Year In Review

Tomorrow is Earth Day and I'm reflecting on our behavior since the last Earth Day. I don't feel like we've done very well this year from an environmental point of view. I mean we still try to buy organic, try to avoid purchasing foods from far away places like New Zealand, never purchase beverages in plastic bottles, use the least possible water in all activities, recycle, use air conditioning and heat as little as possible, buy shade-grown coffee, have switched to energy-saving light bulbs, wash with cold water, eat mostly vegan and certainly vegetarian, and buy as much as we can from the bulk bins to reduce packaging, but we haven't added anything new this year. In fact although we do use canvas bags when we shop at Earth Fare I still need plastic grocery bags for scooping cat litter. And our composter isn't working correctly so we haven't even been doing that. Hopefully this summer Saeed can fix it or buy a new one, but shouldn't we be taking steps to do more?

The obvious answer is "Yes!" I can't ride my bike to work but we can make a garden. Our plan is to find the area in our back yard that gets the most sun for the most hours per day, and grow as much of our own produce as possible. It won't be much (remember, I have a black thumb) but it will be some amount more than we currently produce which is none.

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These aluminum bottles are easy to use instead of plastic. They do get dented but who cares? And since they're not made of plastic I don't worry about them getting warm in the car - no nasty chemicals to leach into my drinking water.

It's true. Not only does my laundry get just as clean as before switching to cold water, but my colors stay brighter. Many of my coworkers still use warm/hot water and their uniforms fade more and sooner than mine do.

Now if only we could get recycling pick-up outside of city limits so we wouldn't have to lug it to the recycling center...

We are fortunate to live in a relatively temperate part of the country. Our heat pump turned on maybe twice this winter. Granted, it was a warm winter and we also use our natural gas logs as heat, but we are willing to keep our system OFF much longer that most people and set our temps much colder in winter and hotter in summer. Plus we have kitties to warm our laps in winter! (really sucks in summer)

Every once in awhile we run out of our favorite organic, shade-grown, fair-trade coffee and have to use what we used to drink. Blukh! Chemical brew not worth drinking. I feel so much happier knowing the land, the animals, and the farmers are not suffering for my caffeine habit.

We buy as much as possible from the bulk bins at Earth Fare. Not only is there less packaging surrounding our food but it's cheaper. No more boxes of oatmeal, cans of nuts, boxes or un-resusable bags of rice and legumes.

We really love soy yogurt. It provides necessary nutrients as well as live bacterial cultures for gut health and does not come from dairy cows. One day we saw that these little containers weren't recyclable. Horrors! We almost decided to stop buying them, then noticed that the containers are made out of plants and can be thrown away. Maybe one day we can make our own and do away with the containers altogether.

We can't be happier about our vegan-ish/vegetarian diet on so many levels. Reduced suffering for animals is primary for me, but to know that the environment is better off is a super bonus. Some articles recently tried to say that organic and vegetarian growing practices were worse for the environment but these have all been discounted.

So that leaves the darn broken composter. I know what the first thing on Saeed's post-retirement to-do list is! I feel sure we'll composting again soon.

As I mentioned above we plan to add a garden to our green-wannabe lifestyle so we can grow some of our own vegetables. This is the site of our future experiment in farming. Right now it's full of periwinkle ground cover but at some point I hope to post pics of a garden in the making.

Right now this is the extent of our vegetable garden. Look how much our tomato plants have grown and look at our new babies...