The Observation Deck

I'm annoyed every time I go out to eat at a Lakewood restaurant and see plastics in trash cans - this would be the first step I'd really like to see pushed. For goodness' sake, the banana split boats at Malley's (which is what they use to serve the cake and ice cream at birthday parties, as well as takeout and some of the eat-in stuff) are #1 plastic from what I remember, but there's not a recycle bin in the place that I've seen. I've nudged them about this, but I really think that getting the Chamber of Commerce together to strongly encourage Lakewood businesses to at LEAST recycle their plastics, glass, metals and paper would be BIG step in the right direction. One business generates much more trash than one residence, especially restaurants.

Another thing I'd LOVE to see Lakewood be a leader in - composting. Toronto has "green bins" in addition to the blue bins for recycling, the green bins are for curbside composting - kitchen scraps and much other stuff (IIRC, including dog feces) are able to be put in there and sent for commercial composting. I don't know if the yard waste composting that is going on would be able to take this on or not, but I'd like to be part of seeing this option investigated.


Ahmie

Ahmie Yeung wrote:Another thing I'd LOVE to see Lakewood be a leader in - composting. Toronto has "green bins" in addition to the blue bins for recycling, the green bins are for curbside composting - kitchen scraps and much other stuff (IIRC, including dog feces) are able to be put in there and sent for commercial composting. Ahmie

A possible option if we let dogs in the parks - nice centralized containers for collecting that great material.

Just wouldn't want to be the one cleaning that container out.

Ahmie Yeung wrote:Malley's (which is what they use to serve the cake and ice cream at birthday parties, as well as takeout and some of the eat-in stuff) are #1 plastic from what I remember, but there's not a recycle bin in the place that I've seen.

Ahmie

The cost to a business of having recyclables picked up isn't so appealing, especially for Malley's, since the majority of the dishes they use aren't disposable. I wish it were otherwise, but, I understand not wanting to pay a company to take care of one tiny bin of plastics.

From what I've come across the residential rates are all that I've found measured so far. On the commercial side though, I did just hear a week or two ago that the city is now picking up recyclables from storefronts as well. I did see Souper Market (I think) had their corrugated cardboard and cans out front this evening. From what I've seen Waste Management one of the few if not the only option for commercial recycling if a dumpster is needed. I'd be interested if there are other ideas on this.

To respond to Ahmie's suggestion about the Chamber pushing this, how about a Green Your Business seminar? Sysco offered to help out with this today when I met with them about the bins for the schools. While I certainly agree that the end of the cycle is important, I also like the option of focusing on the front end (coffee mugs over syrofoam cups or disposable, email over printing and mailing letters, etc) and using recycled materials.

The possibility other than a seminar format would be a debate but would anyone really want to get in front of a group and say that it's not worth it to try to be more green?

Under the last administration, Lakewood had a Green Committee, which I understand was discontinued when Fitzgerald came in. It would be nice to see that started up again.

I learned today that I may have to replace my roof soon, so I would be very interested to investigate solar panels and any incentives Lakewood might give. In response to Will, this is a great time to be greening up Lakewood, because there are a lot of public and private grants and incentives available. Did you see the PD article about the accountant who put solar panels on his east side house? He got a $2000 tax break plus about a $15,000 grant to do it. And he will sell his excess energy to the electric company.

Another thing that Lakewood could consider is permeable paving. The water filters through to the water table and doesn't go into the storm sewers. Geothermal pipes under paving would reduce the need for plowing.

Bobbie Hendrick wrote: Another thing that Lakewood could consider is permeable paving. The water filters through to the water table and doesn't go into the storm sewers. Geothermal pipes under paving would reduce the need for plowing.

The geothermal is not super efficient in this climate due to our freeze thaw cycle... although global warming may take care of that for us. But I'd like to see the roads we have taken care of first before we start installing piping below.

Permeable paving is a good thing... as is concrete instead of asphalt. With the prices of oil, concrete is getting competitively priced to asphalt so there isnt a cost issue and the color of the asphalt causes extreme heat gain in urban areas where there is a lot of paving. Light colored concrete does not do this.

I am a LEED accredited profession that would be more than willing to join an intitiative on this in Lakewood. Let me know.

[quote="Bobbie Hendrick"]Under the last administration, Lakewood had a Green Committee, which I understand was discontinued when Fitzgerald came in. It would be nice to see that started up again.

I learned today that I may have to replace my roof soon, so I would be very interested to investigate solar panels and any incentives Lakewood might give. In response to Will, this is a great time to be greening up Lakewood, because there are a lot of public and private grants and incentives available. Did you see the PD article about the accountant who put solar panels on his east side house? He got a $2000 tax break plus about a $15,000 grant to do it. And he will sell his excess energy to the electric company.

Another thing that Lakewood could consider is permeable paving. The water filters through to the water table and doesn't go into the storm sewers. Geothermal pipes under paving would reduce the need for plowing.[/quote]


I don't read the PD, so I didn't see the article, but a few years ago I was looking into solar panels. One problem I recall is getting them oriented to the sun, and in this respect our location so far from the equator works against us. Also, the panels were quite expensive, produced dc power, and would complicate reroofing. With dc power, you would have to buy all dc appliances, or buy an expensive device to convert the dc to ac power.

I would wager a ripe tomato, if I had one, that the accountant in the article paid far more than the amount of the grant and the tax break to install his system, and will have little, if any, excess power to sell. I'd also hate to see us chop down all our trees so they wouldn't shelter our solar arrays.

I do think I would like to see some sort of solar power capacity associated with bridges, and some minimal heating of the bridge surface. I think this could produce a safer surface (no ice) on the bridge, and make the bridge last longer as it would not be subjected to the anti-freezing chemicals that eat bridge surfaces and structures.

