Dallas Green Festival, Sept 18th

I'm more of a "primitive skills" guy than a treehugger green if that distinction makes any sense. I recycle fairly rigorously, mainly because it seems wasteful and pointless to pay someone to bury a bunch of stuff that could be repurposed. I don't do it because a Wolf spirit guide (be sure to read the reviews) appeared to me in a dream and told me to "get back in sync with Mother Nature, man."

Anyhow. I haven't attended DGF before but will go this year to take a look around.

Dallas Green Festival 2010
Texas Discovery Gardens • Fair Park Dallas

The third annual Dallas Green Festival will be held at the beautiful Texas Discovery Gardens, Saturday September 18, 2010 from 9:00 until 2:30.

Join us for a day of family fun and environmental stewardship including...

• Monarch butterfly tagging • outdoor recreation zone • recycled arts and crafts • lifestyle demonstrations • food and live music • door prizes and give-aways

• mass butterfly release • children’s area • face painting • classes for adults and kids • vendors and artisans ...and much more!

recycling sched over the holiday

Guess I wasn't the only one that misinterpreted the holiday recycling schedule written in the water bill. (It noted that the pickup that would normally happen on the Thursday and Friday would happen instead on Wednesday and Thursday.) There are still blue bags around Highland Terrace. Guess I better go drag mine back in...

I found it later on the web where it's spelled out more clearly, which day is the makeup for which normal day. I'll check the web next time.

Abortive attempt to freecycle

You know, the basic concept of freecyling appeals to me. I wanted to try it, I really did. I figure it's wasteful to throw away something that might have value for someone else. I've been giving away stuff for years, mainly on interest-specific forums and craigslist. I wanted to get involved in a community of folks that had a similar approach to excess material goods.

Turns out it's actually a collection of mailing lists. I read the FAQ and thought the banned list was a bit draconian: no "vitamins, creams, etc", no firearms, and many allow no pets. OK, a little controlling. Maybe it's for good reasons (past flamewars, whatever). Anyhow, none of the stuff I had to give away was in the prohibited list.

So I ran the yahoo gauntlet (yay, more yahoo signature spam), only to get denied by the dfwfreecycle moderator for using the the word "trade" in my introductory questionaire. How hard should a person work to join a group where you give your stuff away?

Subject: Request to join DFWFreecycle denied
Your request to join the DFWFreecycle group was not approved.
The moderator of each Yahoo! group chooses whether to restrict
membership in the group. Moderators who choose to restrict
membership also choose whom to admit.

Please note that this decision is final and that Yahoo! Groups
does not control group membership.

Part of my original response:

I have many things to give away... I will give them away elsewhere, probably Craig's list although I suspect there are more moochers there.

Doesn't matter to me where they go; I wanted to reward people who recycle and live frugally, but I am not going to fight uphill to do it.

I later edited my extended rant down to "It's your sandbox".

Reminds me of when I was delivering food to the Arlington Night Shelter in the mid-90s; I started getting harrassed by the recipients so much that I started to dread the delivery. Hey, if I'm giving you stuff you don't have to be gracious; I don't want your thanks or gratitude. Just don't be actively obnoxious or try to control the gift unnecessarily.

So try freecycling if you are so inclined; just remember that your membership in the group depends on how you answer the questions that are presented when you try to join the list. So don't blow through the questionaire quickly in your desire to start sharing. You may be shunned. Definately don't use any conjugation of the infinitive "to trade".

Richardson to recycle Allied Waste?

Two interesting things in this article:

1. current recycling level is about 25% of single-family dwellings.
   
2. City of Richardson suspects they can save $$$ by picking up the blue bags themselves instead of outsourcing to Allied Waste
   

Recycling

The wife was gung-ho on recycling, but I was only mildly interested. I did want to try my hand at composting, though. Seems wasteful to throw out all those spent tea leaves.

Turns out that Richardson has a pretty good recycling program and picks up 1x/week on one of your normal trash days. After we started getting the compostable and recycleable materials in their respective bins it turns out that most of our waste no longer goes in the trash.

It's astounding, really. I assume we'd have something like a 25% decrease in trash, and it's more like 65% decrease. We only fill up a trash bag about every 10 days now.

It takes almost zero work and it seems like we are doing something useful.

Post-mortgage scammers

Before we bought the house I was listening to some mortgage-related podcasts. One of them mentioned to be wary of any mortgage-related snailmail and phonecalls you receive after closing.

Boy, were they right.

Each day we get 1-2 pieces of scareware junkmail that mocks up the correspondence to make it look like it came from your mortgage company. There is a tiny asterisk which leads to a footnote that says something "we are scammers, and are not associated with your mortgage company". But how many gullible folks fall for this?

The wife and I are fighting back in a small way. We dutifully mail back each "no postage necessary" envelope back to the mothership. These envelopes contain no information that identifies us. Hopefully {this} return brings income to the USPS and dings the scammers a few cents. We shred and recycle the rest of the packet.