Get your copy of the 2008 Olive Press Green guide to Andalusia here:  http://www.theolivepress.es/the-green-guide/

A local business has installed 150 photovoltaic panels on its roof, making it the first business to do so in the area.  Read the story (in spanish) here:  http://www.alteadigital.com/noticia.php?id_noticia=2515

Slowly but surely, organic produce is becoming more available, fresher and more economical in the alicante region.  This week I present a comparison between two vendors:  MenjaBio and their organic produce bag, and Alhama, who have a shop and a stall at the weekly market in Altea.

The small MenjaBio bag costs €11 and contained 6 carrots, 3 red peppers, 3 tomatoes, 1 spaghetti squash, 3 bananas, 2 kiwifruits, 2 apples and a small watermelon.  I had to drive to Penates in Alfaz del Pi to collect the bag.

Popping down to the market today, on foot, I scooped up 2 bunches of chard, a bunch of beets (with their greens), a celeriac, a sweet potato, 4 small leeks, 4 potatoes, 2 onions, 4 zucchinis (courgettes), 5 tomatoes, 3 apples and 3 pears.  For this I paid €16.   Here are a couple of photos of my lovely organic veg.

I conclude that the produce from the market is better value for money and a better buy all round.  Why?  I just don’t think that bananas from South America and Kiwis from New Zealand are the best ways to use my organic euro.  The produce from the market is not only organic, it’s local.  Plus, I don’t need to drive to collect it. Very important in the age of gloablisation, food miles and ethical spending.

Note to self:  when doing grape experiment, put grapes out of baby’s reach. Yep, yesterday morning my lovely little monkey climbed up her ladder, got hold of the bowl of grapes and ate them up. yum yum!  So, the experiment grinds to a halt…but there’s a smiling girl as a result:

And then there were none

These lovely grapes have been out on my counter for three days now.  The weather is hot and humid during the day, cooler at night.  We’re in southern Spain here, people.  I’m not seeing a lot of breakdown:

Day3

Wikipedia tells me that Spain is the country with the largest acreage dedicated to grape growing.

Well, the grapes had an eventful afternoon yesterday.  My houseguest kindly washed the dishes, ate one of the grapes, then threw the rest out!  I fished the remaining two out of the garbage – thank heaven we’re vegetarians! – and thus proceed apace.

According to this abstract, the fungicides cyprodinil and fludioxinil are used in southeastern Spain on grape and lettuce crops. These two fungicides have a much longer half-life (the amount of time required to reduce the concentration by half) when the sprayed produce is refrigerated.  However, the Pesticide Action Network’s fact sheets say that neither of these substances is a likely carcinogen, nor are they endocrine disruptors.  Cyprodinil, however, does irritate the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract (that tickly feeling explained…)

Below is photo number two.  No notable decay or degradation.

Day 2

Grapes are among the most heavily sprayed and polluted crops on Earth.  Cotton comes out number one, I think.  Have suffered the indignities of the fruit fly invasion in my kitchen, I began noticing a strange thing:  even the fruit flies don’t eat the grapes!  You can leave bunch of perfect, purple globular grapes on the counter in the late summer heat…and nothing happens.  Not a spore, nor a fungi attacks them.  My daughter once left two half-eaten grapes amongst a handful of unbitten ones…and two days later, discovering them among the beach gear, I was amazed to see them half-eaten but perfect.

So, I present to you a photo-essay of the amazing non-degrading grapes.  Using a bunch of grapes bought conservatively two weeks ago (it may be three weeks) and then stored in the fridge until beginning the experiment, I will document their degradation – or not – for your inquiring eyes.  I am keeping them in a bowl on the counter, at room temperature.  Here’s day 1:

Day 1

The Guardian today published the Clean-Tech 100 List, it’s list of the 100 best clean technology companies in Europe. Sadly, there is not one Spanish company in the list.

Carrefour is set to become the first major supermarket chain in Spain to offer customers biodegradable plastic bags for their purchases.  Wa-hey!  Note that Eroski offers re-usable shopping bags for sale. While Mercadona bucks the trend by offering nothing but plastic and even increasing the packaging on many of its products (for example:  a 250g unsalted butter packet used to come with a single plain foil wrapper.  Now it’s divided into 2 packets of 125g, held together by a cardboard wrapper.)  Oh, and their present ad campaign announcing their brand new range of plastic party ware (cups, plates etc).  100% “recyclable” they proudly boast, hoping that their ignorant customers will scrape the jamon off their plates and carry them to the overflowing municipal recycling container.

I have to admit it:  it’s tough being green.  Sometimes I think it must be so easy to bag everything up in plastic at the store, stick it in your car, drive home, unload and then throw away the bags.  Bang, done.  Instead, I walk to the shops, carry my cloth bags home, take the stairs to reduce my electricity consumption, and try my best never to add to my seemingly ever-expanding collection of plastic bags.  (Aside:  Where do they come from?  We never accept plastic bags, to the point of arguing about it, but yet the collection grows…)

I love my worm composter and am thankful to Rachel the Composter for her tips about the jute bags and vacuuming up fruit flies.  My kitchen ceiling is covered in fucking fruit flies.  I say fucking because that’s what’s going on.  At first, I couldn’t figure out what they were.  From down below  they appeared to be multi-legged wingless black wrigglers somehow making their way up to my ceiling.  That their appearance coincided with the installation of the Can-O-Worms did not escape me.  But they didn’t look like fruit flies.  So I cleaned everything.  Everything.  The cupboards, the shelves, the stored dishes.  I banished some plants to the terrace.  I vacuumed the ceiling every day (my baby daughter now imitates me by saying boom-boom-boom and waving her tiny fist in the air in an imitation of my ceiling-hoovering).  But still, every day, they came.  I took down the light fixture and they came tumbling out of the connectors.  And you know what?  They are fruit flies, but stuck together, ass-to-ass, fucking, mating, multiplying.  ARGH!

So I turn my attention to the garbage bin.  I manage to only throw away one small bag of garbage every week.  I recycle and compost and reduce and minimise as much as I can.  But the net result is that the fruit flies feast upon the garbage!  This week I came home from the market, lugging my locally-grown produce in cloth bags and recycled plastics bags, to find my garbage can crawling with fruit fly maggots. I was not a happy girl.  But what am I to do?  If I only dispose of the garbage once a week, that gives ample time for the creatures to move in and then bring their families with them.  I despair.  Their favourite food is my daughter’s used nappies.  Ewww…If that’s not enough reason to keep on with the washable nappies.  I pat myself on the back for using 75% washable nappies.  One disposable for nighttime and the morning poo-poo is acceptable, by my standards.  But man to the fruit flies love them nappies.

Shall I go on?  How about the recycling that waits, begging to be taken out, while I struggle with my hands full of buggy, baby and cloth bags?  How about the box full of used batteries, old mbile phones, used halogen light bulbs and various bits of printed circuit board that awaits delivery to the charmingly mis-named eco-parque near Terra Mitica?

Can’t I just be lazy and throw it all away, like everyone else?  Do I really need to soak my hands in vinegar-peepee water to dig out the used nappies for washing?  Do I really need to worry about all this?  Well, yes, I do.  And you do.  We all do.  Because the only way that we can tackle the problem of urban waste is to manage it ourselves, at home.  But man, I know, it’s tough being green.