Dispatches
Thank You Northwest Flower and Garden Show!
March 10, 2011
We had a great time at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle this past week www.gardenshow.com. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to join your amazing event and thanks to those of you who shared your time with us. We loved talking to you all and enjoyed hearing about the great green initiatives taking place in Washington. Here are a few of our favorite stories…
The Evergreen State College in partnership with the Washington State Department of Corrections has initiated an untraditional relationship known as the Sustainable Prisons Project www.sustainableprisons.org. Through science and hands-on experience with gardening and conservation, inmates are able to learn and incorporate sustainable practices into their daily lives, both now and throughout their future. This is truly a win-win program, enhancing both inmate reform
and the preservation of our planet.
The City of Seattle has also been promoting the use of green solutions for problems related to storm water runoff. As a result of roofs, roads and driveways, hillsides erode, houses flood and chemicals flow into streams. Thus, residents in targeted combined sewer overflow (CSO) basins are eligible for rebates on a variety of installations such as rain gardens, cisterns, and porous pavement. Find out how you can be rewarded for living sustainably at www.rainwise.seattle.gov.
Even the Woodland Park Zoo www.zoo.org has jumped on the sustainability train with their popular “Zoo Doo” composting program. Non-primate herbivores such as elephants, hippos and zebras help create one million pounds of compost per year, saving $60,000.00 annually in disposal costs and helping to create organic healthy soils around the Seattle area. We second their notion that, “Sometimes a simple act or change in behavior can create a ripple that has a dramatic effect on the world.”
