Are you over-the-top green?

In My Humble Opinion
1

What do you do to be green that your friends think is crazy?

Granted, this will be subjective, based on your friends, and your location…but I’d like to hear the ‘cutting edge’ of green in YOUR community.

My friends used to think I was crazy for using reusable shopping bags, but that’s finally caught on in my circle.

I’ve just started using a reusable mesh bag for produce. I get strange looks from the cashiers sometimes, even though I bought the bag at that store.

I’m also experimenting with homemade laundry detergent.
So - what counts as over-the-top in your circle?
-D/a

2

Me and a lot of my friends work for the same organization, a sort of live-in eco-laboratory. Think “commune” with modern furnishings. In this circle, so much of the stuff we do is taken for granted that it usually takes an outsider to point out how weird we can seem.

I’m going to list a few things, not to show off, really, but because I find this stuff utterly fascinating.

There’s the standard hippie-tastic stuff: Reusing, upcycling, composting, recycling. Food gardens. Herb spirals. Composting toilet (mainly used by tourists). Earthship/rammed earth building (tired stuffed with dirt). Buying everything we can in bulk, from food to cleaning supplies. Reusable bags, bringing our own to-go containers for take-out food, bringing our own utensils to eat with. Unlined trash cans. Air-drying clothes. Biking as the main mode of transportation. Eating locally, mostly vegetarian, supplemented by pasture-raised animals. Buying used, recycled, or upcycled household goods and clothing whenever reasonable (we spend a lot of time at the thrift stores, recycling center, and junkyard). Most things get cleaned with vinegar and water instead of Windex and such.

There’s the neo-retro stuff: Rainwater catchment, natural building (cob, straw-slip, cordwood), living roofs, passive solar design, permaculture landscaping, native plants, greywater marsh (and plus the city itself handles all its wastewater through a biological marsh turned wildlife reserve).

There’s the passive (meaning it works without power) modern stuff: Recycled cellulose insulation in the walls, recycled styrofoam insulation in other walls, insulated hot boxes (think thermos for entire dinners), solar curtains, natural flour/egg/blood-based wall paints and floor stains, zero/low-volatile organic chemical paints on other walls, double-paned windows, intense attic insulation, solatube natural lighting (reflective tunnels that bring in sunlight through the attic to our living areas).

There’s the higher-tech stuff that’s “green” only in the sense that it allows us to live a modern lifestyle without consuming as much resources: Solar panels, modernized solar hot water, radiant floor heating, ultra-high-efficiency refrigerator, high-efficiency washer, aerated faucet and shower heads, high-efficiency/dual-flush/integrated-handwashing toilets, florescent and LED lighting, low-power laptops, smart power strips, Kill-A-Watt per-outlet energy meters.

This is all stuff we do normally. For it to get “over the top”, we look towards the future, and that’s where it gets really interesting. We’re facing a sort of identity crisis: What does it really mean to be “green”? Some of us want to head towards primitivism, meaning “back to the land” in the most extreme sense, hunting and gathering and living in huts made out of twigs. That will likely yield the smallest consumption levels and ecological footprints, but frankly, most of us (regular Americans born and raised in pretty mainstream families) don’t really want to live that way.

So we’re also considering other efficient technologies: Air-source heat pumps, motion sensors for lights, whole-house production and consumption monitoring to keep us accountable on everything from power generation to trash production, automated curtains and windows, hybrid electric bicycle trailers for groceries, additional food growing, wind power, home-made electric vehicles charged by the PV system, etc.

If the ultimate goal is sustainability in the “7 generations” sense, it’ll probably take more than that – global lifestyle changes, policy changes, population control, etc… But hey, at least it’s a nice step in the right direction.

3

And you know what’s funny? Out of all that, only the to-go containers really freak people out.

A neighbor and I went out for lunch and I nonchalantly pulled tupperware out of my backpack to pack the food away in. He gave me the longest, most incredulous look I’d ever seen. In slow, calculated words – at once trying to hide his disdain, his panic, his rudely interrupted world view, at once trying not to offend me – he spoke, “You… bring… your… own… con-tain-ers?” And at that delicate moment, something clicked, or perhaps imploded, in his head. His eyes became glassy. He saw me, then his 4-year-old daughter, then me, then the future, and in those harrowing three seconds, he bore silent witness to the doom of mankind. The future, he surely thought, is certainly beyond hope if we have to start carrying our own to-go containers.

