Watershed Info No 1131


  1. Tree Recycling Continues In Tucson (https://www.tucsonaz.gov/tags/treecycle) ThroughJanuary 17.  As with all live or cut tree recycling, please make sure all tinsel, ornaments and lights have been removed.  In Tucson, nine site are open during daylight hours.                                                                                                                                             In Flagstaff (https://www.flagstaff.az.gov/607/Green-Wood-Waste), you need to have your tree to the curb by January 7th.

       In Phoenix (https://www.phoenix.gov/publicworks/recycling/christmas-tree-
recycling), there are 16 sites to take your tree up until January8th.

In Lake Havasu (https://nextdoor.com/agency-post/az/lake-havasu-city/lake-havasu-

city/christmas-tree-recycling-132797007/), Christmas trees can be recycled by the city if

you act before January 12th 

In Yuma, tree can be recycled as late as January 8th.  Call 928-341-2500 to schedule your

pickup.

In Sierra Vista, residents can drop off their trees at the City’s Compost Facility on State

Route 90 or you can schedule  pickup by contacting www.SierraVistaAA.gov.

For other location, residents are encouraged to go to https://

www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/ArizonaTreeRecyclingDisposal.php for information

around the entire state.

  1. Jim Web Reaches Predetermined Its Position. On December 25, the worlds largest telescope was launched from the jungles of French Guiana.  On January 4th, it reached its position in space to opend its mirrors and peer deep into space at a distance of 100,000,000 (one hundred million) miles from earth.  The telescope will operate in an environment at a cold -380 degrees F.

The hope is to learn more about the first starts and the first galaxies created.  Thousands
of scientists and more than a dozen countries contributed to the effort.  For more

information on this incredible event, go to www.NASA.gov


  1. When You Hear The Term “Blue Bloods” You Might Think Of Big City Police Officers, But Not When You Think Environmentally.

Off of the coast of Delaware and South Carolina, horseshoe crabs are harvested each year.  Horseshoe crabs, having survived  for more than 450 million years have seen ice ages and dinosaurs come and go are now trying to attempt surviving the impact from humans. 

Horseshoe crabs are being harvested for fish bait, for food for human seafood lovers and for, most importantly, their blue blood, extracted from their hearts.

Pharmaceutical companies like Charles River Laboratories are capturing more than a half million horseshoe crabs a year to extract the crab’s blue blood from their hearts which is extremely sensitive to toxins from bacteria.  Once the majority of the crabs blood is removed, the crabs are tossed back into the ocean.  Only about one third survive.

Any foreign body that gets into a Horseshoe crab’s blood is immediately attacked by the immune system and clots around the infection.  While synthetic alternatives exist.  For example, recombinant Factor C (rFC), which is more effective than the product extracted from the Horseshoe Crab, companies such as Charles River Laboratories prefer to harvest the crabs as the cost of harvesting is practically zero.

For more reading on this subject, please go to the fall edition of “Defenders” magazine at defenders.org.

TAKE Tucson’s  The ‘One Water 2100 Master Plan’ Survey.  If you love in Tucson, check out “The One Water 2100 Master Plan” will guide Tucson Water’s decision- making related to water resources, capital investments, financial planning, and conservation practices over the next 80 years. You can help by taking a short survey (link below). Public involvement is a key component of the planning process to ensure the communities and stakeholders served by Tucson Water have a voice in the management of our water resources.

Take the survey

  1. RECYCLE YOUR GREASE THIS WEEKEND – If you have leftover grease from your holiday dinners, don’t throw it out, and don’t pour it down the drain. Grease can clog your pipes, and it can also draw the attention of ravenous roaches. Instead of letting your grease go to waste, bring it to the upcoming Grease Collection and Recycling Event on Jan. 8, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Follow the links below for more information and drop-off locations. You can also take grease, fats, and oils to the City of Tucson’s Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) program. Follow the HHW link below for the address and hours.  

