Thursday, October 23, 2008

Green & Just Celebrations: Great Job!

Jews United for Justice had their first fundraising dinner last weekend in DC – hear it was quite successful.  Their takeaways were actual copies of their wonderful new publication, Green & Just Celebrations.  Hat tip to JUFJ.  This publication, while DC area specific, is applicable to most any locale and will be indispensable for synagogue bar/bat mitzvah planning, for couples making wedding choices, and for vendors seeking ways to offer more sustainable options to eco-savvy clients. Featured above is one of their suggestions, a tsedakah basket centerpiece.
Yasher kochachem to authors Rebecca Shaloff and Joelle Novey, along with Darya Mattes and Jacob Feinspan.
Here’s the announcement from their website:
Green & Just Celebrations

Over the past year, JUFJ members have drafted a resource guide for Jewish families preparing for a simcha. This green and just purchasing guide for DC’s Jewish celebrations offers tangible advice for families that want the consumption of their bar/bat mitzvah or wedding to exemplify their values.

Whether its recommending fair trade florists in the DC area, identifying venues that treat their employees with dignity, specifying local charities that accept registry donations, or providing Jewish interpretations on conscious consumerism… this guide is a tool for proud parents and engaged couples who wish to make an additional covenant to spend justly for their celebration.

The Green & Just Celebrations Guide will soon be published. Send us an email to let us know to contact you as soon as its ready!

Posted by Betsy in 19:01:53 | Permalink | Comments Off

Thursday, August 21, 2008

How about a Judaica FreeCycling?

Last week I attended the spirited, intense National Havurah Institute in New Hampshire. Not having participated for over a decade I noted with pleasure the many ecologically smart “minhagim”, or customs, which have evolved. FairTrade coffee, as much local produce as possible, minimal disposables and encouragement to bring your own coffee mugs and even name tags. At check out, many items were collected for reuse, such as the key necklaces for our dorm rooms. And there was a book and clothing swap – all kinds of Judaica changed hands and found new homes.
So, I thought, why not do this all year, people offering their surplus Judaica – basically a national Jewish
Freecycle (TM)? (I am more aware of this than usual, having just helped a friend with a large Judaica library & resource collection downsize from six bedrooms to a small apartment.) But it strikes me that COEJL should be the umbrella, and invite participation from the whole Jewish community: organizations, schools, congregations, as well as individuals.
It could function both nationally and locally. People/organizations can post items they want to pass along, from an individual spice box, say, to a whole set of old chumashim or prayerbooks. Likewise, you can post what you’re seeking, so others who may have some can offer them up. (This is already done through the Reform and Conservative rabbinical associations, by the way.) Perhaps folks in Long Island are looking for 12 tablecloths for a bar mitzvah Shabbat dinner; maybe someone in their vicinity would have them to loan or pass along. Need 50 kipot? Maybe there are leftovers from a General Assembly, and all they need are new labels…. Maybe surplus Kosher food could be shipped out? On our local Freecycle (of which I am one of the moderators), people have asked for or given away matzah boxes during Passover, offered Hebrew novels from the 1960′s (4 takers on that one!), and a Judaica “starter kit” which I put together, consisting of my early Judaica, eventually replaced by newer, more lavish items. The couple who came for the starter set were delighted, and I’m sure there would be a lot of enthusiaism for acquiring a Judaica collection in such a fashion – free after paying shipping.
Anyone out there with some data base/ computer skills interested in helping us think this through? We’re envisioning a simply graphic look, a la Craig’s list. Ideas for names? Volunteers? Chime in, so we can proceed on this project, which will lower the cost, as well as the waste and duplication, and increase the sustainability, of Jewish life.
Posted by Betsy in 22:01:17 | Permalink | Comments Off

