War on Garbage: It's the little things

Stored takeout containers
© L. Kathryn Grace

It never ceases to amaze me how much throw-away junk we bring into the house. True, we're cutting back. Because of our war on garbage, we're thinking more than ever before we purchase. Still.

Last night, neither of us felt like cooking. We don't order in much any more, but we made that choice. Two more plastic hot food containers to add to our collection. We find all sorts of uses for them. You can just make out one example on the bottom shelf in the image above, but we always have three stacks in the cupboard. Eventually, one way and another, one by one, they'll chip, crack, become irremediably filled with paint or homemade Play-Dough residue and end up in the recycling bin. Fail!

Friday night, we had the grandbaby over. She's two now, and we took her to the neighborhood restaurant for pizza. We like this place because they use organic ingredients whenever they can get them, and they're kid-friendly. We bought two small pizzas. I know, I know, but we don't like the same toppings or sauces. We like leftovers. We never know which pizza the little one will choose. Then, because I forgot to bring foil and a bag to wrap and carry the leftovers home, we ended up with two take-home boxes. I would have crammed it all into one box, but again I neglected to tell the wait staff, and they brought back two. Fail!

But wait! There's good news!

Do compost poster
Courtesy Recology SF

First: I've been doing some research and learned that San Francisco's compost program includes a whole lot of stuff I was tossing in the trash. We can send those pizza boxes and the wax paper liners in their bottoms to the compost, along with waxy milk cartons, butter boxes, and much of our bathroom tissue waste (the dry stuff, that goes in the waste basket anyway). Why they even take cat hair!* Better.

Second: It's been three weeks plus since we last tied off and emptied the bag in the small kitchen trash can. Thanks mostly to living in this city, with its zero waste goal, today the bin has plenty of head room for more trash. That's 2.3 gallons of landfill waste--once a week just one month ago--pared down to once in three weeks and counting. Big win!

Third: Our commitment to buying only in bulk when available is paying off, but not perfectly--yet. No new cereal boxes or sugar containers have come into the house. One of us bought a couple of boxes of Annie's organic macaroni and cheese--a favorite of the grandkids when they visit. It doesn't take that much longer to make homemade, which we like so much better, so we need to make an adjustment. Better, but plenty of room to improve.

Fourth, and this is the most fun: With fruit season in full swing, I bought a half flat of strawberries from our local farmer's market and made jam for the first time in decades. The berries that tasted best that day, Chandler, were expensive, $5/quart, and by the time I boiled the fruit down to make jam with no added pectin, the eight-ounce jars cost about $5.79 each. My labor was not factored in, so true cost is even higher. Coincidentally, the 12-ounce jar of imported organic jam in our refrigerator has a $5.79 sticker. (Why is it so difficult to get organic jam made locally?)

$5.79 jar of strawberry jam
© L. Kathryn Grace

Now I know why the organic jam and jelly purveyor (Blue Chair--snap some if you live here and get the chance) at the same farmer's market is charging $11 for a 6-ounce jar! Homemade is not exactly a bargain. Perhaps I can improve the net cost of raw ingredients by more judicious shopping. Meanwhile, we avoided overseas shipping. One upside.

Then there's the really big downside. To cut costs, and ostensibly keep prices down, Ball (who absorbed Kerr, so there's no longer competition) now shrink-wraps its partially-boxed jars. We gave away our canning jars years ago, and had to buy new. Sure, I could have tried to find them on Craigslist or Freecycle, but I would not know how they had been handled. Our food safety and health depend on jars that have been handled carefully, so we bought new. We'll take good care of them and use them many times over. Meanwhile, I've written the Ball people and asked them to return to boxing without plastic. If you have the time, I encourage you to lend your voice to mine. I'm sure we're not alone in this request.

Not to despair. There is another upside to making our own jam: Every time we open a jar, we will be omitting a made-for-single-use, shipped and re-shipped jar and lid from our recycling bin. Sure, we use the jars again, but they pile up quickly, and we don't have the storage space for a lot of jars that are not of canning quality. Too many go to recycling. I'm calling this one a partial win.

That's the story on the war on garbage this week. A few steps forward, a few back, but making progress on the road to conscious living.

*UPDATE 6/1/10: Sadly, I was mistaken about the cat hair.


What are you up to on the eco-front?

