keeping up with the eco-Jones’
A funny thing is happening here in our neighborhood. There seems to be a little competition in green living. We have several close friends who live nearby and we all see eye to eye on this environmental thing. So one weekend somebody plants a garden. Then the other person does. The compost systems get upgraded, the clotheslines go up. It’s not that we all need to be the best necessarily, but if one household is doing the right thing the others don’t sleep too soundly until they are too. We share ideas and goals and simultaneously experience the benefits of green living. It’s fun and challenging at the same time. But in the midst of trying to keep up with one another, we have all improved our lifestyle in the best possible sense.
So bye bye to outdoing the neighbors’ new garage or in-ground pool. Now we compete for the least amount of waste, best organic gardens, and smallest carbon footprint. This is where the change occurs, household by household, community by community.
And on that note of living greener day to day, let’s talk about what we’re doing here at the Deep Energy Retrofit Ground Zero. Still in a waiting period regarding the windows (we’ll get to that later), we have been very focused on our own behavior and habits. The dryer has been retired for about a month now and I can’t wait to see how much is saved on the next electric bill. It may not be significant, but every little bit counts and holds much more value than the price the utility company gives it.
The meditative solace I experience while hanging laundry in the fresh air with sunshime beaming down on me is something I can’t put a price on. For years I lived in Queens, NY, and used a clothesline that ran across the courtyard of the building. I appreciated the air-dried freshness and the rudimentary process, but I still remained inside the apartment, leaning out the 4th floor window for all of it. I never imagined how incredibly joyful I’d feel with my feet in the grass and the breeze at my back, letting nature deside when the laundry is done.
So what else? I’ll tell you… the thing that eats at me, wears away my environmental armor… PACKAGING! I mean really, the amount of plastic that comes home in every load of canvas tote bags from the grocery store is just plain disturbing. Not only are these plastic toxins in our food a big issue right now, but it’s just so much waste! We had a long discussion the other night with our eco-Jones’ neighbors and couldn’t really figure what could be done about the whole thing with current FDA standards and our own expectations of fresh uncontaminated food. I mean, we could just switch to glass and metal, but these still have to go through the whole recycling process and be re-manufactured. Getting produce from the farmers’ market or farm shares is part of the solution. But what about food that must be packaged?
I don’t have any all-encompassing answers, but I do have some tips and the example of what we’re trying to do here in our home. First, order yourself some re-useable fabric produce and bulk grocery bags from ecobags.com. Then just start buying in bulk whatever you can. I went to the market yesterday and bought several kinds of beans, rice, quinoa, nuts, spices, peanut butter… and brought my own bags and containers for all of them. Now I’ve transferred them all to mason jars where they can be stored indefinitely, and I didn’t have to discard a single container or plastic bag. Plus, as an added bonus, the store I went to gave me a nickel off for every single bag/container I brought.
The other thing we’ve been exploring around here is called Skin Deep. It’s a non-profit online database of all of the hair, skin, makeup, and general beauty products out there. It rates them according to their toxicity. I’m not really sure how the whole thing works as it’s a little vague, but we had a great time the other night plugging each item in our bathroom into the search field and reading the results. You’d be surprised how many so-called natural products have significant levels of toxicity. Let’s not all get super paranoid now, but I imagine that fewer potential toxins in our products is not only healthier for ourselves and families, but also healthier for our drainage systems and the air around us. A friend recently told me that after he switched from his regular hygiene regimen to a set of more safely rated products his allergy attacks instantly disappeared. Just a little food for thought in our chemically-driven society.
So I promised you all some numbers about our oil savings. I looked it all over today and decided that it’s still inconclusive with the horribly inefficient windows still in place and the fact that for a good part of the winter there were literally holes on the house being re-insulated on a day-to-day basis. Don’t get me wrong, there was still significant savings, but too hard to measure right now. I can tell you that with some very hot days this summer, and when we were actually diligent enough with keeping the windows closed, it was noticeably cooler in our home than before. Windows, windows, windows… that’s the barrier we must overcome now.
But while we work on figuring out how to finance that monstrous portion of our Deep Energy Retrofit, we are content working hard to shrink our carbon footprint a little more every day.