He was never quite the same after that. He seemed a bit prouder of his 4WD truck. He applied a little more Roundup than usual. His Safeway steak was a little more delicious that night. He never quite lost that look, and I can imagine him late at night, sulking in the kitchen by the containers and gently rocking the horror away. “It cannot be, it cannot be…”

4

Thanks, Reply! This is the type of stuff I was hoping for! Have you considered an “Ask the…” thread about your lifestyle there?

I love the “bring your own container” concept. A friend of mine does this too - she has a foldable container that she keeps in her purse.

I haven’t gotten to that point myself…being male, I don’t carry a purse…and I feel self conscious about carrying a container into the restaurant out in the open.

And I’d like to get into rain barrels and the like, except I’m not sure it makes as much sense in South Florida without a big storage area. Our weather patterns tend to be either dry for weeks on end, or pouring every day. My primary use for rain water would be watering the plants…which don’t need it when I would be able to do so.

I’d also like to get into solar, but I worry about mounting them on my barrel tile roof and having to deal with a hurricane.

My main focuses are reducing electricity (mostly by not using the dryer any more) and reducing waste plastics/paper.

You mentioned bringing your own silverware - do you mean to restaurants? Is this for places that want to give you plastic forks, or for some other reason?
-D/a

5

Oddly, I’ve dialed it back a notch. I bought the reusable bags and end up using them for other stuff since I never remember to bring them to the store. I also love the disposable ones. I save them and use them in my car and also attach one to the mower (spans nicely between the bars).

I’m also not as diligent with recycling as I used to be. Sometimes I actually throw away drink bottles without looking at the recycle number. If I’m in a hurry it’s trash. My city only accepts 2 of the numbers and I’m actually getting annoyed at how hard it is to read the damn things. It would be nice if they accepted everything but oh well.

6

I rinse out gallon-sized Ziplocs and reuse them. I mean, not all the time, and not if the contents were sticky/spoiled/oily. But if something had like, chopped zucchini in it, I’ll rinse it out and use it for another vegetable later.

Mostly because those things are kind of expensive. I’m not very hardcore overall. But for some people washing and reusing ziplocs is the very definition of “a thing only an insane greenfreak would do.”

7

Me too! I don’t do all the other things in your post, but I run with hippies, so none of it gets a second look if you mention it as something you do or want to do or wish you could afford to do or wish your landlord would let you do…

But bringing my own containers to a restaurant for carry-out or taking home leftovers (which I actually do) - that’s what my crazy crunchy earth friendly hippie friends think is crazy! Truly.

8

First of all, I’m probably not qualified to answer the question in that I don’t consider myself to be particularly green. Nor do I do anything *to be *green.
However, I do use electricity at about 1/5 of the average rate here in the UK. I only need to empty my bins about once a month. And I’ve been called crazy for doing things that happen to be green.

I don’t drive - I passed my test and then found I didn’t like it and could get away with not doing it. If you believe what you read in the papers when fuel increases happen or restrictions on driving are proposed this is akin to growing an extra head. TBH, when you plan to not drive you do strange things like choosing to live near railway stations and good bus routes. It’s not hard.

I don’t have a mobile phone. This has earned me more crazy points than anything else, yet a lot of people give the impression that this is one kind of crazy that they’d actually like to be. I’m the only person I know who has never had one, and my brother is the only person I know who had one and gave it up. The truth is that I fear the addiction and can get by without it.

I don’t watch TV. Doctor Who and a couple of really good documentaries a year don’t justify the TV licence fee for me. This seems to be a lot less crazy than it used to be.

I only buy stuff that I think will last, and will hold back on buying things that I only half need until I find something I really like. File this under opting out of mass-market consumption of planned-obsolete objects. I only got called crazy for this because I took 5 years to find a backpack I liked.

My thermostat doesn’t even think about turning the heating on until it drops below 18°C (that’s 64°F or so). Ok, I’ll admit that this is partly to be green, but it’s mostly because I don’t like it too warm. Most people I know think that this is getting on for freezing. I say it only is if you don’t know how to put on a jumper.

