MOM’s Organic Market’s ER Blog

I’m really excited to see MOM’s on Facebook for several reasons.  I think that having MOM’s up on Facebook will introduce it to more people out there who might not have heard of the stores.  I’m also hoping that it will give people who share common interests a place to interact.  If hundreds of people who all share a passion for the planet,  organic food, and healthy eating, are all coming together in one place online, then surely discussions and meetings can arise.

I’m hoping that people will post pictures of themselves doing great things for the planet, like cleaning a river, teaching kids, or just plain hiking.

At the beginning of April, I am going to announce a contest giving a monthly prize to people who take a MOM’s shirt or MOM’s bag to interesting places on Earth, and then post the photo on Facebook. One prize per month, with details to be announced the first week of April,  so get your pictures posted!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/MOMs-Organic-Market/49079254653 

Howdy,

We have recycled diligently for many, many years, but we started tracking each item in April 08. Each of our five stores reports their numbers every evening, and they get entered into a spreadsheet. To find an average weight of each item, we traveled to each store and weighed several different samples. We took all of them, and came up with an average weight.

For some items, you get a better idea when you think of volume or cubic feet instead of weight, so we included those in our report.

Please get in touch if you have any questions..

gregk@myorganicmarket.com

MOM’S (Mom’s Organic Market) 2008 Recycling Numbers

487 BAGS OF BUBBLE WRAP or 13,041 CUBIC FEET
(If you stacked each cubic foot of the bubble wrap we recycled on top of each other, it would add up to 10 Empire State Building’s)

4905 BOXES OF PRODUCE TRIMMINGS or 147,150 POUNDS or almost 74 TONS (This weighs as much as 15 fully grown elephants or 6 school buses filled with High School students)

250 BUCKETS OF BATTERIES or 875 GALLONS
(This many batteries would fill almost 15 standard household bathtubs)

1134 BAGS OF PLASTIC BAGS or 13,041 POUNDS
(This would fill 12 neighborhood swimming pools!)

756 BAGS OF PACKING PEANUTS or 20,412 CUBIC FEET
(This is enough packing peanuts to completely fill twenty four 17 foot U-Haul Trucks)

1415 BAGS OF COMMINGLED ITEMS or 29,715 POUNDS
(This would be equivalent to almost thirty 8 yd dumpsters. These are the kind we have at all of our stores)

1723 BINS OF MIXED PAPER or 18,953 POUNDS or 25,776 GALLONS
(This would fill over 3000 standard back yard wheelbarrows)

135 BOXES OF LIGHTBULBS
(The sizes of each box vary, but on average, this would be enough to fill three 17 foot U-Haul Trucks)

OTHER BUBBLE WRAP EXAMPLES
(Enough bubble wrap to fill three swimming pools, one tractor trailer, and
send all of our employees to outer space with Zoltan !)

I subscribe to a blog / daily e-mail called Ideal Bites.  It’s a great source of info, because they are short and to the point.  It’s easy to read, and extremely helpful.  I got this tip in my inbox the other day, and I wanted to share it with you.  I have been telling people this for months, and here it was, written up nicely.

If you would like to see what I mean about this blog, check it out at

http://www.idealbite.com

Wanna study up on how to stop getting phonebooks?

Check out our booth this year at the Green Fest

We had a great time hitting the roads in Frederick last Thursday. Nothing too exciting found this time, but we had a great war with the pokey sticks.

So, I just went on a tour of Trex yesterday. They are located in Winchester, Virginia and they take plastic grocery bags and turn them into deck material. It is made by mixing other ingredients in with shredded up plastic bags, and then the bags act as a kind of glue holding the other stuff together.

I had a chance to see the whole process, and it was very cool, but I don’t want to give away details as I did sign a confidentiality agreement and I’m not sure what is public knowledge.

What I can tell you is that I saw literally three gigantic warehouses full of bales of bags, and got to see it from the delivery of the bales to the end product coming out of the machines.

Another aspect which I found interesting, is that I got to see how random objects included in the bale could mess the entire piece up. I saw a rubber band sticking out of one piece, and what could have been a shredded up soda bottle in another. They told me stories of finding diamond rings, cats, dogs, money and all sorts of things while sorting the bags.

So double check your bags when you take them to the grocery store. Even if you don’t do it to save the people sorting them time and trouble, you should make sure nothing else got inside along the way.

I also wanted to say thank you to Samara and Ray, who were very courteous and informative, for taking me on the tour and showing me how everything works. I am a natural skeptic, and wanted to see the process in action. I’m convinced!!

You can find information about their company HERE.

greg

As some of you know, MOM’s is a founding partner of the Clean Energy Partnership.  Another of the founding members, Gary Skulnik, is the president of Clean Currents.  Up until recently, the main emphasis was on helping businesses make the switch.  Now, residents are able to purchase wind power for their homes as well.

For those of you aware of how the system works, this is not your normal REC (Renewable Energy Credit) purchase.  It goes directly through your energy provider and currently anyone with Pepco in D.C., or Pepco or BGE in the Chesapeake region of Maryland is eligible.

It ends up being a line item on your energy bill, and does not cost that much more than your current bill does.  In addition, you get to lock in a rate for one or two years, so if your current rates go up you will end up saving money over the long haul.  A hidden benefit of going green.

You can check out the nuts and bolts here at Clean Currents.

Found another great source of information out there.  It’s called Go For Change, and can be found at Goforchange.com

I’m a firm believer in supporting people who are trying to get information out, and these folks seem to be posting daily.

For those folks reading our MOM’s blog locally, Go For Change should be of special interest to you, as they are based out of Baltimore and feature many arenas of action.

greg