FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: dania on June 11, 2008, 12:52:04 AM
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I've had lots of thoughts on this lately, well actually my whole life I've had thoughts on this. Here's my latest:
*Cereal boxes, waffle boxes, pretty much every box of food everywhere except for pasta, has a plastic liner inside of it. I don't have to throw it away, heck no! I can dump out the crumbs, maybe throw some water and soap in there, splash it around, let it dry for a bit, and I can use those things for packaging material. Or maybe as a stuffing for a child's toy (apparently babies love that crunchy sound).
*I don't have to drain my dishwater since I'm using Eco Dishmate, I found out that it's safe to use this wastewater for plants. Graywater is fine for plants that you don't eat! Yessss!
What else can we do? I'm not bragging here, let's share information. Maybe there's more stuff I could be doing besides biking, bringing my own bags everywhere, r/r/r, etc. Even though I feel like I'm way beyond turning off the faucet while brushing my teeth (I remember a specific Sesame Street cartoon-vignette where it showed the pond draining and the fish getting really scared as the kid brushed their teeth), I still feel like I could do more reducing.
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i reuse milk jugs for putting peach tea and juice in and old jars as cups.
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I tend to forget to bring my own grocery bags to the store, so I use the resulting disposable grocery bags as packing material.
I also have tried to stop using paper towels for cleaning and I use cut up t-shirts instead. They make perfect rags. (Socks are good if you need something absorbent.)
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I also have tried to stop using paper towels for cleaning and I use cut up t-shirts instead. They make perfect rags. (Socks are good if you need something absorbent.)
why not use an actual rag?
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When you say "actual rag", I assume you're talking about maxi pads.
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haha no, i think dish towels are less than a dollar a piece. or maybe for a set at your local dollar store.
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But doesn't that go against the whole conservation thing? We need ways to reuse stuff, not consume more stuff.
(Most things at dollar stores are made in China, by the way... )
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Exactly. My point is I don't buy rags, I just use cloth/clothes I already have. Stuff I wouldn't give to goodwill, I mean.
Denim can make a good scrubby material for balconies and stuff like that.
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gotcha
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I wash myself with a rag on a stick.
(RESTRAINED APPLAUSE)
http://ragonastick.ytmnd.com/
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probably the bestvthing you could do to help the environment is install some kind of facebook widget. That, or maybe a bumper sticker.
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Probably the single most useful thing anyone can do is to stop driving. I seem to remember you're a bicycling type, so you're probably okay on that score.
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I also have tried to stop using paper towels for cleaning and I use cut up t-shirts instead. They make perfect rags. (Socks are good if you need something absorbent.)
why not use an actual rag?
They go for like 2 cents at Pep Boys.
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Unplug your cell phone charger when you're not using it. I'm no scientist, but according to my Credo phone bill (the source of all my scientific knowledge), current is actually lost into the atmosphere when a charger is left in the socket.
I know it's small, but every little bit helps.
If you want something larger: Buy a pre-owned car instead of a new one. The manufacturing of a car is a filthy activity: You need to drive your hybrid for several years to offset the carbon emissions that came out of the building of the car. If you buy pre-owned, that's one less car that needs to be built. I did not get that information from my Credo statement, thank you very much. I got it from the Benny Hill Show.
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I also have tried to stop using paper towels for cleaning and I use cut up t-shirts instead. They make perfect rags. (Socks are good if you need something absorbent.)
why not use an actual rag?
They go for like 2 cents at Pep Boys.
Yeah but that produces more waste. If I use something I already have then I'm not producing more stuff, right? (What is up with you guys and the rags? Didn't you ever use old t-shirts or sheets to clean stuff up?)
I also wash out ziploc bags sometimes and re-use them. I tried to stop using them but they're actually a good way to preserve food (aka not waste food) so instead I try to reuse them at least twice if I can.
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I also have tried to stop using paper towels for cleaning and I use cut up t-shirts instead. They make perfect rags. (Socks are good if you need something absorbent.)
why not use an actual rag?
They go for like 2 cents at Pep Boys.
Yeah but that produces more waste. If I use something I already have then I'm not producing more stuff, right? (What is up with you guys and the rags? Didn't you ever use old t-shirts or sheets to clean stuff up?)
I also wash out ziploc bags sometimes and re-use them. I tried to stop using them but they're actually a good way to preserve food (aka not waste food) so instead I try to reuse them at least twice if I can.
as long as i didnt store meat (once upon a time) in the ziploc i attempt to use it more than once also.
also, what about the energy/waste used when the batteries from the hybrids need to be dumped of properly- i would think thats just as harmful, yeah?
