According to a recent article in the Financial Post, each year, about 40% of the food produced by Canadians ends up in the landfill. That exceeds the amount eaten in Canadian restaurants and is an estimated $27 billion dollars. Wowza.
While businesses and grocery stores are big culprits, consumers are also not without blame. I know that I have let things go bad in my fridge and have been forced to chuck them.
In a few of my previous posts I outlined how energy intensive it is to produce and transport food, and just imagine all that energy going to waste in spoiled food. Sure, it is biodegradable and compostable, but that is still a lot of good food going to waste.
Wasting food, either by choice or by accident really undermines the ecological and environmental sacrifices made to produce that food and bring it to our plates/fridges. By letting the food spoil or wasting it, we waste all the energy needed to farm, raise, transport store, process and maybe even cook the food!
This is a simple one to fix and is a money saver, so let's stop wasting food!
There are a number of things you can do:
1) Don't buy or take more than you can eat - this is especially important for fresh produce that has a limited shelf life.
2) Keep stock of what's in your fridge and make sure you consume something before it is too late
3) Like my mom always told me -clean your plate!
4)A lot of grocery stores sell bruised/ funny looking produce for really cheap. My local produce market sells bags of fruit/veggies that aren't exactly prime for 99 cents - it's a great deal and the food is still good! I also feel that I can justify buying non-local produce (ex. oranges) if I am saving them from the dumpster
5) I haven't done this yet, but I have heard about it and maybe if you are feeling adventurous, try being a freegan!
If we all stop wasting food and stop taking our fortunate easy-access to food for granted we can really make a difference here! So, my challenge for today is to stop wasting food!
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Day 37: Grocery Store Adventures: Episode 2 - The Truth About Recycling
When I was little my mom used to always go to the the dairy farm down the road to pick up two Milk Buckets of milk that she pasteurized at home. Later, we got our milk from a friend who lived nearby and had a jersey cow that lived happily out on the field. This system was great. We knew the people who produced the milk, that the cows were happy and well taken care of, we knew that the milk didn't travel far from the cow to us, and this process had no waste in the form of plastic milk jugs or milk cartons.
Sadly, we stopped going down to the dairy after it changed hands, and then our friend's cow died. So, we started buying milk in plastic milk jugs. Although just picking up a jug at grocery store while shopping was easier, this milk was definitely not as tasty as the jersey's milk and was part of a more wasteful process than our earlier system. We also became less connected with where our food came from and the earth, as seems to be the way of progress and civilization.
My topic for today is really recycling, but I hope my little anecdote got you thinking as much as I did about how our connection to food and the earth is changing and evolving - and maybe not for the better.
Being Green is really cool these days, and you see all those t-shirts promoting recycling. Don't get me wrong, recycling is great, but it's really not as sustainable as most of us believe it to be. It is not a closed loop, and when you recycle, say, a plastic milk jug, it never becomes a milk jug again because in the process of reclaiming the material, the viability and quality of the plastic deteriorates. Eventually, you end up with those non-recyclable plastics.
This is a brief overview of how it works:
In a perfect world, a plastic bottle would be recycled and turned into another plastic bottle of equal quality -but this is not the case (but remember that recycling still requires energy, water and produces waste - just not as much as other processes). On the bright side, aluminium cans, PET 1 plastics and glass can be recycled into their same quality over and over.
However, HDPE number 2 plastics, which see their first incarnations as milk jugs, water bottles and juice containers can never be truly recycled and used as food-grade packaging again.
From here, the HDPE 2 plastics can laboriously be turned into things like plastic chairs, bins or be blended into a resin code 7 product - this is the end of the line for plastics, and it's next stop will likely be the landfill where it will sit for centuries.
Writing paper is the same - good quality writing paper is made from virgin fibers because recycled fibers are not quality enough, and they are turned into things like copy paper, toilet paper or cardboard - the end of the line for paper. So, recycling doesn't save all trees.