Thursday, July 31, 2008

GKE”T = Glatt Kosher Eco-Treif

I‘ve coined a new term, another Jewish acronym, GKE”T = “Glatt Kosher Eco-Treif”. It popped out of me in a conversation with friends Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman, just back from a remarkable journey to Madrid attending an Interfaith Conference hosted by no less than the King of Saudi Arabia.  There were quite a few Jewish leaders included and we discussed, among deeper issues, how the conference – pulled together on very short notice – handled all the participants’ varied food issues.  Phyllis mentioned that many of the Jewish participants, along with Hindus, ate local, vegetarian fare.  Some of the Jewish participants were provided with “airline meals in 4 layers of plastic wrap”.  I knew just what they meant, and that’s when my new term was invented.  I did find the term Eco-Treif on a fabulous blog, though – SustainableJudaism.
It seems paradoxical to me that food created out of heavily traveled ingredients, wrapped, and then shipped again, generating carbon emissions with each transport, and then packaged in one-use petroleum-based plastic, is nevertheless perfectly kosher, and that fresh local vegetarian food is not.  Not to mention that these catered meals include meat,  possibly sourced from a fairly infamous meat-packing plant known not just for illegal alien labor but also for water pollution issues,  at least in the past.  There generally isn’t any indication of where these kosher airline-type meals’ ingredients come from, just the info about where the caterer is.
I feel very conflicted about take-out food in general.  Not unique to kosher take-out, of course – any take-away meal generates a huge amount of disposables.  Until kosher (and other purveyors) provide compostable plastics, I avoid buying their products, much as I would like to. To me they’re GKE”T if, after a wonderful meal, I need to throw out a whole bag of heavy plastic containers.  Of course they could be washed and reused, but how many chicken rotisserie containers can a family use?
Tonight a friend stopped by a new local Indian take-out here, called Tiffin.  She brought her own containers, and they cheerfully filled them with their wonderful entrees.  The restaurant, needless to say, is not kosher.  Here it’s the opposite problem – Glatt Treif Eco-Kosher.  Even if I would eat their vegetarian food, I couldn’t do so in my own containers.
I am eager to hear how others address these competing values.  This is not theoretical! This is getting meals on the table….
Posted by Betsy in 01:48:02 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Life Cycle: Look Into the Light

COEJL’s How Many Jews Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb campaign was referenced in this great post by Simran Sehti about compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Through this initiative, which began during Hanukkah, 80,000 energy-saving CFLs were purchased, keeping over 29,000 tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere.
Posted by COEJL in 15:45:07 | Permalink | Comments Off

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Repair the World, Yes – But… Repair the Zipper?


In our system, imported items are cheap and American labor is expensive.  Things break and it’s “not worth it” to repair them, since the bill exceeds the value of the item, presuming the item is replaceable.  With electronics, one generally replaces the item with something cheaper AND more powerful. 
This calculus is predicated on the price of items, but sometimes this way of assigning value doesn’t make any sense.  I grabbed a skirt off a rack 2 seasons ago.  It caught my eye because the colors and patterns delighted me, the style flattered (that alone is becoming a rare shopping feat), and I knew it would go well with many items already in my wardrobe.  It was a steal, imported from India.  It has sequins sewn on to the patterns.  If that handwork were done in America, it would be sold in a craft fair, not a designer discount store.  Everytime I wear it, it makes me happy.  A few weeks ago, the zipper broke and I couldn’t fix it myself. 
I took it today to a local drycleaner who does alterations, owned by hard-working Asian immigrants.  The charge for replacing a zipper is a realistic $25.  I remember from my sewing days that zippers are a huge pain!  So now the cost of labor exceeds the “value” of the skirt.  But, it’s not replaceable, and I love the skirt.  In my opinion, it is a perfectly rational choice to pay someone fair value for their labor.  The fact that the Indian factory workers who created the skirt were paid on in Indian payscale is not relevant, really. So I plunked down the money and will soon be able to wear this favorite skirt again.
Repairing something always feel more environmentally responsible than tossing it.  Raising this to a spiritual level, it becomes personal Tikkun Olam, fixing one’s world.  Even if it’s not, as they say, always cost effective….
What instincts and principles guide you when faced with these choices?