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I try to do my share of good things - walk, don't drive, take the train, buy local produce, etc - but I bet I'm still a bad guy if only for the fact that I don't share my apartment (electricity, heat, water) with anyone. That sucks for me and the environment. :(
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You're not alone crimestick, I also live alone. Oh wait, you ARE alone. We're both alone hahaha
Here's more stuff:
*Torn-open envelopes I use for jotting down information. Usually they go in a drawer next to my computer.
*Wine-corks I've been saving for unknown reasons. Any idears? Magnets?
*I saved a whole bunch of lightbulbs and San Pelligrino bottlecaps last year and made chrismas ornaments.
*Spent pens, lighters? The only idea I have for these is to make some kind of eccentric windchime that makes a plasticky clicking sound instead of a dinging sound. Who knows it might look neat...
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You're not alone crimestick, I also live alone. Oh wait, you ARE alone. We're both alone hahaha
Here's more stuff:
*Torn-open envelopes I use for jotting down information. Usually they go in a drawer next to my computer.
*Wine-corks I've been saving for unknown reasons. Any idears? Magnets?
*I saved a whole bunch of lightbulbs and San Pelligrino bottlecaps last year and made chrismas ornaments.
*Spent pens, lighters? The only idea I have for these is to make some kind of eccentric windchime that makes a plasticky clicking sound instead of a dinging sound. Who knows it might look neat...
i subscribe to READYMADE magazine (www.readymademag.com) and they tend to have TONS of stuff on how to reuse/recycle things like wine corks, old pens (someone made forks out of old pens), its pretty cool.
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Christ, I have plastic bags that are literally decades old. Who knows what toxins they're releasing into my food. I don't care.
I wasn't going to post about this, but what the hell: A while ago, I watched one of those dumb reality show/documentary things BBC America likes so much that involved a bunch of people living in a dump and surviving off what they could find there. Most of the show was pretty dopey, but one thing did strike home for me: When the so-called carbon footprint of each participant was calculated, the difference between the most virtuous of the group, a young student madly committed to causes environmental and dedicated to self-denial and another young fellow who couldn't care less about the world around him was very, very small. The reason? Neither of them drove, and that alone made both of them madly less intrusive on the world than anyone else in the group.
Then there was another revelation: Apparently, for us to prevent the world from ending each of our carbon footprints should not exceed 2,000 metric tons, whereas even the holy, self-abnegating student's was 2,500--to which another 5,000 tons was automatically added because of all the services supplied in an industrialized nation. So no matter how good any in this case British individual is, there's no hope in hell.
Now, obviously, one piece of BBC fluff does not count as incontrovertible evidence, but there's a lot of other doomsaying out there that claims much the same, so, when you come down to it, anything we do is just ever-so-slightly delaying the inevitable. That said, of course we should all do as much as we can.
When you come down to it, the Church of Euthanasia is on the right track.
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I'm on the go here, and i certainly don't want to start a vegetarian holy war outside of fotchan, but cutting back on meat consumption-- as effective/less effective as not driving?
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I'm on the go here, and i certainly don't want to start a vegetarian holy war outside of Chinatown, but cutting back on meat consumption-- as effective/less effective as not driving?
i halfway agree with you, yesno. i think how we consume meat is whats killing us. if we could change how we treat cattle, transporting it, etc. i think it would make a difference.
i wish i had the luxury to buy more groceries on a local farmers level.
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i help the environment by using Blackle instead of Google.
http://www.blackle.com/
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I live in a cave.
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that blackle thing is undermined by the fact that it takes more energy to display black than white on LCD screens, which only show black by blocking a continuous backlight.
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I need to eat fewer gorillas; the carbon footprint of shipping them all the way to the US must be staggering
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I'm on the go here, and i certainly don't want to start a vegetarian holy war outside of Chinatown, but cutting back on meat consumption-- as effective/less effective as not driving?
Eating local does the trick too. It's not just about meat. If you're eating bell peppers that have been flown in from Mexico, you're doing more damage to the environment (jet fuel, packaging costs, etc.) than eating a pig that was slaughtered at a farm less than 100 miles from where you live.
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I just found out that the farm from which I buy my meat--about thirty miles away (it's delivered to me a few times a year when someone is coming into town anyway)--sells raw milk for $5.00/gallon (not much more than regular store-bought nowadays, and way cheaper than the organic stuff I buy). I'm going to try to get this regularly. Some of you, at least, will be jealous of me.
