Posts tagged ‘low impact’
Sustainable Menstrual Pads
I read an article on BlogHer today called iPads and Maxi Pads: Changing Women’s Lives in Uganda. Alison McQuade (the author of the post) uses the hype around the new iPad to draw attention to a more important issue – that Ugandan girls are dropping out of school at puberty because they have no access to sanitary items (pads, panty liners, tampons, menstrual cups etc). It struck a chord with me today particularly because I’ve just been trying out a new cloth pad. I’ve had it for ages but have been so enamoured with my menstrual cup, supplemented with cloth panty liners, that I hadn’t worn it before today – and I just felt like trying it out. The sock monkey called to me.
Arty farty shot of my (then new) sock money pad, from Moon Pads. (The sock monkey part is one of the wings.)
Anyway, I digress.
I’ve heard before that many girls in third-world countries don’t have access to any menstrual items, but I was surprised that the solution suggested in the post was to donate to a non-profit group (the Kasiisi Project) who provide disposable pads to the girls. The other group I know of who used to try to combat the same issue was Goods 4 Girls, who provided cloth menstrual pads to African girls (Crunchy Chicken, who ran the group, has since had to let it go – I’m not sure if anyone else has taken up the mantle). The advantage of cloth pads, of course, is that they can be reused over and over again with just a simple washing between wears. Quite aside from the environmental impact, I envisaged the aftermath of introducing disposable pads as something like a less serious version of the Nestle baby powder tragedy of the 1970s/1980s. What would happen if the Kasiisi Project ran out of funds? The girls would run out of pads and be right back where they started.
However, I did a little more research and while I still think cloth pads are a better option, I like the holistic set-up the Kasiisi Project has set up better than the ‘make a pad and donate it’ style of Goods 4 Girls. (Of course, this likely came about because the Kasiisi Project is a well-established non-profit organisation and Goods 4 Girls was a one woman who took donations – so you know, fair enough, you do what you can.) The Kasiisi Project donates Maka Pads, which are produced in Uganda as part of a cottage industry – often employing the families of the girls who will benefit from them. They are made from locally-sourced papyrus and waste paper, using little electricity in production. They can be worn for 8 to 10 hours, much longer than a regular pad (depending on your flow of course), so you use less of them. They’re cheap (US 0.5 cents per pad) for the city women who buy them, but most of the rural girls access them through donation.
Clearly the people behind this part of the Kasiisi Project have thought beyond the immediate need of the girls who would otherwise miss out on an education – they have also considered how to help the community and the environment. If you’re interested, I found this video much more informative than the websites (unfortunately there is no captioning).
Now, don’t think I’m dissing Goods 4 Girls because I’m not. It was still a worthwhile effort, as is the Kasiisi Project – every little bit helps (in most cases). But you know what would be best of all? A combination of their methods, which would, in my opinion, be the best option. Keep up the local cottage industry, but produce cloth pads, which can be reused for a long time. Of course, that then brings up the question – where does the cloth for the pads come from? Is it possible the Kasiisi Project already considered this and found locally-sourced papyrus and waste paper to be the more sustainable option after all? I guess if you had to ship in the cloth over a long distance, that would be a significant impact in and of itself. Also, has the Kasiisi Project factored in the disposal of the used pads?
I may email them to find out. Will keep you posted!
Compassionate Dairy? Nah.
You all know I’m a vegetarian for environmental reasons, but you’ve probably figured out I’m also all for animal rights and compassion. Just search my blog under the tag ‘veg*nism’. To be fair, I don’t necessarily believe this means having one strict, stringent set of rules that apply universally to all. I’m not that kind of thinker in any arena of my life. For example, I believe you could eat a compassionate diet that included chicken eggs, if the chickens lived as your lovely little pets and the eggs were a by-product. However, I don’t think it’s possible to compassionately eat eggs if they were produced in a battery run.
I’ve been an aspiring vegan for ages – I use soy milk rather than dairy, but haven’t kicked most of the other dairy products yet. In fact, I feel I’ve been slipping. I used to be stringently anti-(dairy)yoghurt and over the last few months it has crept back into my diet after years without it. I can’t even claim that it happened without my knowing it, because I did know it, and I deliberately chose to not think about it. I have real trouble seeing a time for me without dairy cheese and I think I just got to a point where I was like… ‘Why bother? I’m not a real vegan anyway.’ I kinda gave up for a bit.
