Victory Gardens for Pollinators and People

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(April 19, 2020) Sometimes issues come together in the oddest and most interesting ways. For instance, in the Age of Coronavirus, people are suddenly talking once again about “victory gardens.” This is the idea that you can grow your own food, wherever you live, indoors and out.

Skip to a specific segment in today’s podcast here.

8:00 Kim Eierman, author of The Pollinator Victory Garden

24:39 Ty Benefiel from Hero Power

39:02 Joel Barczak from Blumen Gardens

57:10 Tom Szaky from Terracycle and Marta Keane of Will County

1:27:30 Meteorologist Rick DiMaio

Long before the arrival of COVID-19, the world had become aware that our insect populations were in danger, too. Let’s face it, far too many animal species are on the precipice, including homo sapiens. The coronavirus crisis has only put the fragility of our planet into stark relief.

So, given the opportunity to have a conversation about a book called The Pollinator Victory Garden: Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening, Peggy and I said, “Hell, yeah!” Excuse my not-so-French French. Today, we welcome author Kim Eierman to the show. Eierman is the founder of EcoBeneficial, a horticulture consulting and communications company in Westchester, New York.

For anybody who has now decided to dive into gardening, her book is the perfect introduction to that world. For far too long (IMO), the horticultural world focused on plants and not enough on the “supporting staff.” I’m not talking about gardeners, I’m talking about insects and other animals. The supporting staff is what keeps flowers blooming and people eating. That’s something you will discover when you read her book.

While there’s a fair amount in the book about plants, the emphasis, rightly enough, is about pollinators. You’re going to learn about what pollinators eat, where they live, and what they need to survive. And you’ll learn how to provide those things in your own yard, large or small.  Here are ten tips that Eierman lists for a thriving pollinator victory garden.

1. Plant for a succession of bloom throughout the growing season.
2. Skip double-flowered plants–they have little, and sometimes, no, nectar or pollen.
3. Emphasize native plants to support native pollinators and your ecosystem.
4. Don’t forget to include flowering trees, shrubs, and vines in your landscape–pollinators need them.
5. Plant a diverse array of plants with different flower shapes, sizes, and colors.
6. Create floral targets for pollinators.
7. Provide nesting sites for pollinators in your landscape.
8. Eliminate pesticides from your garden.
9. Reduce or eliminate your lawn.
10. Add a pollinator habitat sign to your landscape.

That will get you started. But, please pick up the book!

What COVID-19 means for clean energy

On last week’s show, Peggy and I began talking about what happens to our environment while folks are distracted by the coronavirus. Today, we continue that conversation with Ty Benefiel from Hero Power. In full disclosure, Hero Power is a sponsor of The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki. Ty was on the show just a few short months ago, though it seems like a lifetime. Along with his brother Brock, they are the hosts of The Climate Pod, where they discuss many of the same issues that we cover here. Here are their insights about the current situation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a great deal of uncertainty for clean energy. While demand for clean energy has dropped and the outlook for renewable energy downgraded, the Trump administration has stopped enforcing EPA laws, rolled back vehicle emissions, and most recently allowed more mercury and other toxic materials to be released into our air. As more pollution is being allowed, a recent study from Harvard University has directly linked COVID-19 death to exposure to pollution.

Meanwhile, stay-at-home orders have created a short-term drop in a emissions and visible examples in major cities of the cost of the status quo. But the current reduced level of emissions can’t last and the deregulatory efforts will be mostly stay intact for the foreseeable future. Instead of learning from the gains of the 2009 stimulus package, investing in a renewable energy transition, and charting a path to lower emissions and creating a cleaner future, we are doling out bailout with no oversight or emissions standards. The Trump Administration is flying in oil and gas executives to the White House to put their needs first. As a result, our recovery will lose out on valuable job creation and the ability to mitigate climate change.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Earth Day this week, there has never been a more critical time for clean energy. So, how do we support clean energy during this time despite these efforts to slow renewables down?

Wow. We have about eleven minutes to discuss all of that with Ty Benefiel. Wish us luck.

 

Are garden centers essential businesses?

I received a phone call the other day from a person I hadn’t heard from in a long time. Joel Barczak is co-owner of Blumen Gardens in Sycamore, Illinois. Along with his wife Joan, they have been running the garden center for 30 years. I have spoken there, and it’s a wonderful destination, if you happen to be out that way, about 60 miles west of Chicago, as the crow flies.