What's your story this week? How are you handling your waste challenges? If you have a garden, I'd love to hear what's up, what's ripe, what tastes fabulous, and just maybe, what you're preserving and how.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Water Wednesday Action: Stop an Arctic repeat of the BP Gulf oil disaster

Watch this. It's short enough. While you're watching, imagine how such a spill could affect us all if it occurred in the Arctic. The United States expects to begin drilling there in July. Unless we stop it. This is a #WaterWednesday call to action. I'd wager you'll understand the need in less than the 3 minutes 41 seconds it takes to view the vid.

Even as BP's oil continues to spew unabated into the Gulf of Mexico, Shell is pushing forward with plans for exploratory drilling off Alaska's arctic coast. If Shell gets its way, drilling will begin as early as July [emphasis added].

BP Deepwater Disaster and Gulf Oil Spill,
Greenpeace

We can stop it, but we must act this moment
Follow the "Join us ..." link--It will take only a minute

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior for the Obama administration, has the authority to stop Shell in its tracks.  Join us in making sure he does so.

Neither the disaster unfolding in the Gulf nor the one that is imminent in Alaska are necessary to maintain a strong economy. Renewables like wind and solar, paired with energy efficiency, have the potential to meet all of our energy needs. We are calling for an immediate stop to new offshore oil drilling.

BP Deepwater Disaster and Gulf Oil Spill,
Greenpeace

Thank you, Greenpeace. You said it all so much better than I could.

UPDATE May 27, 2010: According to CBS today:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says in a report to be delivered to the White House on Thursday that he will not consider applications for permits to drill in the Arctic until 2011. Shell Oil was to begin exploratory drilling there this summer.

This gives us a reprieve, but does not stop the drilling. We must continue to voice our opposition to putting our environment and ourselves at risk when there are so many renewable resources available to us. Stay tuned.

Have you been following the oil spill? Did you take a moment to Tell Secretary Salazar to Just Say "No" to Shell's Alaska Drilling? What more can you and I do to ensure nothing like this happens again?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved.

War on Garbage: Fake Plastic Fish Challenge

 

Household plastic waste--Week 1
© L. Kathryn Grace

Last Monday, in my ongoing war on garbage, I was spittin' plastic after watching the video, Our Today is Forever. It was time to commit to the Fake Plastic Fish Challenge.

What you see in this image is just one week's worth of plastic throw-aways for our household, twenty-nine items in total, only nine of which are recyclable. The remaining twenty had to be pitched.

Fake Plastic Fish asked for some data, and I'll share with you what I told them. (It's mostly verbatim, but I edited slightly in a few spots for clarity here. The questions are theirs.)


Personal description

Who: A cat and two humans, one full-time employed, the other semi-retired; frequently graced with the presence of grandchildren.

Where: San Francisco.

Biggest plastic challenges: 1) Keeping the cat well fed, healthy and her litter box clean without plastic--not happening, yet; 2) Resisting the urge to buy shiny, plastic-wrapped, plastic toys for the grandkids.

Biggest plastic boon: Monster city-wide curbside recycling program with few restrictions. Most of our plastics are trucked to the front door of the city's multi-million dollar recycling center, where they are sorted on a giant Rube Goldberg conveyor belt system, then baled and funneled out the back door onto ships that head for China and the Pacific Rim. We can only hope that mountains of plastics are not sitting in someone's back yard, as we saw in The Story of Bottled Water (video). For more on that, see Would you pay $10,000 for a sandwich?


Total weight of plastic stash

Approximately 13.5 ounces (I had to estimate the weight of the kitty litter bag as it is filled with clean litter. For sanitary reasons, I discarded the empty one early last week as I had used it for dirty kitty litter when I changed the box.)


List of Recyclable Items
Include the recycling # at the bottom and how it gets recycled in your community, as far as you know.

1. Strawberry clamshell - #1
2. Medjool date clamshell - #1
3. Shampoo bottle - #2
4. Pill bottle - #2
5. Medicine bottle (for grandbaby) - #2
6, 7, 8 & 9: Individual apple sauce containers - #5

San Francisco accepts all firm plastics--the ones with the recycle symbol on the bottom--that are clean of metal, fabric and rubber. They do not accept plastic bags, shrink-wrap, bubble wrap, or filmy plastics like Saran Wrap. Most of the recyclable plastics are loaded on ships for China or countries in the Pacific Rim where they are made into new products and likely shipped back to us, all glossy and encased in--you got it--more plastic.


