Scooting through No Impact Week – Day 3: Transportation

Bikes and buses: Way to go.
Image by ACTransit.org via Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic

It’s Day 3 of the No Impact Week Challenge.The steps today are all about changing our mode of transportation. Luckily, this one is a no-brainer for us. (I'm still waiting for the day we’re asked to go the rest of the week without our  'puters, or to wash our clothes in the tub with Dr. Bonner's and our feet!}

As my regular readers know, we haven’t owned a car in several years—seven to be exact. That doesn’t mean we don’t ride in them occasionally. Most of the time, we walk or ride public trains and buses.

What we’re up to with today’s challenge

From the Sierra Club No Impact Week manual, we are to have a blast with the following. 

1. Take stock of your habits: make a list of everywhere you’re going today and how you usually get there. What alternative modes of transportation could you use instead? Log onto your local transit authority’s website for an online trip planner.
   I’ll walk in the early morning for exercise, fresh air and as part of my morning meditation. Later, I’ll walk a few blocks to my local organic grocer for a few supplies, and still later, I’ll run an errand further away that, if I had more time available, I could walk. It’s only a couple of miles, but I’ll take a bus. I have a choice between a vehicle powered by electricity or one powered by diesel fuel. Either way, fossil fuels come into play.
2. Organize a carpool, pick up a bus schedule or tune up your bicycle.
   No can do. Don’t own a car or bicycle, and I don’t need a printed bus schedule because I have easy access to electronic applications. Interesting question: What has more aggregate carbon impact—Printing thousands of copies of new bus schedules every time routes change and distributing them throughout the region, or patrons using cell phones and computers to plan our routes?
3. Throughout the day, keep a list of everything you eat, where you eat and where you purchase your food. This will help you get ready for Wednesday's challenge.
   I’m tracking this separately. More tomorrow.
4. GO! Bike. Walk. Scoot. Glide. Hop on the bus. Carpool.
   Is it just me, or does one this seem a bit redundant?
5. Take a moment to reflect on your day. Was it a nice change of pace or a difficult one? What benefits did you discover along your route? What could you improve in your experience? Comment about it here. I'll return to update this at the end of the day. Update: Since I routinely walk or ride the bus, there was no change of pace. I did take advantage of the beautiful weather to walk to all my errands, rather than riding the bus part way as I sometimes do. I thoroughly enjoyed the long walk in the coastal sunshine. Delighted!
6. Write down five things for which you are grateful.
   Only five? I am deeply grateful for:
   1. Good health.
   2. Strong limbs to carry me.
   3. Plenty of organic, fresh and local food options within walking/busing distance.
   4. Every person who has the option and chooses to walk, ride a bicycle or use public transportation rather than polluting our air and poisoning our bodies with a fossil-fueled vehicle.
   5. A loving, thriving, healthy family.

Are you taking the challenge? Do you plan to take the Huffington Post version in October? Or how about this? Quick, name five things for which you are grateful right now.

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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.

Zero waste challenge: Coming clean with trash on Day 2 of No Impact Week

Image courtesy Sierra Club

Can our household reduce our personal carbon footprint to zero in just one week? Doubtful, but we're going to find out. We're participating in the Sierra Club's No Impact Week. This is Day 2, and it's all about trash. I'll tell you more about that in a moment, but first, what is No Impact Week?

Author Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, calls No Impact Week a one-week carbon cleanse and says, "It is a chance for you to see what a difference no-impact living can have on your quality of life." Beavan thinks the change will be a good one:

It's not about giving up creature comforts but an opportunity for you to test whether the modern "conveniences" you take for granted are actually making you happier or just eating away at your time and money.
No Impact Man on Join thousands doing the Sierra Club No Impact Week

He should know. For one year, he and his family gradually reduced their carbon impact to zero. In the process, they did a lot of the things we talk about here.  They bought nothing new, except food, for an entire year. They stopped eating meat, bought all their food at their local farmers market, gave up all forms of carbon-emitting transportation, which meant they walked, biked or rode an unmotorized scooter--one of those cute little silver things you see around town. They also gave up television, toilet paper, and electricity.

Beavan, his wife, Michelle Conlin, a reporter for Business Week, and their little girl live in Manhattan. I figure if they can survive a year drastically reducing their carbon footprint, I can manage a week. The bad news is, I only learned about this week-long mass experiment early Sunday morning. We started yesterday with Day 1: Consumption, but I didn't have an opportunity to complete a post about it.

