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13 changes we've made to help the earth

By Ari | Sep 26, 08 09:38 AM

Here's a photo of a card in our last set of little outreach materials we distributed around NYC before leaving for the greener streets and gorges of Ithaca. We used the little cards that we have left over from when we had our wedding invitations printed up, pasting handwritten and printed bits of paper over the parts with text. Presto - new outreach cards, less waste, and no printing costs. Yay!

I thought I'd post about some of the things Shira and I have done to reduce our environmental impact. We've been trying a lot of things and have really reduced our footprint in tangible ways - and we're still living just as lush and happy a life as we were before we started making these changes. In fact, reducing our impact on our planet not been an experience of deprivation or bother - it's actually enriched our lives and brought us a lot of happiness and relief and fulfillment. Read on for some ideas, from quick and easy things to bigger lifestyle changes, that you too could try on for size. The earth, the animals, and the next seven generations will thank you!

1. We swapped out all of our lightbulbs for compact flourescents. Did you know only 5% of US households have done this? It's not that expensive - the bulbs may cost a few bucks more but then you save an assload of electricity and never have to buy bulbs again because they last for ages! And the light quality is really nice - and they're a lot cooler, which we definitely appreciate in the summer.
2. We started collecting compost and dropping it off at a collection site. You don't have to make your own compost if you don't have a garden, space, or the wherewithal to deal with it yourself. You can simply put your food scraps (no animal products - they get gross!) in a tupperware in your fridge. When that fills up dump it into a bag in your freezer, and start over. When you want to get rid of your collection, bring your bags of frozen scraps to whoever in your community is currently accepting compost. In NYC we brought it to a local community garden, and here in Ithaca, we bring it to our food cooperative. You can search the web or ask around at a local garden to find out who in your community might want your scraps - they're like gold for gardeners! This really reduced the amount of stuff we were throwing away as trash.
3. We bring a bag when we go out, and a water bottle. Plastic bags and bottles consume gazillions of gallons of oil (this is very scientific, this analysis) in their production, and while they can be reused, that usually doesn't happen. We bring a tote bag or backpack everywhere we go so we can put purchased stuff (and freegan treasures found curbside) into our own bags, instead of using new bags. When we go grocery shopping, we bring produce bags we've washed and dried for reuse. And if you're the kind of person who likes to have something to drink all the time, bring and refill a waterbottle. We use metal Sigg bottles because they're healthier than plastic and more durable and lightweight than glass.
4. We stopped buying stuff. We used to buy new stuff all the time. We could afford it I guess, though now looking at our as-yet unpaid debts, I don't think we really could. We'd occasionally go through our closet and find things we'd bought and never worn, or we'd realize that this book or that DVD wasn't really all that, and could have been borrowed instead of acquired. So we stopped buying stuff. We already have a lot of stuff. We didn't really need more except for food, services like internet and the like, and other real consumables. Now when we need something, we first see if it's something we can borrow (and man oh man do we now love the library!). Then we look for it on freecycle, then Craig's List. Clothes, we get second-hand - I paid $20 for a pair of $250 Diesel jeans a while back and felt like an idiot for not realizing the glory of second-hand Williamsburg hipster clothes earlier. The long and short of this decision is that we still get everything we want but we pay a lot less - or nothing - for it. And we've said good bye to most of the shipping materials, excessive packaging, and fossil fuels used in transportation that we used to consume in getting everything new and not locally.
5. We stopped leaving all of our appliances on all the time. We had lights on in rooms we weren't in, toaster ovens and things with clocks drawing power even when turned off ("phantom loads"), our computers sleeping all night instead of being shut down. Now things that have phantom loads are plugged into power strips with switches, and we only have lights on in the rooms we're actually in. We also stopped standing around with the fridge door open and putting warm things and uncovered liquids into the fridge (which makes the compressor work harder). We even stopped using an air conditioner most of the time - we're trying to sell it, actually - we never use it any more, we love fresh air now! Our electricity bill has gone waaaaaay down.
