Tuesday, January 12, 2010

No Impact: Days 1 and 2

This week is my week to follow along with the No Impact Project. Remember how I collected my bag of trash last week? My main take-away from that was to try to reduce food packaging. This will be tough for us because of our need for convenience, but I think we can start to make small changes.

The No Impact Project guidelines for yesterday encouraged reducing waste by doing things like packing your own cutlery and coffee mug (do that); choosing to use a Diva cup instead of tampons (sorry for the extra details, but do that); reducing use of paper good like kleenex and paper towels (do that). I've followed the No Impact Man blog for a while, so I'm realizing a lot of these changes we've already institutionalized in the house.

Our Costco days are big days of waste, of course--we're able to recycle a lot of the cardboard but a lot of the other stuff can't be recycle. But buying in bulk is probably less waste over time, so it's a tough call. Other than that, I think a lot of our stuff ends up in recycling or compost. From now on out it's either making very small changes (like making our own granola instead of buying it? Making mascara out of charcoal from the garbage? Using old newspaper instead of toilet paper? Puh-lease).

Day 2 is about transportation. I had to drive to Addie's school this morning (a lot of good that did me) and also drive to the doctor's office. I might have tried biking to the second appt. but had sick Addie with me, so what can you do? But I'm thinking a lot about the transportation thing. One thing E and I have talked about is getting a used scooter for local trips; another possibility is to start doing some biking to work, maybe once a week. But there are major disincentives for doing both. This continues to be our biggest problem, living in the suburbs, but look for some changes on this coming in the next few months, especially once it warms up.

Hey! On the cooking front: I tried an excellent braised tofu recipe tonight. Add that to the list. 2 recipes down; 50 to go.

No comments:

Post a Comment