Collectively, small lifestyle changes can make a huge impact on the environment–and your life. Looking for happiness and health? What’s good for the environment is also, it turns out, great for you. Here’s a collection of tips from the No Impact community.
Note: I believe that there should be a new category – one of Building Community!
Become part of your community. Hold a street BBQ / play date in the park.
Get involved with a community garden – grow your own food and help others do that too.
Mine the garbage! When it’s after Halloween we raid the grocery stores for free pumpkins to smash in our garden – and raid the garage put on for more pumpkins and straw bales for the community garden. Typically at the farmers market we’ll haul away a bike-wagon load of compost for the garden – saving it from the garbage.
Share tasks. When it’s pumpkin season we grab pumpkins for others. When we go to the local organic mill we pick up sacks of grains, flour and flakes for friends. Some of them pick up eggs from farms for others. We have CSA’s (Community Shared Agriculture) groups which do this for the people who have signed up for food boxes.
We don’t have a powered lawn mower. The once or twice a year we use one (as opposed to our push mower) we just borrow one from a neighbour. If you’ve got paint or caulking – then offer to fix up the neighbours door or window frames …
We had a co-housing group and one of the best things was shared suppers once a week. Now, ever few weeks, a few families share a pot-luck supper. In the case of the co-housing meetings – those shared meals have resulted in fences being taken down between properties.
We all have neighbours – it’s time to reconnect with them – because thru thick and thin, they will be our neighbours and we can all live more healthfully and lightly by sharing and connecting.
This post was submitted by Eric.
We wait and combine trips, and only go town when we really need to.
We buy in bulk, and keep a lot of food in the deep freeze.
In our case we can run a deep freeze for a long time for what one trip to town cost us.
We have switched our cattle operation to grass fed and are working to minimize the hauling of big bales of hay by moving the cows to the hay, not the hay to the cows (energy intensive).
Each step is a huge one for husband because he was raised with traditional farming methods. We are fencing cattle away from ponds and woods to prevent erosion and destruction of wildlife habitat.
We are building wildlife habitats, and are working with Missouri Ag. Dept. on a program to restore habitat and prevent soil erosion.
This post was submitted by Sharon .
I purchase linen dresses from thrift shops, add interfacing, and make the linen into tote bags and handbags.
This saves the linen from the rag pile and makes great bags!
This post was submitted by Sharon .
Three years ago I purchased a clothing rack for my laundry room. Instead of using the dryer for 45 minutes per load, I just toss the clothes in the dryer for 5 minutes maximum. The warm clothing is hung up totally wet, yet dries wrinkle free from the few minutes in the dryer. Any item where wrinkles don’t matter are hung up to dry.
Pants and shirts actually have fewer wrinkles with this method than with the 45 minute tumble.
Sheets, towels, blankets, etc. are not even put in the dryer. We mounted pull out drying racks for towels, etc., and hangs sheets over the 2nd story banister.
Our kilowatt hours have been cut by 50% in just 3 years, from about 1200 per month to 600 or less. Saves carbon, saves money. Lots of money.
I never understood the logic of drying a towel in the dryer. The whole ideal behind a towel is to get it wet.
Sharon
This post was submitted by Sharon .
I walk or cycle to destinations within 10km. For weekly shopping, we take a shopping cart on the train. For longer trips, we take public transport where possible, or car pool otherwise. Got rid of the car some time ago. The side benefits are I save $1300/year on registration and insurance, plus even more on fuel and maintenance. I work my transport needs with my physical exercise program, and save time at the gym.
I’m slowly embarking on a program of replacing servers (business and hobby related) and other machines which run for long hours with more efficient embedded PCs, which can reduce energy consumption by 70-90%.
Meetings for committees and Boards of interest groups I am a part of are being increasingly conducted online, which reduces the need to travel. In some cases, this is the only practical option anyway.
Dress to suit the weather. In winter, this means using less heating and putting on more clothes, and even covering up with a blanket. In summer, exactly the opposite. As we are naturists, clothing often reduces to zero in the hotter months (when at home and there’s no visitors), which in turn reduces the amount of laundry. We had no problems handling the Jan-Feb 2009 heatwave, where outside temperatures exceeded 45C (113F) and indoor temperatures approached 40C (104F), with nothing more than a fan and tap water to help the body’s natural cooling system. There are two A/Cs here (came with the house), one has never been used, and the other only once or twice, a long time ago. Other bonuses are bare feet avoids fungal infections such as tinea, and skin rashes (particularly in the groin) tend to disappear, as the whole body gets a chance to air.
Drink tap water. It’s good for you, it’s cheap and it’s the best for the planet.
This post was submitted by Tony.