Sustainability Journal | Aug 2024

Welcome to Sustainability Journal, where I document what I’m reading, learning, thinking, and doing in the sustainability space.

Been a while since I’ve done one of these! How are you? We are trying to enjoy the last of the summer, which means lots of splash pad visits, picnics, and impromptu ice cream dates. Dinners these days involve tomatoes upon tomatoes upon tomatoes, and I can’t say I’m mad about it. Our daughter turned 3 in the spring, and this age has honestly been so magical and definitely my favorite so far. We can kick a ball back and forth! She can cut flowers with scissors (and hands them out to strangers on the street!) More importantly, she can color/play/insert other independent activities long enough that I get to take a shower by myself or flip through a book with a cup of coffee. What luxury indeed.

An individual action I’m focusing on at the moment: battling the bunnies. Since the spring, I’ve been on a quest to turn our property into a pollinator friendly zone. In addition to dedicating more real estate in the raised beds to plant flowers, I ripped out the entire hellstrip this spring, which just had grass/weeds previously. The bunnies have decimated most of the perennials I’ve planted – coneflowers, coreopsis, brown-eye susans, aster – but I think I’ve gotten a good sense of what they won’t touch (anything prickly, fragrant, or fuzzy in texture). Maybe next year I can write more about the whole process.

A thing I’m enamored with: our community herb garden! We built it next to our little free library this spring (yes, it still needs a sign, a neighbor/artist is working on it!). The herbs are so lush at the moment – I hope more neighbors stop by and take advantage!

Books I read:

Sami Sage, Emily Amick | Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives. Loved this short and accessible book on how to increase political and community engagements, geared towards women specifically. The civic personality quiz was so fun and reminiscent of quizzes you would find in 90s teen magazines. Feeling more confident and emboldened after this book, I reached out to my state representative and met with him this week to discuss several issues over coffee! (I’ve sent plenty emails to reps in the past, but always chickened out when it comes to individual meetings!)

More stuff you should check out:

• NYTimes: A radical reboot of nuclear power (with $$ from Bill Gates)
• Washington Post: In July, OSHA proposed rules to protect workers exposed to extreme heat. This is a really big deal and has the potential to protect millions and millions of people. You can read more about the regulation and submit comments here.
• Guardian: IRA tax credits disproportionally benefit the rich. YIKES.
• Hannah Che’s newsletter Little Soybean. Che’s cookbook The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is hands-down my favorite cookbook of the year. Now that she’s relocated to Yunnan, China, you can follow her culinary journey and access her recipes in real time via her newsletter. Her recent post on edible mushrooms in Yunnan, for example, is absolutely mesmorizing.
• The Economics of Everyday Things: Used golf balls. A favorite podcast of as late; I hope you find this episode as fascinating as I did.

* A transparency note: longtime readers of Sensible Sustainability may notice that I no longer include a section called “where I sent my dollars”. There are two reasons for this. One, since having a kiddo, daycare payments (close to $2,500 a month) meant cutbacks on a lot of our spending, including donations. Two, the more I read about donations and non-profit funding, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that sporadic donations to random organizations working on issues of the moment are not a wise strategy. Organizations rely on predictable and sustained funding to survive; in fact, organizations often don’t know how or have the capacity to manage large sums of donations that flood in due to events of the day. We’ve been trying to get a better hold of our finances this year; I hope I can work on a donation budget at the end of the year that will be distributed to a set roster of orgs.