EcoBlog: July 28, 2008

July 28, 2008:

To share my enthusiasm, I’ve decided to start a blog related to my efforts to be more Eco-Aware and active in my day-to-day life. My maternal grandparents, both of whom lived through the Great Depression, left quite an impression on me. It was totally normal for them to collect food tins, cans and bottles both in their home and on their property and drive (no recycling pick-up in Connecticut in the 80’s) to the Transfer Station to drop off and collect the deposit money related to the type of container. They were very aware of curbing waste and making sure that very little went to waste. And, as the materials that could be recycled expanded, my grandparents evolved along with the improvements and brought more items to the Transfer station.
Thus I became a recycling fanatic, and have been known to bring home recyclables from places I’ve worked with no recycling to be picked up in my home-recycling bin. I just hate to see so much go to waste when it can be reused, refashioned, recycled, etc. instead of just pitched in the silly landfills. My father does not currently have recycling pick-up in his county north of here, and I’m working on convincing him to bring his recyclables to our bin for pick-up.

Last week I started reading “the green book” by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen, published by Three Rivers Press. I thought that it may be a lot of info that I already knew, and some of it is, however they pair suggestions for reducing our impact on our world with figures that express what kind of possible effect we can have, such as saving x-amount of paper napkins going into landfills if just a certain percentage of the population switched to cloth napkins, and the amount saved would be equivalent to a paper napkin of a massive size, etc, etc.
Regarding cloth napkins, my boyfriend Jason and I have gotten into the serious habit of using only cloth napkins for our meals at home, and use a combination of paper and cloth towels and cellulose sponges when we clean. For surfaces we use Method brand cleansers as well as Meijer’s new natural all-purpose cleanser, and I’m about to switch from Comet cleanser to a non-chlorine abrasive cleanser for those times when we need to really scrub the sinks or tub.
Last week, inspired by this little book and disturbed by the amount of non-recyclable or reusable trash that I personally create, I decided changed two things in my daily behavior, and this is really what I want to share, and why I decided to try this Blog-thing.
Each time that I visit the restroom, I, of course, wash my hands after I am done, and dry my hands with the least amount of paper towel that I can manage. Even with trying to use as little as possible to dry my hands, this action still created waste, and I cringed at the daily pile of paper towels I was creating, and what that would look like at the end of the week, the end of the month, and each year. Yarg.
So, with some inspiration from this little green book, I had a little brainstorm. I decided to bring in a hand towel from home, and start to use it, rather than the paper towels, for each time I dry my hands. This may seem like a weird, inconvenient thing to many, many people. I’ve always been weird, so there’s no worry there for me. As far as inconvenience, perhaps more folks need to get over themselves. It’s not like you are using those old hand-towel things that used to be in bathrooms. This is a towel that is for you only, and you bring it home as often as you see fit to launder it and bring it back, and maybe this suggestion would help. As an avid backpacker, I realized that I happened to have a quick-drying towel at home that would be perfect for this situation. It’s an Aquis Adventure microfiber towel from a company by the name of Britanne, and in addition to the full-size towel, I also have a face cloth, in a lovely shade of turquoise, and that is what I have been trying out for the past few days. It’s small, doesn’t look like I’m on my way to shower in the bathroom sink, and dries fast. It’s got a loop on it, so I can hang it on the hook on the inside of the stall until I’m ready to wash my hands. When I return to my office, I drape it on the back of the plastic-framed chair that I sit on at my desk, and it starts to drying. It and similar products by other manufacturers can be found out local outdoor outfitters and sports stores, or online.
After getting the ball rolling with the cloth towel for my hand-drying, I had another idea to start bringing a cloth napkin with my lunch. I rarely buy lunch, so I am either home to eat, or home to prepare lunch and bring it back to the office. For the meals at my desk, I threw in a cloth napkin one day after getting my lunch ready. This worked out especially well, as my office is new, and I don’t have a waste-bin yet, so it’s one less thing to carry out to the trash bin in the lounge-area! Bringing my lunch, incidentally, is not only economical, but greatly reduces waste as well, especially if you endeavor to pack your food in reusable containers.
The green book, trendy as it is, has reminded me that making new things takes energy, materials, and water. Reusing one thing regularly conserves all of that, and that is key. Conservation is really what we need to be doing.