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Sometimes trying to live greener a life feels fruitless. Like it is just one big giant pain in the you know what; one that you are suffering through while your neighbor drives their gas guzzling Hummer and your other neighbor throws away cases of empty water bottles every week. It can be difficult to keep in the mindset that every little bit helps.
Kathleen Price-Robinson from Pardon Our Dust writes about this same issue.:
Here's how it works for me: As I consider the new flooring for my living room, will I choose some great deal on Indonesian hardwood of unknown origin and pretend I don't know that my choice is contributing to the deforestation tragedy? Or will I spend a few bucks more to buy wood from a forest certified to be sustainably operated? This is my moment.
Each of us has to examine what our part is going to be in becoming more environmentally conscious. I can't start walking or bike riding everywhere, not just because it is currently 15 degrees outside, but also I would have to walk for hours to get anywhere I would need to go. My house is about as efficient as a 100 yr old house can be. And while we have made energy efficient updates on our house, it will never equal that of a newly built "green" house. And I can't give up coffee. No, honestly I can not.
But what my family and I chose to do is buy organically whenever the option exists. We buy locally, including just recently buying local grain raised beef and pork. It cost slightly more per pound than what is available at our local grocery store, but not by much. We compost, we recycle, but more importantly we do not bring much into our house that will wind up in the garbage or recycling bin due to the packaging. For nine people we bring one black garbage bag to the dump a week. And now that we no longer have diapers in this house, the bag isn't even filled. And every other week we bring the recycling bin with us.
So maybe it helps to even out the outrageous oil bill I have every month.
Catskill House writes about Composting and give specifics on what can be composted and how to do it. Their compost bin sounds just like the one we use, which is a pile in the back corner of our yard. Great easy information for people who are thinking about starting a compost pile, but have no idea how to do it.
Humphrey House recently insulated their house with a blown in soy insulation.
Soy-based foam is made by BioBased, and expands about 100 times its original size to fill every nook and cranny in the walls, better than any kind of rolled insulation. Unlike traditional fiberglass insulation, which even though it holds thermal energy in, teh foam also stops air leakage... while there are other spray foam insulation available, this is the only one that is not oil-based (urethane), and it is a water-based spray, so it truly is sustainable and green.
The New York Times recently ran an article about people who are capitalizing on their windy locations and installing turbines to harness the wind and provide energy for their homes.
Sales of wind turbines have been growing steadily since 1990, when the American Wind Energy Association, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C., began tracking them. Last year, about 7,000 small wind turbines — defined as those that have a capacity of up to 100 kilowatts, roughly enough to power a large school — were purchased in the United States, according to the group, which said it expects sales to reach about 10,000 this year.
One man featured in the article has a turbine which not only powers his entire house, but makes surplus power which he "sells" to the power company. How awesome would that be?
I have an incredible amount of child energy, can that be harnessed?
Just for fun, here is an interactive quiz that answers the question, "What if everyone in the world lived like me?" So take the quiz and find out if you are living a sustainable life.
When she isn't blogging about her life at Notes from the Trenches, Chris is working at rescuing her house from a century of neglect and