Logo from WiseTemple.org

Posted by Betsy in 22:44:21 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The Cookie Monster

While I love my internship at COEJL, instead of asking my parents for money for the third time this week, I decided to get a minimum wage summer job at a personalized cookie shop. This franchised store bakes sugar cookies, designs them, and then makes them into themed baskets. Cute and colorful as they are that is not my purpose, my purpose (and the main theme of many bloggers before me) is Bal Tashchit, the Jewish law of do not waste nor destroy.

My soon to be rant is not about the lights that are left on, the unnecessary paper that is used to make the baskets “fluffy” or the air conditioner that makes the building way too cold – it’s about the cookies. Bal Tashchit and cookies? That doesn’t make sense. Who would ever want to waste a cookie? But being that these extremely overpriced cookies ($7.25 – each!) have been designed for and sitting out since Father’s Day there are no more takers. My second day on the job I watched 7 big, beautifully iced and decorated sugar cookies fall victim to the black hole of a hefty lined garbage can. I asked the girl I was working with that day “Do you guys really always throw away all these cookies?” She coolly responded “Yeah, no one is going to eat them – they’ve been sitting out for over a week.” I agreed, for if I were to spend $7.25 on a sugar cookie, I’d at least want it to be fresh. However, running through mind was the sound of my mother’s voice preaching that there are plenty of hungry people who would be more than happy to have those cookies.

The law of Bal Taschit has always surrounded food. It has evolved over time, but while it now encompasses the law of not wasting anything, a main stand for Jewish environmentalist, the original purpose was to protect all fruit bearing trees during a time of war (trees that failed to produce fruit were excluded from protection). “When, in your war against a city, you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do not yield food may be destroyed” (Deuteronomy 20:19-20). A cookie may shrivel in comparison to the importance of a fruit baring tree – even though cookies taste better than most fruit and these do come on a stick – and the war we are currently in has little relation to the well being of America’s decorative cookie industry. So, the next time I go into work and they ask me to throw out yummy cookies, I promise that they’ll find their ways to awaiting stomachs.

Posted by Jen in 00:47:32 | Permalink | Comments Off

Monday, June 16, 2008

Extreme recycling

I wore a six-year old two-piece dress with a seafoam scoop-neck top to the weddings of my two older sons. I wore the same dress to my two youngest children’s bnai mitzvah celebrations just a few years earlier. I am hoping for more summer simkhas so I can get additional mileage out of it.

I know it is part of the American cultural ritual to buy something new for fancy events, each special occasion occasioning an expansion of the wardrobe.  I could justify my recycling of the dress by arguing that with all the money we were already spending, why unnecessarily spend more?  Truth be told, though, I liked wearing a previously worn dress.

I liked opening the school books at the beginning of the year and discovering the students from the grades above me whose karma now infused that book, binding me to them and the learning enterprise. I liked it when library books came with cards stamped with due dates that showed how often and how recently a book was taken out. I like buying used books from Amazon’s marketplace, pages smoothed and a little dog-eared by previous readers. Most of our family’s best children’s books are library discards – books once held on the laps of countless parents and children in the most tender moments of discovery. I like buying used wooden furniture studded with round water stains from iced-tea glasses accompanying long summer visits with dear old friends. I like old houses, old handbags, old chinaware.

If I could, I would live in a converted train station – imagining the people, the stories, the hellos and goodbyes, the tears and the pacing, the grumbling and the jokes that people would have told waiting for life’s little adventures to unfold. I would conjure up their voices at night and feel the vitality of life’s tidal forces.

I don’t quite understand the lust for new. New feels incomplete to me, possibilities without the wisdom to guide and temper it.  The Old gifted as New seems to me the best of all worlds.

I recently heard of an e-establishment from whom you rent toys instead of buying them. You go on line, choose age-appropriate toys for your kids from this enterprising entrepreneur, use them for however long you want and then return them and get new toys. Kind of like Netflix for toys.

