What small things did you do today to reduce your environmental impact?

[HappierAtHome]

It's hot and humid here. We're using a pedestal fan to keep us cool, instead of air con.

Harvested a very small amount of homegrown fruit and veges from my garden. Every little bit counts. Zero food miles!

Forgot one from earlier: bought cloth napkins, hankies and a wooden puzzle game from my local op shop (thrift shop to the yanks). Not only am I buying secondhand and reducing landfill / overproduction of consumer goods, but the napkins and hankies will help reduce my use of disposables. Given that I have not found time to sew my own, buying some secondhand feels like a solid choice.

[Anatidae V]

Anyone tried this? Thought I might get some and see if it's as versatile as they claim:
https://www.thewellstore.com.au/products/agreena-3-in-1-eco-wraps-4-pack

If they really can work as baking paper I want some!

I bought some from biome.com.au; they seem OK. I will have to use them for a month or so before giving a good review. Seem like they could be delicate and require a little thinking to store properly. I have trialled them as "cling wrap" in the fridge, seem good! Baking paper trial next. I think if I use them to cook meat, I'll want to label that one and make it only for meat.

[Fresh Bread]

I eagerly await your review - I regularly use baking paper to bake fish.

Today I used rainwater to water the plants and tried to figure out how to make our compost start to break down so we don't have to buy compost in plastic bags.

[Imma]

I took out all of the used plastic bread bags and ziplock bags from my work bag, cleaned them where necessary and stored them in the kitchen again. I do this every Saturday and use those bags many times before they are discarded. I don't buy ziplock bags new, I save them from when I receive baked goodies or other things from friends.

[Rollin]

I am vying for contacts, but my doc won't let me until I get my ducts working. So part of that plan is using some disinfecting wipes daily. They are folded over twice so I simply cut them into four smaller pads and place the unused ones back in the foil rap and fold over.

Today I'll ride my bike to the library and to watch a college football game, as opposed to driving of course.

[Monocle Money Mouth]

I just canceled two catalogs through catalogchoice.org. I'm just waiting for a couple more that my wife normally gets so I can get the customer number information and addresses off of them and cancel those as well. It boggles my mind that companies still send catalogs like this. So much wasted paper and energy.

[GettingClose]

Salvaged most of the very sturdy disposable plates from a family member's Thanksgiving dinner.  Washed/sanitized them - now in the office kitchen to be used and recycled.

[gaja]

I'm working on reducing my air travels. This year I've had 20 overnight stays for work. Only 2-3 trips were so long distance that flying made sense. In total, I flew three times; to and from Brussels, and another time home from Amsterdam. The other times I used train, bus, electric car and/or boat. Train to Central Europe takes time, but it is very much possible to eliminate the rest of the work related flights.

For vacation, we have used the electric van and boat, and this weekend I'm taking one of the kids by train to see the Christmas markets across the border. The kids have flown twice each to visit the grandparents - that is the only way they can travel alone. The alternative route is train+train+bus+boat+bus, and takes 10-12 hours. I'm not sure what we can do about those travels.

[Linea_Norway]

Have home office today before going to my GP who has office close by my home.

[Astatine]

This is DH, not me: he brought home some crackers and 12 mince pies from a work party that would have otherwise gone in the bin (still in original wrapping). We'll take the mince pies to a morning tea at a friend's place on Saturday.

[HappierAtHome]

It is way too long since I've updated here!

Still using cloth nappies except for the 12 hour overnight sleep. I'm trying to convince Mr Happier that we should use a laundry hose sprayer thing to rinse nappies off into the toilet rather than using disposable nappy liners to catch poop, but that's a work in progress.
We have commenced occasional shopping trips to the super fancy bulk food shop several suburbs away, to buy dried beans, nuts etc in our own containers rather than plastic packaging. Still working on finding good options close to home.
When shopping at the supermarket, we're making decisions to prioritise minimising packaging over convenience or price. e.g. carrots in a plastic bag are $1/kg, carrots without plastic are $2/kg. This does mean we're not buying cherry tomatoes as they're always in plastic clamshells, so that's a bit sad.

[Astatine]

The coin pouch in DH's wallet had ripped open so I fixed it with some PVA glue, clamping it together with a couple of little bulldog clips. All fixed now!

