reading, reading, reading! My eyes are burning from all the hours
logged at the laptop. What is the cause of all this excitement?
No-Impact Man! I happened upon a New York Times article about someone
doing a year without toilet paper, and found the blog of a man who is
doing a one-year experiment to reduce his environmental impact for
the year to zero. He is a normal person, living in New York City, who
is learning as he goes and swearing off cars, taxis, buses, subways,
garbage of all kind, new purchases, electricity, running water, etc, etc.
Of course, he links to a whole bunch of related blogs, which I have
been devouring. One woman in Vancouver has made a commitment to
acquire no new plastic in 2007. Another woman in Ontario is adopting
one new "green" product or habit every day for a year. A couple in
Vancouver wrote a book called the 100-Mile Diet, describing their
one-year experiment with eating locally. Personally, I don't think
that would be all that difficult. I mean, in Vancouver, you're right
beside the ocean, and the Okanagan valley. How hard could it be? I
just finished doing a unit study on the Inuit with my daughter. Now
THAT was difficult. They ate a lot of meat, and they ate a lot of it
raw because they had no fuel to cook it with. Mind-boggling.
Actually, the unit study on native culture and the environmental
stuff I'm reading are firmly linked in my brain. Through most of
history, in most places, people had to use whatever was around them
to live. If you lived near water, you fished, and fishing and water
and boats were important to your culture. If you lived on the plains,
following the buffalo or the caribou was really central to your culture.
I am trying really hard to figure out what my culture is, and what my
values are, and to create a community of some kind, so that my kids
can have those things (community, values, and culture). Living as
part of nature and part of a community and in harmony with my values
are essential to raising my kids.
I used to live with a few really environmentally-minded roommates,
and I was fairly well-trained in low-impact living. I never did go
vegetarian, and I never did give up my car, but I am at least AWARE
of most of my transgressions. I have gotten lazy in recent years, and
I've decided it's time to clean up my act.
My first major change was to begin composting. It really isn't that
difficult at all. You just toss your kitchen scraps into a pile in
your backyard. Cover it with some dry grass or leaves. Ignore it for
a couple of months or years, as needed. Done. It can be way more
scientific if you want it to, but that seems to be the simple version.
My next goal is to get a clothesline. We run our dryer A LOT. My son
has been wetting the bed every night lately, and I have been washing
and drying his comforter every single day. I REALLY need a
clothesline. I am also going to get my husband to shut our furnace
fan off for the summer. The fan runs 24 hours a day, year-round,
circulating the air in the house. When it's cold out, it blows hot
air, of course, but the rest of the time, it just blows air. I wonder
how much money we will save if the fan only blows when the furnace is
actually on.
From what I hear, environmental living can be quite frugal. We spend
about $350 a month on water, electricity, and natural gas. How much
could we reduce that bill? If I cut back from 5 loads of laundry a
week down to 3, and use a clothesline, and shut off the furnace fan,
is that going to save us money? I will keep you posted!
What I am REALLY concerned about is how to reduce the amount of
garbage we create, especially plastic. Most of it has to do with the
kids. It is unbelievable how much crap comes into the house related
to them. Dollar store items, loot bags from birthday parties, happy
meal toys at the fast food restaurant. Every time I turn around,
someone is handing us a dooddad or a gizmo for the kids. Even the
groceries are bad: the yogourt comes in little tubes, the drinks come
in little boxes, the granola bars are individually wrapped.
I guess I can't change everything all at once, but now that I have
been reminded, it is time to do BETTER.
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