Roman the plumber

This past election season we all heard about Joe the Plumber. Well, we have our very own icon, and his name is Roman the Plumber, or Roman Bukowinski. Roman and his wife Liz, residents of Birmingham, MI, entertained us all at their home this past Saturday night by taking us on all 3 levels of their home and showing us his gray water and solar heating systems. Roman designed all of this himself, and it is a sight to see. We started at the upper level, in the kids' playroom, and were shown how the house is cooled by radiant tubes in the ceiling. In the basement, he showed how the solar collectors on his roof were integrated into his home radiant heating system. He has installed radiant plex tubes in all 3 floors in the home. Also, he explained his innovative gray water system, pictured below. It takes water from his showers and sinks and cleans it as the water moves through 3 levels of sand filtering containers. He then reuses the water to flush his toilets. (And with 4 young kids, this is a good idea!) He has received approval for this system from the City of Birmingham and is working with the State of Michigan to upgrade the standards for these types of systems. Oh, by the way, the kilt in the picture above is authentic - Roman is Scottish.

Here is a brief video from the evening:

The crash of trash

Our Tuesday group is moving on from our fall topic, energy, and has determined that we want to study the area of recycling. After a bit of discussion, however, we thought 'recycling' was probably the wrong term, and have tentatively broadened the concept to 'no waste'. So it was with great interest today that I found this article on the front page of the New York Times: Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up. The gist of the article is that the value of recyclables has crashed, mainly due to the economic downturn that is causing China's demand for recyclables to dry up. As a result, recyclable materials are piling up with nowhere to go, and in some cases community recycling programs are halting pickup of plastics and paper.

I had a feeling we were heading here. A couple of years ago I had read, improbably, a couple of book on garbage: Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage and Garbage Land: On The Secret Trail of Trash, and here's the message I took from both books: stop consuming so much and reuse what you have consumed. Both books felt that recycling was, at best, a band-aid, and, at worst, a way to delude people into thinking they were environmentalists. So it's interesting to see where our bandwagons for recycling have taken us.

Which brings me to today's point: Maybe we need to start becoming more mindful of what we are consuming and begin thinking about how we can reduce not only what goes into our garbage cans but also what goes into our recycling bins. The yogurt container, pictured above, is a prime example. Years ago when I was reading all of this I read that one thing yogurt eaters can do is to move from individual packs to the larger container - less waste. I took that in, but never switched because my brand was not available in the larger size. Fast forward to last week - I was in need of yogurt but the market I was in did not have small packs, only larger ones. So it forced my hand - I bought the larger size and discovered that I loved this yogurt too. And since my husband and I have been making soups this winter, we'll reuse the containers for freezing soup. I love it when things work out this way.