Be Green, Save Green

Too often, the face of current ecotrends is advertising and tv shows. Watching them, it is easy to think the way to be green is spend spend spend. There's definitely energy-efficient products that pay for themselves, and if you are in the market for a new product it's better to go with the eco-friendly product. But there's tons of ways to be green that don't cost a dime (and actually save some $$$).

Here are a few things we practice in our home:


1) Composting. You do not need a composter to compost. All you need is space. Your trash won't smell as bad, you won't have as much trash, and it makes rich fertilizer for your yard or garden.


2) Turn off the heat/ a/c. Or at least use it less. If it's summer, aren't you wearing less clothes? I hate walking into a building in summer and freezing because I'm wearing shorts. We keep our house 76 summer and 64 winter. Use fans in summer, layers in winter. Small temperature differences lead to big savings.


3) Zero waste eating. When you plan meals for next week, your first stop should be what you already have. Are the eggs expiring, will the spinach go bad? Americans throw away a huge amount of food, an estimated 40%!!!! So stop wasting and your grocery bill could be 40% less. If you know you have more food than you can eat, freeze it. The refrigerator and freezer also run more efficiently when they are full.

4) Reuse creatively. A lot of "trash" can be useful. I like to reuse food containers. Grated cheese and hummus containers are great for snacks instead of buying plastic bags or "Gladwear." Glass jars are also the best! I use large ones for leftovers and freezing soups or broth and small ones to hold herbs or dry goods. When I start seedlings sometimes, I will poke holes in the bottom of yogurt containers for a temporary pot before planting permanently.

5) Homemade cleaners. 50/50 water/vinegar solution works great for sanitizing surfaces and cleaning toilet bowls. Mix vinegar with baking soda for a stronger cleaner. Not only will you save money, you will avoid inhaling the horrible cleaning concoctions that contain who knows what...

6) Your trash may be someone else's treasure. If you don't want to go through the hassle of a garage sale or ebay, donating your unwanted items still gives you a tax deduction (and creates jobs too).

7) Drive less. Americans spend much more on transportation than other countries, an average of $9500 per household annually. Buying a car, maintenance, gas, insurance, it all adds up. Extend the life of your car and save gas by carpooling, using public transportation, or working from home if possible. Our insurance company (Amica)  asks us how frequently we drive to work and our rate is less because neither of us drives to work often.

8) Eat less meat. Yep, unless you are getting local meat (and grassfed beef, organic, etc. etc.) your meat is probably bad for the environment. About 30% of arable land is used for meat production, not to mention how much energy it takes grow the grains, transport the grain to the animals, then transport the animals to your table. Not only is eating less meat good for the planet, it's usually better for your health and your wallet.

9) Avoid traffic. I hate running errands on the weekend, it feels like waiting in traffic for hours just to spend a few minutes buying something. All the while the car is idling at 0 mpg. Run errands on a weekday evening (8 pm is prime empty time) and enjoy your freed weekend.

10) Don't impulse buy. Advertising and stores are set up with the primary purpose of getting your money. The more you buy, the more energy is put into those products, half of which you may decide you don't need after all. "Every dollar I spend is a statement about the kind of world I want and the quality of life I value." Read more at New American Dream.

Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day is tomorrow, and I always feel like it is a day for reflection on how my own life affects everything else. I can be a pretty negative person, so I'm trying to focus on the good and bad, and realize that Rome wasn't built in a day (i.e., I can't just change the habits that I grew up instantaneously, it takes a lot of work). The naysayers say your little contributions don't amount to a hill of beans. But, if everyone did what they could to get us going in the right direction, it would amount to a lot.

So, our positive environmental impacts:

-We do not use pesticides or artificial fertilizers on our yard. 

-Indoors we only use green cleaning products (I am a big believer in the power of baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice and scrubbing).

-We recycle almost everything (thanks to the great recycling program in Austin)

-We compost all of our food waste

-We drive small cars with good gas mileage

-Charlie takes the bus to work

-We use reusable bags. We even reuse the plastic bags produce comes in several times and bring them with us to the farmers market.

-We use energy conservation settings at home (cooler in winter, warmer in summer) and we have an energy efficient air conditioner.

-We only run the dishwasher and washing machine when full, we don't leave the water running needlessly.

-We recently tested the toilets for leaks, and we found a slow leak in one that we're getting fixed.

-To reduce even more water waste, we have a bucket that we fill while we're waiting for the shower to get warm, and we use the water on seedlings and houseplants (this is like 60 gallons a month).

-We bought native plants recently for our yard, and native shade tolerant grasses (that we still need to plant...)

-We buy organic food when possible. We support the local organic gardening center and belong to the wildflower center.

-We only eat sustainable seafood (the stuff recommended by Seafood Watch). Often it is expensive to be sustainable so we are usually vegetarian, which is cheap.

-Paper: we bought a duplex printer. I really don't believe you can just buy a sustainable lifestyle, but we needed a new printer anyway and I save a lot more paper with the duplexing. Also, Charlie joined the library and paperback swap.

Neutral or questionable:

-We bought carbon offsets for our trip to Hawaii (probably not as good as just not traveling, but I couldn't do that)

-I work from home. I am not sure if this is good or bad because it means I don't drive much, but it also means I keep the temperature at home more comfortable than I would if the house was empty

-We started an organic vegetable garden. I think in a lot of areas this would be positive. I counted it as positive in the wet cool winter months, but now it's hot and we are in a major drought. I find it harder to justify the garden but I can't help but look forward to summer veggies. We mulch the garden which reduces the amount we need to water. I will point out, our garden is a lot smaller than the yards that most people water...(we maybe water ours once every 3 weeks). Our water use last month was ~3500 gallons, the average in Austin is more like 8,000.