Well, that’s just slack and not cool and all ‘head in the sand’ style.
I guess the yoghurt thing has been lurking in my mind after all though, because as part of my dreaming on about living on an eco-friendly property with my strawbale house and rescue animals, I started to wonder about keeping a cow or two. I knew there’d be egg-laying chickens (dunno if I’d eat the eggs cos I don’t really like eggs anymore, but regardless), and I started wondering if it would be possible to eat compassionate dairy. Unlike eggs, milk production is stimulated by pregnancy, but I wondered if it would be possible for a cow to have a baby once a year, and to rear it naturally at the same time as me taking just a wee bit of milk for my own devices. I wouldn’t even use it to drink – just for stuff like cheese – so I really would need such a tiny bit. After some research I discovered this was possible, although very few people do it as it’s a bit of a chore to get the milk with a frisky calf around and you end up with less milk.
I started to wonder what would happen to the cows though. I’m not into artificial breeding – all my pets are desexed, there are enough unwanted animals in the world – so it seemed I would be artificially increasing the herd. I mean, the alternative is to kill them off and I wasn’t thinking of doing that. Er, no. Vegetarian herd-culler, I think not. I thought maybe each cow could have just one baby so really all they did was replace themselves, like Zero Population Growth (ZPG), which I’ve talked about before in human terms. I figured male calves would just luck out and get to hang around getting fat and happy, and the females would have one baby each. If a boy calf was born then lucky for his mum, she’d get to have a second one after all.
Then I started to think that I must be a bit naive, and all this seemed like hard work and I knew I was really not grasping all the complexities. Plus the Internet seemed so adamant you should separate the cow and calf ASAP for the calf’s protection (immunity etc). This didn’t seem so natural to me. Then there was the question of whether they could live on grass alone or if they need supplementary food (ultimately – grass is possible, if there is enough of it year round). And how to milk them. Are those milking machines really humane?
So I kept reading.
Then I came across Edgar’s Mission, and a little story by Shirley the calf. Now I think I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and give up milk entirely.
Hansel - one of the newest 'bobby' calves at Edgar's Mission; his life now saved.
Go have a read, and take your tissues. Go have a read of Sadie’s story too, if you are a glutton for punishment.
I know it’s sentimental, and from a human perspective and probably cows don’t think that way really cos they’re cows and don’t have the kind of higher cognitive functions we humans do – but another thing I learned in my research tonight (and on other nights) is that they do have feelings and they do think. Maybe not like us, but they do. Those baby cows miss their mummies and the mummies miss them. Separating them buggers up their health, they don’t socialise quite right, the boys are unceremoniously killed, the girls raised as lactation machines and ultimately, when it comes right down to it, it’s mean!
Rosa - another calf (now a cow) from Edgar's Mission.
So. My plan is to give it all up, one thing at a time down the list below. I know I’ve tried to do this before, ages ago, but I didn’t have a list, and unlike giving up meat and eggs which I wasn’t that big on in the first place, getting past milk and yoghurt were so daunting that I kinda burned out before I got anywhere else. This time, I’ve already started, so it will be easier I hope. There’s a bit of me that wonders ‘why bother, not many other people are doing this, what difference will it make?’, but I’ve unexpectedly read about the story of the old man with the starfish (or little girl, depending on the version) about five times in relation to this very decision tonight, so maybe the compassionate zen God of the universe is trying to tell me something. Besides, that never stopped me making a stand before. Every little bit counts, right?
Most items have replacements, although lots of those things I eat more of now that I will of the replacements, cos I just don’t like the substitutes as much (such as ice-cream – soy icecream just doesn’t really do it for me), or eating that much soy isn’t good for anyone. The first two should be easy as I’ve mostly done them, and the third I just have to remember. Plus, for the fourth, I was eating too much ice-cream so I already gave it up for the month… now I just need to keep going.