[Monocle Money Mouth]

I started composting even more stuff. We're at the point now where we are really only tossing plastics that aren't marked as recyclable or food soiled items that can't be composted or recycled.

We usually only have to take our trash to the curb once a month but my goal is to only have to take it to the curb every 2 months. The recycling bin will will probably still go at at the same frequency, but we are looking for ways to reduce that too.

[pancakes]

I took my organic waste down the road to the community composting hub and covered my leftovers using the beeswax wraps my MIL gave me for Christmas.

[mustachedali]

I love the idea of this thread. I brought my own reusable bottle of water and refilled it in the public water filter machine.

[frooglepoodle]

This is upcoming and not today, but...

We have to visit a city that is about an hour's drive away this weekend. Since we are going anyway, I plan to cajole my husband into allowing extra time to visit the bulk food market there, and drop off our glass recycling at their recycling facility. Our town doesn't collect glass for recycling, but I refuse to throw away something that's 100% recyclable so we've been saving our bottles and jars in a separate bin for the 4 months we've lived here.

[Fresh Bread]

This is upcoming and not today, but...

We have to visit a city that is about an hour's drive away this weekend. Since we are going anyway, I plan to cajole my husband into allowing extra time to visit the bulk food market there, and drop off our glass recycling at their recycling facility. Our town doesn't collect glass for recycling, but I refuse to throw away something that's 100% recyclable so we've been saving our bottles and jars in a separate bin for the 4 months we've lived here.

That's crazy that they don't collect glass. They could sell what they collect so the cost could be lower than regular collection. I watched a program on waste here where the glass recyclers said they couldn't get enough to meet demand.

[HappierAtHome]

Walked to my mums' group catchup rather than driving. I brought my keepcup for a coffee but that turned out to be unnecessary - baby started screaming and I had to go straight home again :-/

[alewpanda]

Threw some leftover vegetable bits from tacos last night into tonights salad. 

Took coffee in my mug from home, although I was tempted to stop out.

Got ice cream out with friends.  Avoided the plastic container by ordering a cone.

Found an ice cream brand whose containers AND lids are completely recyclable in my area.  This is a big deal as we have very limited recycling options and we are big ice cream lovers.  Currently we have no kitchen space for an ice cream maker, so for now this will need to do.

Am putting together a bag or textiles for recycling at goodwill.  Too worn to donate, have plenty of rags already, and no room for extra "dirty work" clothes.



Food waste and food packaging is the big one for us right now.  We are in process of selling our home and moving to a location that will allow for a lot more walking and public transit to cut down on commuting impact, but for now we are focusing more on avoiding extra purchases, packaging, and waste. 

[Astatine]

Caught the bus home from work again. Even though it is summer and I hate the heat. (I should get bonus points for that)

[HappierAtHome]

@alewpanda food packaging is a big one for me too! I'm just chipping away at it bit by bit.

Caught the bus home from work again. Even though it is summer and I hate the heat. (I should get bonus points for that)

*Bonus points*

[Astatine]

Caught the bus home from work again. Even though it is summer and I hate the heat. (I should get bonus points for that)

*Bonus points*

Sweet. *polishes bonus points*

[mustachepungoeshere]

A colleague gave me her empty Coke can for Return and Earn rather than tossing it in the office bin (where it would not be recycled).

[frooglepoodle]

This is upcoming and not today, but...

We have to visit a city that is about an hour's drive away this weekend. Since we are going anyway, I plan to cajole my husband into allowing extra time to visit the bulk food market there, and drop off our glass recycling at their recycling facility. Our town doesn't collect glass for recycling, but I refuse to throw away something that's 100% recyclable so we've been saving our bottles and jars in a separate bin for the 4 months we've lived here.

That's crazy that they don't collect glass. They could sell what they collect so the cost could be lower than regular collection. I watched a program on waste here where the glass recyclers said they couldn't get enough to meet demand.

That's fascinating! I think it's crazy too. I'm in a small town in the American South, so not the most environmentally conscious place on the planet. It's the kind of place where people sometimes look at you funny when you bring your own shopping bag, so I have to wonder if they only collect the items that they can get enough of to make it worth it.

The upside is that it's make us much more careful about purchasing things in packaging that CAN be recycled. Or even reducing what we buy in glass, so we don't fill up our bin too quickly.

[soccerluvof4]

Not just today, but overtime in the course of the last year I have reduced our garbage by half if not a third by shopping smarter, planning meals so leftovers get used and hence the less waste which also saves me $$ so a win win.