And there is an outfit that rents handbags for a night.

I was talking with a potter who says that when she is stuck for a gift, she chooses a bowl from her home pottery collection,  washes it off, and Voila, instant gift. I thanked her, for she had liberated my desire to do the same.

Imagine how rich we would be if the stuff we owned was coated with a patina of lives lived fully; if the gifts we gave were crowded with our stories, our memories, our blessings. Imagine if our daily acts were added, layer by layer, onto a tel of tales, a mound of memories captured and held by the stuff of our lives.

Posted by Nina-Beth in 17:32:34 | Permalink | Comments Off

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Contemporary Gleaners: Dumpster Divers, Fregans, Freecycle.org, and Curbside Alerts

My cousin mentioned that at her minyan, Lomdim in Chicago, they showed The Gleaners and I on Shavuot, thematically tying in the activity of Ruth to contemporary behaviors.  Gleaning is the biblical precept of leaving the corners of the fields unharvested so that the poor can collect grain for their sustenance.  In contemporary times, there is still a gleaning movement.  The Society of Saint Andrew is dedicated towards salvaging crops for the hungry, accomplishing two mitzvot at once: feeding the hungry and avoiding waste, bal tashit. 
In urban contexts, there are many food salvage programs that help feed the hungry, like Second Harvest and our local Philabundance.  Another trend developing, is called Freganism.  Fregans dumpster dive and trashpick as a life style, calling attention to the astronomically wasteful American lifestyle.  Generally fregans have opted out of a high consumption lifestyle and, not being homeless, are a different demographic than people who live on the streets.
The Internet iscleverly utilized to match givers and gleaners.  My personal favorite is freecycle.org – there are thousands of local freecycle groups where folks go daily to offer and request items.  My latest give-away was two bird-feeders that were attracting more squirrels the feathers; my next request is lined 3-hole paper.  Most households have a lot of that sitting around at the end of the school year!
Many freecyle(TM) participants post things we see on the street, dubbed “Curb Alerts”.  Much akin to gleaning, people leave items up for grab on the corners of their driveways.  One question which comes up on Freecycle lists is whether it’s ok for people to resell items claimed via Freecycle, on Ebay or at flea markets.  I say that’s great.  It’s helping people to earn income, keeps things out of the waste stream, and since the donor was obviously too lazy to bother, the reseller is offering an environmental service.  Craigs List also has a large section of free items. 
Whether you glean out of ideological conviction, for sport, or from need, it is an ancient and wonderful system!
Posted by Betsy in 19:34:45 | Permalink | Comments Off

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Are Disposables Good for the Jews?

Disposables, the cheap backbone of organized Jewish life, are so much a part of our experience that we don’t even notice them.  Every meeting, every kiddush, every Hebrew school snack, at simchahs, shivas, namings, you name it – “paper goods” are at the ready.  The decision for most groups hasn’t been whether to use disposables, but what “quality” to use.  Some high-end disposables are really perfectly reusable based on their weight; the reason we trash them is that they’re cheap, since their environmental impacts and costs are not factored into their price.
About ten years ago when we had a large shabbat dinner preceding our son’s bar mitzvah, I was determined to use real dishes.  They’re much more aesthetically pleasing and so much less wasteful.  Since our synagogue didn’t have any, I looked into renting them and discovered that while they were more costly than disposables (especially since it requires dish washing), purchasing them wasn’t that much more than renting.  I located some at deep discount from an outlet, service for 60 for about $200.  We then contributed them to our synagogue as a gift, and they have been used over and over again for all kinds of occasions.  Given the cost of a simchah, $200 is a trivial amount, really, even if you add a budget item for the dishwasher.
Our minyan, Dorshei Derekh here in Philadelphia, ends Shabbat morning with a kiddush.  Like most every minyan in the world, we used little plastic or paper cups.  (Except when we ran out and substituted BIG plastic/paper cups!) At a  minyan meeting long ago, one eco-conscious member said this really bothered him and  proposed we put our heads together to  be more sustainable.  The  very low tech system we arrived it has  worked for more than years we can definitively count, at least 5 or 6.  We bought Ikea tea light holders, pictured above, four for $1.50.  We also bought heavy plastic cups and glasses.  (The plastic plates and glasses are primary colors and not too gorgeous; I don’t think anyone envisioned using them for this many years.)  We place a heavy plastic receptacle in the corner and everyone busses their cups and plates into it.  One volunteer a week takes charge of washing them either on site (one week’s worth fills a dishwasher) or at home, returning them before the next week.  Once or twice a year the volunteer forgets and we use disposables as a fall back, but it’s pretty astonishing to contemplate how much waste we have diverted and how effective this utterly simple system is.  We have a Sustainability Coordinator and about 6-8 volunteers, so each volunteer’s job turn every other month or so.
washing the community dishes cultivates humility, not a bad thing either. 
It would be great to share other communities’ strategies for waste reduction here at the COEJL site.  Please report on your community efforts and success in this area; I’m sure many of the approaches are replicable.
Posted by Betsy in 21:32:15 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Bal Taschit University: A Resource-Frugal End of the Academic Year

