First I wanted to make a comment about your film which I just saw. You didn’t go into your water usage which I think is actually more in danger than our energy or other green issues. You only mentioned your non-use of toilet paper, but you didn’t go into how much additional water you ended up using to clean yourselves, and doing laundry in the tub, etc. I just wished you had taken the entire sustainable lifestyle seriously and addressed those issues.
The other concern I had was that you failed to address the world’s biggest problem and you had a prime opportunity. The problem of overpopulation. Overpopulation is directly leading to all the environmental concerns that we have, from global warming, to air quality, water quality, depletion of energy and resources, etc. Even with China’s 1 child only policy they still have a net increase in population every year, and that does not include immigration, but is due instead to increased health and longevity.
Anyways, other than that I loved the experiment and I am impressed you were able to do all of those things. My family is attempting a lot of those but a bit more gradually.
We no longer eat any red meat, and we are reducing our poultry consumption as well with 1 to 2 vegetarian days a week, while I learn how to cook meals that will satisfy my families intense desire for meat.
We shop as locally as we can. I wish I had a better sense of what foods are in season when. Now days we have so little connection with the earth that it’s hard to know. The grocery store is stocked with blueberries all year round for example. We go to the farmer’s market frequently. We eat organic as much as possible (as much as we can afford).
I bicycle to work a few times a month at least (a 40 mile round trip) and am increasing that as well. My wife bikes our 4 year old around the city almost everywhere.
We have put in renovations and improvements, from windows to low gallon toilets, to tankless water heaters, and new energy star appliances, to reduce our monthly energy costs by more than half. And we have contracted to install solar panels to supply all our energy, but we are waiting on the incentive funding to become available from the DC Govt.
We only buy clothes from second hand stores (or accept gifts) - unless absolutely necessary.
We are currently growing a vegetable garden including pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe, peas, corn, peppers, raspberries, beans, cucumbers, basil, thyme, mint, and onions. And we are planting an apple tree this weekend.
But perhaps the biggest positive impact I have had is in convincing my boss to allow me to start a green committee at my office. The office is hard core conservative, with a good proportion of them not believing in climate change, much less man made. It has been difficult to find ways to appeal to them, but I have made strides by appealing to the bottom line and making it about making or saving money. For improvements in health and lowered health care costs: things such as having a planting day to plant tomatoes and peppers, providing fruit instead of processed and packaged snacks, and a bicycle repair workshop. We have created a freecycle room to for people to exchange unwanted items like baby toys, or books, and music, and other things. And have instituted a huge recycling project where we actually get paid for the white paper and office paper that we sort out. It has been a challenge, but has been very rewarding to see the biggest opponents of environmentalism getting involved.
This post was submitted by Stephen.
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