As to permeable pavement, I would want to know how they would stand up under our freeze/that cycles. If you look at a concrete road around here, you will see the road fails around the joints, where water gets in, freezes, and breaks the concrete. I live near I90 and when it was completed, but not yet opened, we would ride our bikes there; the road was crumbling due to the freeze/thaw cycle even before it was subjected to traffic.

As to the lawn mower, I switched to a push mower years ago; its supposed to be better than a rotary for the grass, and pushing it is good for me. I see one poster advocates an electric mower as being easy to use and producing no pollutants. Wrong, I think, on both counts. Electric mowers are much heavier than push mowers, and thus a lot harder to push and store (I can hang mine on the wall). And the electricity to power or recharge the electric mower in all probability comes from some power plant that produces pollutants, so you are still producing pollutants, just in a different location.

This is a serious and complicated problem, and we will not begin to solve it until we start hiring politicians who can say no.

Shawn Juris wrote: To respond to Ahmie's suggestion about the Chamber pushing this, how about a Green Your Business seminar? Sysco offered to help out with this today when I met with them about the bins for the schools. While I certainly agree that the end of the cycle is important, I also like the option of focusing on the front end (coffee mugs over syrofoam cups or disposable, email over printing and mailing letters, etc) and using recycled materials.

The possibility other than a seminar format would be a debate but would anyone really want to get in front of a group and say that it's not worth it to try to be more green?

Sysco: sounds great to me (especially since I don't have to do it *wink*)

Front-end eco: yeah, my family stopped by the Arabica on CWRU campus (aka Geekabica) for nostalgic reasons while we were on campus a few weeks ago and were really dismayed to be given styrofoam cups and plastic plates/utensils (we were dining in). When we were students back in the good ole 1990s, they used reusable cups, plates and utensils. Malley's does predominantly use reusable, which is why we like to frequent the place and also why we were so shocked by the dishes our sons birthday cakes & ice cream were served in (the one time I've had a banana split there, I was in early labor and had mentioned that, so wasn't surprised to be given my sundae in a "to go" container, I swear they thought they needed to boil water or something - I'm a very slow laborer, I didn't give birth for a few days after that). I'd seen the recycling bins at Souper Market and asked them about it and they'd said that they were getting curbside pickup so I was wondering why other businesses aren't doing it too - maybe word just hasn't gotten out well enough? I'd like official confirmation that the other businesses are elligable and then I'm happy to spread the word. How many bottles are the bars throwing out? The push to recycle doesn't even primarily need to be looked at as an ecological thing, it's an economical thing - landfill space costs money.

(sorry if that was all over the place, got interrupted at least 5 times while typing)

regarding permeable pavement, in case someone else hasn't pointed it out yet, we still have some very old brick roads in the area that are in better shape than most of our other streets are in after one winter. Permeable pavement has to do with using paving materials that are ment to move apart and come back together - like the bricks or tiles - so the water has a place to go without breaking the paving material. It also is easier to patch, I would think, since you can just replace a few broken pavers (if they had manufacturing defects that allowed water to get in without getting out through the bottom, for instance) instead of having to re-do the entire surface or patches that just cause more problems as they weather differently than the original surface.

I think that was all I ment to say, my baby's climbing all over me so can't type anymore

permiable paving info (our driveway's going to need replacing in the next few years I think, will be looking into some of these options. pavers make shoveling.plowing a chalenge but there are other options)

http://extension.ucdavis.edu/unit/cente ... vement.asp

typing around sleeping baby

Thanks for that good information, Ahmie.

here's a picture of ours (it's not hooked up yet because we need to get cinder blocks to raise it up a few feet - necessary for gravity-assisted water flow)



The ones that CWSD gets are all blue like this, I intentionally chose the brightest blue one I could find in their collection since blue is my favorite color and this is installed behind a privacy fence so it won't bother anyone else. They do point out that the barrels can easily be painted a less-shocking color using the Krylon for-plastics spray paint (I'm nearly positive I've seen that at Pat Catan's). Also they suggested putting a planter on top with plants that grow and hang down for a nice effect if people don't like the look of the thing.

As for the permiable paving, I'm thinking that the fact the information says that the permeability actually helps facilitate snow melting might help convince my hubby to use one of those options as a replacement for our driveway when the time comes, even if we wind up with the paver stones option (not sure if the concrete one is available locally - maybe the city could get a good deal on the work by getting homeowners who need driveway work together in a co-op deal? thought just occured to me). Hubby wants a snow blower, the neighbors have been lending us theirs for the last 2 winters, so I'm a little worried about the pavers and blower blades having "disagreements" but considering how un-level our patchwork asphalt driveway is already I think maybe it wouldn't make much difference. Bears more research anyway. Maybe we'll start with a walkway up to the house with them and see how that works (I've been wanting to put an additional walkway going from driveway to existing one that comes up from the sidewalk, like so many Lakewood homes our front door is on the opposite side of the house from our driveway, so I hoped that might help clue folks in to which driveway to park in when visiting).

edit: oops, got confused and thought we were talking rain barrels in this thread since I'd mentioned ours in the other section of this site (home section), seems like they're related topics... Cuyahoga Water & Sewer District contact info is in the other thread. Sorry if I confused anyone!

I found this resource on a blog I read sporadically.

This program teams with city's to reward residents for recycling.

It's an interesting program.

http://www.recyclebank.com/

Out here in Iowa, the convenience/gas chain Kum & Go is building LEED-certified stores, the first one opening in Johnston, just north of Des Moines:

http://tinyurl.com/426f7v