you and the enviroment
 

what have you done for the environment? we have switched most of our light bulbs for the mini bulbs, replaced old inefficient appliances. we have also planted trees and harvest dead fall and trash trees as well as wood that is no longer useful for building with to heat our houses. we also pick up trash on the road sides and recycle any glass, plastic or metal that we find or produce (multipul tonnages of steel!) with farm consolidation going on around us plus urbanization, we are able too pick up small equipment that we refurbish for our own use and too resell (or pass on at cost). we also spread composts and manure's back too our fields (have a long way too go on getting that done this year!) we also have cut down how many trips we make off farm and try and do as many jobs at once while we are at it. we are active in many other ways too but enough posted too start.

well, I am not sure if I do it for the environment or my pocketbook, or just plain old common sense, but...

replaced flower beds with edible landscaping
planted fruit trees
put all gardening and abovementioned items on drip systems
combine errands
fix things instead of replacing them
buy used when it is feasible
grow our own food as much as possible
I know there's more......

I pee in the yard. Good fertilizer.

Very low emissions from my off grid home, very little garbage output, no support for factory farming.

We're replacing light bulbs as they burn out. (we're cheeeep) We recycle everything our city takes. Trying to take shorter showers. Using less water in the washing machine. Co-ordinating errands so as to minimize filling the gas tank. Planted a vegie garden. Don't turn on the AC until absolutely necessary. (this is TX-it WILL be necessary soon.)

Patty

Several years ago a study was done by College of Environmental Science and Forestry of the State Univ. of New York to determine the most influential things one could do to help the earth stay healthy. It says in part "the most effective way an individual can protect the global environment, and hence protect the wellbeing of all living people is to abstain from creating another human". I haven't reproduced and never intend to, so that should help. Also, I do not drive much at all anymore since starting a home business growing plants. It took me 6 months to put 1000 miles on my car! At this rate it should last decades. Cool!

Replaced most light bulbs with the flourescents. That's about it, aside from putting in a food garden and trying to reduce watering but not doing so yet redoing the lawn after construction. And switching this place to organic but that's just us wherever we live.

good topic Ford Major, and one worth contemplating upon.

I've reduced energy consumption by a lot. Part of it is by simple living such as drying laundry outside or in a basement warmed by wood heat from a regenerative wood lot forest, using 75% less wattage with CFL or non incandescent lighting, using the most energy efficient appliances I can afford, etc.
composting organic wastes for garden use, recycling large plastic containers as much as possible...the less waste to the landfill, the better.
Regenerating forest with tree plantings. Over the years, I've replanted well over 4,000 tree seedlings that act to help sequester carbon. The more trees planted by anyone, everywhere...the better it can be to help recapture CO2, and also sustain woodlot fuel for the future.
Use the least amount of hydrocarbon fossil fuels as possible, including getting off of fuel oil heat and into wood heating.
Make places on least usable land for wildlife habitat which benefit the balance of ecosystems.
Grow gardens organically without use of artificially manufactured chemicals.

We replaced all major appliances with energy efficient ones over the past four years. Replaced the furnace and A/C with high efficient units. We have ceiling fans in four rooms. The A/C is set at 80 in the summer. A/C is a must here as we have an average of over 30 days each summer above 100 degrees.

Our town has a recycling program that utilizes a split bin. Trash goes in one side and recyclables in the other side. And yes, the garbage trucks are split too so the two sides don't get mixed up. We recycle all we can.

I am very energy conscious, equally because it costs so much anymore and I want to decrease my usage for environmental reasons. I use oil lamps most of the time and only have a few incandescents in the house. I do have the air conditioner on during the day but so far I haven't had to have it at night. Wash most laundry in cold, some in warm or hot but not much anymore. Do a lot of recycling. Make my own homemade cleaners mostly out of real soap, vinegar, baking soda, borax, alcohol. Hang the clothes out to dry. Don't buy paper towels, instead use old bedsheets cut and hemmed into squares or newspapers when absorbency is needed. Organic veg and fruit gardens (organic is cheap), home grown eggs and poultry meat. I've also been planting a lot of the land here that can't be used for growing fruit or veg back into native, natural trees, shrubs, and undergrowth plants to help feed birds and wildlife as well as to try to return the place to what it might have been decades ago. It's been a real education learning about all the native plants in this area. I've also started saving a lot more of my veg seed and doing a lot more propagation of fruit and the native plants. A lot of them are actually pretty easy to grow. I don't drive a whole lot anymore, only when necessary and then I combine necessary stops. I could go on and on, it's a favorite subject.