While end-of-year college doings may not seem like a Jewish issue, I see all opportunities for Bal Taschit as relevant for our COEJL community, especially since the Jewish community produces so many students and academics.
As any baby boomer parent can tell you, this generation of students has crammed a remarkably huge amount more stuff into their dorm rooms than we did – even though the miniaturization of college life is better now with Ipods and laptops.  The deal now is that your order your kids’ “necessities” through a big box store and pick them up at the closest store to your campus.  This is incredibly easy at the beginning of the term, but poses enormous challenges at the end of term.  Typical problems are lamps and rugs – too large and too expensive to ship anywhere, but not provided by res life.  With very minimal storage options, lots of microwaves, swivel chairs, mini-refrigerators and scads of clothes have gone straight into dumpsters.  Where I live, the day the Penn students leave is practically a holiday West Philadelphia Dumpster Diver Day.
These past few years, mechanisms have been developed to help students be less wasteful and divert these perfectly functional items from landfill, saving colleges money and going easier on the planet.  Dump ‘n Run is a national organization that advises students and administration on how to run such programs.  One nice twist is that many of them now store and resell these items to the next crop of students in the fall, with the proceeds going to charity.  Many virtues are happening here: more responsible behavior by students, when the options are in place.  High quality goods being REUSED,  (higher on the resource ladder than recycling, which actually requires energy to break items down; most of the donated items aren’t recyclable anyway).  And this program saves incoming students money, by selling used items for cheap (saving resources at the same time), as well as raising proceeds for charity.  Yasher koach to all involved!
Below is the info my freshman daughter forwarded me, from her college, FYI:

1.  The PODs
PODs [portable on demand receptacles] are disbursed across campus.  Feel free to donate items to the PODs and if there’s something in a POD that you can use, it’s yours for the taking.

2.  WASTE NOT!

 

Consider donating items to the Waste Not! Item Collection and Tag Sale

 

During reading week, finals week, and senior week, areas will be marked off in the reshalls where you can leave stuff. If you live a program house, woodframe house, or apartment, you can call or email to arrange an item pickup!

Donate the following items:

clothing, furniture, refrigerators, microwaves, rugs, lamps, electronics, printers, alarm clocks, phones, textbooks, course packs, books for classes, other books, posters, dorm decorations, bedding, dishes, hangers, mirrors, CFL bulbs, electric tea kettles, food*, cleaning supplies*, laundry detergent*, brooms

 

*you can donate partially used items as long as they are sealed and in usable condition.

 

The items collected this semester will be sold back to the community at the beginning of next semester. Proceeds from the sale will go to local charities.

 

Check out the website for more information: http://www.wesleyan.edu/wsa/eon/wastenot

Posted by Betsy in 15:54:28 | Permalink | Comments (1) »