No Impact Week Day 7: Giving Back

Sorry for the delay on this post! Labor Day weekend has been a very wonderful, busy one in our household. ANYWAY, let's reflect on No Impact Week Day 7.

Sierra Club No Impact Week Day 7 was focused on Giving Back, and there are a lot of ways to do this.

1. Donate money to nonprofit organizations and causes working for the environment.
2. Join environmental organizations.
3. Get out and physically volunteer.
4. Work for a nonprofit organization.

What do we do in our household?

Firstly, we are members of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. As backpackers, we just love our AT, and we love supporting what the ATC does to maintain the trail, protect the greenway, and educate others on the importance of the AT.

Secondly, we try to find ways to give back. We did not find anything specific to do this past Saturday, but I have volunteered to do a homemade baby food demonstration at our favorite farmers market on October 2nd! I cannot wait to spread the word and show some local parents just how easy it is to prepare local, homemade food for baby, from blueberries to peas to chicken. I am still brainstorming as to what I will be cooking up on October 2nd-- probably something in the realm of squash and apples I presume.

Here are some great resources for finding volunteer opportunities near you. Simply search with the keyword "environment" if you are specifically looking for nature-related opportunities.

http://www.volunteermatch.org
http://www.idealist.org

Here are just a few specific national organizations to consider.
(How cool is the idea of taking a volunteer vacation? I am really hoping to take one in the next few years.)

The Sierra Club
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy
The Audubon Society: TogetherGreen

No Impact Week Day 5: Energy

**If this is the first post you are reading on No Impact Week,
you might want to read this one to orient yourself.**

It's Thursday night, and the only light in our condo right now is beaming from the screen of my laptop. And a few candles. Because today is Sierra Club No Impact Week Day 5, and we are focusing on energy.

When I woke up this morning, Gabriel and I went on a little tour of our condo and pulled the plug on lights and appliances. We don't really use much energy during daylight hours, but we never unplug things so it was nice to go and eliminate the ghost power today.

Did I still watch television today? Yes, I watched less than one hour of television while the baby -sort of- napped. My husband had class tonight, and I knew I was in for a long, long day so I gave in and tuned into Days of Our Lives just in time to see E.J. laying on his bed, (gasp), shot!

But I refrained from watching morning talk shows, and we did not put on the Phillies game tonight. Our goal is to keep the TV watching to one hour or less per day. (And did you know that smaller television sets consume less energy? Which is good for us, because we have a tiny television from when I was in high school. We just can't bring ourselves to spend money on a television.)

Other Issues with our Energy Usage

1. Temperature
I turned it off totally this morning, but as the temperature climbed to the high 90s, I needed to close the door and turn it on for a little while to cool the condo back down for Gabriel's sake. It follows-- while my husband and I are that extreme that we might eliminate the use of ac and heat unless absolutely imperative for our survival, we can't play like that with our little dude. But what we can do is simply turn off the ac whenever we can, open the window when there's a breeze, and be conservative about the temperature setting.

2. Cooking and Food
I cook. With a stove and stovetop. That is not going to change. I do enjoy eating salads and other typically chilled items cold, and I have every intention of using my freezer to keep my local produce good all year. The fridge is not going out the door. I'm totally open to suggestions on reducing energy use related to food, but I don't have any grandiose idea right now.

3. Laundry
I'm not totally against trying to do laundry by hand, but as a cloth diapering-Mommy, I am not planning to clean cloth diapers by hand. However, air drying the cloth diapers by hanging them up is a great option. What's hard for us is to switch to air drying in total because our condo association has a rule against clothes lines. I have been tempted to put one up on our patio all summer, but I haven't rocked the boat. Yet.

I know tonight's post is not nearly as extensive as last night's entry, but I will leave you with the promise that our family plans to have one night per week like this one (as in, candles only, and no television) as we move forward. And I think that's sweet.

No Impact Week Day 4: Food

**If this is the first post you are reading on No Impact Week,
you might want to read this one to orient yourself.**

Sierra Club No Impact Week's Day 4 is food-focused.

And if you regularly read A Mom Writing, you know I have been working on greening our food habits for awhile.
Are we great at it? Not yet.
Are we better than we used to be? Holy wow, yes.

The key to local eating ** local= food grown within 250 miles of your locale** is in knowing where you live. I grew up in the town we live in currently, but I didn't know the farms in the surrounding area. I didn't know the farmers market dates. I didn't know a lot of things, but when I looked, I found it.