[Hirondelle]

I'm trying to make little steps on batch cooking. Just boiled 4 eggs, rather than 1-2 at a time. Saves all the gas used as I only boiled water once :)

[Fresh Bread]

@frooglepoodle - We've been saving glass and plastic bottles for a new container return scheme and when you have to collect them it really makes you see what you are using. As a result we bought a reuseable growler to buy beer (instead of creating 6 bottles a week).

[clarkai]

We live with roommates, and do communal food to save money, reduce packaging, and encourage others to eat better for themselves and the environment. There have been a lot of leftovers that others ignore and were ending up in the compost after a week or longer languishing in the fridge, so I've taken to eating leftovers first this week. Works pretty well.

I also (this is so silly) kept my shoes on after my morning walk when I sat down to journal, instead of pointing a heater at my feet.

[HappierAtHome]

Today is a pretty standard day:
No driving.
Try to minimise use of the air con (tough when it's 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) and humid).
Line dry our washing.
Use cloth nappies on the baby.
Feed vege scraps to the worm farm.

Yesterday we batch cooked a chicken dish and a vegan dish. Mr Happier likes to eat meat for one meal a day, so I'm shifting more of our meat meals to chicken rather than beef or lamb (much less resource intensive to produce). He's happy to have vegan or vegetarian for his other two meals. I'm trying to have one meat or vegetarian meal a day at most (dinner) and shift the rest of my day's food and drink consumption to completely vegan. It's only a small thing, but that's what this thread is about ;-)

When we went shopping yesterday, I bought only unpackaged fruit and veges, and used my reusable calico and netting bags to hold them. It was interesting to see which items cost more unpackaged than packaged. Aldi charges less for its unpackaged fruit and veges than its packaged (though some things e.g. zucchini were not available there without packaging) while Woolies charges more for unpackaged spinach, carrots and mushrooms.

[Teachstache]

Washed a full load of laundry this evening & hung dry the clothes in our bedroom. Extra humidity in this 0 degree Fahrenheit weather. Put kid in cloth training pants (not disposables) this evening after library visit. Will hang dry his cloth training pants. Used Instant pot to make tomato sauce from tomatoes canned from our garden. Washed jars from tomatoes & will reuse for additional canning next summer.

[Imma]

I'm cooking from leftovers today. I'm also going to do laundry and line dry all of it. We eat vegetarian / vegan meals 2/3 of the time, but I've been advised by my doctor to increase my red meat intake. I only buy meat that's been reduced - at least I've saved the beef from the thrash that way.

[HappierAtHome]

We're trying to avoid buying fruit and veges in plastic packaging. It's impossible to get cherry or grape tomatoes without plastic; well tonight for the second time this summer we've collected enough homegrown cherry tomatoes to make our favourite pasta :D

Next summer I will need to be more systematic about trying to grow enough cherry tomatoes!

[Teachstache]

We're trying to avoid buying fruit and veges in plastic packaging. It's impossible to get cherry or grape tomatoes without plastic; well tonight for the second time this summer we've collected enough homegrown cherry tomatoes to make our favourite pasta :D

Next summer I will need to be more systematic about trying to grow enough cherry tomatoes!

Nice work on gardening! Here in the midwestern USA, I have an absolute glut of cherry tomatoes every summer. I love reading your gardening & line drying updates, HappierAtHome, since it's 0 degrees Fahrenheit here (-17 Celsius) & I'm dreaming about my summer garden & line drying out on my patio.

What's your favorite pasta involving cherry tomatoes, HappierAtHome?

[Astatine]

Yay HAH!

As always, line drying our washing (we don't own a clothes dryer). Most of it goes on the washing line outside but more delicate items (where we don't want peg marks or exposure to harsh UV) get hung up inside on clothes racks in the lounge room. It's a cooler day today but quite windy so hopefully the stuff hung up outside will dry quickly.

We're about to go to a housewares swap at a friend's house this morning. Like a clothing swap but for household items. We're taking a whole bunch of stuff from our place, hopefully most of it will find a home. If not, all leftovers will get donated to charity. Our city is drowning in secondhand items and all of the op shops are swamped post Xmas, so I'm hoping there won't be too much that needs to be donated.

