Gleanings of the Week Ending January 25, 2014

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

All of these outbreaks could have been prevented with vaccines - The US has taken a backward step when it comes to outbreaks of diseases like measles and whooping cough. It’s very sad that the downturn has been so abrupt in the past 4-5 years….and that we know why; when will the toll of these diseases reach a tipping point toward increasing mandates for vaccination. All my vaccinations are up to date (and I may ask for a whooping cough booster at my next annual physical since some if my volunteer work is with children).

Wellcome Images - Digital images from the many historical sources made available under Creative Commons licensing by the Wellcome Library, London. All low resolution images are freely available for download for personal, academic teaching or study use. The image at the right is a Mark Catesby illustration of a magnolia blossom and pod.

Top 20 Metropolitan Areas in the U.S.A., 1790-2010 - A very busy chart…but worth look at for a bit. Expand it and take a look. Some cities peaked early (like Baltimore); some didn’t get started until much later (like Dallas and Houston). New York has stayed at the top since it surpassed Philadelphia in the early 1800s.

An earthquake threat is building up in the central U.S. - Lots more people living in the area than there were in the early 1800s (when the last big earthquake occurred there.

Designing Your School of Choice: mySchool - An essay by Adam Renfro about his vision for ‘school.’ There are so many options for future schools….the big challenge will be to choose those options wisely. The balance between needs of the student and society will become more nuanced. It is interesting to observe the uniformity implied by core curriculum, testing, and building structures with the explosion of easily available learning environments that are anything but uniform.

How a Versatile Gut Bacterium Helps Us Get Our Daily Dietary Fiber - Another bit of evidence that our bodies are complex ecosystems with many organisms interacting…..organisms that we need to be healthy!

What's the best place to see or visit in your area? - This is a post where the comments are the main content.  I know in my area I have favorites - and the ones I recommend depend on the interests of the person asking!

To MOOC or Not To MOOC - Infographic. I learned a new acronym: SPOCs is (Small Private Online Courses)

NASA Finds 2013 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend - The Earth’s temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F since 1880. The average temperature in 2013 was 1.1 degrees F since the mid-20th century. There is a video showing the temperature changes over the past 6 decades.

Roasted Chickpeas - A recipe I’m going to try this week.

Robins in Maryland

A flock of robins came to our neighborhood with the sun after the big snow storm earlier this week. It was bitterly cold (in the low teens and breezy) so they fluffed their feathers for warmth and looked very round. They seemed to like the maple tree that is visible from my office. I took the pictures for this post through the window!

There were other birds around that morning too. A blue jay sat in the top of the maple - very alone compared to the robins. There was a small flock of blue jays in the neighborhood last summer and I hope to see them frequently again. There was a woodpecker that was examining our tulip poplar but must not have found anything interesting since it did not stay long. On the other side of the house, the juncos are eating the seeds left on the stalks of the blazing stars from last fall; the cats watch them through the window.

Catching Snowflakes

Snow was swirling around my house a few days ago - and I decided to make an attempt to photograph snowflakes. The wind was blowing enough that even the covered part of the deck was getting a dusting of snow through the screens. I put a red glass plate, a magnifying glass and a camera into a covered plastic bin and put them out to cool down.

About an hour later, I bundled up in coat and gloves. I waved the plate around to catch some snowflakes from the air outside the covered part of the deck. The flakes were very small. The magnifying glass was enough to hint at the magical shapes snowflakes can have.  But ---- it was too cold and windy to perfect my technique. I took a few pictures and went inside.

Later with I looked at the images I'd captured, I  was encouraged by the blurs (caused by being on the edge of the field or bad orientation of the individual flake or clumps of broken crystals rather than intact snowflakes). I'll definitely try again next time it snows! Next time I'll rig a light box (so there will be light under the red plate), cool down a towel along with the other gear to wipe off the plate so I can make multiple attempts, and find a place out of the wind to work!

Timelines

One of the side benefits of taking courses is learning about ways to depict information…and tools to assist with that depiction…in ways that enhance both perception/thinking and communication. I couldn’t resist looking more closely at two timeline tools. One was Tiki-Toki which a student in The Modern and the Postmodern Coursera course (being offered again starting Jan. 27) had used to make a timeline of the topics in the course. The other was a simpler timeline tool from readwritethink - a site I learned about via the K-12 education courses I’ve been taking on Coursera.

