I've been thinking a lot about the planet lately. It started with the Eat Local movement a few years ago, when I realized how much fossil fuel is used if I buy asparagus from Peru in the winter versus buying it in the spring, fresh from the Delta. Next Mr. Food Musings watched An Inconvenient Truth, and went from being an Al Gore hater to an environmental proselytizer. Then I stumbled across No Impact Man. (For all three of you who don't know who he is, he and his family are trying to live for a year with a net zero carbon footprint. They turned off the power a few weeks ago.)
As a result, I have been doing a lot of thinking in recent months about what I should do, what I can do, what I want to do to take better care of my planetary home. Personally, I believe that there is overwhelming evidence in favor of global warming. But even if you don't, it doesn't matter -- that doesn't let you off the hook for cleaning up the Earth and protecting our natural resources. I'm not ready to turn off the power in my apartment, and I'm certainly never giving up toilet paper, but I think that putting less trash in landfills and oceans is a good thing, so the focus of my own teeny-weeny Less Impact experiment has become to consume less, reuse more, and ultimately put far less in the trash bin.
Before I get a lot of flak for sharing the things I am doing, I'd like to be clear: I am not posting this as a congratulatory pat on the back. I'm doing it because I think a lot of people want to make earth-friendly lifestyle changes, but all they hear about is installing solar panels on their houses or buying expensive new hybrid cars. That's the kind of thing that makes anybody just wring their hands and say screw it. The truth is, there are plenty of things we can each do every day that aren't so big and horrible and frightening. Here's my list.
~ When I only buy a few things at the store, I don't take a new bag. I put what I bought in my purse, in a bag I already have on me, or I carry it to the car. Ditto things like shoe boxes and extra packaging; I figure, if the shoe store has to get rid of enough boxes, they'll get annoyed and stop making them.
~ I save plastic grocery bags and keep them in the car. Most of them are in the basket I take to the farmers' market, and I use those over and over and over again until they're filthy or they fall apart. I also use them at the supermarket. Many stores will give you a small discount for bringing your own bags. I have also been known to walk out of the store with my arms piled high with milk and cheese because I left the damn bags in the car. I figure if that happens enough times, I'm bound to learn, right?
~ I reuse plastic vegetable bags that I get with my produce at the market, as well as my ziplocs. (Ditto barely used plastic wrap and aluminum foil.) I wash them, dry them upside down in the dish drainer, and there you go. Yes, there comes a time when every good baggie has to go to plastic heaven, but I bet I get 3-4 uses out of most of the bags. Especially the big ones.
~ Whenever I get to the bottom of a jar of jam, salsa, or anything else in a glass bottle, I wash it, gently pry off the label and store it on a shelf. They're great for storing homemade salad dressing, chocolate sauce, and salsa, as well as taking those same culinary delights to a friend's house. And it means I need less store-bought tupperware.
~ I'm a stay-at-home writer, so I use my printer a lot, but mostly just for reading drafts and stuff. As long as it's got one clean side, every 8.5x11 piece of paper goes back into the printer for a second round of printing.
~ We are switching from paper towels and napkins to cloth dishtowels and cloth napkins full-time. It takes resources to wash all those things, it's true, but unless we're having guests over Mr. FM and I can reuse a napkin through a few meals.
~ We are switching to recycled paper products when we have to buy them for things like toilet paper.
~ Both of us signed up to get our names taken off the Direct Mailing Association list, and the credit card offer lists, which we expect will reduce the amount of mail coming into the apartment. We're slowly switching over to receiving statements and bills online, too.
~ I only run the dishwasher and the washing machine when they're totally full. If I can squeeze in another cup or a tee shirt, I do it.
~ I switched our dishwasher to air dry from heated dry.
~ We are switching over to earth-friendly cleaning products . (But first, we are using up what we already have.)
~ We buy things with little to no packaging when available, such as soap from the natural foods store.
~ Most of our food comes from the farmers' market these days. It means we drive less to buy it, and it drives (or flies) less to get to us.
~ We'd really like a new car (and when we get one it will be a hybrid) but for now we're sticking with our old VeeWee. It's 10 years old but it's in good shape, and using it "up" seems better than paying Toyota to churn out another hunk of metal from the production line.
~ We recycle everything we can. I started paying attention to our trash, and between the two of us we generate 1 large bag and 1 small bag of trash a week. Most of our stuff goes into recycling, probably to the tune of 4 small bags a week. I think that's pretty darn good. So now my goal is to reduce the number of recycling bags that go downstairs by reusing more stuff.
~ I reuse anything I can. Old shirts have become cleaning rags, leftover ice from a glass of water goes into the plants, rubber bands from the asparagus go into my desk drawer.
~ We're switching over to those funny-looking swirly light bulbs , the ones that last w-a-a-a-a-y longer.
~ We unplugged all our phone chargers, except when we're using them. Ditto hair dryers, straightening irons, electric toothbrushes, etc.
As you can see, none of this is terribly painful. Does anybody have any other suggestions? If so, please leave them in the comments .
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