The other day, when grocery shopping I was hovering in the dairy isle -craving milk but not being able to justify the carbon cost of the milk and packaging when I spotted this:
Avalon farms is a local, family-run dairy, their production plant is located right here in Vancouver and their cows are in the Fraser Valley. They are actually the oldest continually running dairy in BC, and have been operating since 1906! I think unless I take up urban farming and start keeping a goat in my apartment, this is as local as it gets! One of the things I first noticed about Avalon milk was the container - it was made of glass reminiscent of the milk bottles of yester-year. I just had to find out more.
I e-mailed the contact person at Avalon farm and inquired about the glass bottles and found out that once they are returned to the grocery store, they are collected, cleaned and re-filled. (The pricey $1 deposit ensures that they get returned too!). I think this is probably the most energy efficient and environmentally friendly way of selling milk that I have come across since my childhood years.
I also learned that the organic cows at Avalon are let out to grasslands for 16 hours a day and are not fed corn-based feed (corn-based feed is the leading cause of cows producing excess amounts of methane gas since their digestive system isn't really made to digest corn).
The milk costs about $2.50 for a liter - not the cheapest, but its is the best milk I have had in a long time. Furthermore, I am supporting a local organic business. And, by paying more for the milk I am consuming less, which is better for the environment (see Day 2 of this Challenge), and I feel like I can justify buying milk now and again, and really savor this delicious treat! So, for the rest of the year I will try to continue buying local milk that comes in re-usable environmentally conscious bottles!
What do you think? Are there similar local business where you live? Do you think I can justify drinking milk by buying local, organic milk that comes in sustainable packaging?
Sadly, we stopped going down to the dairy after it changed hands, and then our friend's cow died. So, we started buying milk in plastic milk jugs. Although just picking up a jug at grocery store while shopping was easier, this milk was definitely not as tasty as the jersey's milk and was part of a more wasteful process than our earlier system. We also became less connected with where our food came from and the earth, as seems to be the way of progress and civilization.
My topic for today is really recycling, but I hope my little anecdote got you thinking as much as I did about how our connection to food and the earth is changing and evolving - and maybe not for the better.
Being Green is really cool these days, and you see all those t-shirts promoting recycling. Don't get me wrong, recycling is great, but it's really not as sustainable as most of us believe it to be. It is not a closed loop, and when you recycle, say, a plastic milk jug, it never becomes a milk jug again because in the process of reclaiming the material, the viability and quality of the plastic deteriorates. Eventually, you end up with those non-recyclable plastics.
This is a brief overview of how it works:
In a perfect world, a plastic bottle would be recycled and turned into another plastic bottle of equal quality -but this is not the case (but remember that recycling still requires energy, water and produces waste - just not as much as other processes). On the bright side, aluminium cans, PET 1 plastics and glass can be recycled into their same quality over and over.
However, HDPE number 2 plastics, which see their first incarnations as milk jugs, water bottles and juice containers can never be truly recycled and used as food-grade packaging again.
From here, the HDPE 2 plastics can laboriously be turned into things like plastic chairs, bins or be blended into a resin code 7 product - this is the end of the line for plastics, and it's next stop will likely be the landfill where it will sit for centuries.
Writing paper is the same - good quality writing paper is made from virgin fibers because recycled fibers are not quality enough, and they are turned into things like copy paper, toilet paper or cardboard - the end of the line for paper. So, recycling doesn't save all trees.
The other day, when grocery shopping I was hovering in the dairy isle -craving milk but not being able to justify the carbon cost of the milk and packaging when I spotted this:
Avalon farms is a local, family-run dairy, their production plant is located right here in Vancouver and their cows are in the Fraser Valley. They are actually the oldest continually running dairy in BC, and have been operating since 1906! I think unless I take up urban farming and start keeping a goat in my apartment, this is as local as it gets! One of the things I first noticed about Avalon milk was the container - it was made of glass reminiscent of the milk bottles of yester-year. I just had to find out more.
I e-mailed the contact person at Avalon farm and inquired about the glass bottles and found out that once they are returned to the grocery store, they are collected, cleaned and re-filled. (The pricey $1 deposit ensures that they get returned too!). I think this is probably the most energy efficient and environmentally friendly way of selling milk that I have come across since my childhood years.