I used the simpler tool to make a quick graphic of the major events of my life. It was thought provoking to decide what events were really important to me. The last ones I added were the deaths of my grandparents; I haven’t had many people that I was close to die except for those four and it occurred to me that I still think of them relatively frequently….that their influence on me persists and is somewhat dependent on when they died.

Timelines are good ways to succinctly display time related items. The timeline above is the simplest form! I’ve wanted to create timelines before but they took a lot of effort to produce. Now I am celebrating that there are actually two tools that are easily available! The tool I used for the timeline above has the capability to have dates and images - features I will use next time. I have visions of including a timeline when I return from my next vacation….in the first blog post of the series! What about summarizing a whole year of travels? Maybe I’ll use the Tiki-Toki tool to create a timeline for all my Coursera courses too.

3 Free eBooks - January 2014

It’s time again for the monthly post about eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for January 2014.

Reed, Chester Albert. Wild Flowers East of the Rockies. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.1910. Available from the Internet Archive here. This book had great illustrations. I found myself looking forward to spring when I can out to find skunk cabbage and trillium.

Bailey, John; Schneider, Carri; Vander Ark, Tom. Navigating the Digital Shift: Implementation Strategies for Blended and Online Learning. Digital Learning Now. 2013. Available in several formats here. This book is a series of papers about the adoption of Common Core State Standards and the shift to personal digital learning.

Moncrieff, Ascott Robert Hope; Palmer, Sutton. The Heart of Scotland. London: A & C Black. 1909. Available from the Internet Archive here. I like the golden colors of the paintings by Sutton Palmer. They are full of details too - enough to make the 1000 words that picture are touted to be worth.

Messy Desk

Periodically I clean off some of the surface area of my desk - which is really a table rather than a classical desk with drawers for folders. I try to keep ‘files’ electronically rather than in paper these days but there seems to always be little pieces of paper around and ay cleared area gets covered over relatively quickly. Sometimes I feel guilty that the desk is always messy. More often I tell myself that I, deep down, must like it just this way - not loaded down with tall piles of stuff but covered with items that make it mine. It is very much like making a house into a home.

I have a low bookcase whose top surface is filled with a tissue box, hand lotion, and ceramic mugs filled with pencils, letter openers, emery boards and scissors. These days the scissors and emery boards are the most popular items. The surface never gets cleaned off. There are stacks of papers with directions to volunteer activities that I printed out. I printed the pages to take with me to the car…to get the address into the navigation system…and then they become a record of the activity. I’m not sure why I don’t just carry them around on the Kindle rather than printing the papers. It would clear off that corner of the table. I also have a lot of small pads of paper. I make quick notes while I work at my computer and I’ve noticed that the small papers dominate the recycle bag from my office (and it takes a long time to fill a small bag to take down to recycle bin).

On the other side of my laptop - the side I cleared off most recently - is my new project: the microscope. There is some unrelated flotsam already around it - a coupon cut out to be taken down to the pile for the next grocery shopping, a washcloth that was used for a napkin and a blank book that needs to go someplace else.

Closer to the laptop is a tea tin used for cables when I travel, a collection of green paperclips, and a stack of coasters. I’ve recently added a ball that I used for grip exercises while I read news feeds.

Yes - this messy desk is uniquely mine!

Between the Gaylord and the Potomac

This is my third post about my walk around the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center week before last (the previous posts were about atrium plants and ice crystals). It was a cold but sunny day when I was there. Aside from the ice crystals - there were some other sights between the glass wall of the atrium and the Potomac River. The white and purple kale had grown lacy like the plants often do mid-way through the winter.

The topiary twists and globes appeared to be weathering the cold as did the neatly trimmed Gaylord logo.

The peeling bark of the birch, the oval shapes of magnolia leaves and the needles of pines added other textures.

Looking out to the river, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge with its drawbridge was in the distance. Ice extended out from the shore.

But the startling event was a gull swopping over the pier to drop a shell (which cracked open)…and then he gull alighting to enjoy breakfast!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 18, 2014

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Over 4,000 Reasons to Love (and Protect) North America’s Native Bees - many agricultural plants are primarily pollinated by native bees (rather than the honey bees that were brought from Europe that are uniquely equipped with the tools and techniques required to do the job. )…and they are declining.

