Don’t eat these. They are not chocolate. They also are not dung beetle balls. Nor are they any other sort of food or poop. Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. They contain compost, so I guess they contain manure. And technically the organic matter of the compost is food for little microscopic organisms. But I digress — what they really are are seed balls. Little round balls of life… and other stuff.

I joined other volunteers on Saturday to make seed ball kits for the fire-stricken Bastrop area. While fire is part of nature’s processes, these seeds are meant to restore plants native to the Bastrop area and help accelerate the healing of the ecosystems out there. They contain a special blend of seeds appropriate for the Bastrop area, and these seeds are rolled into little balls of red art clay mixed with sifted compost. The kits will be delivered to schools, where students will make the seed balls, learn about native plants, and be environmental stewards  all at the same time, and then the completed balls will be dried, packaged, and delivered to the Bastrop area. Thanks to Healing Hands, Healing Lands for organizing all of this.

This weekend I also volunteered at the Austin Green City Festival. It was held at City Hall, and the busy crowds were made more numerous by Occupy Austin marchers all around the perimeter. It was quite the proactive day, I must say. The Green City Festival offered much information about composting, gardening for birds (that was us), Central Texas wildlife, watersheds and aquifers, recycling, being green, bicycle commuting, green building, pollution, nifty paint re-blends available for free, clean air, and so much more. Tree Folks gave away free tree saplings. Others gave away reusable grocery and produce bags, and more. What fun.

This giant bottle-cap sculture threatened to head toward to the top of nearby skyscrapers. It didn’t quite make it. But it tried.

A trailer covered in ash trays gave people a chance to leave positive messages about the importance of clean air and to encourage smokers to quit the habit. My son and I left messages, too. The one shown above wasn’t ours, but I liked it because it was smiling back at me.

One booth combined trash plus fashion to make Trashion. This dress of cables was my favorite.

I even managed to get a few more plants in the ground this weekend. I also got a few out — ones that didn’t survive the drought. In this case, I didn’t mind so much. It finally gave me the incentive to make some minor but well-needed changes to the first garden bed we installed in the front yard.

Oh, by the way, time is running out to enter the giveaway contest for Hill Country Water Gardens and other local nurseries! October 26 at 11:59pm! Don’t forget to enter!

I love participating in the Gardeners’ Sustainable Living Project, because it’s a project I wholeheartedly believe in. So Jan of Thanks for Today — and all folks working on living sustainably — thank you for all you have been doing to encourage thoughtful, earth-friendly actions. I’m posting down to the wire this year — the deadline is tomorrow, April 15 — but I have good reason. My whole life seems to be one big sustainable living project, and I’ve been rather busy doing Earth things lately!

As many know, native plants and wildlife gardening are my passion. But I do more than garden — I lead multiple environmental projects, I volunteer often, and I speak about wildlife habitats and native flora to groups of all ages. I do this because I believe that we can make things better for Earth and protect its threatened species. Education is the first step, and actions are the next. That’s why I share what I can, because believe it or not, it’s easy to live sustainably and protect the environment — it just takes awareness and a desire.

I’m excited today because this morning I found our first Purple Martins setting up house in the new gourds at school. My school-habitat ally informed me as well that our 5,000-gallon rain tank is full and actually overflowing a bit — it turns out it’s been collecting dew off the metal roof at school, which thrills me as we’ve really only had one good rainstorm since fall. Dew! Back at home, I discovered that our native Buffalo Grass has spread greatly across the back of our property, and it means that nature is working WITH me to get rid of the remaining Bermuda. Happy wildlife, conservation of resources, beautiful gardens, kids learning about nature, all so good.

I live in a place where drought is a matter of fact, not an occasional occurrence. And as such, I try to take care about what I plant and the effect it will have on water resources and on wildlife. This is always on my mind, always. And along those lines, I protect the soil by following nature’s example — letting organic matter become a part of the soil again to let the cycle of nutrients and life flow the way it should.  

At our home, we reduce first, then reuse, and only then do we recycle — because reduction is far better than recycling in terms of impact on the planet, with the worst of course being sending things to the landfill. We sometimes actually collect items from others to prevent them from adding to a landfill — our wonderful pond was once someone else’s broken hot tub, we have a flower planter that was once someone’s rusty wheelbarrow — creative projects like these are fun, rewarding, and immensely satisfying.

Inside the house, we’re trying to reduce “stuff” — living more simply without useless things that collect dust. But it takes time to sort items and get them to those who could use them. So it’s a work in progress. A worthy goal.

You know what would make me happy? Besides more people gardening and living sustainably, I mean? I’d love for junk mail to go away. I cannot stand being forced to have to recycle/sort/shred/toss things I didn’t ask to receive. It’s not like I can give junk mail to anyone. But if I can’t have that, then I’d love for all those wildlife and nature organizations that my very heart wants to support to stop sending me address labels, animal stickers, plastic fake membership cards, note cards, magnets, calendars, subscription requests, membership requests, stuffed animals, and so forth. Because doesn’t it say the wrong thing for those truly wanting to help the environment to continue to put so much waste into it? I donate when I can, but I’ve had to become selective. Because waste hurts my heart and the environment. Yes, I support what these organizations are doing, but I want them to stop wasting such precious resources and money on junk and instead maximize the help they can give the environment.