I also learned that the organic cows at Avalon are let out to grasslands for 16 hours a day and are not fed corn-based feed (corn-based feed is the leading cause of cows producing excess amounts of methane gas since their digestive system isn't really made to digest corn).
The milk costs about $2.50 for a liter - not the cheapest, but its is the best milk I have had in a long time. Furthermore, I am supporting a local organic business. And, by paying more for the milk I am consuming less, which is better for the environment (see Day 2 of this Challenge), and I feel like I can justify buying milk now and again, and really savor this delicious treat! So, for the rest of the year I will try to continue buying local milk that comes in re-usable environmentally conscious bottles!
What do you think? Are there similar local business where you live? Do you think I can justify drinking milk by buying local, organic milk that comes in sustainable packaging?
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Day 36: The Dirty Truth About This Blogger
Any of you who have every visited me at home, or even seen my "organizational" method know that I am disastrous. I usually loose my keys, cell phone etc once a week in my room and have multiples of a few things because, well, I lost the first in my mess!
Here is a picture of what my room looks like by the end of a busy week of school, where survival becomes my priority!
This is no good for several reasons (some that I have already touched on already in my previous posts):
1) I have a lot of junk and get more junk because I can't find a specific thing within my pile of junk, so I buy a new one
2) I break stuff stepping on all of my clutter
3) Because I never seem to get around to folding and putting my laundry away, it often gets mixed in with dirty laundry and gets unnecessarily washed, thus wasting water and energy
4) If I keep this up, when I go to buy my first home I will look for a bigger place just to house my stuff - this means more building materials and energy to heat this home
5) A little off-topic, but I waste a ton of time and energy looking for things!
I'm sure there are a lot of other reasons why being messy is bad for the environment, but even just these few are enough to make my new challenge to keep myself, my room, my notes etc organized this year!
Hopefully it will help me to reduce my demand for stuff (from either losing or breaking things) and, un-related to the environment, help me be more organized, efficient and reduce my stress levels!
There have actually been quite a few studies done on how clutter effects stress levels, and I know I get stressed when the clutter levels in my room rise - not aiding my already frazzled state after days of labs, midterms and differential equations!
The resulting "soothing" effect of having an organized space can make me a more productive person and reduce my cravings for comfort foods (cheese & sweets that are oh-so unsustainable!) among other things.
So, most of you probably aren't to my level when it comes to disorder (thank goodness!) but if you are, consider trying to clean up your act like I will be attempting to do for the health and environmental benefits!
Here is a picture of what my room looks like by the end of a busy week of school, where survival becomes my priority!
This is no good for several reasons (some that I have already touched on already in my previous posts):
1) I have a lot of junk and get more junk because I can't find a specific thing within my pile of junk, so I buy a new one
2) I break stuff stepping on all of my clutter
3) Because I never seem to get around to folding and putting my laundry away, it often gets mixed in with dirty laundry and gets unnecessarily washed, thus wasting water and energy
4) If I keep this up, when I go to buy my first home I will look for a bigger place just to house my stuff - this means more building materials and energy to heat this home
5) A little off-topic, but I waste a ton of time and energy looking for things!
I'm sure there are a lot of other reasons why being messy is bad for the environment, but even just these few are enough to make my new challenge to keep myself, my room, my notes etc organized this year!
Hopefully it will help me to reduce my demand for stuff (from either losing or breaking things) and, un-related to the environment, help me be more organized, efficient and reduce my stress levels!
There have actually been quite a few studies done on how clutter effects stress levels, and I know I get stressed when the clutter levels in my room rise - not aiding my already frazzled state after days of labs, midterms and differential equations!
The resulting "soothing" effect of having an organized space can make me a more productive person and reduce my cravings for comfort foods (cheese & sweets that are oh-so unsustainable!) among other things.
So, most of you probably aren't to my level when it comes to disorder (thank goodness!) but if you are, consider trying to clean up your act like I will be attempting to do for the health and environmental benefits!
