Much of our current ecological peril is due to our lifestyles of convenience. (Most of modern North Americans) An antidote to traveling on the environmentally hazardous convenience train is to consciously hop aboard the slower moving but oh so satisfying train that stops at stations which are so much more personally meaningful and filled with real and interesting human interactions. Environmental friendliness!
As you train yourself off of plastic shopping bags, plastic packaged foods, plastic water bottles and the gloss of new and bigger and more is better you will come to see that being environmentally friendly reaps its own rewards and isn’t as difficult as you might think!
Here are a few steps our little family of five have taken and/or are continuing to take to lighten our load:
1) Home efficiency: Our family’s first step towards increased environmental mindedness was looking into improving our home’s efficiency. We installed a new ventilation system, increased our insulation, replaced most of our old, less efficient appliances and are working our way towards replacing our oil burning heat system. All of this has taken place over the past five years and the roll out continues. We are a modest, one income family after all. A reduced flow shower head, and one low flush toilet are in and the second low flush toilet will be installed in the weeks to come. Big thank you's to my dad, my son Lucas and my husband Paul! The water savings on the toilets alone are staggering to consider. We will have saved many, many thousands of liters of clean water from being flushed away simply by making this change at a time when both the province and our municipality are offering rebates on low flush toilets.
And through the process of reducing our water consumption I cannot help but think of my own mother’s upbringing in rural PEI sixty plus years ago. They had no indoor plumbing, no electricity, farmed for their modest living and pumped all the water they used by hand. Increased convenience and increased consumption go hand in hand. So too does a loss of a sense of value and sacredness of resources such as water.
2) Growing our own food: We began our eating local pursuit at the local farmer’s market many years ago and branched out to support a wonderful family CSA for several years before growing enough of our own food that we could no longer justify the spending and intake from the CSA. Our first step to growing our own food began a half dozen years ago when my husband Paul had a friend of ours, Gary Schneider, over to look at improvements we could make to our yard. In his ever generous and wise manner he suggested that we convert the front of our south facing yard nearest our house to a veggie garden. We took his sage advice and haven’t looked back since. We began modestly with tomatoes, chives, basil, green peppers and nasturtiums and have since doubled our fully edible garden space, thereby decreasing the mowed area of our front lawn dramatically. The garden has been the single most rewarding family affair imaginable for our three children, all teens now, and all with significant appetites and desires for tasty, handy, fresh and delicious foods right outside our kitchen window. It is a true kitchen garden and an ongoing challenge and ever changing piece of artistic expression for our family.
Further reducing our consumptive habits has been relatively easy. Due to income restrictions we have never been big spenders and shopping was not a pastime for us. Making music, art, going for walks and family games nights and suppertime gatherings are how we pass our time. That said, we embraced second hand shopping many years ago and have not looked back since. We do supplement with new store bought items from time to time but most books, clothing, footwear and musical instruments are previously used items.
3) Embracing reusable bags and containers: Next to tackle was our plastic consumption. We began by using reusable shopping bags on a very regular basis about half dozen years ago and reusable veggie bags more recently thanks to receiving a gift of them from my sister Janice. Our motto is if you forget your bag carry out the goods in your arms. You won’t forget the next time! Certainly the process has been imperfect but it is entirely doable and can be thought of as a positive habit to train yourself on. The next to tackle was water bottles, also many moons ago. We seem to always be thirsty in this house and have a decent selection of reusable water bottles. We simply do not buy plastic water or juice bottles and have a constant supply of reusable bottles ready to fill or chilling in the fridge for our many outings, year round.
Reusable glass storage containers have been on our gift wish list for many years now. That and mason jars! We never seem to have enough for all the cooking, baking, storing and freezing that goes on in our busy kitchen! We also stack saucers on top of bowls in our fridge if our storage containers are all in use. Bringing reusable glass containers to the Farmer’s Market for Abby’s noodles on Saturdays has been an outing for our youngest, Clara for many years of Saturdays now. They know what she wants and she has inspired others to take their own containers from home while waiting in the busy lineup there. We have lived in our current home for nine years now and never brought any plastic cling wrap or baggies into our home. We do use wax paper and parchment—little luxuries—but we try to be mindful of our usage.
And on the topic of reusable’s—we have embraced our local Bulk Barn’s weigh and pay reusable container policy. We simply bring in our clean, empty food containers and have them weighed before we fill them with any number of items we regularly use and used to buy in plastics. Everything from using small jars for spices to my mother’s beautiful giant glass jar she used to use for brown sugar in my childhood for our large flake oats. We have a medium sized quinoa container we keep in our fridge and a large covered bowl of coconut oil in our baking cupboard. The list goes on and on—buckwheat flour, coconut flour, hemp seeds in mason jars. You get it. This requires some thought and preparation but we make it into an outing and have an increased appreciation for our reduction in plastic waste. Our oldest daughter Maria was instrumental in spurring us on to this venture!
Brand new on our list of refillables is our Down East refill station at Riverview Market for our liquid laundry and dish soaps. My sister Julie saw this new service listed on a PEI zero waste facebook page and told us about it. We gave it a go today and filled our laundry jug cheaper than the sale price at our local grocers and found a better bottle for our dish soap with a smaller output hole so not as much soap pours out at once which saves product and money over time.Riverview Market was so accommodating and helpful while we learned how to refill. Baby steps I know but at least they are in the direction of improved household efficiency and environmental stewardship.
4) Reuse cloth rags: We have a rag drawer in our bathroom which we use for household cleaning and to wipe up spills. We do not buy paper towels and rarely buy paper napkins. My mother has supplied us with a generous number of cloth napkins which we throw in the laundry after each use with our towels.
5) Vegan cooking and baking: The females in our household have all been dairy and gluten free for many years now due to food sensitivities but three years ago our oldest daughter Maria decided to go vegetarian. This was soon followed by a full switch to veganism a year later. We have never been big consumers of meat and bought local meat for many years now but the switch to increased vegan cooking and baking has been life changing. Maria is fully vegan but the rest of us benefit from her fabulous repertoire of cooking and baking sans animal products. Her new instagram account called thisnourishedvegan has been a wonderful source of inspiration and deliciousness. Vegan food is wildly delicious and easy to adapt to. I highly suggest trying adding a vegan dish to your weekly rotation. It can help save the Earth and you won’t be disappointed by the tastiness either! Some cookbooks to try: Oh She Glows Cookbooks (1) and (2), Feasting on Fruit blog recipes, The First Mess cookbook as well as our most recent addition called Liv B’s Vegan on a Budget.
We hope to get a clothes line back up and running after too many years of not using our broken one here. On good drying days in the summer I have been sneaking down to my nearby parents to use their clothes line while they are away camping. Their yard is better suited for drying laundry than our heavily treed back yard.
Our car is a used hybrid and we are trying to consider our driving habits when we are out and about running errands or for pleasure drives. Keeping it local helps! And walking more is a goal of ours too!
I would love to hear what you are up to as you attempt to lighten your environmental footprint and increase your sense of stewardship and empowerment in this crazy era of climate instability. Any tips or comments are welcome!
I wish you good cheer on your journey towards improved environmental friendliness!
In warmth,
Jill