Web Soil Survey - The WSS interface allows you to find out about the soil for a specific area in the US (i.e. an address). It’s provided by the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. Reports can be generated about the suitability of the soil for specify uses. For example, I requested a map about the suitability for houses with basements for my neighborhood. Where my houses sits was coded ‘green’….but at one edge of the neighborhood it was ‘yellow’ because the soil changes and there was another small area that was ‘red.’ This would certainly be a resource to check if you were building a house or buying one in an unfamiliar area! The builder can take steps to overcome the soil suitability issues….and avoid wet basements! There is also a site that provides the detailed descriptions of soils here. Did you know that there are 26,000 soil types in the US?

Ray Archuleta Soil Health Lessons in a Minute - Short videos about aspects of soil health from the USDA NRCS. Watch the one about the benefits of no-till farming!

Spectacular Photos of a Powerful Volcano Erupting in Chile - Awesome power of the earth to reshape itself.

Long-Forgotten Photographs Reveal Challenger Disaster As It Happened - Most people old enough to remember January 1986….know where they were and how they found out about the Challenger. It’s one of those sad, defining moments for the psyche of the US.

The truth about technology’s greatest myth - The impact of technology in our lives is not straightforward at all…there are positives and negatives...complexities…unintended consequences. Technology cannot be evaluated without the context of the people and societies using it - which means that it isn’t ever simple or entirely rational.

Which scientific ideas do we need to get rid of? - Some answers from some prominent thinkers

Salman Khan’s TED Talk ignited the conversation about online education. Why he’s doubling down on the school of the future - How can education keep up with the pace of the rest of society and the cultural nuances around the globe? One pathfinder is the Khan Academy.

European word translator - Enter one or two lower-case English words and see translations overlaid on a map of Europe!

5,900 Natural Gas Leaks Discovered Under Washington, D.C.: A Dozen Locations Had Concentrations High Enough to Trigger Explosion - Aging infrastructure can be dangerous…and very wasteful.

Really Cooking

Having a home cooked meal is faster than going out for fast food - as long as the kitchen is ‘cook ready.’ I’ve been getting better at that recently with my favorite winter time meals - something warm and a complete meal in one dish.

The first type is a stir fry. I don’t generally have rice or noodles - preferring to fill up on the generally lower calorie veggies. Here’s my basic strategy to prepare a complete meal in 30 minutes or less.

Cut up veggies that need to cook the longest. Carrots, celery and bell pepper are examples. Add frozen veggies (I generally buy cauliflower and broccoli frozen since I can use it at the rate I want instead of being overwhelmed with the need to use up the amount I bought in the produce section). Begin the stir fry in a large skillet with a little olive oil. Season (I like orange zest and McCormick’s Pinch Perfect Citrus Fiesa).

While it cooks, cut up veggies that cook more quickly (like onions and mushrooms) and measure out protein (like dry roasted soybeans). Cut up broccoli and cauliflower if the pieces are too large with kitchen scissors once it has thawed. Add rest of veggies to the stir fry.

Once the onions and mushrooms have softened, add sauce (if desired). I like to use roasted garlic hummus with a quarter cup of water to coat the stir fry. It merely needs to be stirred in and heated.

And then it’s ready to eat!

----

The second type of meal I like in the winter is soup. I always make a bean soup for lunch on the day I cook a pot of beans (soaked overnight and then cooked the following morning). This week I cooked a package of dried black beans.

About 20 minutes before I wanted lunch, I took out a couple of cups if bean liquidfrom the pot to start my soup in a smaller pan. I added 1/4 cup multi-grain rice (that cooks in about 15 minutes), dried onion flakes, orange peel and a bouillon cube.

While that bubbled, I cut up mushrooms, yellow pepper and carrots. The veggies went into the pot along with a cup of the cooked black beans after the rice has been cooking for about 10 minutes. Cook until the rice and veggies are cooked….and it’s a warming and filling meal!

The rest of the beans are parcelled out to containers of about 1 cup each and frozen to be the start for soups in the coming weeks!

Atrium Plants

This is my second post about my walk around the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center last week (the previous post is here). The resort has a large atrium area that has pleasant tables and benches amongst lush plantings. Balconies of rooms on the upper floors make up three sides of the atrium with the roof and the Potomac side letting in lots of light. The building was mostly neutral colors and the outdoors was frozen in winter so the deep green foliage and occasional colors were very welcome. There were Bromeliads,

Hydrangea,

Cyclamen,

And zantedeschia.

Zooming - January 2014

The ‘zooming’ post for January includes botanicals from outside (curly bark, magnolia leaves, leaves and twigs of a bush under ice and snow, a deteriorating shelf fungus) and inside (hydrangea, Christmas cactus, Norfolk pine, lilies, amaryllis) plus a pitted shell in the rock garden and the fringe of a holiday tunic.