Friday, February 4, 2011
Day 35: No More Junk Mail!
This one is related to my post from Day 7 about paperless banking but is a bit more encompassing and will require a bit more "legwork" to do. My challenge is to unsubscribe to junk mail (actually phone them and ask to be taken off the list!) and if you have a mailbox, put up a "No Junk Mail Please" or "No Flyers Please" sign. This cuts down on paper waste and leaves you with less clutter to deal with!
Also, can you think of the last time you used a phonebook? I can't .... but that's not something I have to worry about in my current home, but for those of you who do get an annual phone book, think if you really need it or not.
Sorry for two short posts in a row - it's midterm week! I have some tasty ideas coming up, so keep posted!
Also, can you think of the last time you used a phonebook? I can't .... but that's not something I have to worry about in my current home, but for those of you who do get an annual phone book, think if you really need it or not.
Sorry for two short posts in a row - it's midterm week! I have some tasty ideas coming up, so keep posted!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Day 34: Be Green While you Sleep!
My boyfriend came for a quick visit on Monday and brought up an interesting idea that I haven't fully considered or implemented into my lifestyle.
It's easy, and most people already do it in their sleep!
Drawing your curtains at night helps prevent heat loss by capturing an extra "air-pocket" between the curtains and windows which helps to insulate the window. It's a simple thing that us Cold-Climate Dwellers can do over the cold winter months to cut down on our heating bills (along with lowering the thermostat/heat at night) and on our energy consumption!
Happy Thursday everyone! We've almost made it to the weekend!
Also, I came across this rad article (original article can be found here)
It's easy, and most people already do it in their sleep!
Drawing your curtains at night helps prevent heat loss by capturing an extra "air-pocket" between the curtains and windows which helps to insulate the window. It's a simple thing that us Cold-Climate Dwellers can do over the cold winter months to cut down on our heating bills (along with lowering the thermostat/heat at night) and on our energy consumption!
Happy Thursday everyone! We've almost made it to the weekend!
Also, I came across this rad article (original article can be found here)
“Green Curtains” to Reduce Energy Use & Protect Environment
Kyocera Group has begun using viney plants to create “green curtains”, which are formed over trellises to shade portions of windows and outer walls of buildings at 20 different locations in Japan, Thailand and Brazil. These curtains create a canopy over the buildings to prevent direct sunlight from raising the temperature of the building’s interior, helping to reduce the need for energy-intensive air conditioning. Not to mention, the plants also help to protect the environment by absorbing CO2. Taking their conservation efforts another step further, the company has even created a comprehensive how-to website dedicated toward helping consumers fashion their own eco-curtains around offices and homes. Kyocera’s “green curtain” idea began at its Okaya Plant in Nagano Prefecture, Japan as part of its effort to conserve energy and environmental resources. According to their website, these “green curtains” will absorb roughly 23,481 lbs of CO2 — or approximately the same amount as 761 cedar trees.Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Day 33: Take Care of Your Things
So, this one may not seem as clear as some of the other topics, like using both sides of a sheet of paper or bringing your own plastic bag, but it really falls into the same category.
I was thinking about how much our lives have changed in the past 100 years, and how easy it is now for us to access cheap stuff. I have a tonne of stuff, and it seems to be not a huge deal if I break something because I can just buy another thing for relatively little money. In fact, you almost shouldn't be too hard on yourself if you do break something, because a lot of things aren't designed for the long term -they are designed to break relatively quickly because then you'll buy more stuff. Cell phones, for instance, are really only designed to endure a year or maybe two of regular service before they seem to spontaneously quit working. These things are actually designed for the dump.
Annie Leonard goes over this process in her video, "The Story of Stuff". Although it is very generalized and not entirely accurate (I think these inaccuracies are due to her trying to make her topic more accessible to the general population) the video provides a great general overview of stuff and Life Cycle Analysis.
This lead to me to thinking that not only do I have to buy less stuff, I need to take care of the things that I own. I also need to take care of things that other people own too. Broken stuff goes to the dump, so we need less broken stuff.
