You can boost your business’s green cred — and reach several thousand environmentally conscious customers in the process — by being a sponsor or exhibitor at this year’s Scarlet, Gray and Green Fair in northeast Ohio. But make plans soon. The deadline to apply is this coming Monday, Feb. 29, and only a limited number of exhibitor spaces are left. The event, which is a free public festival celebrating sustainability, is April 19 at CFAES’s research arm, OARDC in Wooster. Read more…
recycling
All about those microbes
“It’s a microbial thing,” CFAES’s Mary Wicks and Fred Michel said about composting and the upcoming Ohio Compost Operator Short Course in their recent article in Ohio’s Country Journal. Related post here.
2-day short course on large-scale composting
The 2016 Ohio Compost Operator Short Course, billed as a “comprehensive program on the science and art of composting,” is March 8 and 9 at CFAES’s research arm, OARDC in Wooster. It’s for people who work at or with large-scale composting facilities. Read the story …
Recycle your plastic flower pots Saturday
This Saturday, June 6, from 8 a.m. to noon, you can recycle your plastic flower pots and trays at CFAES’s Chadwick Arboretum in Columbus. They’ll take nonfood-grade plastic foam packing material, too, such as Styrofoam. It’s another way to reduce what’s filling up (and being interred forever in) our landfills. Details.
Benefits of recycling? There’s an app for that
An Ohio State student team has developed a new app called RecycleNow to help cities and other local governments quantify the social, economic and environmental benefits of recycling programs, according to a story by the Big Ten Network’s Matthew Wood. Neil Drobny, director of CFAES’s Environment, Economic, Development, and Sustainability major and coordinator of Ohio State’s Energy and Sustainability Cluster, helped the project get rolling. “The ultimate goal,” he said in the story, “(is) to get cities to recycle more.”
New life for spent foundry sands
Spent foundry sands are safe for certain soil-related uses, such as in soil blends for use around homes, a recent risk assessment has found. The sands are a byproduct from the metal casting industry. A CFAES study played a key role in the assessment. (Photo: iStock.).
Hang a fish on your Christmas tree
What to do with old Christmas trees? Sink them in your pond, if you have one, to give fish a place to hang out — and to give you, if you fish for those fish, a better chance of finding and catching them. The trees provide structure; structure tends to concentrate fish. A free online fact sheet by CFAES’s outreach arm, OSU Extension, shows you step by step how to do it. (Photo: iStock.)
That was one of them balsams
CFAES’s Neil Drobny offers tips for reducing, reusing and recycling holiday trash. Including, yes, old Christmas trees. Drobny is program director of CFAES’s fast-growing Environment, Economy, Development and Sustainability major.
Global Innovation Initiative grant has CFAES, sustainability connections
Ohio State will partner with universities in the UK, Brazil and China on three grants awarded by the Global Innovation Initiative, a new program funded by the U.S. and UK governments, and one of the three involves both sustainability (new ways to recycle polymers?) and CFAES scientists. Go here and scroll down to the second bullet to learn more.
Wrap it up, we’ll take it: 20 days till Wooster’s green fair
Start packing. You can drop off a range of materials, including old light bulbs, dead batteries, unused medications and embarrassingly outdated electronics, at the Wooster Scarlet, Gray and Green Fair’s free, drive-through recycling center. Click here for the list of what you can bring. You also can drop off documents for free shredding. Of note: The first 200 people to drop off materials will get a $2.50 coupon to use at any of the fair’s local-food-focused food vendors. The fair is on April 22, Earth Day, at the Wooster campus of CFAES’s research arm, OARDC.