Today, Day 2, is Trash Day

Yesterday, we each—my sweetie and I--saved all the trash we accumulated during the day, including recyclables and food scraps. I have the biggest bunch because I was cooking quite a bit, and I cleared a few past-due items from the refrigerator. I generated two pounds, nine ounces in food scraps alone. Thankfully, they went into the city’s compost program. We were supposed to set the trash we accumulated yesterday aside until the end of the experiment, but I couldn’t hang onto food scraps for eight days. Eeeww! I saved the rest though. Here it is.
The first step today was to separate our trash into two piles:

• Stuff we used for more than ten minutes.
  Stuff we used for less than ten minutes.

The only items used less than ten minutes are inside the brown paper bag: a bunch of used tissues and a couple of what my mother delicately refers to as “unmentionables.” I didn’t have the heart to lay them in plain sight.

With the exception of the toilet paper roll, the other items are packaging. We are gradually phasing out most of them, but it will take a while.

Options we’re exploring—and not

We have a few ideas in the works for eliminating the packaging you see in the picture.

• Ice cream carton. We’re considering several options to replace ice cream in cartons, because we’re not giving up ice cream. Uh uh. Nada. Not gonna happen. I’ll tell you more about that in a post down the road.
  
• Cracker box and liner bag. Crackers are easy to make. I have to get better at planning to have some on hand for snacks and when the grandbabies come to visit.
  
• Compostable compost bags. I’m thinking about building a worm bin like Wanda’s so I don’t have to buy any more compostable bags for the food scraps.
  
• Evert Food Saver Bags. The green plastic produce bags are on their way out. I love how they keep our veggies fresh, but when the last one cannot be reused one more time, no more. When they’re gone, they’re gone for good. We’ll be using organic cotton reusable produce bags, organic cotton reusable mesh bags, and trying out the storage methods Beth Terry outlines on Fake Plastic Fish.
  
• Plastic sausage wrapper. Niman Ranch sausages are one of the few meat items we still enjoy, and we buy them once a month or so. We’re not ready to give them up, but the plastic wrapper screams a little louder each time I stand in front of the case deciding whether this is the time to say no more. That’s coming. I don’t know when.
  
• Tissues, unmentionables and toilet paper rolls These will be with us awhile. Maybe a long while. We just can’t bear the thought of washing and reusing cloth rags that have been used for certain human excretions. You know what I’m talking about.
  

What’s up with trash for the rest of the week

The Sierra Club has posted these suggestions for reducing our trash for the rest of the week. We already do most of them. I bet you do, too.

1. Put together a no-trash travel kit for the week with a reusable drinking receptacle for hot and cold liquids, a handkerchief/old t-shirt, Tupperware® [Or not! Try a stainless steel bot instead.], utensils, and reusable produce bags.
   
2. Stop making trash. Reduce it. Reuse it. Recycle it. Just don’t throw it away. Keep a special bag at home or the office to collect trash you make by mistake or necessity throughout the week.
   
3. At the end of the day, take time to reflect on your discoveries and post on our [Sierra Club’s] blog. Answer these questions: What did you put in your special trash bag? Why was it hard or easy not to make trash? Where was it impossible not to make trash? Comment about it here.
   
4. Be proud of your efforts and a great start to the week! Write down five things for which you are grateful.

Interested? If I’d known about this experiment before midnight Sunday morning, I’d have told you about it, but you haven’t missed out completely. If you’re game and don’t mind being a couple of days behind, sign up now and find out whether you can improve your quality of life while lowering your carbon footprint. It's just one week. Alternatively, you can wait until October, when the Huffington Post is hosting its own Huffington Post No Impact Challenge Week.

Don't feel like it? I get that. Stick around and see what happens with us. I'll be honest about our successes and failures. One thing is certain: If I'm asked to give up TP, it ain't a gonna happen. I'm not there. Wonder if there's anything in the project that could change my mind.

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Disclosure:  If you follow one of the Amazon links above and purchase something, it is possible I will earn a few pennies, and what a thrill that would be, but of course I would rather you source a new product locally and avoid extra packaging and shipping. Better still, maybe someone on FreeCycle has an extra lying about and would love to hand it off to you.

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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.