp farms, no plant ever too wet or too dry

RECYCLING/REUSE/ WASTE n Partners for a Clean Environment (Boulder County service): Partners for a Clean Environment provides free expert advisory services, incentives and a certification program to help businesses measure and gain recognition for their successful environmental progress in energy, waste, water and transportation. PACE Partners are businesses committed to supporting a strong economy, implementing environmentally sustainable practices and becoming leaders in our community. www. pacepartners.com n Eco-Cycle’s A to Z Guide for Recycling Any Material: www. ecocycle.org/a-zguide n Boulder County Recycling

Drop-off Sites: www.bouldercounty. org/env/recycle/pages/recyclingdropoffcenters.aspx

info@sustainablevillage.com 303-998-1323 info@sustainablevillage.com www.sustainablevillage.com •• 888-317-1600 info@sustainablevillage.com•• •www.sustainablevillage.com www.sustainablevillage.com • 888-317-1600

d stuff Your ol build can help mes! new ho

DONATIONS WANTED DONATE your gently used and unwanted home improvement items, furniture, appliances and more and help build energy-efficient, affordable homes for families in Boulder and Broomfield counties.

n Center for ReSource Conservation: Reclaimed building materials: www.conservationcenter.org/resource/ retail-store n Habitat for Humanity ReStore: Reclaimed building materials: www.stvrainhabitat.org/restore n Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM): CHaRM collects unusual materials like electronics and plastic bags for recycling and reuse. www.ecocycle.org/charm

FREE PICKUP: Call 303-404-2008 1 Park St., Broomfield | flatironshabitat.org/restore

DIRECTORY continues on page 38

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n Hazardous Materials Man-

agement Facility: Common household hazardous waste products include items such as fluorescent bulbs and tubes, home cleaning products, home maintenance products, motor oil and antifreeze, paint, and yard and garden care products. The Hazardous Materials Management Facility accepts wastes from residents and businesses in Boulder and Broomfield counties. www.bouldercounty.org/env/ hazwaste/pages/hazmatfacility.aspx

n Boulder County “Zero Waste” Policies and Information: Boulder County is committed to “zero waste — or darn near” — by 2025.

Learn more about policies and programs. www.bouldercountysustainability.org/waste n Art Parts: Art Parts is a non-

profit creative reuse center founded in 2011 to serve Boulder County. We accept donated, reusable industry surplus and other art/craft/school/ resourceful materials from businesses and individuals to resell at 30-90 percent discount to the public. www. artpartsboulder.org/about-us.html

WATER n Water for Colorado: A onestop website for resources focused on protecting Colorado’s rivers. www. waterforcolorado.org

*Limited time offer - 1 coupon per customer per day • Expires 9/28/17

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n Center for Energy Water Sustainability: It is the purpose of the Center for Energy Water Sustainability (CEWS) to bring together industral, academic, agricultural, governmental, environmental and consulting stakeholders to address water issues through research and related activities. www.cewc.colostate. edu/resources n City of Boulder Water Conservation Program: The Water Conservation Program’s goal is to work with residents and businesses to conserve water, both indoors and outdoors. The program offers a variety of different services to help manage water use in and around the City of

Boulder. The efficient use of water helps decrease water bills and supports a sustainable community. www. bouldercolorado.gov/water/waterconservation

n City of Longmont Water Conservation and Planning Programs: Committed to responsible, environmentally sound and efficient use of precious natural resources. The City and its customers recognize the importance of wise water use and water use efficiency as an essential component of the community’s culture — helping to maintain the local quality of life in a responsible, sustainable manner. www.longmontcolorado.gov/ departments/departments-n-z/water/ water-conservation n Town of Nederland Public Works: Information about water and sewer rates, wastewater, stormwater drainage, the town’s water protection plan, water rebate program and ongoing projects. www.nederlandco.org/ government/town-departments/publicworks/water/ n City of Lafayette Water Conservation: Part of the City of Lafayette Public Works Department.

Dedicated to providing quality water, storm water and water reclamation services; and maintaining city streets and infrastructure, all with superior customer service. www.cityoflafayette. com/871/Water-Conservation n City of Louisville Water Conservation Tips from the Sustainability Advisory Board: Information on: how to register for a free sprinkler system inspection; how to read your water meter; sustainable landscaping; lawn watering conservation tips; water saving tips; water saving in the home; water rates; winter watering guidelines for trees and shrubs; Louisville Drought Management Plan. www.louisvilleco.gov/residents/ sustainability-initiatives/water-conservation n Town of Erie Water Conservation Plan: Part of the Public Works Department. A variety of water

sustainable resource directory

conservation measures, resources, restrictions and programs. www. erieco.gov/1062/Water-ConservationMaster-Plan

n Workplace EV Charging station incentives: Up to $6,260 per station. www.cleanairfleets.org/programs/charge-ahead-colorado

n Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment: Serving the people of the American West, the nation and the world through creative, interdisciplinary research, bold, inclusive teaching and innovative problem solving in order to further true sustainability for our lands, waters and environment. www.colorado.edu/law/ research/gwc

n Tax Credits for Electric Vehicles: Up to $7,500 in federal tax credit and $5,000 in Colorado State tax credits. www.refuelcolorado.com.

n Partners for a Clean Environment (Boulder County service): Partners for a Clean Environment provides free expert advisory services, incentives and a certification program to help businesses measure and gain recognition for their successful progress in energy, waste, water and transportation. PACE Partners are businesses committed to supporting a strong economy, implementing environmentally sustainable practices and becoming leaders in our community. www.pacepartners.com n Center for ReSource Conservation: Free outdoor irrigation efficiency services, water-wise landscaping seminars, xeriscape gardening program and discounted high efficiency toilet program. www. conservationcenter.org TRANSPORTATION n Partners for a Clean Environment (Boulder County service): Partners for a Clean Environment provides free expert advisory services, incentives and a certification program to help businesses measure and gain recognition for their successful progress in energy, waste, water and transportation. PACE Partners are businesses committed to supporting a strong economy, implementing environmentally sustainable practices and becoming leaders in our community. www.pacepartners.com

n Electric Vehicle Advising (Boulder County service): EnergySmart provides an adviser to help you learn if an electric vehicle is right for you. If it is, your advisor will help you navigate and take advantage of incentives. www.EnergySmartYES. com/ev-advising n City of Boulder, GO Boulder transportation information and incentives: www.bouldercolorado. gov/goboulder n Employee Commute Ad-

vising and Incentives: Boulder Transportation Connections at www. bouldertc.org/,Commuting Solutions at commutingsolutions.org/, Smart Commute Metro North at smartcommutemetronorth.org/

n Community Cycles: Community Cycles promotes, celebrates and encourages cycling including do-ityourself bike repair, used bike sales, bike repair workshops, bike advocacy and more. communitycycles.org/

Quality? Quantity? Both?!

Check out our amazing selection of organic, natural and conventional growing supplies!

Best price and expert advice!

n Way to Go: Way to Go offers real-life solutions helping commuters save money, experience less stress and save time so that they can focus more on the things they enjoy. Assistance is free of charge thanks to federal funding earmarked to preserve air quality and reduce congestion.

If you’re an employer who wants to attract and retain the best employees by offering progressive and friendly commute options, we’re here to help. www.waytogo.org/ When all else fails, head to www.

BoulderCountySustainability.org for an overview of what the County has to offer.

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