[tawyer]

Put on my down jacket in the house to avoid using the heat or making hot drinks to keep warm.

[Fresh Bread]

A homewares swap is such a great idea!

[HappierAtHome]

We're trying to avoid buying fruit and veges in plastic packaging. It's impossible to get cherry or grape tomatoes without plastic; well tonight for the second time this summer we've collected enough homegrown cherry tomatoes to make our favourite pasta :D

Next summer I will need to be more systematic about trying to grow enough cherry tomatoes!

Nice work on gardening! Here in the midwestern USA, I have an absolute glut of cherry tomatoes every summer. I love reading your gardening & line drying updates, HappierAtHome, since it's 0 degrees Fahrenheit here (-17 Celsius) & I'm dreaming about my summer garden & line drying out on my patio.

What's your favorite pasta involving cherry tomatoes, HappierAtHome?

It was 37 degrees Celsius / 98 Fahrenheit here yesterday!

Super simple: penne, basil pesto, a heap of halved cherry tomatoes (I like to pan fry them for five minutes), and some fetta on top. A little bit of pan fried chicken is a nice addition if you enjoy chicken.

[Teachstache]

We're trying to avoid buying fruit and veges in plastic packaging. It's impossible to get cherry or grape tomatoes without plastic; well tonight for the second time this summer we've collected enough homegrown cherry tomatoes to make our favourite pasta :D

Next summer I will need to be more systematic about trying to grow enough cherry tomatoes!

Nice work on gardening! Here in the midwestern USA, I have an absolute glut of cherry tomatoes every summer. I love reading your gardening & line drying updates, HappierAtHome, since it's 0 degrees Fahrenheit here (-17 Celsius) & I'm dreaming about my summer garden & line drying out on my patio.

What's your favorite pasta involving cherry tomatoes, HappierAtHome?

It was 37 degrees Celsius / 98 Fahrenheit here yesterday!

Super simple: penne, basil pesto, a heap of halved cherry tomatoes (I like to pan fry them for five minutes), and some fetta on top. A little bit of pan fried chicken is a nice addition if you enjoy chicken.

Sounds similar to our summer pasta with garden produce. Enjoy your summer!

[Astatine]

A homewares swap is such a great idea!

It was great! It was mostly kitchen things but there was also non-perishable food, a couple of bottles of wine, games, personal items and so on. It all managed to find a home or a good place to be donated. Huzzah!

We mostly just took consumables - a bit of food, a bottle of bubbles, cat treats. And we're adding to our Lifeline donation run with some games and puzzles. (we're in the process of doing a massive cull of books, CDs and DVDs to make space for removing a big bookshelf for our mid-year renos - will be knocking a wall down to make things more open and usable)

[Imma]

- Drying the laundry indoors. Only used a tiny amount of detergent to wash it (I always do this, I don't even own a dryer).
- Going to fix a few holes in a frequently used homemade quilt. I made the quilt years ago from worn-out jeans and because it's pretty heavy and warm, it's very popular in this house.
- Also DIY'ing around the house a bit, fixing things that are broken. This way, we don't have to replace them but will be able to get a few more years of use out of them. I glued the leg of a chair earlier this week. I was afraid this wasn't going to work, so I put a few heavy objects on it to test the strength. It seems the chair is holding out, but just in case, I will put the chair on the side of the dinnertable that's only used when we have company and I will be careful not to allow a very overweight relative to sit on it.
- Tonight I'm going to work on one of two quilting projects-in-progress, one from old jeans, one from scraps. We use quilts a lot, in bed and at night when we watch a movie so we don't have to heat that much.

[Meowkins]

Have I been here before? Idk. Hello. I will be reading this whole thread tomorrow.

[HappierAtHome]

Have I been here before? Idk. Hello. I will be reading this whole thread tomorrow.

Welcome Meowkins!

[Linea_Norway]

Walked to work today. And will walk back home again.

[Astatine]

Wow @Linda_Norway! How far away is work from your home?

I caught the bus home again.

Tonight's dinner will be using up potatoes that have been in the fridge for many weeks. They'll be turned into potato salad, probably enough for a few meals.

Tonight we'll wash some clothes with cold water and hang them to dry inside on clothes racks.