List of non-recyclable items

1 & 2. Toilet tissue packages
3. Frozen blueberry bag
4. Kitty litter bag
5. Trash bag (Partially filled with household non-plastic, non-recyclables, non-compostables and the day's kitty litter gleanings)
6 & 7. Intimate product liners
8. Toy package bubble
9. Brown sugar sack
10. Godiva shipping cold pack bag
11 & 12. Cheese packages
13. Tortilla package
14. Toy package bubble
15 & 16. Cat medicine tablet holders
17. Toy package
18 & 19. Cut corners from kitty litter bag & tortilla bag
20. Toothbrush package


Tally analysis
(Answers to the following questions)

What items could I easily replace with plastic-free or less plastic alternatives?

 1. The strawberry container and the blueberry sack are easy to eliminate by buying fruits only in season at the farmer's market and carrying them home in our own reusable containers.
2. The individual apple sauce containers are an aberration at our house and unlikely to be in our recyclables again. Typically, we buy applesauce in glass jars, but now that I am semi-retired, I hope to make homemade.
3. The plastic trash bags are being phased out in favor of compostable bags. While they will not break down in the landfill, they will biodegrade quickly should they be released into the environment.

Possibles:

1. Shampoo bottle: One of us still uses commercial shampoo. The other (me) switched to no-poo awhile back, which means I'm bringing no new shampoo/conditioner bottles into the house. My sweetie is undecided, but strongly considering trying no-poo.

2. Intimate product liner: I am searching for intimate products without plastic liners and have purchased a few organic cotton ones for trial.

3. Medjool date container: We are looking for a bulk source of organic dates where we can fill our own reusable container. These are an important part of our diet, so an alternative absolutely must be found.

4. Toy packaging: We're grandparents. Sometimes we can't resist buying cutesy toys on a whim. Wherever possible, we plan and choose sustainable wooden and handcrafted toys for our grandchildren, but they are usually encased in shrink-wrap or nearly impenetrable plastic bubbles. Plastic seems inevitable in toyland. We can do more to reduce, however, and will continue to work on it.


What items would I be willing to give up if a plastic-free alternative doesn’t exist?

1.  Brown sugar sack: While we can buy organic raw sugar in bulk, we have not yet sourced brown sugar in bulk, but we keep looking. I am researching ways to add molasses to recipes in lieu of brown sugar.

2. Tortilla and other wrap packages: Again, because I am semi-retired and have more time, I am looking into recipes for homemade tortillas and other wraps so we can avoid those packages. This would not be possible if I were still working 50-60 hour weeks.


What items are essential and seem to have no plastic-free alternative?

1. Toilet tissue packages: I'm constantly trying to think of ways to minimize and ultimately replace. Write your suppliers and ask them to package in recycled paper!

2. Pill bottles: Alas, necessary, and again, write the suppliers! The more who write requesting glass bottles, the more chance we'll have of achieving change.

3. Medicine bottle for granddaughter: We have to keep a supply of this doctor-prescribed over-the-counter brand on hand for her overnight visits, and no other packaging is available.

4. Godiva ice-pack shipping bag: Not essential, but it came in a gift package, and I am unlikely to dictate to friends and family what they may or may not choose as gifts. I will, however, continue to show my preferences by example, through my writing, which some of them read, and through topical discussion. We keep such items in the freezer and reuse, but I have four of them now, and this one had to go to make room for fresh-frozen foods from the farmer's market. Just realized I could have advertised it on Freecycle. Duh!

5. Cat medicine tabs: We cannot source any other method for the cat's life-saving medicine.

6. Kitty litter bag: We buy the most ecological we know of, but I must write the manufacture regarding packaging.

7. Toothbrush packaging: So far, I have found no toothbrush packages that do not involve plastic.

8. Frozen berry (and vegetable) packaging: While I will source fresh farmer's market fruits and vegetables  wherever possible, it is likely we will continue to use frozen berries and some vegetables in winter months. Eliminating these from our freezer is a long-term goal and will require changing our expectations of what we should have available to eat on a moment's notice. This will take gradual, habit-changing practices.


What lifestyle change(s) might be necessary to reduce my plastic consumption?

I already made one that has made a huge difference: Partial retirement. Had I not semi-retired in the last year, we would have a much larger plastic problem. Like many people, I worked 50-60 hour weeks and all too often opted for quicker, easier solutions. With more time available, I can assure I get to the farmer's market every week, where I can purchase the freshest whole foods and carry them home in my own reusable containers.