I have only ever flown 6 times in my life and don’t expect to again. Admittedly, this does include Australia and back so it’s definitely not a green thing. I love flying. It’s great. However, as far as I’m concerned airports are among the circles of Hell and must be avoided at all costs. They feed my paranoid side like nothing else, and I go a bit mad within their walls. This was pre-Shoe bomber and all the liquid bans, so Lord only knows what I’d be like now. Also, I can’t really think of anywhere I’d want to go that isn’t baking hot - note for me that means going much above 25°C - which would mean I couldn’t cope with the heat anyway.

I’m a very thrifty cook. That’s not so much crazy as odd these days. This isn’t about greenness, but about getting better food for my money. Stocks, marinades and various forms of curing extend and enhance my diet and I don’t need to get a lot of pre-processed food. I mostly buy fresh ingredients. This earned me some crazy points through my insistence on making my own sandwiches at work. I often bake my own bread and always bring in separate fillings. Someone finally twigged why I might be doing this and discovered that I was eating better than they were for 30% of the cost.

Then there’s things that no-one really knows about, like having a big, efficient washer so that 3 weeks worth of washing is just one load. The ultra-efficient and small freezer. A fridge that only a toddler could walk into. The reuse or changed use of just about every container that enters my house. That’s more frugality than out and out greenness.

All in all, a lifestyle that merely happens to be green-ish and only slightly crazy. Most of this is because my job is highly technological and I need a break from it at home. The rest is down to foibles. The key, though, is that I don’t feel I’m missing out on anything. I think that that is the trick that future legislators are going to have to pull to bring the public with them. For example, put a power consumption limit on TVs. Bigger tellies only become possible if they are more efficient.

9

Actually I’ll rinse out all size ziplocs and reuse them but I use them for non-food items. I often divide them in sections and make smaller ziplocs for small parts by cutting and sealing them with my food saver.

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If there’s an interest, I’d be glad to.

Indeed. As a (much too old, I’ll admit) student, I can still carry around a backpack and not seem too weird, but otherwise it’s difficult. I dunno what I’m going do after that, but knowing me, I’d probably just shrug off the tsk tsk glances :slight_smile:

If you have a vehicle, it’s easier just to keep a stack of reusable bags and tupperware in the trunk so you can pull one out whenever you need one. At a grocery store checkout line and forgot to bring the bag? Just have someone run to the parking lot. Same for restaurants.

Oh, absolutely. We call this stuff “appropriate technology” (a 70s term for sustainability, essentially), and part of appropriateness is suiting your particular location/climate. That said, big storage tanks are the norm for anyone serious about rainwater catchment. The small wine barrels are good for watering a few plants, but if you want to live off of collected rainwater, you do need more room. There are water tower designs, rooftop designs, underground bags and tanks, etc. Many houses in Hawaii, for example, utilize rainwater as their sole water source. The sustainability wiki Appropedia has a section on DIY rainwater catchment projects (along with a wealth of info on other green living methods/technologies). There may also be commercial vendors in your area who can do a more professional setup.

Hmm. I don’t know anything about hurricanes, sorry, but I can say that there are many mounting options available, from flush rooftop mounts to altogether disconnected arrays. Whether any of them would be hurricane-proof is probably something you’d have to talk to local PV vendors about.

Also beware the price… perhaps second to hurricanes, that’s usually the main issue.

There may be leasing options available (you provide the space, pay some money, get some power, and the excess helps the leasor) where they take responsibility for insurance and storms, etc., but I’m just speculating at this point.

Electricity conservation is probably one of the best things people can do, because it’s usually easier than the other things, relatively affordable, and can save you money over the long to very long term. If you’re concerned, get yourself a Kill-A-Watt to see what’s using the most power. Then you can either choose a more power-efficient model, turn it off when it’s not in use, put it in standby, or (as is the case with home theater setups) put it on a smart power strip that only turns on when the TV is on and turns everything else off when the TV goes off.

You could also consider swapping out your bulbs for CFLs if you haven’t already; that normally decreases the power draw by 4-5x per bulb. But ask around about incentives in your area first… some regions subsidize their costs or even give them out for free. (Here, there’s an agency that will go around to households and swap out all the bulbs for CFLs for free, materials and labor and all).

