Thursday, August 9, 2012

Week 5:7: Waste

Hey peeps. Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm spending time with my family, so the blog is up a day early. Apparently I'm way behind, or way ahead.

This week we'll be discussing the "green" chapter. I've got to be honest, this chapter had little to no effect on me. We are not really a green family and I don't feel any inkling to change any of our habits. I know that several of my friends are pretty green (I'm talking to you Vikki and Shannon), so I'm really interested in getting your thoughts on this chapter. Jen listed 7 habits for a greener life:

  • Gardening
  • Composting
  • Conserving Energy and Water
  • Recycling
  • Driving only one car
  • Shopping thrift and second hand
  • Buying only local.
Which of these do you do already? Do you feel like you should change your habits to start any of them? Just for fun, here are my thoughts on the 7 habits.

Gardening - We don't eat much produce in our house. The $15 worth of fruits and veggies that I get at the farmer's market each week sometimes rots before it is eaten. It seems that a garden would be a waste, as I would be the only person eating what was grown. Also, I am terrible at keeping plants alive. Have you seen my tomatoes this year? Shameful. I loved the idea of having someone come over and farm on my land. My yard is huge and I would gladly offer it up. However, this idea got a huge thumbs down from the hubs. He told me in no uncertain terms that he is not comfortable with strangers on our property. Ever. I'm pretty sure he would build a moat if he could. 

Composting - We have a skunk problem already, so I am not about to through rotting food in the yard so the skunks, raccoons, and opossums can fight over it at 11pm. (Although it is fun to watch, it smells terrible and then we have to shut the windows and turn on the a/c. I'd rather just use my window fan.)

Conserving Energy and Water - I'm pretty sure we already do this. We don't turn on the lights unless we have to, we have no central air, and we keep it warm in the summer (the a/c doesn't come on unless it reaches 85 or above in the living room) and cooler in the winter (67ish). This has little to do with the earth and much to do with the fact that we are cheap. The lower our electric and gas bill, the happier we are.

Recycling - I put pizza boxes, diaper boxes, milk jugs and juice containers in the bin. I'm not sure that we have many more things that are recyclable. We're pretty much a filtered tap water and coffee drinking house so we don't have soda cans.

Driving only one car - Not unless I move to the city. Lou has to go to work, and I have to grocery shop and get the kids to school. This just seems completely unrealistic to me.

Shopping thrift and second hand - Most of the kids clothing and some other major purchases (i.e. my Kindle, our newest tv, all of our cars) were purchased used from consignment sites or Craigslist. Again, this has nothing to do with the earth and everything to do with cost effectiveness.

Buying only local - I don't mind buying local, but I haven't ever gone out of my way to do so. If buying local means spending a lot more money on something, it's probably not going to happen.

Here's another thought that keeps me from caring a ton about the state of the earth - Isn't God going to just destroy it anyway? It talks about Him creating a new heaven and a new earth, so should we really be spending a lot of time, effort, and money making sure that we're green? Wouldn't all of that energy/expense/excitement be put to better use by feeding the hungry, loving our neighbor, and seeking a deeper relationship with Him? Don't get me wrong, I am against outright waste but it seems that the time and effort that Jen put into this month's experiment was misplaced. 

What do you think? I know that some of you (maybe all of you) may disagree with me, which is fine! Please let me know if I'm totally missing the point here. :-)

4 comments:

  1. •Gardening - We have a smallish raised bed garden this year. In years past we had a 15 x 30 garden but I was overwhelmed by the amount of veggies we yielded. The neighbors would draw their curtain and hide when I would approach the houses with produce. We went to a 3 x 16 container garden and have had a lot of success. Plus I loved building the raised bed :)

    •Composting - I want to compost but this was vetoed by hubby. He is afraid of stink and animals. He also believes that we don't produce enough stuff to compost. I think he would be surprised at the amount if we actually did it. He said the same thing about recycling when I wanted to go "all in."
    •Conserving Energy and Water - We changed over our lightbulbs years ago and we always turn off lights. I am going to throw Hubby under the bus about the water though. He leaves it running all the time. I stopped nagging and I just show him the bill every month.
    •Recycling - We have been recycling for the past 12 years living in this house. We never really knew all the things that could be recycled so I went on the twp website about a year ago and we started adding to the stuff we recycled. Now we have very little trash. I am convinced that if we composted the only thing we would throw out is cat litter. I will have to continue working on Hubby :)
    •Driving only one car - NOPE not going to happen!
    •Shopping thrift and second hand- I am very bad at this. I hate going in a store and having to sort through to find sizes and inspect clothing. It also has a gross factor for me. i know I can wash the stuff but I would still know. I also don't like running all over to do my shopping. Hubby gets his discount at Target so if it doesn't come from there or Amazon.com we usually don't buy it.
    •Buying only local.- See above.

    I loved the idea of someone farming our land. Not sure if anyone does this in our area. If anyone hears of an organization that does let me know!

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  2. I agree with you tons! I do have some ways where I guess I'm considered green but its not to preserve the earth. We shouldn't be wasteful of course but like you said I'm not going to drive myself crazy trying to preserve the earth when its not going to last forever. Whereas people are going to last forever. My green ways include making homemade cleaner because it is cheaper and I like chemical free stuff for my health and Liam's. I like gardening cause its cheaper and we eat a ton of produce. Also I sometimes I don't mind spending more money on certain things like local produce at times just because (being a farm girl) I like to support local farmers rather than buy cheaper from outside of the country. And this goes for other products that I can get made in this country that supports a SAH mom/wife trying to make extra income for her family.

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  3. Alicia, I would farm your land for you if I lived closer! Would Lou let me, I'm not a stranger, lol!

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  4. Car - if you could farm my land, it would be the best thing ever!! I don't need a lot, just some tomatoes, zucchini, and strawberries. And maybe some horseradish. Pumpkins would be fun too.. :-)

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