I also have time to relearn old skills, such as breadmaking, and to experiment making foods that I previously bought in packages during the years I worked outside the home. These included bread, tortillas, wraps, jams and jellies, frozen fruits and vegetables, sometimes soups and beans.

The biggest lifestyle change would require a move to an apartment or home large enough to accommodate a deep freeze capable of preserving large quantities for up to a year without significant loss of flavor or nutrients. Such a change is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

My dream lifestyle change is to live and work in an ecologically conscious community with communal kitchens and gardens where we could share some, but not all, food growing, gathering, preserving, preparing and eating. I vision and write about such a community in the fictional Village of Ordinary and here.

Until this or something better is possible in our lives, we will continue on our current path of gradually reducing plastic consumption, one awareness, one problem-solving moment after another.


What one plastic item am I willing to give up or replace this week?

We have purchased compostable trash bags, which we will use for non-compostables/non-recyclables, including kitty litter. We won't start using them this week though, because we still have a stash of the regular plastic bags. I know of no ecological benefit to throwing the unused bags still on our shelf in the trash.


What other conclusions, if any, can I draw?

We need to re-grow our society from the ground up. Ours is a tear-on-the-dotted-line, disposable, throw-away, consumption-addicted culture. We as individuals are the only ones who can change that, by voting with our dollars, asking manufacturers to change, and spreading the word about the need for systemic change until the movement for making conscious, life-enhancing, Earth-preserving choices has reached critical mass.

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Much gratitude to Beth Terry, who writes Fake Plastic Fish and issued the challenge. She is doing a grand service to us all by founding and maintaining her blog, keeping the message out there on numerous social networks, and running the challenge.

Much gratitude to you, as well, my few (so far) and faithful readers, whom I treasure, because I am aware that several of you are way ahead of me on this journey to conscious, mindful living. How do you manage the plastics in your life? Are you interested in taking the challenge? Have you already?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace.
All rights reserved.

Did you shower today?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthijs

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Lucky you. Lucky me. We can shower every day. Wash our clothes. Take a drink any time we want.
For now.

According to the New York Times, our easy access to water may soon be a luxury.

Thirty-six states face water shortages in just three short years. California knows all about water shortages. We've been getting some of our water from other states for decades. Farmers in the Central Valley, where much of the nation's food is grown, are going out of business, unable to get water to their crops.

California is not the only U.S. state with water supply issues. By 2013, at least 36 states expect shortages, according to a 2003 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Erica Gies in Turning to Water Conservation to Save Energy
New York Times

Take a look at the world map on the water crisis page of the World Water Council. See all that red and brown on the United States? That means we're using water faster than the earth can replenish. Much faster. In fact, only a small portion of the United States is safe from running out of water.

#WaterWednesday

That's why I participate in #WaterWednesday on Twitter. Every Wednesday, mindful Tweeps (people who tweet on Twitter) from all walks of life take time to learn a little more about the world water crisis and pass along what we learn.

We give each other tips on conserving water at home and work, participate in calls to action, write our senators and congressional representatives, blog about water rights and needs, and lend a helping hand any way we can. We try to have fun while we're focusing on water issues, and we're prepared for the heartbreaking stories (slide show) that bring the reality of the world's dwindling fresh water supply home. This brief video does a little of both.

New oil, blue gold and water wars

We don't hear about water wars every day, but they're happening--here at home between states, between cities and agriculture, bloodier ones abroad.

Some say water is the new oil. Global climate change is drying up the glaciers that feed our rivers and streams. Desertification caused by deforestation and agriculture exacerbates nature-caused droughts on every continent. Scarcity breeds greed. Greed breeds ever smaller circles of ownership and control over water resources. You know about the oil cartels. There is talk of water cartels.

Water is so valuable, as Wall Street tightens its grip on the world's shrinking water supply, that some are dubbing it blue gold. So important is water that, little known to you and me, Congress holds hearings on it frequently. You can bet that big corporations, with their multi-million dollar lobbyists, are making sure they get the deepest wells, the tallest fountains, and the biggest pipes.

Get a glimpse of what I'm talking about here.



If we are to build the world of Ordinary, we must take notice of the world of water now.

Do you love your shower?

Do you love your shower in the morning? You and I may be dead by the time the tap stops flowing in our country, but chances are good we'll see water rationing, including the taps in our homes, in the next decade. It's time to get involved. The question is, how?