And FINDING it has made it possible for us to have the following local products on a regular basis:

1. Fruit: peaches, apples, berries, plums, tomatoes, etc.
2. Veggies: string beans, swiss chard, peppers, eggplant, cucumber, corn, etc.
3. Meat (as in of the grass-fed, free range kind): beef, lamb, chicken
4. Dairy: butter, cheese (limited choices on the cheese)
5. Bread: fresh-baked "green" bakery bread, rolls, etc.
6. Wine: a full range (but cranberry wine from Valenzano winery is my favorite)
7. Other (as in of the cage free, organic kind): eggs, herbs, flowers

I think it is important for me to mention now that you will find animal protein in our diet. We are not vegetarian or vegan, and while I think those eating habits are fabulous, our family is comfortable eating meat. We are not comfortable eating protein sourced from feedlots. We are not comfortable eating primarily corn-fed beef. Our feelings are that if the meat comes from a farm where animals are treated correctly and respectfully, without use of hormones or heavy use of antibiotics, we are happy eating it. Pastured protein is delicious and nutritious in moderation. We are always trying to develop alternative meal ideas for dinner featuring protein from beans or quinoa, etc., though.

WHERE did I find the information to get all of that food locally?

http://www.localharvest.org

An online directory of farms, CSAs, farmers markets, and events. Search by your zip code and see what is near you. I would have never known an alpaca farm is within 20 miles of my home if I hadn't searched. And if you look on here before your go on vacation, you can still eat farm fresh food on vacation (Yes, we did this. The picture below is from Ludlow, Vermont's Farmers Market)

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Let's get real here. I'm not a green saint-- we do sometimes get take out (it's usually pizza from our favorite place), and we do eat some processed food. The point of this week was to avoid it as much as possible so obviously we have not and do not plan on eating anything other than home-cooked meals. But we still bought some packaged, processed food. Here is a list of the non-local things we bought:

cereal
organic milk
whole wheat pretzels
a giant bag of organic pears
a giant bag of organic sweet potatoes
sandwich-style wheat bread
luna bars
clif bars
organic yogurtturkey bacon
mozzarella cheese
chocolate chips
organic pasta
organic fair trade coffee
organic half & half

**We gave up bananas and avocados for the week. We were inspired to switch from plain old coffee to fair trade organic for now. We are not ready to eliminate coffee from our diet, and if you saw No Impact Man, it seems that was the hardest thing for Colin Beavan's wife Michelle to give up, too. We don't drink coffee on a regular basis, and we will savor our moments with it.**

The No Impact Manual highly suggests swapping the processed for the local, and I am sitting here staring at this list trying to figure out what I would do differently. From the ingredients we purchased this weekend, here are some samples of the meals we are and will eat this week (Gabe has bits and pieces of these meals, but he also eats many of the foods I have already made, frozen, and written about here). I have bolded eight ingredients for us to research finding and purchasing locally.

Breakfasts
Yogurt and Pear
Luna Bar
Cereal with Milk
Eggs with Cinnamon Toast
Local: eggs, butter
Not: ha, everything else.

Lunch One
Baked Potato with Tomatoes, Butter, Salt
Local: tomatoes, butter
Not: potato, salt

Lunch Two
Sweet Potato and Pretzels with Peanut Butter
Local: Nothing

Dinner One
Free Range Pork Chops with Cinnamon Apples and String Beans
Local: pork, apples, string beans
Not: olive oil, cinnamon

Dinner Two
Pepper Cheese Omelets or Swiss Chard Omelets (with or without Turkey Bacon), Plums, and Bakery Bread
Local: eggs, pepper, swiss chard, plums, bakery bread
Not: cheese, turkey bacon, salt, pepper

Dinner Three
Pastured Roasted Chicken with String Beans and Potatoes
Local: chicken, string beans, butter, rosemary
Not: potatoes, salt, pepper, paprika, lemon, olive oil

Dinner Four
Chili Con Carne
Local: ground beef, tomatoes, corn, carrots, green pepper, red pepper
Not: pinto beans, red kidney beans, salt, pepper, chili powder, hot sauce, cumin, olive oil

Dessert
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Local: butter, eggsNot: flour, white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla extract, baking powder

Are you seeing a trend? I'm seeing a lot of spices and baking ingredients as main offenders. Other issues? Those foods which are not in season or native to our area, such as lemons, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pears.



A Tip on Eating Local All Year Long
Make and freeze local ingredients while they are in season. I made my first batch ever of tomato sauce this week to freeze, and I will be doing one big batch this weekend as tomato season comes to a close. Other great foods to freeze are green beans, peas, and corn.

Stay tuned for tomorrow when we pull the plug .
The power is going out (on everything possible).

No Impact Week Day 3: Transportation

**If this is the first post you are reading on No Impact Week,
you might want to read this one to orient yourself.**

Sierra Club No Impact Week Day 3 is about Transportation.

Annnnnnnnnd here's where our family gets a bright, big...

FAIL.

Why?