 

 

 

 

 

Microscope Memories

Over 35 years ago when I was in college working on an undergraduate degree in biology, my husband and I bought a microscope. The one we chose was as good as or better than the ones I used in the labs at school:  objectives, spider silk guide lines, wooden carrying case.  It was ordered from a local company and took several weeks to arrive. The microscope was a major purchase for us (I remember thinking that it cost almost as much as a used VW Beetle!). There was reciprocity involved in the decision since he owned a telescope and we were spending money to tweak it (cold cameras, mount modifications, new guide scope, and electric socks come to mind) and it was loosely tied to his physics major. The plan we both had was to forge ahead to grad school in our chosen fields and our hobbies would align with our academic work. Our ideas about what would come after graduate school were still vague and seemed very far in the future.

A few years later as I began graduate school, I decided that computer science was so much fun (I had supported us through our undergraduate years with programming jobs) that I decided to do graduate work in that field instead. There was not enough time for a microscope hobby so the microscope was carefully stored away with the idea that when I did have time, it would be a hobby I would start again.

The microscope was only unpacked a few times in the intervening years. We bought a student microscope that attached to our computer for my daughter when she was in elementary school. The quality of the image was not very good and the software didn’t work with current versions of windows by the time I wanted to use it a couple of years ago when I started this blog. That device was jettisoned but I still wanted to restart the microscope hobby. Recently I decided to buy microscope imager for my original microscope. It replaces the eyepiece and attaches to my laptop via USB. I dug out my wooden box of slides and cover slips. The prepared slides dried out years ago and were thrown away; there are only three slides and covers left!

It is a rude awakening to realize that I have forgotten a lot in 30 years! I will need to read up on microscope maintenance (it’s been in its wooden box for a long time) and decide on what other supplies I need aside from a few more glass slides and covers - immersion oil and stains come to mind. Once I decide what I need - I’ll have to order it; online ordering and shipping has certainly improved since I originally worked with this microscope but it is not instantaneous. I’m excited to be fiddling with the microscope again!

There will be a series of mini-projects - things I want to view and then write a blog post about. Feathers and plant material and molds are high on my list. My goal is to have at least one microscope based post a month. Stay tuned for my experiences restarting an activity from my early 20s!

Ice Crystals

Late last week I accompanied by daughter to the last day of the American Astronomical Society conference held at the Gaylord National Resort & Conference Center just outside of Washington DC on the shore of the Potomac River. She had a couple of hours of sessions to attend and I enjoyed the sights of the resort. There will be several posts over the next week or so from that experience.

It was a very cold day so we were bundled up when we arrived and I headed back outdoors as soon as we agreed on the place we would meet each other when her sessions concluded. I walked out to the pier jutting out into the Potomac from the resort property. In warmer weather, there is a boat that carries tourists across the river to Mount Vernon and Alexandria. It would be a great excursion with a family in warmer weather. But on this day in January, there were plates of ice in the water where the boat would have docked. I didn’t see any boats out on the river.

But the pier was still quite scenic for its vantage point for ice crystals at the edges of the ice plates and also to hear the ice moaning as the bright sunlight started the slow process of thawing the accumulation of ice of the past week when the temperature was well below freezing.

 

 

Osprey (Florida - November 2013)

I’m still savoring the trip to Florida last November. Ospreys are the thread I’m pulling today. There were a lot of them at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.  Ospreys were easy to spot on the electric lines because they looked different than the other two birds that also enjoyed the high vantage point:

The ospreys were larger than the kestrels;

The white on their head and breast contrasted with the dark forms of the vultures.

The talons on these birds are large, like all raptors; they suit the life of the fish hawk - swooping down to grab fish from the surface of the water.

I had never seen ospreys before I moved to Virginia and Maryland. Thirty years ago they were not as numerous as they are now. The parks that were near marshy areas provide nesting platforms for them…and occasionally there is one with a nest. When we went to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge last May there was one with a nest (with eggs or chicks because the bird stayed at the nest and a mate came to help with other birds were approaching too close.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 11, 2014

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Iodine - A new site that formats drug information to be more easily understood by consumers. There is information about how it all got started on the TED site here.

An Animated Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States - Maps are a visual pathway to history. Thanks to the University of Richman for making these available online with a good interface.

CES 2014: Audi Shows Off a Compact Brain for Self-Driving Cars - Good to have a car manufacturer getting serious about self-driving cars.