- Milk = non-dairy milk (eg: soy, oat, chickpea or almond, as rice milk isn’t good for me and hemp milk is NASTY – sorry hemp-lovers)
- Sour Cream = avocado, guacamole etc
- Yoghurt = non-dairy yoghurt (eg: soy)
- Ice-cream = non-dairy ice-cream (eg: soy, coconut etc, and sorbets like Weis yum yum yum)
- Butter = non-dairy margarine, oil
- Custard = non-dairy custard (eg: homemade soy)
- Cream = some soy substitute for cooking, otherwise probably nothing
- Chocolate = non-dairy chocolate (eg: dark chocolate, soy chocolate etc)
- Cheese = depends on the type of cheese (eg: tofu for paneer, tofutti better than cream cheese for cream cheese, no idea what for haloumi, ricotta or feta, maybe I’ll try some of the Uncheese Cookbook attempts for melty cheese cos I dislike all the commercial fake cheeses).
Cheese is definitely going to be the tough one. Like, real tough. I eat cheese in a lot of meals, and Yankee Elv loves it and probably won’t want to give it up (which is entirely her choice, of course – no pressure!!). All the rest I’ve lived without for certain periods in my life before, but cheese has always been a constant friend. However… I’m thinking of Shirley and Sadie and all the other cows like them. It’s time to bite the bullet and make a real commitment.
Interestingly enough, this hasn’t solved my question about whether it’s possible to consume compassionate dairy. Maybe it will be something I look into again one day. However, maybe when the time comes that it would be feasible for me to do that, I won’t be interested in eating dairy anymore anyway. After all, regardless of compassionate reasons, not consuming dairy is better for the environment and my health too.
Edgar Alan Pig (the first rescue and namesake of Edgar's Mission) with a little lambie friend, enjoying the sunshine together.
Edgar’s Mission is a farm animal sanctuary in Victoria. I wish it was closer so I could go there and have a look myself! Next time I’m in Victoria with access to a car, I’ll be there, for sure. I’m wildly envious of the owner, Pam, and would love to know how she manages to live on, run and fund the place. The idea of doing something similar is not unfamiliar to me – hence the thoughts about my eco-friendly rescue farm that started this whole thing off. I’ve become a Facebook fan. Go check out the Facebook page, and especially the photos in the Around the Farm album; some are just beautiful. The photos in this post are taken from the page.
Unforsaken
Oh wee blog, I have not foresaken thee.
I am just swamped at work (typical) and now feel I have tried everything to get unswamped in my current role. As such, I feel comfortable that I’ve given it my best shot and will feel no regrets to leave. In the past I’ve made efforts to leave in a sort of angry ‘I can’t take this anymore’ kind of way. In contrast, I’m now working with folks to transfer to a different department within the same company. Initially, I think my workload will increase, but ultimately I think it will be better for me, my work-life balance overall, and my career prospects.
Also, I’ve been diagnosed with a reasonably serious illness in my spine. Serious in that it requires a series of day visits to the hospital for treatment (which I’m currently undergoing) and regular MRIs, but not that serious, in that it’s not degenerative or terminal or anything, although it might recur over time. Plus, it’s mild so far, so I’ll be ok… I’m not going to end up paralysed at this point! And hey, I’m re-using my hospital band… it’s loose enough for me to slip off my wrist, so I asked if I could just use the same one over and over and the nurses said I could, since I’m always the same person lol.
By the way, why do hospitals give you nasty sandwiches for lunch? I mentioned I was vego and I got egg and lettuce on white bread… none of which I eat, and all of which were particulary nasty versions of the foods in question. The woman who got them for me though was so proud to offer a meatless meal that I didn’t have the heart to not eat something… so I did some fancy bread slice switching so I didn’t have to eat the egg and then ate most of the disgusting lettuce sandwiches… I kinda hid some under the crusts though. I felt not eating crusts was kinda socially acceptable enough for me to leave them. I never even practiced food hiding as a kid, either… my mum had the eagle eye for food. I got served up peas for breakfast once because I wouldn’t eat them for tea. Mum won the battle but I won the war… she didn’t serve me peas again, but as a compromise, I had to eat lettuce (something green had to be on the plate!). I wonder if the copious amounts of eggs and lettuce I ate as a kid have anything to do with my complete dislike of them now…
Anyway, what with that stuff, Mr Teeny-bop’s birthday (including the last ever sleepover part of DOOM) and starting school, Yankee Elv’s on-going work woes and her own health issues, Loodle the escapee crossing a major road (fortunately in the middle of the night with much less traffic) and organising a bunch of extra stuff at work (such as the local company Clean Up Australia day), it’s been pretty full on.