In addition to some of the things mentioned above, we try to obtain as many "free" items as we can in order to not only recycle but so we are not spending money. For example, we get wood chips free from a tree co. and use them in too many ways to list, we allow 2 lawn services to dump for free the grass and leave clippings on 3 acres we are trying to reclaim, free pallet wood for building projects and free rotten hay/straw for gardens. We get free hand-me-down clothing, and other household items and those we cannot use are passed around neighborhood.

I congratulate those of you who are contributing mercury to the environment by switching to the mini-fluourecent bulbs. They've got nearly as much mercury content as the long tubes, with no means to recycle it or contain it. They get crushed in the trash, and released to the atmosphere.

Those bulbs are not the environmental wonder they are marketed as.

I have not added to the burden of people in the world having realized at about age 14 (when there was less than half the current numbers in the world) that there were plenty and were going to be plenty of children in the world.

I purchased and have just let sit a large tract of fairly wild land with 1/4 mile of wild trout stream.

I have a home-office, so no daily commuting to the office.

I have made a switch to organic, non-motorized gardening and have nearly eliminated meat consumption in my diet.

And burning coal contributes to mercury in the environment too. There are several different studies with several different findings as to which way is better.

We switched to a high efficiency washer, use plant oil based instead of petroleum based dish and laundry soap, temporarily replaced the clothes line (this one is fence posts and string until we get a proper one) so we don't have to use the electric dryer, reuse the livestock water and leftover grass in the garden, combine errands instead of making several trips to one area, got the car running again and use that for most trips instead of the gas guzzling van, recycled an old fence the neighbor was going to throw away.

we dry laundry on the line exclusively ! reuse water from the kennels and livestock too water plants in the summer as well as a drainage tank that catchs the run off from the barn yards, this we also dragline onto hayfields. we use our sheep as lawn mowers as much as possible using weedeaters and mowers very little (used too take hours too mow the lawns now called pasture) they are more forgiving of rocks but hard on flwoers and vegys! we are also active members and supporters of our local farmers market both as volunteer maintenance and vender's as well my bro has been on the exec board for years. we also participate in freecycle giving away that which we do not need and getting some stuff in return.

Foxtrapper-

You raise a good point about the mercury content of those lamps. However, your statement regarding recyling is incorrect. There are many places to recycle CFL's. Our local tox-away day program takes them.

Go to earth911.org to search for a local recycler of CFL's.


aircycle.com has a mail-in recyling program. It's not free, but I plan to contact them and see what they might offer for residential use.

Great thing about them is they last so long, you shouldn't have to replace them very often. I'm coming up on 18 months for some of my bulbs, and haven't had a failure yet.

MG

We have an off-grid home (solar) and are planting a vegetable garden, are trying to reduce driving into town to 2-3 times a week. We're also into woodlot management to increase the health of our forest and use the firewood for home heating. Chris

The new property (farm) is offgrid. Diesel generator which runs on waste veggie oil to provide electricity (whichis stored in batteries). New house is underground concrete dome, so little use of heating in winter or cooling in summer.

biodiesel for the vehicles. woodburning cookstove. collecting rainwater for showers, garden, critters from the roof of a 40x80 shed. Homemade soaps.

We've been using wind generated electricity since 1977 and PVs since 1981. We garden organically (since the mid1970s), drive small cars as little as possible, live 2 miles from work on a farm, have extensivly reinsulated and in other ways improved the comfort and reduced the fuel usage of our old farmhouse (previously had a super insulated home that we built but moved due to jobs). We grow as much of our own food as we can, and buy most of the rest from local producers.

Regarding compact flourescents: They can be easily recycled in most places, and they reduce total mercury in the environment compared to powering a regular incandescant bulb with coal-fired generated electricity. The CFL bulb contains less mercury than the power plant would emit making the electricity to run an incandescant bulb. Regular incandesent bulbs should also be recycled as they contain lead solder in the base of the bulb. The solution is to sleep when it is dark, and make use of daylight.

That is a very natural pattern to fall into :)

wow, i am sooooo proud of all of you. this has been my cause since way before it was in vogue.

i do all the above, excepting the solar house and bio-diesel (still coming). but i do one more thing no one mentioned. i have put all my appliances and luxuries on strips, and turn them off at night. anything with a light or led, will drain energy, even while "off".

for example the tv, or microwave, or ac. don't leave the cell phone plug in, take it out, it continues to drain if you don't. stuff like that!!!!!!!!!!

