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need to spine up!
The best thing we can do ourselves is to reel in the use of harmful chemicals for a start.
I have I'm not bragging.
I kept getting sick from store bought veggies and bad allergic reactions to all kinds of things from soaps for laundry to bath soap.
So in self defence and to help defend our ecology we recycle, buy less crap etc.
We do almost complete organic gardening, using as little chemical inputs as possible and planting things that will attract beneficial insects to our garden that will eat the bad insects, and draw pollinators.
Even going on an energy diet.. Turn off the lights, kill the vampire loads, buy cfls(and turn them in to the proper recycle), we are buying LEDs for the most used lights in the house 1 or 2 at a time. It does call for some research. I had a simple answer, Sams Club(hate the waltons but) 15$ per pair of leds that use 3.5 watts each. 2 will give the equivalent of 80 watts, since most fixtures take more than one bulb it works out.
I found side firing LEDs that work in the range hood with enclosed light box to keep the grease/moisture out from cooking. 4 watts/50,000 hrs cost 18.99 gives about 50w and I can see even with old eyes what I am cooking.
To those who want to whine it costs too much.
How the hell will not buy expensive ipods , detergents, paper/styro plates, plastic bags, etc cost so much?
If you can get an energy start dishwasher and use bio friendly soap you will actually save $ on water and power with an onboard wter heater, and you won't get dishpan hands. I run ours once a day. scrape the veggie left overs into composter, rinse the lot in the machine, wash, let them air dry instead of the heat dry.
Now we not only have that 2xTexas size garbage swirl in the Pacific the Atlantic area of the Sargasso sea is developing a plastic garbage patch.
How the hell is it that we are so careless?
I don't use paper plates. I use 'green' laundry/and dish soap, a front loader washer, yes it was hard to come up with the $ for it,when the old top loader died.I will convert the old washer into useful things like a surge tank for the greywater and the cabinet into a solar oven/furnace(still collecting parts to do it for free and all will be recycled things).
On the other hand the 1200$ cost was returned in lower electric bills 2yr return on investment.
We are on a well, so there is less ground water pumped, it has an onboard water heater so I could lower the temp in the electric water heater.
Best of all your clothes last longer and you only need about 2 table spoons of soap for even some of the dirtiest clothes.
Since we are now using biodegradable laundry soap I don't itch all the time, the clothes come out cleaner and almost dry so do not take long on the line.
They smell better too. I put them in the dryer on cool when I bring them in for 10 minutes to delint them and to soften them(no dryer sheet needed since there is no soap left, they are rinsed clean. Plus we are planning to put in a graywater system to route the water from the washer to the orchard trees that we have to hand water now.
It is a learning curve.
We did not start out doing all we do. We made each thing habit, when that was learned we sought out what else we could do.
MIL and I got into a discussion, she said well "I'll be dead in a year or two, why should I care?" "Well you have grandchildren, I have no children, but we are stewards of our environment I want to leave things better than when I found them".
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