However, just to show you that I haven’t forgotten you, and I’m still keeping up with all things weird and wonderful and environmental…
Check out these awesomely cool living root bridges! We have trees like this here in Brisbane so bridges like this would definitely be doable.
Root bridges in India
Living Root Bridges can tell you more about why they’re awesome…
Reduce: Green(washed) Bags
You know how everyone raves about green bags? We have a bunch of them at our place, in our efforts to reduce the number of plastic bags we bring home from the grocery shop. You all heard me rattle on about my unwilling connection to plastic bags, and my alternative green bags a while ago.
Well, it turns out green bags aren’t so green after all.
I had a suspicion this was the case. I knew they were made from plastic, but I already owned the green bags and never really bothered to look into it. Bad hippy, I know. Anyway, now I know the deal:
- Green bags are also made of plastic (which comes from oil and biodegrades extremely slowly)
- Green bags are difficult to recycle
- If green bags are recycled, they make nasty thermoplastic elastomer (used in things like snowmobile tracks, shoe soles and catheters)
- Green bags tend to be manufactured overseas and thus plenty of energy is expended getting them to you
- Green bags break too, eventually (trust me on this!) and are difficult to repair
- The piece of black plastic in the bottom of the bag snaps and is generally a pain in the arse (it’s not recyclable either).
Ok, so the last two I added myself, but they are just as valid.
We buy 5kg bags of basmati rice in a cotton bag (sort of like the little one on the right).
Do I think green bags are a better option than regular plastic bags? Sure thing. It’s still better to reuse plastic a bunch of times than go for single use items. However, if we can make the same product out of natural, biodegradable fibre (like our Guard basmati rice bags), isn’t that an even better choice?
Reduce: Summer Fruit Food Miles
It’s summer in Australia and that means it’s hot. I live in Queensland, so that means it’s bloody hot! (Ok, South East Queensland isn’t hot to the rest of the Queenslanders, but it is to a lot of the outside world.) My point is, it’s too hot to stand in the kitchen over a hot stove. Summer in Queensland is typically the season of salads. Among others, there’s pasta salad, Greek salad, potato salad, Ceasar salad, mango and avocado salad and (my favourite) – fruit salad!
Fruit salad is soooooo good on a hot summer day!
I’ve been going to town with the fruit eating lately, and I’m not generally a fruity person (fruit is sticky and I really dislike being sticky). The fruit is so cool and refreshing though, that it’s worth getting a little messy to enjoy it. Plus, then you get to have a cool shower afterwards (or a jump in the pool or ocean) to cool off. Mangoes and melons are my particular favourites, and the best thing about them at this time of year is that they’re all in season (you can check here). This means they’re cheap, but as well as that, buying ‘in season’ fruit means you tend to buy local.
Queensland, in particular, grows a heck of a lot of summerfruit (stone fruit, like peaches, plums, apricots and nectarines), melons (such as watermelon, rockmelon and honeydew), pineapple, bananas, passionfruits, pawpaws (papaya) and mangoes in the summer. Queensland farms also grow less well known fruits in summer, like dragon fruit, lychees and longans (which Yankee Elv likes to eat for breakfast). Basically, pretty much every succulent, juicy fruit you can imagine wanting to eat in summer, we have here in cheap, local abundance. I love it!
Now, when I say local, in some instances I really mean local – mangoes are in season all around me, for instance – the neighbours have a massive tree they’ll never completely harvest because it’s just too tall, so the possums, flying foxes and fruit bats are going to have a feast. It gets me every time I go out on the back verandah. There’s this mango tree up the road that I pass on the way to the bus in the mornings… it is so laden with fruit it’s all I can do not to jump the fence and start in on it. Only the fact that it’s not cool to steal, and that it must be a mid-season variety (the fruit is only just starting to get a pink blush on its very full cheeks) is stopping me! We have pawpaws, bananas and passionfruits in suburban backyards and along fences all over the place. Mmm mmm good!