Next week on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day. At school, we’re making it a week-long celebration, and every class is choosing projects related to environmental stewardship and green practices. But it’s not our goal to only encourage environmental stewardship once a year or one week a year, but as a lifetime habit. Our kids are learning all about protecting and valuing nature, and, with hope, as adults they will continue practicing and sharing these values.

But it’s not just up to them. It takes all of us, and it’s okay to start with baby steps. Do what you can. One change makes a difference. But the more you work toward, the better. It doesn’t take much to live sustainably, just awareness and a desire.

Don your Green hat and safety vest, and take a visit with me to a recycling center here in Austin. My son and I visited the center as part of a special tour set up by Keep Austin Beautiful, and it was an eye-opening experience for this green-blooded girl and her green-blooded kid.

Allied Waste Services of Austin is a partner of Keep Austin Beautiful, helping keep our city clean and progressive in environmental stewardship. The local center is a MRF (pronounced merf), or Material Recovery Facility. It is separate from our single-stream processes, which involve a different facility, instead working directly with businesses and the community to take in recyclable items.

Day in and day out, they collect and transport materials, to the tune of an impressive 71 tons per day average just from this single collections center. From the Allied Waste website, “Allied Waste recycles approximately 3.3 million tons of materials annually. This metal, plastic and paper is equal to 200 pounds per second. Recycling the paper products alone is equivalent to saving 41 million trees. Every ton of paper that is recovered through recycling saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.” Yowza.

The tour leaders reminded us that recycling is a business, even though we environmentally-minded people like to think of it as a do-it-for-the-Earth-and-because-it’s-right sort of action. The materials we send to be recycled get sorted according to type, condensed into big bales that are held by wire, and delivered and sold to third parties in the U.S. and the world to be processed into materials that can then be turned into other products. Bales = Value

Plastics, for example, might become plastic lumber which can be used for park benches, construction materials, and so forth. Our living-room carpet is actually made from clear plastic bottles. Note: Before you think this makes it okay to buy lots of water bottles, note that the bottles themselves aren’t made from recycled materials. Reduce your use first, please!

The facility in Austin separates paper and cardboard from all other goods, and from there sorts all the materials even farther. Big conveyor belts carry the materials up ramps to where machines and people both do the actual sorting.

White paper is very valuable, so it’s packaged into its own bales, as is cardboard.

 The plastic bottles, metal and aluminum cans, milk jugs, and so forth are piled together.

 A giant conveyer belt pulls the commingled materials up, then a magnet draws out the tin cans. Aluminum is separated out with an eddy current.

The plastics get sorted by hand. The numbers in the chasing-arrow symbols on the plastics indicate the resin they are made of, not whether they can be recycled. If the plastics are accepted for recycling, they are grouped by that identifying number, and they will get melted together at a specific temperature. Milk jugs are referred to as “natural plastic,” which means that they are unpigmented. They get their own bin.

Pigmented plastics — like those for detergent — get grouped together, as do the clear drink bottles, of which there were a LOT.

Once material is sorted and gathered, it is compressed into giant, heavy bales wrapped with heavy-gauge wire. These bales can weigh between 600 and 2,000 pounds depending on the material. Here is mixed cardboard and paper recently baled:

Once everything is baled, it is carried by forklift to be stacked with similar bales and to wait for the truck to arrive. One truck can carry as many as 48 bales.

Outside, the bales are stacked neatly into formidable walls. From a distance, some of these bales look like blocks of colorful fabrics and textures, but a closer look reveals what the bales really contain: packed, compressed plastic bottles.

Look at this mountain of bales of clear plastic bottles:

Depending on the items needed, the materials might be sent around the U.S., into Mexico, or even as far away as China. Plastics will be washed and shredded, then melted. The melted resin might be used to make pellets or flakes that will get further processed into new products.

Tips from the Recycling Center to make things better for the facilities that process and sort the materials:

1) If possible, sort the materials ahead of time — paper separate from plastic, and so forth. Single-stream facilities don’t require this, but other collection facilities appreciate it, since sorting is done manually in most cases.

2) Remove any plastic caps. They are a different plastic resin, and they become dangerous like bullets when compression forces them off the plastic containers. You can send the caps in separately if the center accepts them, but regardless, remove them.

3) Rinse food out of the containers before you send them. While a little residue in a peanut butter jar isn’t a big deal, larger bits or quantities of peanut butter is. Food is the Number One issue that recycling centers deal with. Not only is it an issue of spreading disease and ickiness, as well as the contamination and thus ruining of entire bales of materials, but here’s another word for you: RATS. Help the facilities out by sending in materials that are reasonably clean of food.

4) A word about plastic grocery store bags: for them to be recyclable, they must be very clean — not just free of food but of dirt. Take these directly back to the store for recycling.

5) Though most places won’t take styrofoam, a few facilities will take it if it is made of a plastic with a number accepted by the facilities — check your local recycling centers. Like plastic bags, the styrofoam must be perfectly clean of food and dirt, or it can’t be used.

6) Be careful to only send in materials that actually are on the list of acceptable, recyclable items — remember, contamination can ruin a whole bale of good materials!

Here’s an interesting fact: The recycling symbol with the three arrows that people associate with “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” actually refers to the recycling process itself: Collect, Process (make into something new), Purchase (a consumer buys a product made from the recycled materials). Recycling only works when you close the loop and buy things made from recycled materials, so do more than recycle — be a Green consumer, too!  

Whichever meaning is used for the chasing-arrows symbol, it all means one thing to me: helping the environment. Go Green!