Sustainable Colorado

Four years ago, on June 1st, 2016 our family started a year long adventure to only eat food that came from Colorado. At the end of that year, Lee Stiffler-Meyer interviewed Lilly on their podcast the Reimagined Table about it.

A few highlights:

How air quality and pollution are being affected.

Our broken food system and what it means to create your own.

A new world of consumption.

The importance of essential workers as we are given a new lens to view the true backbone of our country.

Lilly and Xerxes talk with Edgewater City Councilperson, John Beltrone about what motivates him to serve his community and how he became involved in politics. One of his first accomplishments as a councilperson was putting together an ordinance to establish a Sustainability Committee that eventually led to Edgewater’s Sustainability Board.

What is the difference between curbside municipal composting verses backyard composting? Learn about what works and what does not. Composting is fun and healthy. It is like sourdough. It is a living organism that needs a little bit of attention from time to time.

Two weeks into our social distancing, we talk about the details of our current situation and what we are witnessing in Colorado and in our local community. Like so many our lives have gone online even more as we connect with friends, family, and work.

As we consider the 6 R’s, refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, rot and remember, we are facing some challenges purchasing in zero waste ways, but we have also been dramatically shopping less. Of the 6 R’s, the one that feels most profound for us is: remember. We did the previous show on Victory Gardens as we personally felt that this is perfect time to connect to the earth and grow your own food. Beyond our garden show, we have been getting emails, texts, and phone calls from dear people in our lives asking for tips and strategies around living a more homesteading-style life. We are grateful for these calls, their efforts, and we are eager to be a place of support for our listeners as well as our community.

What does it mean to remember what happened in our world in the past when families relied on the food they grew or created themselves. During this time, what does it mean to create your own food system or at least try as we do.

We also call upon you to do your civic duty by paying attention to how are government is working on and through this crisis. The EPA recently rolled back mandates about air pollution and we discuss our disappointment in this, but also our determination to make sure that as all of us need to turn our focus to the COVID-19 that we can still pay attention.

The impact of this coronavirus time is yet to be determined, but we discuss what we hope and what we are already seeing that is bringing a sense of joy and community.

Xerxes asks Lilly about her experience as a gardener, a teacher of gardening and a master community gardener. The podcast focuses in on saving money, gardening, for health, how to get started and why gardening right now is a great way to buffer you against a pandemic. We hope you are inspired to start a victory garden today and plant hopeful seeds for tomorrow.

Lilly and Xerxes talk about what it was like getting ready for quarantine during the heightened COVID-19 awareness in Colorado, how Zero Waste efforts were strained, where bulk food can save money, and express hope after day two of self-quarantine.

With our first update about our zero waste year after we finally started our efforts, we will talk about what worked, what didn’t, and how we are feeling. It is all about facing insecurities and the awkwardness of what it means to live counter-culture, while still being polite and kind in our community.

Sarah Martinez is the Director of Marketing for Eco-Products where she works to reframe single use products with a focus on zero waste. She has worked in sustainability in corporate America with companies such as retailer, Target and real-estate firm, Prologis. 

 

Xerxes and Lilly talk to her about greenwashing, social responsibility, the slowness of changing behemoths such as large corporations, but also her optimism that great strides are coming. She also addresses the paradox of corporations that need to grow based on consumerism, but the need for our society to reduce consumption. 

 

In this interview she talks about how when consumers are surveyed they desire more sustainable products, but our buying behavior doesn’t always reflect that. Through Eco-Products she strives to ease the pain and guilt without greenwashing. She talks about the ‘hall pass’ of using a compostable product verses encouraging the use of reusable products. 

 

She discusses what it looks like for her at home and how it is always evolving as she strives to learn more from others. She shares tips that she finds doable in her life as well as what she struggles with. 

 

With Eco-Products, Sarah has done large venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheater as well as the Super Bowl a few years ago. 

 

In addition, she talks about:

The importance of compost

Recycling versus compostable packaging

Why we need more commercial composting infrastructure

Policy change

The minimization of contamination

The importance of consumers doing a better job of recycling and composting

Xerxes and Lilly’s Zero Waste Year is the catalyst for moving their conversations into podcast form. In this episode, they dive into the 5 R’s that have been coined by Bea Johnson as well as their own additional R that they like to include.