-I loove coffee. The environmental impact is not always so great, but I am sure to get shade grown, fair trade organic. The food miles on this are also big.

-I moved to Texas. The move took a lot of gas, but it means a lot fewer flights between Texas and Ohio (the carbon spent on flights is crazy!)

Room for improvement

-I am pledging to myself to take less time in the shower. I already try to reduce the number of showers i take by focusing on showering after working out when possible, but I am guilty of "spacing out" often.

-I love traveling. It uses a lot of carbon, more than if I didn't travel and didn't conserve any energy. I need to work on carbon offsetting all of my travel.

-Our house could really use double paned windows. They're expensive, we just replaced the air conditioner and are in the process of replacing the fence. It's on the list.

-Our energy use would really go down if we had a "smart" system. I think this is a dream house solution for me, not something that is going to happen anytime soon. But if I spend all day working in my office, and all night sleeping in the bedroom, the a/c doesn't need to be running in the majority of the house most of the time.

-I want to build a workable solar oven. I made one out of cardboard last fall and it worked! But it was not durable, and it was bulky. I think this would save a little energy from not using the oven, but save lots of energy by not heating the house (and thus not running the a/c as much)

-We are still using fossil fuels. None of the green energy options are ideal, or affordable. So while we have reduced lots, there are other things to be done.

-We could save more water by having rain barrels or a cistern. The problem? They are expensive, and expensive to install. The city reimburses a little of the cost, but city water is still cheaper. It's on the wish list though.

-We could replace a lot more of our grass with native plants. It's also on the list.

-Right now we donate a lot of stuff, but we don't buy a lot of used items. We tried doing this last fall, but we have not found a store with items that we are actually interested in buying, and even if it is a store that has some good items, you never know what will be there. It makes a lot of sense to buy used in terms of environmental impact, and I would like to buy used more often.
-We need to replace our charcoal grill with a gas one. That's right, gas takes about half the carbon!

Strawberries and Tomatoes and Squash, Oh My!

Our garden is growing great! We have had our first two ripe strawberries, with many more ripening. For some reason, the very first one had part of it go bad (we could not see any little bites out of it), but the rest have been ripening ok so far. We have since covered the strawberries with bird netting and haven't had any stolen.

 The tomatoes have also been looking great! There were a few that died on us, but we had extras and transplanted them in. We have 10 tomato plants and 6 of them already have tomatoes. Some of the plants are not growing as big as expected, but the tomatoes are all we really care about anyway.  I had a sad accident trying to adhere one of the roma tomatoes to the trellis-it was not as bendy as I hoped and the top snapped off and we lost some tomatoes with it! Oops...now I know. The tomato pictured below is a "small fry" variety and produces cherry tomatoes.You can also see our house in the background.

 The squash and zucchini are also growing at their own pace. There are buds forming, so hopefully we'll have many little squash soon! To the right of the large zucchini, there is a container of slicer cucumbers just starting out. We had hoped to have it started sooner, but there was a little typo about planting the cucumber seeds 3" deep, so the first time we tried they didn't survive.

 The snow peas are also looking great and have a lot of little pods on them that will be ready to eat within the week. I haven't been able to help myself and I've eaten 1 or 2 each day even though they weren't full size yet.

We never gave up on the carrots (front corner), but we probably won't plant them again. Now that sun is hitting the full garden they have a lot more leaves, hopefully translating into more roots. The potatoes (large plants in back) look awesome, hope something comes from it (since we aren't really looking to eat the stems). You can also see a few peppers we have planted. They are not growing very quickly, and something has eaten some of the leaves so we don't know how great they will do.

I have seen several of these little assassin bugs on the potatoes and snow peas. I think they're cute! Though  they are supposed to pack a bite if you touch them. I'm happy to see them, they kill some of the insects that try to eat the produce!

While most of what is planted is revving up with the weather, we had to cut lots of the spinach and lettuce because it was beginning to bolt. There is no way we will be able to keep them throughout the summer, we are just hoping to get a little more to tide us over until some of the other plants produce more. My summer replacement for spinach is going to be chard, and the replacement for lettuce is going to be lots of cucumber salads (hopefully!).

Random cat picture. Cookie, the grey ghost. I wish that the cats actually kept birds away from the garden, but they tend to stalk birds more than chase them away.

Garden total for last 3 weeks:
30 cups mesclum salad mix
4 heads romaine
30 cups spinach
5 cups swiss chard
1/2 cup herbs (oregano, basil, parsley)
1/2 cup green onions
2 strawberries
5 snow peas

I am hoping by the next update we might have a few tomatoes and carrots ready, and I expect we will have lots of snow peas!
Failures: turnips, too many little bugs eating them they can't get large enough to keep growing.Something is also eating the green beans, but we have put black plastic containers around them to try and keep bugs out.

Galveston

 Monday was our 2 year anniversary. To celebrate, we went to Galveston. We stayed at Coastal Dreams Bed and Breakfast, where we stayed the weekend of July 4th in 2008, the weekend before Charlie proposed. It was too cool to get in the water, but we enjoyed walking on the beach.

 Charlie by the pool at the Bed and Breakfast.

 

 The state park in Galveston. I thought there was a great egret somewhere in this picture.

Wedding shot!

I have accidentally been traditional about our anniversary gifts. For our first year anniversary, I made a photo album of our honeymoon cruise (paper is the traditional first year gift) and Charlie got us Mr. and Mrs. aprons. This year, I got Charlie a blue bath robe (cotton is the traditional second year gift). Charlie got me an awesome travel mug with photos of us and a moonstone necklace.