Green Options

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While out for my monthly moms’ night out last week, I was disturbed by my own request for more salad dressing. With 1/3 of my lettuce remaining, I could have easily gone without. Before I thought better of it though, my extra dollop arrived in a plastic ramekin on a side plate with a paper doily for pretty presentation. Instead of enjoying the rest of my salad, I felt guilty knowing what Mother Earth had gone through to satisfy my need for a mere ounce of strawberry vinaigrette.

Being green is more difficult when you’re on the go, isn’t it? As my mom used to say, one of the hardest things in life is learning to just say no. Here are some of my new no’s for on the go:

Say no to receipts for things I would never take back

I use debit for almost everything and my purchases show up on my electronic bank statement. I’m not going to take back gas, or my daughter’s haircut, or the new crown on my dead tooth, so why do I need a receipt?

Say no to plastic bags for produce

I need five apples, four pears, and a bunch of bananas. Do I need three plastic bags as well? No. The clerk may get annoyed, and she will have to touch my fruit, but so did the teenager who stocked it and I’m planning on washing it well.

How much good comes from one person’s hypervigilant paper recycling effort?

I’ve been asking myself variations of this question lately, mainly while at my day job as I see basically all colleagues around me tossing paper into the trash, rather than the recycle bin.

I know it’s tough to look in the mirror and think that you, just one individual on a planet of billions, can do much that makes a difference. So I’ve been pondering what the value is — or is not — to my vigilance in recycling.

Can I make a difference? Is my effort worth anything to the planet, especially in the face of so many non-believers who assume apathy is the only medicine?

I’ve looked for the numbers to apply some math-based logic to these questions.

With a constant need to look out for the planets ecosystems, it is always saddening to see that some governments simply are not. So when I saw the news that, over the past 12 months, deforestation in the Amazon rain forest had jumped 69%, I was literally shocked.

According to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon, since August 2007 a total of 8,147 square kilometers (3,145 square miles) was destroyed within the Amazon. This is the first such increase in 3 years, and saw a 69% jump over the 4,820 square kilometers (1,861 square miles) felled in the previous 12 months.

Whoever said that the environment doesn’t involve security? And here I’m talking about real politick, those issues that involve honest to gosh boots on the ground. Environmental scarcity or environmental disasters are quite capable of involving national security issues.

30-90 percent of bee colonies have been dying over the past two years.   Europeans are banning the pesticide clothianidin to protect their bee populations from “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), yet the FDA, which approved the pesticide in 2003, refuses to release public documents of studies conducted by clothianidin’s maker Bayer CropScience on the chemical’s impact on bees and the environment.  Last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit [...]

The Green School opens its doors Sept. 1, 2008 to preschool through eighth-grade students. According to the Green School’s post at Ode Magazine’s Web site, the school’s faculty and student body come from 16 countries. The school aims to united Western and Indonesian students and, presumably, viewpoints. If interested in more information, Meliana Salim is the person to contact (Marketing & Public Relations Manager: meliana@greenschool.org.

Hah! Another completely misleading title from me. I refuse to eat this because it’s baby food and, frankly, my kids are bigger and I’ve done my time. If you’ve got a baby though, you’ve got to get some of this goo food for him/her.

My neighbor has an infant who is just adding solids (squishy ones) to her diet. Like many other really great parents my neighbor wants to feed her daughter good organic foods. She loves the idea of making it herself and freezing it all into little cubes a la Martha Stewart.

But she’s too farking tired.

In any event, the UPS guy came and brought her this.

According to an old adage, necessity is the mother of invention; it forces people to find alternative ways and tools. In Zimbabwe today, devising skills to survive is the norm of daily living.

As a means to cope with erratic electricity power cuts which are undoubtedly a defining characteristic of the ongoing socio-economic crisis in Zimbabwe, many Zimbabweans living in urban areas have resorted to using the tsotso stove because of its low labour and energy saving characteristics.

Traditionally, rural as well as low-income households have always depended on fuelwood which usually chews up loads of firewood, thereby endangering the environment.

One benefit of my children attending a one room school house is we don’t get the ubiquitous back to school list of school supplies.  There’s no place to shop for these supplies in our little town of 200, and most families could not afford the extensive list common to suburban schools.  No matter where they live, one thing all children need for school is pencils, but what is the most eco-friendly option for these graphite writing utensils?

Pencils are made from wood, and although it is hard to imagine forests are clearcut for the little bit of wood in a pencil, they are.  Many pencil manufacturers buy their wood from Sierra Pacific Industries, which is notorious for irresponsible logging practices, such as clearcutting and use of herbicides on plantations.  Forturnately, Forest Ethics has rated pencil manufacturers on the amount of pre- and post-consumer recycled content in their products, whether they are made Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified lumber, and whether the lumber is purchased from Sierra Pacific Industries.  According to Josh Buswell-Charkow of Forest Ethics:

Parents don’t want their children using pencils which degrade California’s landscape, drinking water, or species, and the top companies on our report card show that there’s a better way. Those big companies that earned ‘F’s, however, are like the students in the back of the class with pencils in their ears and their heads in the clouds while the rest of the class leaves them behind.

I know I do A LOT of product reviews. I confess, I love to shop and consider myself to be a somewhat of a self anointed maven. I love trying new things out and writing about it.

Perfect for blogging but not so great for the environment. So I have come to a decision to instead of throwing things out; I will reuse them in hopes that my family will make less impact than the Earth. I wish I could say that I live off the grid and grow my own vegetables and all that; maybe one day I will get there. For now we rent, we use electricity from coal generated power company (When asked about alternative resources, the sales associate had no answer for me). We do things for the Environment, but I feel not enough. Well here’s a way you can do something for the environment free… it doesn’t cost nada, zip, nothing. Reuse what you have and use until it’s standing on its last leg. Take for example the Ikea desk that my significant other had since his single days. I hate that desk. I hate its MDF cheapness and how it’s coming apart since the move. It’s really standing on its last leg. I want to throw it away (or donate to Salvation Army) and get a brand new desk. I saw one on Pottery Barn catalog that’s SO me. However, I decided to put some pretty wall paper over the ikea one and call it a day. It’s a waste to throw it out and anytime, you purchase something new. More renewable resources are needed to build another one. Just remember that.

I am getting quite creative with uses of things. Another example are the tab curtains we had that are SO outdated and didn’t fit the windows to our new place. As someone who puts considerable value in aesthetics and design; the curtains were blight to my stylish sensibilities. However, with a curtain rod and modern textile, I repurposed the curtains to be a shade for the window. I didn’t have to go out and buy a new curtain or shade. I just used the one I have to create something that worked for the new place. It saved the curtains to going to the landfill (or the Salvation Army, my solution for unwanted things) and I saved money in the process.