6. We shop at a food cooperative. In NYC we shopped at Flatbush Food Coop and here in Ithaca we shop at Greenstar Cooperative Market. With a small buy-in (at this place it's $10/year) you get a small discount (a piddly 2% - but they're talking about making it a periodic rebate check instead of an ongoing discount), which is higher if you work a couple of hours a month. We're now co-owners and are sharing in the profits of the cooperative. But we're also making a more positive impact on the environment; our coop is jam-packed with well-labeled vegan options, local foods, and organic choices. It's easy to make good decisions about food in such a supportive and well-intentioned community.
7. We joined a CSA and we shop at green markets / farmer's markets. We haven't figured out yet if we're joining a CSA (community supported agriculture) here in Ithaca yet because we've been able to get affordable, top-notch, 100% local in-season produce at the Ithaca Farmer's Market and at our coop. But whether you do a CSA or a farmer's market, you'll save money and you'll appreciate produce a lot more. There's something amazing and precious about fresh in-season organic (often heirloom) veggies - we find ourselves loathe to let them go bad because they're so delicious and beautiful - and because we actually meet and speak with the folks who grow and pick them.
8. We wash dishes more efficiently. We used to leave the water running while washing dishes, but then our friend Meg showed us how easy it is to wash a batch of dishes at a time and then rinse them in these little batches. You turn the water on and off like you do when saving water while brushing your teeth - and you use soooo much less water. We also started using a long-lasting scrub brush made out of wood and plant-derived bristles, instead of synthetic sponges, a choice which is also a lot healthier and less bacteria-breeding.
9. We use microfiber cloths instead of paper towels. We never have to buy paper towels again, and we keep all of that paper out of landfills! Microfiber cloths last for ages and ages and are much more effective and absorbent and strong and useful than paper towels. Use them for a week or whatever and then toss them in the laundry so you can wash and reuse.
10. We use Maggie's Soap Nuts instead of laundry detergent. These are these crazy little nuts that grow on trees that magically clean and soften your laundry. They're super-cheap, they work better than soap, and they're totally harmless to the environment. Since they're these lightweight little nut things instead of big heavy jugs of detergent, they take less of a toll on the environment when shipped in the mail. You can use them for a lot of other cleaning purposes too.
11. We're vegan. Vegans use hundreds if not thousands of times less water, about 12 times less vegetable matter, and a massive amount less of fossil fuels than do omnivores. Raising animals to eat them is extremely bad for the environment; only very "rich" (read: imperialist) nations like the United States can afford to raise enough animals to feed their whole population, and our waste and selfishness translates into hungry people the world over who could be fed better if we were all just eating the plants ourselves instead of funneling them into living, breathing, sentient beings for years so they'll grow large enough for slaughter. Since we consider animals and hungry folks our neighbors, and since we love our earth, we can't imagine not being vegan.
12. We drive less and use public transportation, bikes and our feet more. Using your feet is super-cheap! If you're worried about the price of gas, stop needing gas. For us this even meant moving to a smaller, more human-scale, walkable community where we could get everything we need within 20 minutes' walk or 10 minutes' bikeride. We can't wait to get baskets (on freecycle or craigs list, we hope!) for our bikes, so we can use our car even less - and we're trying to figure out if we should ditch the car altogether in favor of joining Ithaca CarShare - or maybe we could trade our car for one with a diesel engine so we could switch to using waste veggie oil for fuel.
13. We spread the word about how to love our earth. We may have begun to have a more positive and less negative impact on the earth ourselves, with all of these changes, but we know we can do even more good and less harm if we help to spread these ideas to other folks. Through blogging, and using Facebook and Flickr and MySpace to get these ideas out there, we've had a lot of incredible dialogues with awesome people all over the world, many of whom have then gone on to spread these ideas even father, in addition to putting them to work in their own lives. In addition, this dialogue is largely behind the changes we've made ourselves - if it weren't for meeting the amazing people behind freegan.info and other activist folks and being open to their ideas, we wouldn't have come to many of these changes. Loving our environment, our neighbors, our own healthier bodies, and the generations to come is now a big part of everything we do - from the clients we work with to the projects we take on to the themes and ideas in our artwork and music. We call it radical solidarity - as in, we're all on the same team, so let's act like it. The more we can all learn from each other, the more we can all figure out how to change our actions and create a better here and now - and a better future.

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