Pima County Protect Our Pipes/Grease Collection

Pima County RWRD

HHW


5. How to Reduce Food Waste

Make soup, organize your refrigerator, and follow these five steps to zero waste

Pasted Graphic.tiff

Illustrations by Montse Albany

By Paul Rauber | Nov 18 2021

The last time I went to the supermarket, a guy was standing by the store’s qdumpster, happily eating a discarded peach. The market already does a lot to reduce food waste, like selling expiring produce dirt cheap and dehydrating excess fruit to sell in the bulk section, but the dumpster still fills up. US grocery stores throw away about 3.5 million tons of food a year —mostly dairy and produce, like that one good-enough peach.

Grocery stores are not uniquely wasteful. Perfectly edible food gets trashed throughout the food system, from the millions of pounds of vegetables farmers plowed under because restaurants closed during the pandemic to the broccoli your kid wouldn’t eat at dinner. The United States dumps a prodigious amount of food—80 billion pounds a year, or more than 200 pounds per person per year. That’s an obvious moral failure in a country in which 50 million people are not always sure where their next meal is coming from. It’s also an environmental disaster: Discarded food is the single-largest component of US landfills. There it becomes the country’s third-largest source of methane, the powerful greenhouse gas that forms as your uneaten Chinese takeout rots. We can do better. Here’s how.

Reducing Grocery Store Waste

SMWI21-Material-World-Food-Labels-WB.png

UNDERSTAND FOOD LABELS Consumers throw away millions of pounds of food each year because they are misled by producer food labels like “Sell by” and “Use before.” In 2019, the FDA recommended a single designation: “Best if used by.” This label speaks only to peak quality—the food does not turn poisonous the next day. Use common sense: If the food looks, smells, and tastes OK, don’t throw it away.

EMBRACE UGLY PRODUCE As much as 40 percent of fruits and vegetables are discarded because they don’t meet exacting cosmetic standards. The easiest solution is to relax those standards or to sell ugly produce at reduced prices (although both Walmart and Whole Foods abandoned their experiments in doing so). Companies like Full Harvest channel cosmetically challenged produce to food processors (like canners and juice makers) that don’t care what it looks like. At misfitsmarket.com, you can buy a subscription for home delivery of food that might otherwise go to waste. 

AIM FOR ZERO WASTE Perishables perish in supermarkets for many reasons. Managers misjudge what customers want; produce displays are ridiculously overstocked; preprepared food won’t last. Supermarkets often donate their excess to food banks, but according to a survey by the Center for Biological Diversity, only three of the top 10 chains—Kroger, Walmart, and ADUSA—have committed to zero waste. (Learn more at grocerywaste.com.)

Five Steps to Zero Waste

SMWI21-Material-World-Inverted-Food-Triange-WB.png

In 2015, the USDA and the EPA set a goal to cut food waste in half by 2030 and introduced an inverted pyramid that shows better uses for excess food. But their version addresses the food system as a whole, and industrial uses like making bioplastic from banana peels aren’t relevant to the home cook. So here is a personal—not USDA approved!—version. End goal: Not a crumb ends up in the landfill. 

REDUCE If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. The best way to reduce food waste is to stop buying more than you can eat. Are you really going to finish that six-pound tub of guacamole from the big-box store? Probably not. Plan your menus, and know how much you can freeze or store. Pro tip: Never shop hungry. 

FEED YOUR PEOPLE And stretch out your food. You bought it, you eat it. Abundance is an opportunity to exercise your culinary imagination (see “Waste-Free Cooking Tips”). Food waste is a sin of privilege; don’t be the person who throws perfectly good food away because they no longer find it interesting. 

SMWI21-Material-World-Ugly-Produce-WB.png

FEED OTHER PEOPLE Too much food = not enough guests. It’s a human duty, when blessed with bounty, to share the wealth. Bumper crop of tomatoes? Distribute to garden-less friends. Threw a pizza party, but you don’t have as many friends as you thought? Take the extras to the homeless shelter (check first to make sure it’s OK). Many communities have organizations that will pick the fruit off your trees on behalf of local food banks. 

FEED ANIMALS Feeding animals can be tricky if you don’t live on or near a farm; contact your local agricultural extension office for opportunities to donate scraps to farm animals. Backyard chickens are excellent recyclers of leftovers: Today’s oatmeal is tomorrow’s delicious egg. Dogs and cats would love to recycle too, but for health (and obesity prevention) reasons, human food should only be a snack. 