I'd like to hear from you. Have you studied this issue? Are you concerned about your water rights now? Down the road? Who do you think should own water? Where do you think we, ordinary citizens, should start in terms of informing ourselves and taking action?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

War on Garbage: Spittin' out plastic

Typical garbage bin at our house
© L. Kathryn Grace

One hundred million tons of plastic. That's how much is estimated to be floating in the great Pacific garbage patch, now bigger than Texas.

Ocean faring birds eat it till their bodies, unable to pass the stuff, burst. Three hundred year old giant sea turtles get entangled in plastic ropes and wash ashore strangled. Bad, bad news, and we're the culprits. I don't want to be one of them any more.

On Earth Day, when I first declared war on garbage, a whole lot of plastic was visible in my trash can--including the disposable liner! None of it is recyclable. Of course we hope our plastic and other non-recyclable, non-compostable trash is buried in the landfill, where presumably it can do no harm.

You believe that, right? Once in the landfill, our trash, even our plastics can do no harm? Yet, sadly, somehow our plastic throwaways end up in our rivers and oceans where fish, giant sea turtles, pelicans and other sea birds get tangled in it, eat it, and die. Take a look.

Thanks to @pauljimerson, from whom I first saw the video when he retweeted @DianeN56and @PlasticPollutes, who discovered the video by @Plomomedia. (It takes a village.)

Holy crap, Batman, plastic is forever!

Is it? Science has discovered that some plastics break down in the ocean. That sounds like good news. Not so fast. According to Carolyn Barry of National Geographic News, science also found that these disintegrating plastics are "leaching potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A into the seas, possibly threatening ocean animals, and us."

We're the last stop on the food chain--whales in the sea, people on land. We get all that accumulated BPA and who knows what other toxins unraveling from those slippery polymers. What will it do to life on this planet? What will it do to our children? And theirs?

Taking the Fake Plastic Fish challenge

So this week, the Grace household is tackling plastic. First step: We're taking the Fake Plastic Fish Challenge. Instead of tossing that berry container into the recycling bin or that empty frozen peas bag into the trash, we're going to set them all aside in a separate container. Next Monday, I'll lay them out and take a photograph of our collected plastics and post a writeup on the Fake Plastic Fish web site. We've been cutting back on plastics for awhile now, so it will be interesting to see how much we gather.

I'd love some company on this challenge. Will you join me? If you're interested, and can spare the time, be sure to check out the rules first. There aren't too many. Do let me know in the comments below whether you plan on participating. Either way, I'd like to hear about your relationship to plastic and what you think we can do to solve these problems.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

War on garbage: Pitching paper towels

Waste basket collection
© L. Kathryn Grace

Ugh! Remember this from my Earth Day declaration of war on household garbage? This lot was collected from the small baskets sitting about the house, much of it bathroom waste--paper towels and tissues. I collect almost two pounds of this stuff every week.

Most of the paper towels in this mess have to do, one way and another, with hair. Cat hair. Wads and wads of the stuff.

Urrrk

My sweetie and I are a tad squeamish. There's something about unattached fur that sends us both in a tizzy. When our dear Salome sheds, it's not veils. It's fur balls--tufts and tufts and tufts of Persian longhair. What do we do? Grab a paper towel, wet it slightly, engulf those flighty tufts, one after another, and toss 'em in the can. Five minutes later, do it all over again.

Occasionally Salome leaves us a nice fat hair ball nestled in a slimy puddle. Urrrk. That's the sound we make when we pick it up, carefully covering it first with a paper towel, grabbing the whole mess with another. Involuntary muscle spasms. Urrrk.

That's not all. Cat hair flies, and what flies has to land. Everywhere. I chase hair gingerly, with a damp paper towel, in the futile hope of grabbing it before it sails up and away again. Our tiny bathroom, a favorite Salome nesting spot, is constantly alight with fur. Two or three times a day, I run a damp paper towel around the bathroom fixtures, on the sills, in the corners, everywhere the fur settles. Salome especially likes to nap in the tub, so that gets a swipe too.

Then there's the kitchen. It's not all cat hair, of course. There will be spills. It's so easy to tear off a paper towel and wipe up the trail of slime from the avocado slice that shot from my hand, skipped across the butcher block like a stone on water and landed, smoosh, on the floor I mopped this morning. Or last month. While I'm wiping that up, I catch as much fur as I can reach.