When we built this house, we used a shallow frost free foundation, and turned the lower level into a garage. We use infloor radiant heat (one water heater, no furnace). This year we put in a drip system for the garden. We buy pastured beef and pork from a local farmer, and lamb we get from our own pasture. We are growing more of what we eat. We layer our garden and do not till. We do not mow, we rotate the livestock or use a scythe. We do not use chemical fertilizers, we compost. We use a front loading washing machine and line dry all laundry.

We also turn the power off to the computer, tv, and microwave before we go to bed and don't turn them on again until we use them, often not until late afternoon or evening.

We did lots... but the latest is adding two dairy goats (and their) kids to produce milk and meat. Our pasture is managed with lots of care.

Also I use the bus when I have to go to town (25 mile commute) and bike to my office from the bus station - it is all mild downhill and arrive fresh as a flower! Going back I take the city bus (it is uphill....).

Really fantastic masonry stove keeps us (almost) warm in the winter (we add a little heating with gas), and allows to cook meals in its belly. In the summer, I have thought of using solar cooker, but it is a bit pushing it for me - so I will build a wood horno for baking and such.

To those intentionally not having children, thanks. Makes more room and resources for those that God chooses to bless my wife and I with. LOL, we only plan to have a couple.........dozen!?! We do conserve alot, combine trips and carpool whenever possible. We grow our own meat and eggs, get dairy from a friend, we trade off, which allows us to keep money local and barter more.

mark

I like to burn all my used tires to save the landfills from filling up :rolleyes:
Sorry, I couldn't resist being an educated donkey (warning: this joke may take some people awhile and may cause headaches and groans).

Seriously though, I hate the stench of burning tires and have never burned them. One thing that I do to at least help my own environment is I never wash out paint rollers between days of painting, I just cover them in plastic wrap tightly so they don't dry out and then use them again the next day. I also don't reuse the rollers, I let them dry out and then throw them out. There's just something about taking clean drinking water and then adding paint to it that doesn't seem right (and yeah, I know how septics work :rolleyes: ). I do however, clean out expensive paint brushes.

Our house is very energy efficient being it is a new home. But we have a compost pile, grow some of our own veggies, Burn wood from trees that have fallen from storms, We use cloth diapers this alone saves over a ton of waste from going into the land fills and this is our second child we have used them on so that would be 2 tons of diapers not in our landfills. We recyle everything possible. When we need something we try to find it used first before buying new. That is all I can think of right now.

I just rented my first house..moved in on Sunday actually. So far I have replaced almost every light with CFLs, in fact I don't really turn them on its that nice here, I unplug things when not in use, except for the clock and appliances, don't have a washer yet so haven't done any laundry, set up a clothesline, had the landlord replace the hazardous range with a new one, will plant a small garden, compost.

Also, I have been using natural cleaners such as baking soda, vinegar and such. No paper towels, combine errands, drive a car with good gas milage.

I am sure there is more and there will be more shortly but that's kinda the jist of what I do.

we buy our groceries in bulk and use most all the jars ,cans and other pkgs to store the food in. Flour bags are used to mulch with. Or used as a trash bag when I really need one.
We have a large garden and use gutters and some of our gray water to water with. Very little of our lawn is grass any more.
We don't use paper towels, and less and less ziplock bags.
All cardboard and other paper is composted , along with kitchen wastes..
Our winters wood is collected from the dump. If no one takes it they burn it in huge bon fires. i also bring home loads of leaves for the garden to compost and mulch with.
We do alot of thrift shop shopping, and use the trade a table at the dump.
I've been hanging out my laundry, and have all CFL's. in our house.

1. We compost.
2. We conserve water and use less than 50 gallons per day for 2 adults.
3. We are downsizing from a 2000 sq ft house to a 952 sq ft. mobile home.
4. about 50% of our groceries are organic.
5. We use earth friendly cleaning products.
6. Recycle water from basement sump to water garden.
7. Left about 5 acres of land by creek as wetland habitat instead of using it as pasture.
8. I did a project with 4H kids to make homemade biodiesel.
9. We only use the clothers dryer from November to April, clothesline the rest of the year (believe me, in a Manitoba January, hanging laundry outside is only for the eco-warrior).

On the negative side, my wife still commutes 50 miles to work, which probably negates all of the above...Oh well, at least it is a 4 cylinder...