reduce my environmental footprint

I have adopted a goal of taking cold showers for all of august.

The following-the-speed-limit gas saving plan has been working pretty well, to my surprise. I wish more people would do this.

I bought a reusable air conditioner filter. When it gets dirty, all I have to do is wash it.

I bought a box fan this weekend (finally, after 2 years of intending to buy one) so for the past few days DH and I have been using the fan instead of the air conditioner. DH is a little grumpy about it because it doesn’t cool down the apartment quite as fast as the AC. But I say he’s just been spoiled since we’ve been using the AC almost every day this summer.

What we really need to do is come up with a better way of securing the fan in the bedroom window that also easily allows us to move the fan into the living room when we need it there.

First, the good: I just found out our apartment complex supposedly has some recycle bins! Gone are the days of driving my recyclables out to the public drop-off center! Now I just have to find out where they’ve been hiding it…

Now, the bad: In the middle of the night, DH knocked over a table lamp with a CFL bulb in it and luckily it didn’t break! But it did cause me to read some of the safety info on the package. We’re not supposed to use them in floor lamps with height greater than 3 times the base width (I assume this is due to the risk of them falling over and breaking the bulbs, which have mercury in them.) This means I’ll need to take out about half of the CFL bulbs I’ve been using and go back to incandescents. I don’t think LED bulbs are quite affordable yet. :-/

Okay, my father went out and bought CFL spotlights for the recessed lights in the kitchen.

They’re WONDERFUL. The light is much clearer and stronger. We’re going to be putting them into Mom’s sewing room as well.

So this weekend I purchased a shirt that says “Love the Earth”. Previous to this year, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, thinking that it was hippie mantra and people would think I was a tree-hugger or something. After senior year of college when I was forced to take two science classes and I elected to take two environmental/energy classes, however, I find that loving the earth is not something to take lightly, nor is it something only the hippie/natural crowd should take on. It is incredible to me that some people can still maintain that global warming does not exist. The extent of global warming that is due to human action can be debated, sure. But the fact is that since we’ve become an industrialized world, the earth has lost a sizeable chunk of its natural resources and has become a dirtier place. On a humorous sidenote, we saw the movie Wall-E this weekend as well, and the fact is that the plot line that the earth has become overrun with garbage, forcing the human race to leave Earth, is not as unrealistic as one might think.

Short term goals:
1. No more styrofoam cups at work. Bring a cup.
2. Try to use the car air-conditioning as little as possible to save gas mileage.
3. Keep the air conditioner in our room at 68, not 64.

Long term goals:
1. Find a job and a living space within 10 minutes of each other (or within the bounds of reliable public transportation).
2. Start a garden with trees and produce.
3. Recycle. It is absurd how little I do this.

So, I’m getting brave and figuring out the public transit system here in portland. It’s actually really easy and reliable to use :)—just takes forever, so I have to plan reading or study time for the train etc. Much better than driving all over though even if I DO have access to a hybrid that get’s 50 + mpg. and I can read and relax instead of watching traffic :)

under reducing the amount of weird chemicals in my life, but thought it was pertinent to this goal as well. I found out some stuff I thought I’d share with anyone interested.

Ways to reduce your exposure.

I can’t remember the last time I had something dry cleaned.
We don’t really use air fresheners – the closest we come are candles and occasionally Febreze or Nature’s Miracle. I rarely wear makeup or perfume, but I should look into what I have. Most of our kitchen food containers are Pyrex. We filter our drinking water and have finally gotten some good quality plastic bottles instead of buying water bottles and reusing them a few times. (See below…) We almost never use pesticides and only ever use natural fertilizers if any. Oh, and this isn’t on the list but we use Yesterday’s News cat litter, which is recycled newspaper instead of weird crystals or the super dusty stuff.

So I’m doing really well with this goal of reduction already, apparently.

As I was looking this stuff up I started to worry that perhaps the bottles we got weren’t so good after all – they have the number 7 on the bottom and that apparently means the bottles MAY contain BPA. However, 7 doesn’t automatically mean it contains BPA. 7 is basically just a catch all category for plastics that don’t fit into the 1 through 6 categories. The bottles also say SAN on the bottom, beneath the 7, and it would seem that SAN isn’t the kind of plastic that leaches the stuff. So if you should decide to buy hard plastic bottles and want to avoid BPA do your research. Don’t just disregard something because it says 7 but do check it out, essentially. Most sites just say ”#7 plastics are bad!” but that’s not actually the case. Especially since compostable plastics, made from corn and such, fall under the #7 category. It’s a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I suppose.

Car Free and vegan for almost a year and loving it!

Well I’ve changed all the bulbs in my house, I recycle and I free cycle. I turn off the lights when I leave a room and I don’t own a car… What next?