Serve & Celebrate

This weekend was our annual Serve & Celebrate day, to kick off Homecoming week by helping others. I worked with a group in my neighborhood (Independence Plaza in Historic Northeast Kansas City) doing a neighborhood cleanup. The Neighborhood Council does a cleanup about once a month throughout the summer, and the help of the Jewell students made a huge difference in what we were able to accomplish this time. Here are some highlights:

• We collected two huge roll-off dumpsters, one of trash and the other of yard waste. A lot of it was larger items that neighbors came to drop off, but much of it was just blowing around on our streets. Litter is a constant problem in poor neighborhoods, and we greatly appreciate the extra help in gathering up this garbage.
• With the help of the local Jackson County representative Scott Burnett, we cut down some overgrown weed-trees in an 80 year old woman's back yard that were threatening her power lines. This problem had been plaguing this elderly neighbor for a long time, and our service would have cost her hundreds of dollars to get taken care of, which on a fixed income would have been impossible for her to get done.
  
• The Jewell students found a large sum of cash lying in a vacant lot, so they deliberated about what to do with it and decided to turn the money that was very likely originally meant for bad and make a donation to some friends making a positive difference in the NE, Cherith Brook.
• We picked up about 60 tires that were illegally dumped on the streets and alleys to be recycled.
• One of my neighbors has been clearing out an empty and neglected lot (owned by a real estate firm in Colorado, one of many absent landlords who take poor care of urban lots in cities around the country). There are many kids who play in and around this lot, so this neighbor is clearing it out for their safety. The Jewell students hauled four or five truck loads of this yard waste over to the dumpster.
  
• Even if taken great care of, there is more yard waste in our city lots that the City will actually pick up, so cleanups like this are a way that the Independence Plaza Neighborhood Council tries to alleviate this problem. Thanks to the help of the Jewell students, we were able to assist many neighbors who do not have the resources for hauling this waste away at their own expense.

What did you do for Serve & Celebrate? E-mail your stories to honset@william.jewell.edu and we'll add them to the CJS blog.

Support urban farming in KC

Support Urban Food Production in Kansas City!!

The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, one of our community partners from Rock Out Reach Out is getting the word out about urban farming in our city. Whether you grow local food or buy local food, this information is very important to you. Come to BADSEED, Tuesday, October 20, 6:00-7:30 pm, to discuss proposing City Code changes that will benefit Urban Agriculture.

BADSEED has gotten a lot of flack and legal pressure lately about farming in the city, and I want to invite Kansas City friends and allies to support Kansas City urban farming by coming to this initial meeting.

Katherine Kelly of KCCUA says, "In our meetings with the Urban Planning and Development staff, and with various city council people, they expressed a willingness to work with us to develop codes that more accurately fit the ways that urban food production is developing in Kansas City, MO. They are in a review period looking at the revised codes, so the timing is good for refinements.

The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, Bad Seed Farm, and the Food Policy Coalition for Greater Kansas City are organizing a meeting of any interested community members who would like to have input into this process. You are invited to attend, Tuesday, October 20, 6:00-7:30 pm, at the Bad Seed Market at 1909 McGee, Kansas City, MO."

The goals of the meeting are:

· To look at existing codes that impact urban agriculture,

· To brainstorm about changes that might be useful and supportive of the benefits of urban agriculture, and

· To put together a volunteer committee of Kansas City, MO residents to lead the codes revisions process. This committee would work with KCCUA, the Food Policy Coalition, and city staff to research possibilities, prioritize, draft, and build political support for more urban ag applicable codes.

· Start a process that other municipalities in the metro area can use as inspiration and as a model for creating more urban ag friendly cities.

At the meeting, we will have KCMO Councilwoman Beth Gottstein, Patty Knoll from the Planning and Development Department of the city, and possibly other city representatives.

PLEASE RSVP to Katherine Kelly! They want to have some idea of how many folks to expect. And, if you can, bring a folding chair, Bad Seed will have some on hand, but depending on the numbers, we may need more.

If you have any questions about this, you can contact:
Katherine Kelly, KC Center for Urban Agriculture, 913-831-2444, or katherine@kccua.org
Gretchen Kunkel, Food Policy Coalition of Greater Kansas City, ghkunkel@kc.rr.com
Dan Heryer & Brooke Salvaggio, badseedfarm@hotmail.com

Even if you can't make commitments to the long process ahead, I hope we can have lots of people show overwhelming support for this initial meeting. Hope to see you there!

cell phone safety

Have you heard the buzz about cell phones? No, I don't mean the buzz when you have your phone on silent, vibrating across the table. The Environmental Working Group has just released a study about cell phone radiation and safety, and it has gotten a lot of attention in the US and around the world. Even the US Senate has called the authors of the report to testify before the Appropriations Subcommittee on Health. Read the article to find out more about the issues and to see how your cell phone ranks in radiation. Bad news for me, mine is high on radiation, so don't call me!

Do you know where your meat comes from?

Here's an interesting blog post by the Utne Reader about eating meat and your carbon footprint. I'm sure you've heard before that NOT eating meat is good for the environment, but these people remind us that, depending on where the meat comes from, it can benefit the environment to eat meat.


My wife and I have been members of a local meat CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for over a year now. We feel good about both the environmental and economic impacts of supporting this local, natural farm because of their holistic approach to farming. We have also gotten to know the family of six who works so hard to put dinner on our table, which is something that sadly most of us don't get to experience anymore.

I encourage you to find out more about the foods you eat, not just meat. How far has it traveled to get to your table? What are the ingredients and where did they come from? (Mother Nature, or an industrial lab?) How processed is it? (Sometimes processed vegetarian foods use way more energy than a fresh piece of meat.) Who had a hand in making this for me?

If you're interested in local food, drop me a note at honset@william.jewell.edu and I'll tell you about some other Kansas City area resources.

Welcome back!

As we gear back up for the school year here at Jewell, we're also gearing the blog back up. I encourage you to subscribe, follow (in the right column), or check back often to see what we're blogging about here. Or, become our fan on Facebook and get updates from the blog there. Either way, make sure to leave us comments and let us know what you think about it!

I thought we'd start the year of blogging with a bit of information about cardboard recycling, since we're expanding that on campus this year. We started in the residence halls last spring, and now with the help of two CJS Recycling Interns, we're taking it campus wide, so look for the new bins throughout campus, next to the paper and plastic bins. So, here is some information to spur you on as you're breaking down those boxes.

"Recycling cardboard (like any other type of paper) reduces the demand for new paper from virgin pulp, thereby saving trees and decreasing the amount of pollution generated in new paper production. Finally, because cardboard is such bulky waste, recycling it saves significant amounts of space in landfills and reduces pollution in areas where trash is incinerated." (www.riverwired.com)

"Facts about recycling 1 ton of corrugated cardboard:
Saves 17 trees from having to be cut down and used for pulp
Saves 7000 gallons of water
Saves 11 barrels – 462 gallons – of oil
Saves more than 3 cubic yards of landfill space
Corrugated can be recycled an average of 7 times before the fibers become too short and they are filtered out as sludge during the pulping process, which is then used as cover at landfills." (www.papertrail.com)

According to the EPA, paper products take up 34% of landfills. (www.epa.gov)

Making the pulp used in unrecycled cardboard creates sulfur dioxide, a gas that contributes to acid rain. (www.valleyrecycling.org)

Finally, it is important to buy recycled cardboard (and other recycled products) in order to close the loop. If we don't create a market for recycled products by buying them, companies cannot afford to use our recyclables in their manufacturing, which defeats all of our effort in the first place.