One of my friends is a vegan, and she said to me the other day (about a coworker), “How can he call himself an environmentalist when he’s not a vegan?” I thought, but didn’t say, “How can people who have children call themselves environmentalists?” It was a sarcastic thought; that is, I don’t actually believe it. But just a reminder that there are many ways for human beings to contribute to reducing the use of energy and natural resources.
It might be vegan, @creekland. Dairy cattle are tough on the lands and underground water supplies.
Leaf blowers drive me nuts, too. Along with using the hose to clean off sidewalks and driveways. I once collected rainwater drainoff from the downspout to water plants and do cleanup. I’d love the sort with a big barrel and hose, but can’t justify the costs (and again, the environmental impact in mfg and shipping.)
In my wildest dreams, I’d really hunker down, live off the land, store potatoes for winter and use minimal energy. I keep reading up on self made passive solar. Still too complicated for me. So for now, I settle for honeycomb shades.
Just replacing the drryer, our energy bill dropped a lot. Upgraded window AC and it dropped. My house is rated lower energy use in the elec co neighborhood reports. Beats me, since I do run the AC, a space heater, etc. Maybe having enough clothing that we don’t run the washer that often is a help. Ijut converted to gas heat and waiting to see how that helps.
I compost, reduce, reuse. Our weekly garbage is about 8 gallons if that for family of 1.5. I filter water to drink not buy bottled water. My neighbor who puts out 3 30 gallon cans of garbage for a family of 2 touts how environmentally conscientious they are.
I am so happy to see people making changes. My husband and I started doing this 20+ years ago. It was lonely and people thought we were weird.
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We use a car share instead of owning a car. Mostly, we bus, walk, and bike places.
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We are vegetarian and reduce waste by meal planning. Leftovers are used for lunches or subsequent meals. Vegetable scraps are composted. I don’t think people have to be vegetarians but being strategic about what meat you eat and how often is good.
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We avoid single use and disposable items when possible. We have reusable bags for shopping, reusable containers for lunches, insulated travel mugs, cloth napkins and cleaning cloths.
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We have tried to make our home more energy efficient with new doors and windows, energy and water efficient appliances as they need replacing, LED lighting. We have a programable thermostat, set our water heater to a lower setting, and have a wind energy offset for our electricity.
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We try to avoid over consumption. We have capsule wardrobes, buy used items whenever available, repair instead of automatically replacing. For recreation, we often rent equipment rather than buying. When we do buy we either buy used or buy quality products we can use for a long time or resale.
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We try to buy items made from recycled materials to support a market for such items.
There is still stuff we are working on like packaging. There is so much packaging. And maintaining relationships with far flung family without making too many plane trips.
@lookingforward I don’t care to go entirely vegan. My science nature tells me humans as a species are omnivores for a reason. I accept that. One doesn’t need meat at every - or even most - meals though and it doesn’t have to be the largest part of a meal either. We opt for venison from our farm over beef. We feed them - they feed us! Same with our chickens as long as I can keep the predators away from them (just lost 7 a couple weeks ago…).
My youngest son - super green lad that he is - is planning on living essentially as much off the land as he can - tiny house, permaculture farming, and all. He has to learn a little bit. He’s the reason we lost 7 chickens… nature isn’t pretty. We close our birds in at night for a reason! He’s replacing 3 for us today. We might add more in the spring. Time will tell.
We are almost always the “most efficient house in our neighborhood” according to our energy provider. Part of that is only having 2 or 3 people living here. The other part is how little we actually use even when here. We don’t have natural gas either. We have a pipeline that crosses our farm, but no service to us. Everything we have is electric except oil heat.
Well, I’ve been shopping for a vehicle. It will be either electric or hydrid. We have photovoltaic and solar on our roof and try to keep our carbon footprint small. It is a work in progress. Probably won’t become vegan and too late to be childless. We use very little energy and don’t have gas. The folks who installed our systems were surprised by how little we use.
Will talk with the electrician about wiring our house for electric or hybrid vehicle.
@MadcityParent My youngest (recent college grad) had friends over last week. He spent a bit of time explaining our extensive system of what happens to garbage - all the recycling/reusing/composting/chicken feed details and more. They couldn’t believe how much was involved. We throw away very, very little. I wish we could still recycle glass… but for the moment, he’s using all of those to store his varieties of seeds in (seeds he’s saved from previous plants).
Our negative is travel. We love traveling. We’re not resort people though (usually). We love hiking and seeing nature in various places - far preferring that to cities. Our planet is gorgeous. Hopefully we can keep it that way.
Creekland’s post reminded me that we can track our energy usage and water usage to see our progress. Feedback that our efforts are actually doing something helps to keep at it.