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I'm jealous. I can't find cheap meat. I've been eating a lot of beans lately.
*toot*
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Re: local foods
True, but the biggest carbon cost with food still usually comes from ppl driving to the supermarket--going too far out of your way, by car, to buy local food might defeat the point (although long term maybe you're helping grow the market).
Also, it's not so much food miles as method of shipment. Planes are a nightmare, but trains are very fuel efficient. Also food shipped by truck may or may not be carbon friendly.
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Oh, my meat ain't cheap, erika, but, poor though I am, I lead such a narrow life that I can afford the extravagance (working at home and living within walking distance of most necessities helps quite a bit; plus a generally reclusive bent). My big regret is that I can't feed my animals the same holy meat--and their consumption is much greater than mine. But I've already bored everyone on that score, so I won't go into details.
JJ, shirts made with child labor just clean better, don't you find?
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I also have tried to stop using paper towels for cleaning and I use cut up t-shirts instead. They make perfect rags. (Socks are good if you need something absorbent.)
why not use an actual rag?
They go for like 2 cents at Pep Boys.
Yeah but that produces more waste. If I use something I already have then I'm not producing more stuff, right? (What is up with you guys and the rags? Didn't you ever use old t-shirts or sheets to clean stuff up?)
To be fair, I've never actually set foot in a Pep Boys. I'm passing along a price quoted by Chet from Gene Simmons Toyota. He had to buy his son a rag for Christmas because Tom refused to purchase a car, so I'm assuming he price-shopped to get the best deal.
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Boy, if I gave up making french fries and bacon, I'd use no paper towels at all. I really should just use newspaper (my sole source being the grocery store flyer I get weekly) and thumb my nose at the ink. I mean, I don't even bother to wash most of my produce (my father said of me about twenty years ago that I have a suicidal approach to food preparation/consumption), so what am I being squeamish about?
(Sorry to babble, but I'm listening to SSD right now, and this is helping to pass the time.)
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I tend to forget to bring my own grocery bags to the store
Sometimes I forget too. Only in the last few months have I been continually remembering to bring them. Other times, I have them with me and I forget to tell the cashier I don't need one. Then there's that nominally awkward moment after I say "oh, I don't need a bag," and they have to take the extra step away from their routine to take the item(s) out of the plastic bag (or sometimes bags if they decide that a bottle of sunscreen definitely needs 2 bags).
Recently I had a little moment of joy where the lady of front of me was still getting ready to leave, and the cashier started ringing me up. I said "I don't need a bag" and then the lady in front of me decided to do the same after a moment of fidgeting with her stuff.
I was like, "Good choice!" and then immediately felt nerdy and weird for saying so.
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I like to buy a brand new shirt at WalMart and rip it up for rags. When the rags get dirty I throw them out and buy some more shirts. These shirts are really cheap! Like $10. I like WalMart because of the competitive pricing.
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In my little town, my sisters and I are about the only people who use their own bags regularly (the cashiers love us, because it means we do our own bagging). But recently I went to a larger grocery store and was very pleased to see a number of people using their own cloth bags. Still remarkably few, however, considering how they started being pushed so heavily beginning with the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day almost twenty years ago.
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I always have a shortage of plastic bags. Not only do I need the ones from the store, but I need to steal them from other people. Dog poop.
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Here's a consumption v. humanity-loving dilemma I have all of the time:
When walking down the sidewalk and some sad person is handing out fliers do you take them out of pity for the person getting payed garbage to stand in the heat or freezing cold for next to nothing (I have had friends who have done this for temp agencies between jobs and they say it is really pretty awful) or do you refuse to accept out of love for trees and hatred of commercialism. I usually refuse but I know these people have to hand them all out before they can check out. What to do?
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Then there was another revelation: Apparently, for us to prevent the world from ending each of our carbon footprints should not exceed 2,000 metric tons, whereas even the holy, self-abnegating student's was 2,500--to which another 5,000 tons was automatically added because of all the services supplied in an industrialized nation. So no matter how good any in this case British individual is, there's no hope in hell.
Now, obviously, one piece of BBC fluff does not count as incontrovertible evidence, but there's a lot of other doomsaying out there that claims much the same, so, when you come down to it, anything we do is just ever-so-slightly delaying the inevitable. That said, I of course we should all do as much as we can.
When you come down to it, the Church of Euthanasia is on the right track.
I've read stuff like this, too. One of the things I took from it is the fact that, yes, we should all behave responsibly and make the right consumer choices, but there's a lot that we can't do simply by making consumer choices. And this means we need government to act, through regulating business and through creating infrastructure, to make it possible for us to radically reduce our ecological/carbon footprints.