Right now, Barczak is not a happy camper. Along with other garden centers in the state, his business has been allowed to stay open during the coronavirus outbreak, but on a limited basis. According to an April 9 directive from the Illinois Department of Commerce,

…all garden stores, garden centers, and nurseries (even those that did not fall within our original guidance above) are allowed to sell products for delivery or pick-up. That expanded guidance states: “Garden stores and greenhouses can remain open for purposes of maintaining inventory, and to fulfill online and phone orders for pick-up or delivery only.” This guidance applies to both standalone stores as well as garden centers that are part of a larger store (such as a garden center that is part of a hardware store or big box stores such as Lowes or Home Depot).

And therein lies part of the problem. As Barczak explained to me and to the DeKalb Daily Chronicle,

The small business owner said he’s noticed large corporate stores selling items in garden centers which go against what he’s able to do at Blumen Gardens.

“Also about Lowes, Menards, Home Depots who are actually selling contrary to the Illinois Department of Commerce’s dictation,” he said. “We’re running true to the letter of the law, but there’s parties out there that are not that are a bit of a bully. We’re hoping for survival. We’re a small business, and we appreciate your attention particularly the idea of a letter of support to the green industry.”

As he told me, it’s not just that the big box stores are doing an end around the state order, though they are. He’s lobbying to allow garden centers to operate beyond just delivery and curbside pickup during the pandemic. Given that garden centers can make their businesses strictly open air operations, he believes that they can operate safely during the pandemic. He makes his case in this Facebook video that he just posted.

His mission is complicated by the controversy created in states like Michigan, where even garden centers have been ordered to shut down. That has led to protests against the stay at home order in that state and others, many of which seem to have more to do with politics than with the science of COVID-19.

That said, the idea of opening garden centers is tricky, and we’ll talk about it with Joel Barczak for a few minutes this morning.

 

Can sustainability survive a pandemic?

On last week’s show, I brought up a disturbing email that I, and a lot of people, received from Recycle by City. It included this information about sanitation and recycling crews.

Now they need our help to ensure they remain safe and the recycling stream remains clean. Crews are seeing a surge of COVID-19 related items that are mistakenly being placed into the recycling carts instead of the trash. 

Personal protective equipment (PPE) like gloves, masks, eyeglasses, and gowns are not recyclable.  Also not recyclable are cleaning supplies like disposable wipes, paper towels, tissues.  These items have never been recyclable...

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that items possibly contaminated with the COVID-19 virus be discarded immediately in a trash bin with a lid and then wash your hands with soap and water (see video below) or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.  Here’s more from the WHO on masks and mask disposal.

I had already been thinking about what happens to recycling programs during and after the pandemic. This bit of information wasn’t reassuring. However, as it so happens, there is a way to recycle PPE. It’s through a company called Terracycle, which we have featured on our show in the past. That same company is behind the creation of a program called Loop, which was on Time Magazine’s list of 100 Best Inventions of 2019. Here’s how they describe it.

Loop is the first-ever global platform to partner with brands and  retailers to offer consumers a way to go from disposability to durability with their purchases. Loop enables consumers to responsibly consume a variety of commonly used products in customized, brand-specific durable packaging that is delivered in a specially designed reusable shipping tote. When finished with the product, the packaging is collected, cleaned, refilled and reused – creating a revolutionary circular shopping system.  Loop partners with some of the world’s largest companies and brands including but not limited to Unilever, P&G, The Clorox Company, Nestle’ Pantene, Haagen Dazs. 

As you can imagine, the thought of reusing something that has been exposed to COVID-19 is terrifying to a lot of folks, even though the virus is unlikely to survive for more than a few days on any surface. That’s why Terracycle founder and CEO Tom Szaky returns to the show today to talk about the impact of the pandemic on the Loop program and how, basically, sustainability can survive this crisis.

He is joined by a friend of the show, Marta Keane, who is a Recycling Program Expert for Will County, just outside of Chicago. She is also a board member of the Illinois Recycling Association. In full disclosure (I seem to be doing a lot of that today), I was a board member a couple of years ago. Anyway, she notes that

several [Illinois] communities have been approached by their hauler asking them to drop landscape collection service. In one instance, I was told the announcement to the community included the recommendation that residents be told to burn their landscape material. Of course this is bad anytime but none more so than when we have a respiratory epidemic!

May I say, “Yikes!”?

She also reports that the IRA sent a letter to Governor J.B. Pritzker to thank him for supporting recycling in Illinois during the crisis. Keane notes that some states have dropped their landscape collection and allowed it to be placed in the waste stream.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Or the Spanish Flu. Or COVID-19. Certainly not the waste and recycling industries. This should be an interesting conversation.