Some things to beware of with CFLs: Some earlier and cheaper models have quality issues and don’t last as long as they should. Also, if your home is on a thermostat most of the time, the inefficiency of incandescents contributes heat to the house – which is good during the winter, bad during the summer. And look for CFLs that are “daylight balanced” or “warm white”, so you don’t get a harsh white glare.

Yes, only for places that give out plastic: Food carts, grocery store delis, etc. I just keep a folding spork in my backpack that I rinse off after every meal and put back in.

More inconspicuous would be to just keep a set of the plastic ones that they give you and re-use them. They ought to last at least a few weeks.

11

My system for remembering bags - when I unload my groceries, the bags go on a hanger on my door. The next time I go to the car, the bags come along.
When I go to the store, I grab them from the trunk.

The only part that requires my memory to work is getting them before leaving the car at the store, and I’ve reached the point that it feels weird NOT to have them when I walk in.

drbhoneydew - I think it’s awesome that your chosen lifestyle just happens to be green. No sacrifices…just living in society.
Reply - I’d also like to buy more stuff in bulk, but I live by myself and have found bulk foods either

  1. Expire before I finish them, or
  2. are non-perishable, but get packed as lots of small containers, so I’m not saving on packing material.

I assume the first isn’t an issue for you…have you been able to avoid the second one?

-D/a

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Heh, how ironic :slight_smile:

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Yeah, exactly! This is the way it SHOULD be. A lot of the stuff already makes sense on a purely financial basis, and the rest, well… in a less consumer-minded society, wouldn’t seem so strange either.

The disposal lifestyle we lead is a relatively recent change fueled by the availability of cheap energy and plastics. If that ever starts to run out, material conversation will just have to become second nature to people again.

  1. I struggle with bulk perishables too. Before this job, I had a CSA (community-supported agriculture) share in my last house and we ended up composting a quarter to a half of the produce every week and I felt incredibly bad about it. I ended up just scaling back the amount of fresh items I got.

It’s less a problem with a multi-person household (and employees and volunteers to feed), but it’s something we’re still working on as we go.

  1. Bulk non-perishables are a lot easier. If you look for a Whole Foods, co-op, or natural food store, they’ll usually sell bulk staples completely unpackaged – pasta, beans, nuts, nut butters, cooking oils, soy sauce, soaps, etc. Bring your own bag or jar to fill up.

If you consume rice, the aforementioned stores will often sell them in big 25lb bags. Asian markets are also great for the rice.

And sometimes, if you ask, you might even be able to buy a wholesale package of the items before they get split up into bulk bins in the first place. But think carefully about how much of it you’ll actually consume. God help you if you end up with a 25lb bag of chick peas that’s been around since the Jurassic and more flour than the local bakery. (I guess the people before me never believed in moderation)

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I couldn’t make it further then the first sentence of your post. Clearly, you’re a liar. :wink:

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We found an odd side-effect of bringing in our own tupperware for take-out at a local place. We provided an assortment, so they could pack them as they saw fit, but I guess the one was too big and looked really empty, so they added more food to fill the space. When we got home, we had probably a good 30% more than we had expected! We tend to always buy the same dishes, so we’ve since figured out which exact containers to bring so we don’t confuse the kitchen and feel like we’ve ripped them off. Carrying re-usable containers to restaurants is not a big deal. So may people carry around laptop case, or a carry-all like this one, or a similar courier bag, that I’ve even gone to nice resautants, and have managed to have a small container with me. Guys carry courier bags/laptop type bags too, so it’s not like I’m relying on one of those ginormous little, old lady purses. My carry-all fits in in corporate situations and no one even notices it. They assume it’s for a laptop.

We buy our laundry suds and shampoos from an eco store that allows us to bring our own containers. They sell it by weight. Our milk comes from an organic producer and comes in glass bottles that you hand back to them when you buy your next litre. They have several distributors, so we have several places in the area to return our empties.

