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.
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Food waste - from fields and oceans, to stores and restaurants, to individual purchases and homes - is a huge contributor to climate change and other environmental problems, and equally a huge opportunity to turn things around. In November I started logging, on a whiteboard on my home refrigerator, every bit of wasted food, by type of food, date, and reason wasted.
Surprise - my household food waste has already gone down, I’m buying smarter (and a bit less), my fridge is less crowded, and I’m approaching cooking dinner more as a puzzle to solve (what can I make with what’s here) and less as an onerous chore. Somehow logging food waste has engaged my “game mind” - it’s a lot more fun than I would have expected. I feel satisfaction when I see that I haven’t written an “entry” for days, sort of like scoring points.
My husband and I already compost food scraps and some other organic waste, and use the rich dark compost in our garden. But there’s no reason to feed “our friends the micro-organisms and worms” expensive food gone bad!
Logging food waste is something almost anyone can do, for a week or indefinitely. I’m curious how my log will look a few months into 2013.
This post was submitted by Janet Weil.
Hi,
Watched your movie today, and I really enjoyed it. What was most striking was the fact that the viewing audience follow you through the process of educating yourself and utilising trial and error in your daily life to reduce your environmental impact. So many books/films address environmental impact are preachy, sensationalist and removed from the day to day realities of the very people their encouraging to change. Anyway, thank you - I will be applying many of the techniques you used in future.
My tip is: If you have a garden, reduce food waste by putting kitchen scraps outside for birds to eat. In cold winter months it helps sustain the birds, and can dramatically reduce your food waste. I’ve started doing this on a daily basis. I use this listing to make sure I maximize what I give the birds, without damaging their health.
http://birding.about.com/od/birdfeeders/a/kitchenscraps.htm
To avoid attracting pests, only put food out in the morning, and preferably on an elevated surface (table etc.)
It’s lovely to hear their song & watch them feed in the garden.
Thanks again,
Kelley.
This post was submitted by Kelley.
Every year during the no impact week, I work harder and harder at reducing our families impact.over the last 3 years, I have eliminated paper products such as napkins, towels in the house. We use reusable rags for spills and cleaning, I only shop local for food, minus the Arizona family who gets fish from family in Alaska. We eat fish about 2 times a week. We buy clothes second hand, or I repurpose them. Our son loves the bus, so biking and busing are easy, even in the summer here in Phoenix. So I drive one day a week to get all my shopping and errands done. Though our neighbors give us dirty looks, my husband and I are running our cars to the ground. His is a 2000, mine is a 2005. I will not get a new car when mine dies. It’s back to biking everywhere all the time, or borrowing my husbands company van. We collect rain water for our garden, which even in the desert is enough water year round. And last year, my son and I donated our unwanted things to local shelters for families who are in need.
This year, my goal is to find alternatives to products we use every day, that are not local, and come in plastic bottles, like my jojoba oil, toothpaste, vinegar, and Castille soap. This is where soul searching meets creativity to find local alternatives, and maybe in the process, get my whole community to think about the impact they are making.
Thanks for all the inspiration.
This post was submitted by Mommeefit.
If you’re in a cold, northern climate like me, your heating bill is probably the bulk of your power consumption, and keeping warm can be a challenge. One trick I’ve hit upon is simple: I do most of the cooking, and right after I’m done using the oven for the day, I leave the oven door open, and let the heat out into the room (note: only do this if you have an electric oven!).
There’s usually enough heat released to raise my girlfriend and I’s one bedroom apartment by 1-2 degrees F- heat that would normally go to waste. We haven’t had to turn on our radiators since the beginning of January, despite cold and often subfreezing temperatures outside.
This post was submitted by Mason Fisher.
hi,i´m from portugal and i read you book it inspired me to became a diferent person than i was before !to change my ways about the enviroment..so what did i did and continue to do it .well i don´t use toilet paper ,in the need of that i rather use paper cloth and one recipiente that i call water irrigator its for i clean my ass..(and i mean it literatly)i use everthing in cloth …
This post was submitted by dora .