Great post, Endlessness. I'll add the following:
Buy products that will last you forever
My biggest gripe is with non-stick frying pans etc. Forget non-stick, learn to cook with stainless steel instead. It's easy. Non-stick pans need throwing away every year. Also, if they get too hot they release poisonous gas that I heard would actually kill a pet parrot if you kept it in the same room while your non-stick overheated! It's not too good for you either. Non-stick should not be used over 210 degrees in an oven. Use stainless steel on your hob, and pyrex dishes in your oven.
Avoid badly made plastic junk. It's an unsustainable false economy. Think of plastic as a finite resource (most plastic comes from oil) that should be reserved for more important stuff like medical equipment, and buy things made with as much alternative material as possible. Better to not buy in the first place than have to recycle. It's also full of chemicals. NEVER buy PVC, it's horribly polluting to manufacture.
Become an ethical consumer
And don't make nasty people rich by giving them your business. Here's a good site:
Ethical Consumer
Buy as little as possible!
I try to own as little as possible. 'Things' bog you down, as well as waste your money and clutter your home. Question the consumerist neo-tradition of giving presents. My family don't do presents anymore and I can tell you Xmas is so much nicer. What presents you do buy, make them as sustainable as possible, or even better something the person actually says they want!
Don't worry about how this'll slow our economy down or whatever. Consumerist capitalism is a lie that has to end sooner or later. We should move further into a service economy instead, so if you're worried about slowing the economy spend your money on massages etc instead!
Use ecologically friendly household chemicals
Ecover is a good brand, but even better is to make your own using vinegar etc. Old fashioned cleaning remedies from before the consumerist bombshell still work!
Travel more sustainably
I'm not saying you have to stop going on holiday, but be mindful of how polluting air travel is. It's better to go abroad less often and for longer. Try to limit long haul flights as much as possible, but you should probably still go see the world, because it broadens the mind and that is socially a very good thing. I guess the most efficient and therefore most sustainable way to do it would be all in one round the world trip, using non-air travel as much as possible! I missed the chance to do this when I was younger, so every few years I just go away for a month to one continent and travel fast through several neighbouring countries by land and sea while I'm there. The rest of the time, I holiday in my own country, sometimes the neighbouring ones.
Travel is really hard to give up, I wish there was a greener way to fly. Definitely pay extra for the carbon offsetting option when you do.
Use 100% renewable energy
If you're not settled enough to kit out your house with your own wind turbine, buy from a wind farm energy supplier such as Ecotricity (they use their profits to build more wind farms). Wind is better and cheaper than photovoltaic solar panels (if you have the wind that is). Solar panels are another option but higher tech so more harmful to manufacture- always go for the simplest possible option.
Superinsulate
IF you own your own home, insulate it as much as possible. Of course, a superinsulated passive solar house is best of all, if you're starting from scratch, then you won't need any heating whatsoever. 'Massive and tight' is the best strategy- the mass stores heat and regulates temperature, and the airtightness reduces heat loss. You can then look into getting a heat pump etc.
Collect rainwater
Usually from your roof, you can use this to water plants, flush toilets, or even for all your water needs if you filter it through a simple homemade filter (I forget exactly what but it involves sand and maybe some other natural inorganic things).
I made a booklist a while ago for this kind of thing but I have no idea where the thread is, I'm afraid.
Convert diesel vehicles to run on veg oil
It costs £500 to do so, or if you're handy you can do it yourself, you just need to remove all the rubber bits from the engine or something I'm told. Then, you can clean used cooking oil e.g. from chip shops after filtering it with something like a centrifuge. Top up your supply with cheap veg oil in bulk if you can't get enough recycled stuff.
This is a stopgap really (until they give us our electric cars!) because some say we need to grow food on land rather than fuel, but anything's better than using petrol or diesel in my opinion. The biofuel argument is a toughie... I mean we already have more than enough food to go round, it's just that some people don't like sharing. And if you're one of those ones who says we should stop eating meat to free up land, well fish don't grow on land, do they? And chickens and pigs can be reared in forests. In the old days some utopian communities such as the Owenites absteined from alcohol because it took up too much land to produce it, now there's an idea I'm open to, but I doubt many others would be!
Finally, if you're hardcore...
Use a composting toilet
If you're building a new home, then you won't have to flush at all. The modern ones don't smell at all.
Treat your own sewage
Wastewater can go into a soakaway in your garden (and this has the added benefit of encouraging you to use green househod products). There are cool eco-sewage options, using nature and sunlight to clean your sewage.
endlessness said:
- Organic is nice, but not always better
It feels good eating food that is produced organically and I certainly like to do so as much as possible and coherent, but it may be counter-productive and more damaging to the earth in some cases. An organic fruit that is transported half-way across the globe may have a greater impact to earth than a locally produced non-organic fruit.
Where I live, the organic fruits come from no further away than the inorganic ones, so personally I see this particular point as irrelevent. I don't like how inorganic farming pollutes the environment with runoff into rivers etc, and how it kills so many bugs and often indiscriminately. People who like inorganic farming always argue that it's more efficient so can feed more people in future... well, maybe it's time we started talking about limiting how many babies we have instead? We're going to have to do that at some point anyway, it may as well be sooner rather than later. I feel like it's a human right for me to not have to eat food with up to 1/17th of the trace vitamins and minerals in it, things that we still have no idea what role they may play in our health. I agree it's ridiculous how supermarkets like to torture hippies by wrapping up organic food in packaging... but you can get it from one of those box schemes instead if you have this problem, or even better...
Grow your own food
Turn your garden, even your windowsills, into a farm.
Scatter seeds
Turn your entire country into a permaculture farm by scattering seeds for edible plants in hedgerows, patches of land etc as you walk along!
endlessness said:
Remember, every food rest thrown in the normal garbage is not only not helping but its greatly increasing the ecological impact (instead of going sustainably back to the earth, it will feed methane-releasing bacteria that increase global warming)!
Can you explain this bit please? I don't disagree with your doing so at all, I just never understand how it makes a difference. Why wouldn't it go back to the earth? It's dumped in a big hole in the ground to rot, won't it become earth there too? Many dumps have methane extractors that produce energy from the rotting waste, although this may not happen in all countries.
endlessness said:
-Avoid flushing the toilet every time you pee
Endless liters of water go down the drain wasted, to take away a little bit of piss away. Better if possible to pee on nature/ground if you can, or shower and clean it, or to flush it down after a couple of pees only.
My friend moved in with me and never flushed the loo. Now we have to clean the toilet a lot more, because piss coloured minerals form in it. And it smells. I forbade her doing it in the end, this one is just too much for me, sorry! Definitely change your flush handle for a 'cable dual flush' (they're really cheap), which you can press for small or large discharge and they use less water but in a more powerful sudden deluge that actually flushes better.
endlessness said:
If you are getting or replacing a dishwashing machine, check what is its water consumption efficiency.
Dishwashers can actually use less water than handwashing. They do use energy but that's ok if it's from renewables, and you can use Ecover tablets and rinseaid. I love my dishwasher, it's one of my most important possessions!
There is a spectrum between spaceman and caveman, and ultimately however you choose to spend your carbon, it's fine as long as you're not using more than your fair share. Find a carbon footprint calculator online if you want to see how you're doing (sorry I forgot where it is). Being Green is a joy, and it's cheaper living too, so don't let the guilt-tripping preachers bring you down or put you off (with their throwaway marketing merchandise and their endless junk mail for their cause). Guilt is not Green. Be happy, because there's no point in sustainability otherwise, what would there then be to sustain?
