Ecominded Mama

A year of ecomindedness

I've been blogging about my efforts to be more ecominded for a year now, and I have to say that I'm pretty proud of the changes I've made. I certainly could be more ecominded in my actions (I've been wanting to buy a compost bin for at least a year, for example, but still haven't bought one), but all in all I'm doing a lot better than I was when I started this blog. I committed to changing my habits and my spending patterns whenever I could, and for the most part I've been satisfied and even incredibly surprised at how easy those changes were: I turn off my car when I think I'll be idling for more than 10 seconds, my dryer goes largely unused because I dry most of my family's laundry on clothes racks if the weather isn't amenable to me drying them outside on my clothesline, I pack snacks and leftovers in reusable containers, we fill our Klean Kanteen and Sigg bottles with water at home instead of buying bottled water (my 5-year-old did not lose her school Klean Kanteen bottle for even a DAY this year!), we unplug appliances we aren't using, and minimize our entertainment center's phantom load by hooking everything up to the Smart Strip. Am I singlehandedly saving the planet with these small changes? No. But I am making a difference, and that's something to celebrate. 

Use less. And then try using even less than that.

My latest environmental strategy was inspired by spots -- spots on my clean laundry. At first I thought they were grease stains, but then I noticed that they were on the backs of shirts and other spots where they couldn't possibly have been in the line of fire of cooking oil. Naturally I turned to the Web to research these mysterious spots, and although I found some conflicting advice, the majority of what I read indicated that I was using too much detergent. I was skeptical, but I ran a few loads using about a quarter less than the recommended amount of detergent and my clothes were perfectly clean (and without mysterious spots!). I decided to try using even less detergent, and once again, my clothes came out clean. Now I'm using about half of the recommended amount of laundry detergent, which means I'm getting twice as many loads out of the box of detergent. I'm also using a quarter of my dryer sheets rather than the whole thing (with no noticeable difference in static). Hooray!

It's been a good lesson to learn. I'm now trying to use less of everything -- less shampoo, lower heat when I'm boiling water (don't forget to use a lid), lower thermostat, less dishwasher soap, etc. If you're hesitant, try using just a little bit less, then try using just a little bit less than that. You'll be amazed, I promise.

2009 Eco-Resolutions

Last year was a good one for me, environmentally speaking -- I took a hard look at what changes I could make in my everyday life that would have a positive impact on the environment and I committed to at least try them. Nearly all of them were surprisingly easy to do or only mildly inconvenient; my hope is that the ones that were onerous will some day be made easy by new techniques or technology or a change in my temperament.

Here's what I'm focusing on for 2009:

1. Eat less meat. Reducing the amount of meat I eat has been on my mind since I read Mark Bittman's Rethinking the Meat Guzzler and Putting Meat Back in Its Place articles, but I haven't actively been trying to change my eating habits. I tried to eat vegetarian in college and only lasted a few weeks, so I know I can't give up meat entirely -- but I can eat less. (By the way, Mark Bittman's recently revised How to Cook Everything cookbook is fantastic. His approach is simple, his recipes are manageable, and everything we've made so far has been delicious.)

2. Buy less stuff. We more than tripled our space when we moved out of our tiny apartment and into our suburban house, and one day recently I realized that it was becoming full of stuff. I had to be smart about buying only what we needed when we lived in our apartment and diligent about getting rid of things that were no longer used, but the increased space of our house changed everything. I could hold onto things just in case we might need them, I could buy things because they were on sale, I could allow the mountain of toys to grow. But when I thought about my new habits in environmental terms, I realized that I'd become a mindless consumer -- and being a mindless consumer is wasteful. So for 2009, I'm aiming to buy less. (Another book recommendation: Peter Walsh's It's All Too Much is insightful and offers easy ways to reduce clutter and organize your house and your life, primarily by buying less stuff.)

3. Be even better. And finally, I want to keep learning about my impact on the environment, keep trying to reduce that impact, and continue with this blog so that I don't get lazy.

Shop at consignment stores

I'm lucky enough to have two great kids' consignment stores near me, and I've found some fantastic bargains. Today I bought one of my daughters a Lands' End dress similar to this one (currently selling for $45) for $8. It's in perfect condition and looks like it was never worn, and she loves it. It's easy to see the cost savings associated with buying used clothes (particularly for fast-growing kids), but doing so has environmental benefits as well -- it's a perfect "reuse" scenario.

Focusing on "reuse"

I've focused on recycling and trying to buy eco-friendly products for some time, but I realized that I'm falling down on the "reusing" front. The "How to Recycle Anything" article I mentioned in my last post got my thinking about ways I could repurpose things, so I spent the past few days trying to come up with ways to reuse stuff. Here are a few changes I've made:

1. Use newspaper delivery bags for dog waste pick-up. I had been using maybe one per week of the blue plastic bags our NY Times is delivered in each day as a garbage bag for the car, but obviously that meant the other six were going in the garbage (our city doesn't accept plastic bags for recycling). I started collecting the bags and putting them next to the dog leash, which makes it easy to remember to take one with me when I walk the dog.

2. Reusing plastic soup containers. We're big soup eaters in our house (even during the summer), and are huge fans of the prepared soup at our local grocery store. The containers are recyclable, but I had never thought to reuse them first for leftovers or general storage. I'll think twice now before I toss them into the recycling bin.

3. Newspaper to clean mirrors. I'm not sure where I read to do this, but I know it was a trick of my Mom's: I used newspaper instead of paper towels to clean the bathroom mirrors yesterday and it worked great. It left fewer streaks and barely any lint, which is a problem with paper towels. I still recycled the newspaper, but I used it to clean the mirrors first (I'm sure it would work on glass, too).

More to come....

The term of the day: eco-anxiety

I just read a post by Risa Green on Mommy Track'd that's focused on her "eco-anxiety" (which Plenty magazine describes as "a chronic fear of the environmental future," but which Risa describes more along the lines of guilt related to doing things she knows are detrimental to the environment). I'd never heard the term before, but I can certainly relate -- my own eco-anxiety is why I started trying to be more environmentally conscious in my daily life and it's why I started this blog (when I discovered that it's not really that difficult to be more eco-friendly, I wanted to share what I'd learned).

Anxiety in general is not good, of course, but eco-anxiety can be a good thing. It prompted me to start making simple changes -- and they really are simple changes. They take a little extra time to do, yes. In the grand scheme of things, though, I'm talking a few extra minutes, not hours. Not even quarter-hours. I'm catching up on laundry now after being away for four days, and I hung up some clothes on my clothesline and put the rest on my drying rack, which is one of the most time-intensive things I do for environmental reasons on a regular basis. It took me about 10 minutes to do both things. 10 minutes! I feel great that I'm not using my dryer for non-environmental reasons, too:

• Air-drying is saving me money on my electric bill, which is astronomical

• The heat from the dryer isn't heating up the house, which means that I can continue to leave the windows wide open and the air conditioner off

See, my eco-anxiety has its upsides!