Kids and families. Children’s corner at 18th Avenue. Kids’ parade at 11 am. Meet at 15th Avenue to join the parade.

Shopping. Over 150 vendors lining Alberta Street between NE 10th and 13th Avenues, 11 am to 7 pm.

Dancing & Music. Three stages at NE 30th, 21st and 11th Avenues

Celebrating! In the beer garden at NE 11th where you can sample fine local brews.

At The One Stop Sustainability Shop – free lavender! Buy a hanky, add delicious smelling lavender, tie with raffia, put in a special drawer. When the lavender smell is gone, shake the lavender into your garden, wash the hanky and use. Easy and sustainable!

Come join us at the One Stop Sustainability Shop (1468 NE Alberta Street) on Wednesday, June 29 from 7-8:30pm to celebrate the debut of our first full size Yellow Shelf. The Yellow Shelf Project is plastic-free and zero waste made easy!  Everything on the shelf is sold in bulk or in returnable containers that will be reused by our local producers.  Drop by to say hi—snacks will be provided! We will also be demonstrating how to make your own facial kits for yourself, gifts or an activity to do with friends.  The workshop is free, but you can take a kit home for just the cost of the supplies.  If you are interested in the facial kit workshop, please RSVP by Tuesday to su-wen[at]createplenty.org. Space for the workshop is limited to 15.

My old truck survived yet another trip down to Eugene to pick up large dog beds made sustainably by St. Vincent de Paul. Besides being a great price, $60 for a large dog bed, the dog beds are a good template for sustainable products. The beds are made from recycled mattresses — you know, the kind that no one knows what to do with – can’t sell them, Goodwill doesn’t want them, too good to throw away – and what a terrible addition to a landfill, anyway. SVDP (St. Vincent de Paul) has a big machine which takes the mattress apart. The wood slats are recycled as well as the metal springs. The good covers are resewn to make dog (or cat) beds. Mattress covers that are not in good shape are bundled up and shipped to California to be used under carpets as carpet padding. Foam from the mattress is used to shape the dog bed; then new cotton batting which is excess material from a company that would normally landfill it is used to pad the dog bed. An outer cover is sewn from upholstry fabric obtained from an RV company that went bankrupt. Voila! A lovely sustainable, usable, affordable dog bed is made. Approximately 12 people who would otherwise not have jobs are employed at SVDP’s warehouse, as well as six seamstresses who make the dog bed covers.

St. Vincent de Paul in Eugene saves approximately 2,000 mattresses from the landfill per month. Their facility in California saves about 10,000 mattresses from being landfilled per month. That’s a lot of mattresses kept out of landfills! And a lot of happy dogs! Cats, too! Have a look at Kiki cat, also known as Kiki Pest, my cat, lounging on her bed on my porch.      

INDOW WINDOWS WINS AWARD

Indow Window inserts which help keep older homes warmer in winter, cooler in summer and always quieter, while preserving the integrity of old windows, was named the Innovative Product of the Year by the  Sustainable Business Magazine. Indow Windows which was launched as a business in December of 2010, has completed over 100 successful installations in the Portland area. Besides helping with thermal regulation, sound is a major reason to install the inserts during the summer months. 

The One Stop Sustainability Shop is an authorized dealer of Indow Window inserts. We have a demonstration window insert in our shop so customers can see how this new technology works. Come into our shop, check out the demonstration window and see if this cutting edge technology would make your home more comfortable. If you’re interested in finding out how much the inserts would cost, just e-mail us the dimensions of the windows you want inserts for and we’ll send you back an estimate. Indow Windows are a product of local ingenuity and made here in Portland! Support your local economy!

The Kenton Street Fair will be held Sunday, May 22, 2011, 11am to 7pm in the heart of the downtown Kenton commercial district on N. Denver Avenue between N. Schofield & N. Willis.

One year after the BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, the company is posting first-quarter profits of almost $5.5 billion. The other four big oil companies, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Shell had amazingly massive profits in the 1st quarter of 2011 of $26.8 billion due to high oil prices – a 50% increase over last year. Exxon alone experienced a 70% increase in 1st quarter profits over 2010, earning 10.7 billion. Mind you, this is only one quarter of the year — not for the whole year!!! Crude oil has jumped in price from $85 a barrel in January to $112 at present, increasing the price of gasoline 22%. Check out this link for all the figures: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/04/pump_pain.html

President Obama’s 2011 budget proposes to eliminate nine different tax expenditures that primarily benefit oil and gas companies. Cutting these special tax deductions, preferences and credits would save the US government about $45 billion over the next ten years.  Check out this page:  http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/oil_company_subsidies.html

However, it looks like it’s going to be tax breaks and subsidies as usual. Yesterday, 5/17, Republicans in the Senate blocked an attempt to repeal  tax subsidies for the five oil companies mentioned above which given their stupendous profits in the first three months of 2011 did not need any subsidies. Although the majority of the Senate voted to end the tax breaks and special deals to oil companies 52-48, the procedural motion needed 60 votes to pass. How could any senator have voted to extend tax breaks to oil companies which obviously need not need them? Well, the 48 senators who sided with big oil received over $24 million dollars in contributions from the exact same oil companies, while the 52 who voted to end the subsidies  received an average of $5.4 million in contributions. See the article from the Daily Grist: http://www.grist.org/oil/2011-05-17-senate-republicans-filibuster-to-protect-oil-industry-subsidies

What can you do? COMPLAIN to your elected officials and even to ones you didn’t elect! Get in touch with the US Senate and let them know how you feel: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=OR