In other instances, though, Queensland isn’t quite that local. Some people, like Asphyxia from Fixie’s Shelf, live in smaller states (in her case,Victoria), so just consider the whole state local. That won’t work for Queensland though. You’ve got to remember – you could fit the US state of Texas more than five times into Queensland. We have a lot of area (no, not as much as you guys in Western Australia, but let’s not go there). Most folks agree that when it comes to food miles, local equals a 100 mile (roughly 160km) radius from your home. For me, that means I can go as far south as Lismore, almost as far west as Dalby, and my northern boundary is between Gympie and Rainbow Beach. To the east, I have Moreton Bay, including the islands I guess, although they’re not really cultivated. If I ate seafood though, I would be set! You can check your 100 mile local food radius using the Radius Around a Point tool – see Julie’s (from Towards Sustainability) instructions to learn how.
So what does having a huge state mean? It means that getting melons from Yeppoon (which I always considered quite close by) is about twice again as far north as I’m supposed to go, according to my radius. Not so local. That being said, I think it’s better to eat a melon from Yeppoon than a packet of biscuits from the nearby Weston’s factory. I guess for me there’s more to reducing food miles than just how far away the food was grown/produced – it also involves reducing the environmental impact of the food I eat in a more general way. In this example, I think it’s better to avoid the plastic and all of the energy expended on producing the raw ingredients and then on creating the biscuits (including the energy required to run the factory and ship the biscuits), and just eat a damned melon. The melon requires no packaging and much less energy is expended to produce raw food as opposed processed food. In addition, most fruit is shipped around Australia by electric train – a far better method than by truck or air.
Aussies are a bit greedy too, we eat most of our fruit right here in the country. Yum. There’s nothing better than a big platter of stone fruit in the middle of the Christmas table at lunch time. It’s the perfect interlude, between a morning spent stuffing yourself on Christmas treats and an evening cool enough to eat a hot dinner. Plus it’s light enough so you can spend the day in the pool without getting a cramp. Yay for local, seasonal fruit!
Review: Reverse Garbage
Yankee Elv and I went to Reverse Garbage today to kick-start our Christmas shopping. As always, the place inspired me, so I came home and wrote a review.
Reverse Garbage is awesome
Check it (the review) out!
Spotlight: Composting
So it’s taken me a good long while, but I finally have our compost bin up and running! I used this post on You Grow Girl to guide me, but I didn’t add quite as much to the bin as I want to keep using it as I go along, not fill it up right away.
You could buy a special composter, but I decided to use a big, old, concrete laundry tub as my compost bin. It has three sections, so it will be easy to turn the compost from one section to another as required. I put a bit of gutter guard we had lying around over the drain holes to stop them getting clogged.
The compost bin is an old concrete laundry tub.
First I put in a layer of ripped newspaper (darned free papers they keep dropping off in spite of our No Junk Mail sign).
First, a layer of paper...
Then I put in a layer of browns – mostly dead leaves, sticks, dead camelias and crusty old passionfruits and grapefruits that have been rotting on the ground. I can add to this with old pasta, pet hair, paper and other dead bits and pieces from the garden.
Then, a layer of browns...
Next came a layer of greens – weeds, passionfruit leaves and frangipanis. I’ll be adding to this with grass cuttings I don’t use to mulch the garden, tea bags and food scraps.
Next, a layer of greens...
Finally, I wet the compost. It’s supposed to be as wet as a wrung-out sponge, so I think I overdid it a little bit.
Finally I wet the compost!
Luckily the tubs have drain holes from when they acted as sinks, so the compost won’t stay too wet. I added ice-cream containers underneath to catch any drips (with bricks in the containers to weigh them down).
Too much water - luckily there are drainage holes!