COMPOST When excess food is composted, either at a municipal facility or in a backyard, its nutrients can be recycled into the soil. Composting also precludes the production of methane from rotting food. Beware: If not cared for assiduously, food scraps in conventional compost piles may attract rodents and other critters. If you’re composting mostly food, try a worm box.

SMWI21-Material-World-Zero-Waste-WB.png

Reducing Waste at Home

BUY A NEW REFRIGERATOR Refrigerator efficiency doubles every 15 years, so buy a new one and save money. (Be sure to recycle the old one!) Shallow shelves are good because stuff doesn’t get lost in the back; double doors let you see at a glance what you’ve got. 

SEGREGATE YOUR PRODUCE Some fruits and vegetables—apples, melons, avocados, tomatoes—naturally produce ethylene, a gas that hastens ripening. Keep them separate from ethylene-sensitive produce like broccoli, asparagus, carrots, and lettuce. 

LABEL LEFTOVERS The container of last night’s Bolognese sauce is less likely to turn into a science project if you clearly label and date it. Painter’s blue tape works great.

MAKE IT A GAME Jammed refrigerator after the holidays? Same for your friends? Challenge them to the Hunger Games: Eat only what’s on hand as much as possible. After a week, the emptiest fridge on social media wins.

PRIORITIZE PERISHABLES Designate a “use first” shelf for items that need to move.

DON’T WASTE; ORGANIZE Establish sectors in your fridge for like items— sauces, cheeses, condiments—so you can easily find what you’re looking for. If you can’t see what you’ve got, for sure it’s going to rot.

Food waste is a sin of privilege.

SMWI21-Material-World-Refrigerator-WB.png

Waste-Free Cooking Tips

Storage

You’ve got to preserve excess food long enough to find another use for it. Consider getting a small energy-efficient chest freezer for large quantities of things you eat a lot of. Home canning is great, especially for tomatoes and jams; our plum tree gives a year’s supply of plum butter (good for breakfast and gifting).

Repurposed Leftovers

Every culture has a vehicle for disposing of leftovers: pasta or risotto, tacos, fried rice, rice bowls, succotash. Too much chard? Braise with garlic and put in tacos with salsa verde. A couple of lonely shrimp? Chop with scallions for fried rice. Elderly carrots? Grate into a risotto with a little cream and Parmesan. Extra boiled potatoes? Fry some chorizo and add cut-up spuds for an excellent taco filling.

Soup

When it comes to using up excess and aging food, nothing is as versatile as soup. Most everything in your veggie bin can go into the pot to make broth. Add the broth to some sautéed alliums (onions, shallots, leeks, garlic) and chunks of tubers or squash. Cook until tender, then maybe add greens and herbs, cook a few minutes more, and blend. Finish with a swirl of cream or good olive oil.

Bread

Fresh bread is great the first night, OK the second, but then? If you have way too much, slice and freeze for toast making. Old loaves are perfect for French toast or bread pudding. Cut old slices into cubes for frying in olive oil and garlic for croutons. Heels can be dried out in a paper bag (or an oven as it cools) and then ground into crumbs for breading.

Apples

What if you have too many apples? Cook them down to applesauce or even further for apple butter. Make a pie so you can exercise your right as an American to eat apple pie for breakfast. Dry apples in a food dehydrator as a snack for kids or hikes. Serious oversupply may require a juicer; an excess of apple juice may lead to hard cider.

Pinto Beans

Tired of those brothy beans? Sauté some diced onion in a heavy skillet, add beans and broth, mash a bit, and cook low and slow until the liquid is gone. Turn over on itself for refried beans. Alternately, add enchilada sauce, some diced tomato, and leftover protein of your choice for a quick chili. 

Source: Sierra Club at https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/how-to- reduce-food-waste suppress=true&utm_source=greenlife&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Copyright Enviroinsight 2022

Posted in

pwsadmin

Recent Posts

Categories

Subscribe!