Because we live in a suburb of Philadelphia. I work in our town, and our babysitter is five minutes from my work, but my Mom watches Gabe once per week two exits away from us off of the New Jersey Turnpike. Yes, once per week, I drive approximately 40 minutes to my Mom's to drop off Gabe and then head back to my office, turn back around and go back to my Mom's, and then drive back home. It sickens me. But it saves us so much money for my Mom to watch the baby for free, too (yes, even with gas and toll costs included). And student loans don't disappear if you smile at them.

It really is disturbing, though, that despite the days I spend home during the week (I RELISH my baby time!), I still have done so much damage on mileage that I really am not helping the environment on those days I crawl around the house.

And then there's my husband who has to get into the city. We're twenty minutes from the train, which he will drive to, but once he takes the aforementioned train, he still has to switch to an entirely different subway line once he gets into the city to reach his office. So he often has to choose between a car, train, subway commute or a car commute. What do you think wins more often? Yes, you guessed it-- the car.

Transportation is a hard reduction when you live in the suburbs, but there still are things you can do to minimize the damage. And here are some serious actions I do and will continue to take more seriously:

1. If I don't have to go out or drive, I do not go out or drive. There is a lot to do right here in our condo.

2. If I have an errand to run, I try to do it on the way home from work or I do multiple stops at nearby places in one trip.

3. When driving on the highway, I try to stay as close to the speed limit as possible because cars generally achieve best gas efficiency in the 50-65 mile per hour range.

4. We keep our car's tires full. This also helps with gas mileage.

5. If possible, we carpool with family or friends to events or parties.

We also have some goals for the future.

1. When our lease is up, we plan to move to a place with a quicker, closer commute for my husband-- as in, a place where he could walk to a train-- or move to the city where walking and subways abound.

2. If and when we make the move above, we would hope to go back to one car. At this time, having one car would result in utter mayhem, and it would actually make us drive more total miles than we do now.


And that's all I have for now on this topic. I know this post is not very empowering, but it is honest. Hopefully that counts for something.

No Impact Week Day 2: Trash

Once I opened this wrapper, I spent less than ten minutes with it before it was trash.

**If this is the first post you are reading on No Impact Week,
you might want to read this one to orient yourself.**

Day 2 of Sierra Club No Impact Week is all about the trash. Collecting it. Looking through it. Reducing it.

Seriously.

Yesterday we were supposed to keep a trash bag of our waste, and today we were supposed to rummage through it. Well, we did things a little differently. We collected and rummaged today's trash because I knew today would be more trashy. As in, we are better at behaving ourselves when we are not working, and I wanted us to look as guilty as we can be.
So what was in our trash today? Let's have a look.

Here's mine and Gabe's, mine from work, his from my Mom's:

There's other stupid stuff in this photo, but my trash is:
-The napkin: It was someone's birthday at work, and I ate a slice of the apple bread on the napkin (instead of a plastic plate).
-Plastic cup: I forgot my Nalgene bottle so I drank from that cup during my entire shift. I almost never purchase bottled water.)
-Luna bar wrapper: My breakfast.

Gabe's trash was:
-The brown bag (for a slice of toast)
-The apple sauce container: I confess I do have prepackaged organic apple sauce in our fridge for Gabe's lunch on the days I work-- he still gets homemade fruits at lunch & dinner. He had other food that was in reusable containers.
-Disposable Wipes (not pictured) were used while he was at my Mom's.

Here's my husband's, from his work:

My husband works in higher education, and on the first few days of classes, his office provides him lunch-- that's the plastic bottle and sandwich container seen.
You can see a Clif Bar (breakfast) wrapper peeking from behind the plastic container.

And here's our "home" trash:

coffee grinds, pear rind, egg shells, a dried up sliver of cheese

Do we see a theme here, or what? It's almost ALL food packaging!! (Thanks to cloth wipes, cloth diapers, reusable cloth kitchen towels, reusable travel coffee mugs, etc.)
Which maybe is good in the midst of being bad because we can so, so easily reduce this trash output. How?Use only resuable food containers, bringing a reusable napkin with me INSTEAD of using the paper at work, remembering my Nalgene, and my husband bringing his lunch (I have a hard time telling my husband not to eat the free lunch pre-ordered for him; it seems more wasteful not to eat the food and throw it in the trash).

Yes, we have leftover plastic shopping bags in our home collected from the past year. I do not throw them out if we come home with one unless we resuse them. Normally, we have our reusable (and cute) grocery bags with us for food shopping. I need to make an effort to remember them anywhere we shop.

On top of this, we can choose to eat foods with less packaging. Fruits and veggies are obvious choices, but so are foods which come in less. Buying in bulk is always a recommendation because you get more stuff in less packaging. Bulk is hard for smaller families, though, because with less people, there's less consumption and all that.