“I’m going to try to figure out how to reduce the junk mail coming in my door.”
Please pass along any info. I need to focus on this in 2019.
“There are exceptions for this with OLD appliances and cars (newer ones are better for the environment).”
Although they may be more energy/fuel efficient, one needs to factor in the environmental costs of making them in the first place in terms of energy/resources/transportation to the end user.
California has banned straws at certain restaurants. We have strict smog standards. But the government wont come down hard on the electric companies that have caused so many fires. The amount of pollutants put into the air by these fires dwarfs other pollution. Crazy numbskulls and idiots. I am still fuming and livid. O guess the straw companies dont have the clout of PG&E.
LED light bulbs are now inexpensive enough that they can now be used to replace burned out bulbs (or immediate replacement of incandescent bulbs that get significant use). You could also cascade bulbs by installing LED bulbs in your most frequently used fixtures, then moving any still-working CFLs that they replaced to replace incandescent bulbs in less frequently used fixtures. Your electric bill may be pleasantly lower.
Use programmable thermostats to avoid using heat (and AC) in the house when not needed. Consider what range of temperatures inside the house are acceptable to you. Also consider what temperature you really need the water heater to be at. Your heating bill may be pleasantly lower.
If you live in a place where the tap water is safe to drink, buying bottled water is wasteful of money and environmental impact.
In terms of food choices, meat from ruminants (beef and lamb) has much greater environmental impact than other meats, while vegetarian foods tend to have the lowest.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/your-kitchen-and-the-planet-the-impact-of-our-food-on-the-environment
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-reveals-foods-markedly-environmental-impacts.html
When we eat beef it is local grass fed beef.
My husband has a 3 mile commute and uses a plug in hybrid. It was a deliberate choice to not have a major commute.
Like @doschicos said, the cost of manufacturing items and transporting it to the consumer is an often forgotten factor in figuring out whether or not a person is making an environmentally meaningful choice. How much energy does it take to create a solar panel? What is the distance it has to be transported? Once creation is taken into account it can take years before you are net even. It isn’t solely about what your electric meter reads.
Same thing with new construction of an eco home vs updating an older home.
If I can think of the term for this concept I will pop back in later. We take this into account when making large purchases like the plug in hybrid, replacement windows, etc.
Probably the biggest factors in how good your rooftop solar panels are environmentally have to do with how much sun they get and what your grid electricity is generated from. If your grid electricity mainly comes from fossil fuels (particularly coal or oil, though natural gas has other issues even though it makes less CO2 when burned), your rooftop solar is more beneficial than if your grid electricity already mainly comes from things like utility-scale solar, wind, hydroelectric, or nuclear.
Even if it is hydroelectric, there are issues and environmental impact associated with it.
Heck, even creating the panels has environmental impact, but we are glad to have them. We feed our surplus back to the grid so less fuel is needed to produce electricity for our island.
The single biggest way you can personally reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is not to only have two kids, but to have zero kids. If your kids are grown, tell your kids you want zero grandkids. The second is to take public transit or drive an electric car and never fly. Almost everything else is noise in comparison to the impact of those two decisions.
One additional thought… I tell my kids at school all the time that they might not be able to or willing to change everything to be more beneficial to the planet, but everybody ought to be able to do something. Doing something is a good step. When that becomes routine they might be able to do something else that catches their eye.
I also get a fair number of kids (and some adults) who don’t believe that humans affect climate change. “So what?” I tell them, “Making changes for our planet may or may not make that sort of difference, but making changes will give us cleaner water, air, and food at the very least. Less cancer. Better views of the skyline. Nicer life. Are you telling me you don’t want that?” It helps them think it through - and make changes.
FWIW, I definitely believe what humans do makes a difference in climate change, but some battles can be lost if that’s the only “reason.” I’d rather win the war than any particular battle.
If everybody has zero kids who gets to enjoy the environment :))
I want grandkids. I see no purpose in a planet with no humans. Humans aren’t the enemy of our planet. We just need to coexist and that’s certainly possible. Right now too many humans are destroying the planet. Fewer kids is fine. No kids is pointless. (Talking overall - not any one individual who chooses not to have kids.)
@TatinG Re the utilities and responsibilities for fires. I haven’t followed it too much recently but I thought that at some stage there was a law passed saying they were entirely responsible if it was determined their equipment caused the fire, which seems to make sense. At some stage though, I thought I read the issue was the utilities would go bankrupt as the costs were too high so they reversed the law. Is that correct?
If so, I guess I see the point. If the utilities are 100% on the hook then presumably, no one in their right mind would loan them funds so they could not get loans, etc. Is there more to this or a better solution? On the one hand, they should pay if responsible but California obviously needs utilities to be able to get loans so what is the solution?