My very small efforts to reduce methane
I chose to move to an apartment about two and a half years ago. It has a smaller footprint, is very well insulated both for temperature and sound, is close to the centre of the city and on a regularly serviced bus route. After I added a verandah over my north-facing windows I get the winter sun in and not the summer sun and seldom need to use air-conditioning at any time of the year and I hear less from my neighbours than I did in a house in the suburbs.
I was fortunate enough to find an apartment with a large 50 square metre terrace out the front. This is wonderful and I don’t have to live without a garden (unthinkable!). The reality is that in summer the terrace is very hot and the organic home grown vegetables simply do not survive. Nor unfortunately do the worms in the worm-farm.
I worry about the addition of anything with carbon to landfill and carefully recycle and we have great recycling facilities in the basement of the building. We have an insinkerator which I dislike but I use it in summer because I think that the increased biological oxygen demand at the sewage works from my food scraps has less impact than the methane generated from landfill. Note I am happy to be corrected on this if people know more than me here!
I much prefer to use a worm-farm and finally the cooler weather has returned and I set up my worm-farm again yesterday and planted vegetables! The worms do survive in the very large pots with my fruit trees and native bushes but those in the black plastic worm-farm got cooked. This year they will all be popped into the pots before the hot weather comes unless I can find an insulated farm for them. I will confess that I find pottering with plants, soil, worms etc deeply satisfying. What a contrast to my mostly web based working life!
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July 2nd, 2008 at 3:39 am
On Monday night my family arrived for family dinner, as they do every Monday. My small grandson excitedly helped me carry out vegetable scaps to feed the worms. He had been learning about worms and even handling them at his Montessori kindergarten that day and was thrilled to discover that i had some worms.