Remarkable coastal change from the recent UK storms - Sometime erosion is so slow it is almost unnoticeable. These ‘before and after’ pictures show the potential of storms to cause changes very quickly.

The Bright Side of Prions - When prions are in the news, they are often associated with terrible diseases like Mad Cow Disease. This article is about recent discoveries where prions perform positive functions in cells.

10 Easy New Year’s Resolutions to Transform Your Health and Well Being - Some of these are so easy….they are good prompts to do something ‘outside the box’ to improve your 2014!

Timeline of the far future - An infographic from BBC Future. This timeline is for one hundred quintillion years!

The Future: What 32 Ed Leaders Are Excited About - And more about the near term future of education and the potential of technology to improve outcomes.

Gulf Coast Wetlands Rapidly Declining - It includes a map of the gulf coast that shows the huge wetland loss in Louisiana between 2004 and 2009. They are subsiding underwater.

Why we need to sleep in total darkness - I need to get an alarm clock with red rather than blue numbers…or do without a clock in the bedroom at all! And I have installed f.lux on my computer to change the color the screen emits at night (software available free from here).

Wedding Anniversary

My 41st wedding anniversary is coming up soon so I picked up on this quote Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s book Writing a Woman’s Life that I read recently:

The sign of a good marriage is that everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players, who seek no public trophies.

It sounds very close to reality for the long term marriages I’ve observed. There is always flexibility in the roles over the years that build in resilience to the changes life brings. Life is not static so a marriage cannot be either.

There are still some things that have not changed too much over the years. My husband usually takes out the trash; I generally plan meals, put most of the items on the grocery list, and buy the groceries. He usually vacuums; I usually mop. We started out discussing larger purchases before making them; the dollar value of what we consider large has changed but the commitment to share financial decisions has been there from the beginning.

There were a lot of debates subsequent shared decisions along the way. One of the funniest ones happened early on: he was buying dress shoes and asked me which ones I thought looked the best. I told him and he bought that pair. A few weeks later he asked me why I told him to buy that particular pair of shoes because they hurt his feet! Fortunately we could both laugh about it.

And maybe being able to laugh with each other is an indicator of ‘a good marriage’ too. 

Sweet Potato House Plant - January 2014

I am enjoying a sweet potato vine as a houseplant this winter. It all started back in mid-October when I discovered a sweet potato had sprouted.  I cut off the sprouted end before I cooked the rest of the potato.

The sprout grew so rapidly in the saucer of water that within a week, I bought a planter box and soil. I included some shells still in the bag brought back from some beach vacation years ago on the top of the soil; pouring water onto shells works well to avoid holes dug by water.

At first the pot looked huge compared to the tiny plant but it continued to grow rapidly. It got pretty tall by early November before falling over and beginning to act like a vine about a month from the time it was planted.

The vine twined around a stick in early December.

In late December, I threaded the end of the vine through a metal sculpture.

In just 3 months indoors the vine had grown around the planter box and leaves spill out over the side. The bright green foliage is welcome in the deep of winter. It sits on the window end of the kitchen table where it gets sun on sunny days and supplemental artificial light for cloudy days and extra hours. It’s the best houseplant I’ve ever had!

I’m going to put the box outdoors after the last possibility of frost and anticipate that the planter box will be full of sweet potatoes by next fall!

US Botanic Garden - December 2013 - Part III

This is the last of the posts with images from our visit to the US Botanic Garden back in December. I could not forego posting about the poinsettias. The conservatory is full of them during the holiday display every year - in baskets, surrounding models of Washington DC landmarks and

Snuggled around miniature towns.

But my favorite part of poinsettias is the center of flowers….and that part is the focus of the slide show below.

Outdoors in Maryland - January 2014

Outdoors in January is cold and the eye searches for colors other than brown or white. The green of the pines under snow is a relief the eye. Our mind conjures comparisons for the snow: whipped cream, flocking, blankets. It was very cold after our first snow of the year and the yard stayed pristine and windswept for more than a day; we didn’t venture out and neither did the deer.

When the sun came out, the melt began even though the air was still well below freezing. I ventured out to take pictures of seed heads from last summer’s blazing stars looking very much like a bottle brush,

A twig blown from the oak tree standing upright in the snow,

A woodpile topped with snow in a yard trampled by deer and children,

Icicles that formed on a bush from the drips off the gutter above, and

The frozen gush from one of the downspouts.

Most of the snow was gone within 24 hours. The gutter was clear and the only snow remaining was from piles created by snow plows.