Egg on the floor

How did it come to this? As a young mom, I refused to have paper towels in the house. Wasteful! Somewhere along the line, a roll came into our life. I suppose I eyed it gingerly at first, but then there was that egg that rolled off the counter top and splatted all over the indoor/outdoor carpet tiles (Why would anyone put indoor/outdoor on a kitchen floor?) and halfway up the cupboard doors. That roll came in handy, too, when my three year old poured, and immediately dumped, a brimming glass of milk. It wasn't long before paper towels were a mainstay.

Fast forward. Kids grown up. Many life changes. New mate, just the two of us for decades now, and here we are, until recently using at least one roll of paper towels a week. At $2.99 a pop, that adds up to $155.48 a year, plus tax. Now I know $150 doesn't go far these days (Astonishing!), but it's the principle, I say! The price of convenience, you say?

Not this year. I'm at war with my throw-away habits.

Here's what I'm doing about it

Reusable cloths cost about the same as a roll of paper towels
© L. Kathryn Grace

A couple of weeks ago we bought several new dishcloths to augment our aging and increasingly ragged supply. Serendipitously, they were $2.99 each. Knowing what I do about conventional cotton production (here's just one example), I was compelled to buy organic. Now I ask you, if I'm willing to throw away $2.99 worth of paper towels a week, how can I flinch at paying the same price for organic cotton I can use again and again and whose manufacture is harming no one?

No more disposables!

© L. Kathryn Grace

We're also trying out a couple of reusable clothsmade of recycled fibers. We keep them all in a handy basket on the kitchen work table, ready to grab and mop up spills or wipe our hands as we chop, dice and slice.

For the cat hair and every day floor messes, I cut an old, ragged bath towel to hand-sized squares. They're perfect for those quick swipes around the fixtures and to mop up spilled kitty water or to clean the floor boards.

Downside: I have to rinse those hair-covered cloths and hang 'em to dry. Do you know what wet black cat hair on a white cloth looks like? And the sink! Urrrk.

Success!

That was two weeks ago. So far, this change is a big success, better than any of the previous times we've tried to cut back on disposables. After two weeks, nearly an entire unused roll sits on top of the refrigerator, accessible, but no longer convenient. That helped. More importantly, this time, we brought the reusables to the work table, instead of storing them in a drawer. They're every bit as handy as the roll of paper towels had been. The floor rags are stored in a bin convenient to the kitty food and water bowls, where the most spills occur.

Making conscious choices is sometimes as simple as changing an outdated habit, but mindful living can be complicated. One concern about switching to reusables was that we might significantly increase our laundry and water use. That would do nothing to help us lower our ecological footprint. Fortunately, despite liberal use of the reusable cloths, I'll wash kitchen linens for the first time this weekend, and we have yet to accumulate a full load of floor rags. No problem.

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Update: Buying in bulk

Update on my goal to buy in bulk (See War on Garbage: What is all that junk anyway?): I told you I'd get back to you on whether my sweetie would join me in avoiding pre-packaged foods and commit to buying everything available in bulk at our local organic grocer. The answer: A resounding yes and a new spreadsheet listing all the items we buy prepackaged, complete with suggested solutions for finding even more items in bulk. Tee hee. I'm so excited! We are making progress in the first and most important of the three Rs: Reduce, reuse, recycle.

What about you? What conscious choices are you making this week to help us all live in a world more like the Village of Ordinary?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

44 pounds, 80 minutes

Are you planning to watch TV tonight? I encourage you to spend 80 minutes watching 44 pounds instead. It's hauntingly beautiful, sweetly silent, save for muted voices, the occasional footfall on rock. If you don't have 80 minutes to spare, watch the 2-minute time-lapse version. Viewing it was enough to make me want to see the whole thing. Afterward, please take time to tell me what you learned, what you felt, how you might respond.


44 Pounds from water.org on Vimeo.


44 Pounds, 2 Times a day

Berhane makes this trek twice a day, every single day. Imagine hauling water this way when you are sick with the stomach flu, or your children, whom you must leave at home, have chicken pox.

How did you feel when you saw that young woman climbing down into the well, clinging to the wall, and lifting out the jerry can to her friend? What do you think would have happened if the second well had been too dirty, like the first?

Give water, Save lives

Nearly one billion people lack access to safe water and 2.5 billion do not have improved sanitation. The health and economic impacts are staggering.