As for staples which come in packages, such as milk, eggs, berries (they get crushed!), etc., I am going to look into glass bottles, returning the egg container to the farm (we bought our eggs at a local organic farm), and figuring out our own way to get things home.

What was really inspiring about No Impact Man was how very little trash they put out over the course of their No Impact year simply due to composting. If I think about it, if we eliminate our food packaging trash or at least get it down to a minimum, we would primarily have food remnants (rinds, peels, shells), and those are all great in a compost bin. In other words, despite the fact we are in a condo/ unsure of where we could put a compost bin, I am now seriously inspired and investigating the start of our own compost bin.

I also really like the suggestion to keep a special trash bag with you throughout the week (no matter where you go) so that you are truly aware of you trash output. It is amazing how conscious you become of your trash and the packaging on anything once you are really critically looking to reduce your trash. I mean, wow, WHY are things so covered in plastic and cardboard? Really, WHY? I am going to make a true effort to purchase less when it comes to food. What I mean is, I will not only be looking for whole foods, less processed, local, organic, and fair trade. I will also be looking for less stuff on my food. I'll keep you updated.

For the rest of the week, there's no chancing trash.
We HAVE to reduce.

And here's a start:
Rubbermaid containers for bringing lunch,
Using regular old flatware to and from work,
Bringing a napkin wherever we go,
And keeping our beverages in resusable containers only.

No Impact Week Eve

'Twas the night before No Impact Week and all through the house...

I could come up with some little rhyme about it being No Impact Week Eve, but instead, let me just fill you in on what we are about to do.

As I mentioned in this post, August 29, 2010, marks Sierra Club No Impact Week, "a one week carbon cleanse" inspired by Colin Beavan's No Impact Man.

After signing up here (You can still sign up and do this with us!), I was sent a link to the week's Manual, an inspiring directive and resource guide to reducing any family's waste (and that is not just waste in the form of packaging).

The week maps out different topics to examine on each day. Here is the basic outline of what you will be reading over the next seven days on A Mom Writing. The topics and quotes are straight from the No Impact Experiment Manual (They are not my ideas!).

Sunday: CONSUMPTION
"Living a fuller and happier life by buying less stuff."
In other words, we will be examining what our family really needs and where our family gets these items.

Monday: TRASH
"Discover how wasting less improves your life."
We will be getting an eye-opener on our everyday trash heap, and from there, we will take action on limiting our family's consumption on packaging and disposable products.

Tuesday: TRANSPORTATION
"Burn calories, not fossil fuels."
This one I already know will be a challenge-- I'm not sure how we can examine public transportation as a viable option while living in the 'burbs of Philly. Just thinking about Tuesday is making me yearn to move back to NYC.

Wednesday: FOOD
"Healthy eating can also lessen your footprint."
Well, we already have tackled this one in the past, and this week, I have already planned locavore (as in eating local and in season) meals. We've got a lot of room for improvement, though. I can't wait for Wednesday's post.

Thursday: ENERGY
"Replace kilowatts with ingenuity-- explore no-energy alternatives to accomplish your daily tasks."
As a cloth diaper-lovin' Mama, I am scared of Thursday (I mean, really, am I really going to not use the washer for Gabriel's diapers?). I've been inspired by some less frightening ideas, too.

Friday: WATER
"Soak up the personal benefits of using less water."
A precious resource, water is definitely something worth conserving. We already only drink tap water in our home, but I'm looking forward to more drastic improvements.

Saturday: GIVING BACK
"Pay it forward. Feel the benefits of service."
Love the earth? A big step in eco-friendly living is giving this world a hug in many forms, such as volunteering. I'll be looking at some options for our family, and I will list some resources for you to find opportunities, too.


So, there's the Table of Contents to our little week ahead. I haven't heard of any A Mom Writing readers doing this challenge, and if someone is, please speak up! Comment or just tweet me @amomwriting. I'd love to hear what you are doing with your family.

Cheers! Let the week begin . . .

No Impact Week

After watching the film No Impact Man last month, I researched into Colin Beavan and family's one-year experience in drastically lowering their impact on the environment journeying into the "deep green."

No Impact Man has expanded to an 'organization' with a blog titled The No Impact Project, and teaming up with the Sierra Club, it has created an event called No Impact Week. This "one week carbon cleanse" is mapped out for you step-by-step in an online manual complete with other resources and savvy green suggestions.

Our little family is going to do No Impact Week, along with many other people and families who have pledged to do it, starting on August 29th. I'll blog about our whole journey, but what I want to know from you is....

Who wants to do this with us? If enough people want to do this, I'll host a daily blog hop for everyone interested, and maybe we will even have a twitter party at the end of the week. I would love to make a big deal out of this, but I need to know from you all if you want to join with me.

So comment or e-mail me if you want to do this with us, and visit the No Impact Week site to sign up for your manual!