I prefer the trees with green leaves…but being able to see the large wasp nest built last summer in a nearby maple is some consolation.

And the sycamores always seem even more beautiful in the winter with their white bark. These lean over the street as if it were a river.

Reducing Trash

Periodically, I take an inventory of what is still ending up in our trash and think about what changes I can make to reduce it. I buy in to the notion that sending things to the landfill is ‘bad’ from the perspective of right now and for the future. No one wants to live on or near a landfill now and yet they are ever growing; how will our children and grandchildren avoid living on our trash heap if we continue as we have in the past? And who wants to be wasteful? It isn’t about being rich or poor. It is about being good stewards of our home.

The inventory was a great project for a cold winter day when the best plan-for-the-day was to stay indoors. Here’s what I found (grouped by the action I am taking…or plan to take)

Tissues and paper towels - The only way I can imagine to reduce this trash is to avoid creating it. In the past I have considered using handkerchiefs….but only for a few seconds; the tissues are just too convenient. Using a dish cloth or towel rather than a paper towel reduces our paper towel consumption but I still keep a roll on the counter for extra messy or contaminating jobs like wiping up chicken juice or cleaning the inside of the microwave of oily residue (from microwave popcorn). So the amount of tissues and paper towels in our trash will stay about the same. We have very few napkins because I switched to washcloth napkins after a previous inventory.

Small pieces of paper - There were all kinds of small pieces of paper in our trash until recently:  stevia packets, wrappers from tea bags, paper used in other packaging that is not recyclable, and Post-it notes. I’ve made it a point to collect it in a small box (like the box the stevia packets came in originally) and then put it in the recycling. It does not reduce the trash by very much - but every little bit that does not go to the landfill is a good thing. I’ve even started emptying tea bags into the gold mesh basket of my tea maker (a coffee maker that has never seen coffee) so that the tab and tea paper goes into the small paper box too!

Fruit and vegetable parings - In the summer time, I try to compost these directly into my garden but the only thing I compost in winter is tea leaves (which go into houseplant pots). On the plus side, the county is expanding the curbside compost program; hopefully it will come to my neighborhood within the next year.

Egg shells - Again - I manage to compost these in the summer. Should I save a few to use as mini-pots for sprouting garden veggies indoors before the last frost?

Microwave popcorn package - We are using up our last box of packaged microwave popcorn. I bought a bowl with a vented lid to pop the corn in the microwave (without oil or other harmful chemicals). It works with the least expensive popcorn in my grocery store (which comes in a recyclable plastic bag that makes many servings of popcorn).

Dryer sheets - I did a little research and am going to look to see if my store carries any that are recyclable.

Worn out underwear - Clothes that can still be worn are candidates for donation. Items with holes and rot still end up in the trash.

Used cat litter - There does not seem to be any other possibility….it stays in the trash.

Plastic wrap - If it’s clean it can go into the same recycle as the plastic bags! I just learned this from reading my county’s recycling list. If it has food on it, then it still is a trash item.

Clam shell type package - I try to avoid these because they cannot be recycled. It is better to use the plastic produce bags for tomatoes, for example. Unfortunately, some products (like small electronics, kitchen knives, etc.) tend to come in this kind of packaging and there often is no other packaging option.

Frozen food bags - These are not recyclable in my county. Even if they were it might be difficult since they often end up messy on the inside. I do try to buy the largest bag that I can us in a reasonable time.

Foil lined packages- I seem to have more of these that I realized from cat treats,Christmas chocolates, and tea bag wrappers. I’m going to look to see if there are any alternative forms of packaging. The tea bag wrappers are probably the easiest.

Pre-cut veggie containers - I have just recently noticed that the pre-cut salads and veggies come in clam shell packages or a material that is different than the plastic produce bags….and neither one can be recycled. Maybe grocery stores will help out by changing the package. I can buy bell peppers in a package of pulp paper with plastic wrap….which can be re-cycled.

Flip top lids of cat food - The recycler recommends putting sharp lids into the trash. Perhaps it is a safety issue?

Straws - The recycler does not like very small items in the stream they are processing…so straws are relegated to trash. Maybe I’ll use up the straws I’ve already purchased and simply stop using them.

Everything else I found in the trash was an infrequent item. Nothing stands out as an opportunity to reduce the trash volume dramatically so the main action I am taking from this inventory is a tweak to my grocery shopping:

Avoid clamshells and other non-recyclable containers.