A lot of the big things that our society needs to do will not be terribly profitable to private interests, and therefore will not happen, or will be slow to happen via private industry. However, they are necessary for the public interest. Convincing people to consume less doesn't fit well with our current economic model.
It's a big problem.
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It's a big problem.
Yes. And what a gentle way to put it.
I'm just glad I have no children.
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I'm just glad I have no children.
Ugh. I have no idea what to tell my kids about this.
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Maybe the earth will get lucky and we'll all die in a plague.
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But a nice painless one, please. For the children (and me).
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I want to make babies and go to europe (not in that order) before this whole thing is over so if it could hold out for another dozen years or so I'd really appreciate it.
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Only a dozen? But what about those babies you make?
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Conservatives are the problem with the environment!
Oh wait, sorry. I guess I just 'Emily Read' the title of this thread.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24880313/wid/18298287/?GT1=45002
recyclers craigslist, i guess
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Unplug your cell phone charger when you're not using it. I'm no scientist, but according to my Credo phone bill (the source of all my scientific knowledge), current is actually lost into the atmosphere when a charger is left in the socket.
I'm gonna start uplugging my cell phone and walking around with the charger dangling off it. Can you say "New fashion statement"? It's like the anti-bluetooth!
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Sorry for dragging this thread into apocalyptic territory. I think it's valuable to discuss ways that we can live lower on the food chain.
As per Michael Pollan's suggestions, I'm learning to garden. It really has been rewarding to see the crummy soil in our backyard improve over the past couple of years. And this year, I'm taking part in a community garden.
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Sorry for dragging this thread into apocalyptic territory. I think it's valuable to discuss ways that we can live lower on the food chain.
As per Michael Pollan's suggestions, I'm learning to garden. It really has been rewarding to see the crummy soil in our backyard improve over the past couple of years. And this year, I'm taking part in a community garden.
speaking of gardening, has anybody had the luxury of burning the soil: does this really work in providing the soil with the nutrients for amazing results...or should i invest in a volcano?
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speaking of gardening, has anybody had the luxury of burning the soil: does this really work in providing the soil with the nutrients for amazing results...or should i invest in a volcano?
I've never heard of this. As in literally burning soil?
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speaking of gardening, has anybody had the luxury of burning the soil: does this really work in providing the soil with the nutrients for amazing results...or should i invest in a volcano?
I've never heard of this. As in literally burning soil?
yeah. i couldnt tell you how they do it, but supposedly thats why the soil in hawaii is so rich. it has to do with the volcanoes and the heat and the soil being burned. nitrogen (or whatever!) is released, as a result, into the soil and makes it richer, giving it the nutrients for your plants/food/zombies.
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Why not just add nitrogen to the soil? Burning it sounds extremely labor-intensive. You can easily find fertilizer with nitrogen, phosphorus, AND potassium in it.
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I think that conventional, store-bought fertilizers are regarded these days as a no-no. They're derived from fossil fuels in an energy-intensive process, and in the long term are bad for the soil. Composting all the way!
But you're right - burning soil does sound like too much trouble.
Also: I recently read a comic called "As the World Burns". I got it from my local library, and was surprised to find that it echoed many of the apocalyptic thoughts from this thread, and called for an armed uprising! One of the heroes of the story is a cute widdle bunny who bombs dams and burns down animal testing labs.
I'm a pacifist (or just a pussy, maybe) so can not really get down with the revolution, but the book was an eye-opener in many ways, and worth a look. Did you know that in urban areas golf courses use as much water as people do? Remarkable!
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http://www.extremelygreen.com/fertilizerguide.cfm
Bat shit has phosphorus in it? :o
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I think you can also use bat shit to make gunpowder - that's probably because of the phosphorus, too. (I learned that in a fantasy novel I read when I was 9.)
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Human shit has phosphorus in it. Not as much, I grant you.
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i didnt feel like starting a new topic. but as for trying to "go green", apparently for a large sum of money you can get an all electric sports sedan that gets LESS gas mileage than my car (which loves unleaded, polluting oil).
where do i sign up?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/30/tesla-announces-the-model-s-a-60k-all-electric-five-passenge/
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What kills me is the desire to buy new stuff that's green before the need arises. For the most part you'd do more for the environment if you keep on using what you already have, and buying new green stuff only when the need arises, rather than going on a consumption binge in order to purify yourself.
I am also going to
save energy by not using punctuation
in the same way TE does