Your best tricks!

[Kim Bothen]

Hello PA transitions!

In preparation for our April 17 event at Char's, "In Our Hands",  and acknowledging Earth Day, April 22, I have a two part request: 

• Share one or two of your favourite, maybe surprising, tips or tricks, daily habits or routines for living your best sustainability lifestyle!?  (sweaters and rain barrels for me!)
• Share a local resource, (business, service, organisation) that supports your sustainability lifestyle

Thanks ahead of time!

See you April 17 at Char's Landing!

Kim Bothen

AVTTS

[Gail Morton]

Thanks, Kim!

Two favourites:

Slowly turning lawn into pollinator gardens with more indigenous plants and eating our garden produce.

I like buying shampoo/conditioner bars at Healthy Habits as there is no packaging.

Cheers,

Gail

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[Val Baggaley]

One simple thing I do is I always keep my (spent) daily tea leaves (from loose tea) and egg shells in a separate container apart from the rest of the compost. Then I dump it directly onto my garden patch. 

I usually hang to dry my laundry rather than using the dryer. And in gardening season, like right now, I wear my dirty gardening clothes a few more times than I used between washes. 

When I am busy cooking and accumulating vegetable waste, I use the wee bits of celery ends, onion skins and other bits for making a small batch of stock to use for later. 

Those are a few ideas...

Val

[Mike Youds]

Good idea, Kim.

Two favourites:

Driving less

A friend of mine used to limit his smoking habit by storing his cigarettes outside in the apartment mailbox. I've adapted the same behavioural/psychological device to limiting automobile use, storing my vehicle in the backyard inside a locked gate off the alley. When you take away some of the convenience, you disrupt the compulsive side of driving. I still drive short distances once or twice a week, across town. There's a health payoff (more walking, cycling) and a pocketbook payoff. Think of it as freeing yourself from a gasoline-oil addiction.

Shopping less, buying less

Shopping became a weekly routine during my years raising a family. During the pandemic I broke with the routine by limiting grocery shopping to twice a month (a lot easier without kids at home, for sure). Earlier on, we were advised to stock up and I did, helping to soften the impact of price fluctuations since that time. Shopping less forces me to be more efficient in managing a household. Increasing the intervals between store visits reduces my reliance and consumption overall, although this seems counter-intuitive.

Local resource

I applaud the city for modernizing its waste and recycling programs a few years back. The green bin is strictly for garden debris, saving me trips to the landfill in spring. I recycle all kitchen waste in a closed composter and have done so for more than 30 years. No food waste goes in the garbage, keeping the container clean, odour-free and therefore bear-resistant. All materials that cannot be blue-binned go to the recycling depot. Once every couple of months I put out the smallest of garbage containers.

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[Val Baggaley]

Nice, Mike. I love your key idea. I’m not yet thete but I admire you for it and will mull it over…😁

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 11, 2024, at 10:21 AM, Mike Youds <myo...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jim W]

I don't have nearly enough special tricks to reduce. Having grown up as the child of someone very poor during the great depression I developed a few habits born of that time. 

1. I try never to buy new if I can buy used. 

2  I grow as much food as possible, and glean from the wild if possible. 

3. I've trained myself to avoid single purpose trips by car, do chores by bike where there is secure parking, and walk as often as possible. 

4. I'm training myself to use substitutes to plastic everywhere I can. 

Long way to go....

Jim Wright

On Sat, Apr 6, 2024 at 6:34 AM Kim Bothen <bluet...@telus.net> wrote:

[Kim Bothen]

A current favourite local resource supporting my sustainability habits is the INEO run RE-USE store...I've gotten some really great quality older tools there, as well as fixtures for my new home office!

Kim B

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[fogme...@outoffog.net]

‘Lo all!

Not too many tricks to share…we bought a bundle of industrial rags back in 2008 and haven’t bought paper towel since. I have cloth bags purchased at BC Liquor stores for (mostly) $1.75 each back in the later ‘90s, and still use them today. They’ve faded but still retain their carrying capacity. 

We went through a bit of a drawdown around the turn of the century, got rid of the boat, then the trailer and the truck, got rid of the motorcycle and the sports car, eventually sold my car because I could walk to work and back, and became a one-car family. In summer, we direct our wash water into green bucket and use it on ornamentals, being careful to use only appropriate laundry products. We dry laundry on racks in the rec room, or on the wash line when that’s feasible. I have foresworn air travel and stay close to home most of the time, where we try to grow as much of our own produce as possible. We buy a fair portion of bulk supplies from reputable organic providers, soak and cook our own pulses, make almost all meals out of primary ingredients, and dine out infrequently. We have slowly changed our ICE yard tools for electric, though we have not yet ditched the ICE car, reasoning that the embedded energy in a new vehicle would more than offset the low km. we drive in our now 10-year-old Matrix. We’re waiting for a small, light, and less-expensive EV before we consider getting rid of the present rig.

The final piece that needs to be said, especially in light of the focus on personal responsibility, is that each of us, as an individual, can accomplish little in the context of the need to effect wholesale and systemic change in a civilization that, in the words of physicist Carlo Rivelli, represents a species that seems ill-adapted to long-term survival. Our most potentially effective actions must be to gather together to fundamentally alter the path of civilization and call to account the rapacious entities that are at the root of the production and marketing of products that carry the germ of ecocide in them, as well as the elected enablers who have built a whole canon of jurisprudence and precedent that protects the culprits large and small.

It just happens that this article showed up on RossK.’s blog roll this morning. Do take a few minutes to scan and contemplate:

Cheers,

Dan

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

---Robert Ingersoll