Yesterday as I was sweating through my shirt at work and trying to keep my sunscreen out of my eyes I couldn’t help but wonder what this summer would do for belief in global warming. It seems like any time it snows, people in the United States decide climate change isn’t real. I have tried to explain the global warming trends to my grandfather until I was blue, and yet he still disagrees with me because he got snow at his house and cities across the East were buried in snow this winter.

Image courtesy of Nirmala’s Mind

And yet that snow, and this warming trend across the United States are both part of climate change. In the United States we will have areas of cooling, warming, and desertification. It is not that every single place in the world will warm and no longer experience cool weather or snow. Instead it is the change in climate of that location due to increases in greenhouse gasses that are raising the earths average temperatures.

Image courtesy of Is it getting warmer

Sadly, I still cannot help but wish that as summers heat up and people get annoyed with the heat that they will, at least for the summer, consider that climate change is an issue they should be concerned about.

I know I have been all about sun protection lately, so I thought I should admit my failure so no one else has to have the same problem. I have had two major issues in the last few weeks of work. The first is that for some reason I keep forgetting to reapply. I get so caught up in everything that I am doing at work that before I know it my shift is over and it has been 4 hours since the last time I put on any sunscreen.

My other major problem is that the sunscreen I am using is from last summer. My mom is constantly telling me that sunscreen doesn’t work after it’s a year old. I remember it and I understand why it would no longer work, and yet it still kills me to throw away a half full tube. In hindsight, I think it would be better to throw away the tube and protect my skin with some new sunscreen instead of using the old stuff and getting burned or freckled and tan (which are both signs of skin damage).

I have been trying to wear my long sleeve shirt as much as possible, but with the summer starting to heat up, I have been getting really hot sitting in the sun. Part of the problem is that the long sleeve shirts for my job are made to be warm. They are the uniform for the guards in the winter, not a sun protection idea for the guards in the summer.

I haven’t gotten really burned yet this summer, and yet my arms are starting to tan, I have a swimsuit tan on my back (even though I put on sunscreen and then waited 20 minutes for it to really set before I got in), and my hands and forearms are full of freckles.

I guess this week I will be investing in some new sunscreen. And I will find ways to keep cool while wearing my long sleeves so I don’t have to worry so much about protecting my skin.

Our Meyer lemon tree in the backyard is starting to fall over because it has so many lemons all on one side. After harvesting a ton of them because I felt sorry for it, I decided I wanted to make lemon cupcakes. It turned out one of the hardest parts of making them was actually picking a recipe. I couldn’t decide between 5 recipes, and I ended up just picking the one that I already had all of the ingredients for. I do, however, have the other recipes bookmarked so I can find the best recipe. By the end of the summer I should have one I really like (I have decided I should wait at least a week before I make another batch).

Ingredients:

Another tool I really enjoy and use often is this lemon juicer. It seriously gets all of the juice out without pulp. I still like it, even after I shot lemon juice into my eye the last time I used it (I might as well have wrung out the lemon into my eye I got so much in there).

I couldn’t wait for them to be frosted, but they sure were delicious. I hope our new neighbors enjoyed them as much as I did.

For the next school year I will be living in a University owned townhouse. This is a first for SCU, and the new student housing will be finished with construction in August. Needless to say I am excited to move in.

However, for the first time I will have a kitchen. Because I am the one the most interested in cooking/baking, and I want to be able to start building a sustainable kitchen that will last me well into my future, I have taken over the responsibility of our entire kitchen. This means I am in charge of all cooking utensils, plates, forks, drying racks, dish towels, ect. The list feels endless.

What is most important to me is that I buy items that will last me years after I graduate. I want the shopping I do now to not just be on plastic junk that I will throw out when I graduate. This poses a bit of a challenge, however, because I am trying to buy quality items that will last. There are some costs that are unavoidable (my amazing mixer that will last me more than 20 years (based on how long my parents has lasted, and I have the updated model of theirs : ) ). And yet there are also some items that extremely cheap can also be sustainable and beautiful.

I have been thinking about what to do about drinking glasses for a few weeks now. My main concerns were durability, quality, quantity, and of course, price. My roommates and I are not the kind of college students that will be throwing major ragers in our condo next year (many of us do not even drink), but I am expecting us to accidentally knock things over and drop things. I am a complete klutz on my own, so adding in the fact that there will be six of us living in a relatively small space, I am expecting us to break some things.

My solution to all of my concerns: canning jars. They are durable, super duper cheap- each jar is about $1. For 12 “glasses” I paid a little over $12. This is perfect because if we ever have guests over, we can easily feed everyone without having to use plastic or throw away. They are easily replaceable, washable, and easy to drink out of. If we break them we can cheaply and easily replace them. They are also beautiful and add a little personality to our kitchen.

Another bonus is their potential for sustainability. After I graduate if I no longer want to use them as drinking glasses I can use them for canning, vases, food storage, and many other things.

These are cheap, easy, readily available, and a perfect solution for anyone who is trying to supply a kitchen on a budget. You can find them at any grocery store as well as large chains that try to sell a bit of everything (I hate giving any suggestions to go to these places, but for clarity I mean places like Target. I just try to encourage people to support their local business owners before huge chains with questionable ethics and environmental standards… thats a whole other story…). In the next few weeks I will be off to some used stores to see what other quality items I can score for our kitchen. Check back soon.

I know it’s odd that I am so passionate about sunscreen, but it is something that is important to me for many reasons. The first is that I have grown up with a mom who used to slather us in sunscreen before we went outside. I will be thankful to her in 20 years when I’m not covered in wrinkles or skin cancer (even though as a kid it used to drive me crazy! The 5 minutes it took was an eternity in kid time).

I have to admit, I am not very creative when it comes to creating things or decorating. I have been itching for something to organize my jewelry, but I did not really know how. I almost gave away one of my bulletin boards that I have had since I was a kid when I realized it had potential to be something better. My DIM (Do It Myself) project this weekend was to turn this hideous piece into something functional and beautiful.

I simply used white push pins that I already had lying around my room to hold everything up.

It took us four weeks and countless hours editing to make our short e-waste documentary. I hope you enjoy it.

About three weeks ago I visited an e-waste recycling facility for a documentary I was making with two other girls for a class (I will post it soon : ) ). Before going I thought e-waste was recycled by having people disassemble each item by hand, pulling out all of the important materials, and separating them all meticulously. Oh how naïve I was.

In reality, my imagined method of e-waste would have us completely buried in mounds of it. It would take forever for workers to break down each and every item. However, it would be significantly more efficient at material recovery. So what really happens with e-waste? Just saying this makes me shudder: it goes through a shredder.

Although the majority of the e-waste does go through this shredder, anything with a cathode ray tube (CRT) are recycled by hand (including older TVs and computer monitors). Computer towers and laptops are also recycled by hand because the parts in them are more valuable when sent off individually (all of the circuit boards, cd drives, fans, ect. are piled together and sent to different companies for different purposes, but unless they are still in excellent working conditions, they will be melted down and turned into something else).

For more information about responsible recycling near you check this out.

Thank you to ESC Refining for allowing my group to film part of our documentary as well as to answering all of our questions.