I guess what I am getting at is that we need to have a sense of responsibility and ownership not just over our things, but over the world and anything in it. We only have one planet, and if we break it we can't just go to the store and buy a new one.
We need to take care of our possessions and the possessions of others. We need to consider the impact of our actions will have on our planet and other living creatures. We need to think further than our own comfort, lifestyle and convenience. We need to be responsible and accountable for what we are doing.
One small step towards this rather lofty ideal is taking care of your possessions, and when you must buy something, buy something that will last for many years. When you are finished with something, give it to someone who needs it. I realize that this idea has some fundamental problems associated with it when it comes to the economy - but I'm not suggesting to stop consuming. I'm suggesting to consume wisely. If you need (not want... need) something, buy quality wares that may cost three times more than their cheaper alternative, but will last a lifetime or more. Take care of these things and do everything possible to keep them out of landfills.
I was thinking about how much our lives have changed in the past 100 years, and how easy it is now for us to access cheap stuff. I have a tonne of stuff, and it seems to be not a huge deal if I break something because I can just buy another thing for relatively little money. In fact, you almost shouldn't be too hard on yourself if you do break something, because a lot of things aren't designed for the long term -they are designed to break relatively quickly because then you'll buy more stuff. Cell phones, for instance, are really only designed to endure a year or maybe two of regular service before they seem to spontaneously quit working. These things are actually designed for the dump.
Annie Leonard goes over this process in her video, "The Story of Stuff". Although it is very generalized and not entirely accurate (I think these inaccuracies are due to her trying to make her topic more accessible to the general population) the video provides a great general overview of stuff and Life Cycle Analysis.
This lead to me to thinking that not only do I have to buy less stuff, I need to take care of the things that I own. I also need to take care of things that other people own too. Broken stuff goes to the dump, so we need less broken stuff.
I guess what I am getting at is that we need to have a sense of responsibility and ownership not just over our things, but over the world and anything in it. We only have one planet, and if we break it we can't just go to the store and buy a new one.
We need to take care of our possessions and the possessions of others. We need to consider the impact of our actions will have on our planet and other living creatures. We need to think further than our own comfort, lifestyle and convenience. We need to be responsible and accountable for what we are doing.
One small step towards this rather lofty ideal is taking care of your possessions, and when you must buy something, buy something that will last for many years. When you are finished with something, give it to someone who needs it. I realize that this idea has some fundamental problems associated with it when it comes to the economy - but I'm not suggesting to stop consuming. I'm suggesting to consume wisely. If you need (not want... need) something, buy quality wares that may cost three times more than their cheaper alternative, but will last a lifetime or more. Take care of these things and do everything possible to keep them out of landfills.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Day 32: One Man's Trash...
During the holidays I was at my parents'home and I spent a lot of time with my mom's sewing machine. When I got back to Vancouver, I thought it was time that I should "come of age" and finally get my own sewing machine since I was only home maybe once a year these days, which allows for a lot of sewing projects to accumulate.
My first instinct was to go to Sears and buy one. But then I started perusing Craigslist and came across a bunch of machines in good condition for quite a bit less than I would have paid for a new one. Another thing I discovered is that craigslist has a "free" section where you can get almost anything imaginable free of charge (sofas, dishes, books, clothes, dining room sets, televisions, washing machines, you name it!) - you usually just have to go and pick it up. You could probably outfit your entire house with free stuff from craigslist -most of it in relatively good condition too!
In the end, I am the proud owner of an almost-new-still-in-the-box sewing machine that still had the manual with it for $50! A new one of equivalent quality would have cost at least three times that amount.
What is great about buying used is that not only does it save you money, you are diverting these previously-loved goods from the landfill (as most people are moving or getting new stuff, so the old stuff just has to go!) but in a way, you are also sort of helping to reduce the amount of stuff in circulation by decreasing the demand for new stuff. (Did that make any sense?) It works both ways too -if you have stuff kicking around your home that you no longer use or need, post for sale or for free on Craigslist, or bring it to a thrift shop like the Salvation Army where you will help make a difference in someone else's life!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)