As always, we will compost kitchen waste - banana skins, coffee grounds from DH's Aeropress, uneaten wet cat food, onion peels etc




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[Linea_Norway]

Walked to work again. It is 7,5 km in one direction. In summer I use 1 hour and 10 minutes one way. Today it was close to 1,5 hour one way. Most of it is on quite road or pavement, but a 2 kms is on a forest road where the snow is not removed. There is now about 50 cm of snow now. It feels a bit like an expedition under these circumstances. I do own a pair of snowshoes, but I think it is too much fuss carrying them with me on the rest of the stretch, so I just walk through the snow. I sink away about 15 cm for each step.

[Astatine]

Walked to work again. It is 7,5 km in one direction. In summer I use 1 hour and 10 minutes one way. Today it was close to 1,5 hour one way. Most of it is on quite road or pavement, but a 2 kms is on a forest road where the snow is not removed. There is now about 50 cm of snow now. It feels a bit like an expedition under these circumstances. I do own a pair of snowshoes, but I think it is too much fuss carrying them with me on the rest of the stretch, so I just walk through the snow. I sink away about 15 cm for each step.

That's a long way to walk. (I have no idea how hard it is to walk 2km in snow but I'm guessing it's hard) Wow!

[Poundwise]

Walked to my mums' group catchup rather than driving. I brought my keepcup for a coffee but that turned out to be unnecessary - baby started screaming and I had to go straight home again :-/

Yeah, for a while it's going to be hard to have adult conversations that last more than a few minutes at a time without interruption, especially at playgrounds or meetups!  Kudos on walking there and back, though!

Since our dryer broke, I have been rack drying between 1-3 loads a day while we wait for the right replacement dryer at the right price to come along. It means that laundry is fluttering around everywhere in the house (too cold/rainy/snowy/icy to hang outside) but it will be interesting to see what our electricity bills are like without drying 10 loads of laundry a week!  Also as we plan our laundry room reorganization, I'm hoping to build in more folding racks so that we can permanently reduce our dryer loads by at least half.  (why get a new dryer at all? First of all, house resale, second, my planning is not so great that I can guarantee that we'll have the dry clothes we need when we need them if it takes 24 hours.)

To do this, I had to resurrect my folding dryer rack from the garage. It used to have two special plastic pieces that broke, so was held together with string. I was going to trade it in for scrap metal. BUT--
Last year I got a bag of "Instamorph" (also known as Low Temperature Thermoplastic Beads, "Friendly Plastic", "Polymorph" and other names).  Since then I have used them to replace pieces on my fancy (though not durable) umbrella, broken toy parts,  and most recently my folding dryer rack. This stuff is the bomb for resurrecting broken items.

[GuitarStv]

Rode my bike 22 km to work this morning through a foot of uncleared snow on the road.  Took 45 minutes.  Another co-worker who lives a bit closer than me ended up in his car for two hours stuck in traffic.  :P

[Linea_Norway]

Walked to work again. It is 7,5 km in one direction. In summer I use 1 hour and 10 minutes one way. Today it was close to 1,5 hour one way. Most of it is on quite road or pavement, but a 2 kms is on a forest road where the snow is not removed. There is now about 50 cm of snow now. It feels a bit like an expedition under these circumstances. I do own a pair of snowshoes, but I think it is too much fuss carrying them with me on the rest of the stretch, so I just walk through the snow. I sink away about 15 cm for each step.

That's a long way to walk. (I have no idea how hard it is to walk 2km in snow but I'm guessing it's hard) Wow!

Today it was pretty bad. Think of walking very soft sand. On my way back I regretted not bringing my snowshoes. Most of the pavements weren't cleaned for snow either, so I could choose walking through deep snow or walking on the road between sliding cars. Half of my colleagues stayed home today because of the snow chaos.

I really like cross country skiing. Unfortunately there is no good route from my home to my work. But I appreciate the snow for the good conditions that we can use in the weekends. Petty we are not FIREd yet.

[Abe]

Things we've done with reasonably minimal impact on our lives:

1) Compost everything organic. If it's not clearly inedible, eat it. I refuse to buy anything packaged in plastic, which is fairly easy since the only things (other than utilities) that I buy are food, clothes and occasionally gasoline. 90% of our trash waste is baby's diapers. Once he's older, total garbage will be less about a pound per month.

2) Showers: no more than 3 gallons (I've measured it a couple times). I only use hot water in the winters, for the final rinse.

3) Bike to work. Bike to grocery store. Bike to parks.