Guests:

Ellen Sandbeck is here from Laverme's Worms to tell us all about vermiculture or worm composting.  Adding worms to your compost makes it super efficient.  You can compost with worms indoors becuase it is odor free so this is a great option for apartment dwellers or anyone!  Ellen talks about what you need to start your own worm compost bin as well as some of the benefits.  You will have super-fertile compost and worm compost tea - which is a great fertilizer.  If you want help with your worm composting, call Ellen!  She has kits available on her website and she will send you the special worms that you need.  Stop feeding the landfill or incinerator your waste.  Compost it!

The GIving Tree band is a green-focused band that has used renewable power to make their latest album.  Great music and green business. Eric Fink, the founder of Crooked Creek Records and member of the band plays us a song live in the studio!  Make sure to listen to our podcast to check it out!  Here is a snippet from their website...

There are many innovative and environmentally friendly aspects to the production of our upcoming album and third release. For starters, we were able to set up a temporary recording studio in the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center in rural Wisconsin. This is the first certified carbon neutral building, receiving the highest score ever from the LEED program of the US Green Building Council. It is managed by the Aldo Leopold Foundation, which includes the family of the legendary American conservationist. The center was built on the land where he did most of his research and with sustainably harvested wood from trees on the property that Leopold himself planted. With 198 solar panels and geo-thermal energy, the facility generates 110% of its power needs on site and sells the excess back to the electric company. The Leopold foundation was inspired by our commitment to sustainability and the synergy in our missions and allowed us to use a conference wing for a month (June 23 -July 19 2008). There are no overnight accomodations there. So, we camped 10 miles away in a state park, where we ate organic produce donated by a local farm, and commuted over 500 miles by bicycle to complete the solar-powered recording session.

READ MORE HERE

Green Tips and Info:

Listener Email - What is better for the environment - drinking soda from 2-Liter plastic bottles or aluminum cans?

The amount of petroleum used in making the 50-gram (g) and 2-liter bottle is around 325 g, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions from its manufacture are around 825 g. An aluminum can made from virgin materials results in the emissions of 280 g of carbon dioxide. Does this mean that the can is better? Well, keep in mind that the bottle holds more beverage, so we need to take that into account. You would need to buy 5.6 cans, almost a full six-pack, to equal the volume of the bottle. The 5.6 cans would be responsible for 1,568 g of carbon dioxide emissions. So it looks like the 2-liter bottle results in about half of the greenhouse gas emissions of the equivalent amount of cans.

Ryan's Tip/Challenge: What to do with those business cards once you don't need them anymore? Maybe your job was outsourced, maybe the slow economy got you downsized, maybe you've just moved on... but the fact remains - you have a stack of business cards that are destined for the trash... OR ARE THEY??? My challenge to you listeners is to come up with creative and/or cathartic repuroposing for that stack of cards!

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