Water.org

Every minute, four children die because of water-borne illness. Every minute. Organizations like water.org and Water Charity, are working hard and fast to help villagers in Ethiopia, India, Haiti and many other countries dig wells, install pumps. They show parents how to save their children's lives by using some of their precious fuel to boil water.

Can you help? Will you spread the word through your blog, Facebook, or Twitter? It takes only a moment if you use the buttons immediately below this post. If you have a little extra cash, will you take time to donate? Both sites linked to above have easy to use donate buttons on their home pages.

Why it matters

Apart from the sheer humanitarian need to help when we learn of another's distress and have the means to be of use, why should we care so much about water?

We in the developed West are fortunate to have all the water we need--for now. According to many scientists, the world is in a planet-wide water crisis that may result in water wars sooner than any of us imagine. Very likely you and I will live long enough to experience the first wave of these. Crazy as it sounds today, our children and grandchildren may face much worse.

For now, we are the lucky ones. Beginning to know and understand the problem is an important first step. Lending a hand to the real people already experiencing the crisis is an equally important second step.

What can you do to help the one-sixth of the world's children who do not have safe, clean water to drink? Can you help save a few lives today? Will you help spread the word? Spare a few dollars? It's the Ordinary thing to do.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

War on Garbage: What is all that junk, anyway?

One week's waste accumulation
© L. Kathryn Grace

The first step in my personal war on garbage is to figure out what it is we're pitching. You can get a pretty good idea here.









There's a lot of paper, a lot of thin cardboard--the kind that cereal comes in and paper towels are rolled on, the occasional can or bottle, and lots of bits of plastic. Right on top, you can see the bag that held the frozen peas we had with our dinner last night.

First off, I should tell you, we've been reducing our waste contribution for some time. Just five years ago, we filled a 10-1/2 gallon trash canalmost every week, in addition to stuffing the recycling basket. Back then, we curb-cycled the large trash can (it disappeared in minutes) and acquired the 2.3 gallon version shown above, which we empty once a week. So in that time frame, we've reduced our landfill contribution by a minimum of 8.2 gallons per week. That's the good news.

But how can we reduce our throwaways and recyclables even more?

Stop the junk mail

First on the agenda: Stop the junk mail. We got rid of almost all of it a few years ago, but somehow we've managed to get on a whole lot of lists again, despite always hitting the opt-out button whenever we donate to a worthy cause or subscribe online.

In the last several weeks, my sweetie and I have been calling the businesses, non-profits and political organizations that send us junk mail and telling them to stop. Most are polite, take down our information, and assure us they will remove our names from their mailing lists. The credit card companies are the most difficult to deal with. After listening to seemingly endless menu choices, and pressing numerous buttons between, sometimes we end up back where we started. You know how that goes. Eventually, we get through to a human who claims they will take us off their list. In every case, the live reps tell us it will be six to ten weeks before we stop seeing their mailings. For some of those organizations, that's one or more fat envelopes every single week.

I'll let you know in a couple of months how well this worked.


Buy in bulk--Take reusable containers

Second step: Decide right now we're not going to buy anything in a box, can or plastic bag we can buy in bulk at the organic grocer a few blocks away. And we'll take our own reusable containers to hold the goods. That will eliminate most of those flattened food boxes and some of the plastic bags. We already buy most of our cereal, grains, nuts, and other dry foods in bulk at our local organic grocer. The problem is, all too frequently, when we're out of an item and in a hurry, we will stop at our corner grocery and bring home a box of cereal or a plastic bag of rice. The cereal boxes can be recycled, of course, but those plastic bags that hold rice, pasta and frozen vegetables cannot.

This will take a concerted effort. I need to talk to my sweetie about that and see if I can get a commitment. I'll let you know how that goes, too.

That's two good steps to move us further down the track. I'm working on a third today and will tell you more about that in the next post.

We're a long way, in our household, from the model of Ordinary, where nothing is wasted. The fictional people of Ordinary, like the very real people of Ladakh, waste absolutely nothing. Perhaps things have changed today, with the influence of Western culture, but when Helena Norberg-Hodge first visited the Ladakh in the 70s, there were no landfills, no unsightly dumps.

No ugly geometry had been imposed on this land, no repetitive lines. Everything was easy to the eye, calming to the soul.

Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, p. 22

This is the goal. Can you see it? Can you visualize a world in which we all care so tenderly for the earth and each other that we waste nothing, that everything we see is easy to the eye, calming to the soul?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.