We can’t even do that becuse we suck! We have to unpack the groceries and then go put the bags back in the car immediately. If we PLAN on going to the grocery store, we’d remember to bring the bags, but often we’re running one particular errand then think to stop at the grocery store on the way home and we never have the damn bags! So we store them in the car, and put them back in the car immediately or else! Fortunately, our main mode of transportation is by bicycle, so we normally use panniers for our groceries. We use Ortlieb panniers that carry 20L/1220 cubic inches each, so between the two of us, we can carry a LOT of groceries on our racks, and more if we also have backpacks. We’re working on converting a baby bike trailer, similar to this one into more of a utility trailer that is also suitable for a large dog, so we’ll be able to carry larger items and a lot more groceries and never need out car. We tend to buy fresh food stuffs anyway, so we rarely need much more than two paniers each because we don’t buy huge amounts of stuff to last us weeks on end. We buy less but go more often - edit: this is really important to avoid spoilage, “buy less, buy often” - and since we buy less, our grocery trips are really quick stop-offs on the way home. Our car is primalry used for large buidling supplies and carrying our canoe on holiday.

As for the OP, the only thing we do that seems to surprise people, is that we re-use Ziplock bags and aluminum foil. We’re vegetarian, and very rarely carry soupy, gooey, salmonella-ey food stuffs. For our day-to-day lunches we have a variety of re-useable containers, but when we camp or for occasional fridge storage of things, we sometimes use Ziplock bags, which we then turn inside out, wash, and re-use. We’ve found a way to avoid using aluminum foil altogether, so it doesn’t come up much.

16

Thank you. I wouldn’t say it’s without sacrifices though - I’d dearly love to go to Istanbul for example, but recognise that I simply wouldn’t be able to cope with the heat and the airports. My dreams have needed some tempering, perhaps. Most of the other stuff is more along the lines of things that I don’t consider to be sacrificial. They only appear sacrifices if you currently do them. It’s the transition from having to not having that is the sacrifice. I’ve never had :slight_smile:

I’ll answer some of the stuff you asked reply, if I may. I live on my own (I doubt anyone else would have me), so suffer the same issues.

  1. Perishables can be an issue. I find milk to be particularly difficult. The only way with it is to buy as much as you can use and no more. Fruit & veg should be treated as you would a glut (my parents grow courgettes, which only ever appear in bulk). Every recipe you can dig up involving said ingredient should be used. Excesses can be frozen, as can the cooked results. Learn to pickle and make jams. Or this - sniffing the vapours off fermenting blackberries would be banned if more politicians knew about it. This could explain a lot.
    Meat probably can’t be ethically bought in bulk, unless you’re buying in units of 1 animal’s worth. If you don’t know how to joint a chicken, learn. I can get 6 or 7 meals out of a chicken. Yes, that might look like showing off, but it’s well short of what my mother can do.
  2. It really depends on what the packaging material is as to how much it matters as to container size. As tins can be recycled, I would suggest that the biggest problem would be with stuff mainly packed in plastic.

Reply, do you now live on variations of hummus? I’ve a Cypriot bread recipe that would lower both your chickpea and flour stores so long as you can grind the chickpeas up into flour without frightening the Allosaurus :wink:
And Joey P - I still use more than double the resources that the median person on earth would be using, so I’m more a realist than a liar.:eek:

17

Um, what?? I spread blood on *my *walls and no one calls **me **eco-friendly.

Thanks for the great hints upthread, btw.

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And what might that be?

That sounds interesting. Do share!

That’s because your walls aren’t painted with the blood of organic, free-range, grain-fed bad employees. We call it Productivity Gloss.

Seems to be a much better motivator than time clocks :wink:

19

I wonder about the aluminum foil thing. Aluminum is one of the most recyclable and recycled container materials on the planet. If you don’t have curbside recycling, metal recyclers will actually pay you for your aluminum cans, foils, takeout containers, etc.

Of all the things to eliminate, aluminum seems like a strange choice. Most people would be better off using aluminum more especially in favor of non-recyclables or difficult-to-recycle plastics (#5, I hate you).

ETA: I suppose if you’re to the point where you only own containers hand whittled from the thigh bones of deer and driftwood, you can start eliminating aluminum.

20

I thought I was doing pretty well, but after reading through the thread… not so much.

We use CFL’s in all the fixtures that will allow or make sense. We just installed a geothermal HVAC system. We use the reusable shopping bags. If we don’t have them with us, we avoid getting a disposable bag whenever possible. We recycle. We have the lower-flow shower and faucet heads, and I’ve replaced the older, large-tanked toilets with more economical ones. We’re about to start composting and I’m building a raised vegetable garden that we will start plating in the spring. There are a bunch of other little things too, but I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas from this thread that we may adopt.