Yankee Elv got me a big piece of wood from Reverse Garbage to work as a lid, and I’ve used bricks to weigh it down so no animals get in. I can’t imagine they would anyway – the bin is in the fenced area under the house so nothing bigger than a possum could get in there.
Yankee Elv got me a lid, and we already had the bricks.
Now I can divert the majority of our kitchen rubbish into the compost bin! I’m very pleased about it, especially when you consider articles like this one indicate that people in the US waste 28% of their food (I imagine Australian stats are similar). I hope I don’t waste that much, but whatever I do waste will at least no longer be going to landfill. Have a look at this video if you wanna learn more.
I’ll be using these two posts to guide me on what I can add to the bin:
- Things you can compost that you didn’t think you could, from You Grow Girl
- 163 things you can compost, from PlanTea.
In several months, I should have some compost to put in my garden (or give to Mum as a gift, just in time for mother’s day). Now all I have to do is control myself enough to not go fiddle with it everyday just to see how it’s doing!
Reduce: Laundry
How do you manage your laundry? In our house, I’m the laundry lady. As such, I get to skip out of all kitchen chores, which is super awesome as I hate doing dishes with an absolute passion. In contrast, Yankee Elv hates laundry so it works well for us. Anyway, although it might seem like a routine chore, the way you choose to do your laundry can impact your electricity and water usage.
I have a front loader washing machine. Front loaders are more energy and water efficient than top loaders – top loaders actually use twice as much water. I only ever wash full loads and use cold water (unless I’m washing work clothes which go through on permanent press). This saves water and electricity.
Once I have the clothes washed, I don’t put them in the dryer (in fact, I don’t even own a dryer). I hang them on the line. I know that this isn’t common in the US – in fact, in some places it’s actually illegal to have a clothesline – but here in Australia it’s totally normal to have a clothesline. Every house has one, and I put up ‘under-the-house’ lines within the first two weeks of moving in here.
Under-the-house clothesline
You need to be able to dry your clothes if it’s raining, right?
Another under-the-house clothesline
We have an outside line too.
The outside clothesline
When I lived in the US, we only had a dryer, and the reduction in electricity used here as compared to in Texas was dramatic, and based mostly on not using the dryer. As well as being good for the environment and your electricity bill, it’s also better for your clothes. When Australians hear that lots of Americans don’t have clotheslines, they all look horrified and ask how their clothes don’t get ruined – bras, flimsy shirts, elastic in underpants!? (Once a British colleague asked an American colleague this question and he responded by joking that all their clothes are polyester anyway, so they withstand anything.) Just remember to hang your clothes inside out or the sun will fade them.
I know in some places, line drying isn’t a feasible option in winter (and thus this post isn’t particularly timely for those of you in the northern hemisphere), but keep this in the back of your mind for spring. It’s good for the climate and your bank balance!
Spotlight: Transition Towns
Hands up anyone who’s heard of a transition town. Anyone? No-one? Nah, me either, until the other day when I was freaking out about Peak Oil. I came across thsee articles on Treehugger about transition towns generally and in Australia.
What’s this? I thought. Gotta find out some more about this shiz.
So I did some looking around and here’s what I found.
Transition towns started in the UK (things always start in Europe!). They’re groups of people within specific towns that are focussed on transition to a permaculture-based way of life after peak oil. These folks recognise that with energy descent (the downward slope of the peak oil bell curve) life is going to change, pretty dramatically, for all the reasons I outlined the other day. So instead of freaking out about it, they’re doing something about it, from growing organic food and saving the seeds for the next season to beekeeping to local living to environmentally appropriate water management. The basic tenets are outlined here on the Sunshine Coast Energy Action Centre site. Alternatively, have a look at this flash animation.
Passionfruit vine on the side fence - really local food! (I took this pic in early spring and it's now summer, so this vine is waaay bigger now.)
A big bonus for me is that Queensland, and South East Queensland in particular, are well represented as far as transition towns go. There is a Brisbane hub that I’m definitely looking into further. It doesn’t seem as organised as the Sunshine Coast hub, but it’s clearly more local. I like that while they’re not waiting for the council to drive initiatives, they’re also hoping to eventually work with the council to go even further with the transition.
I’m simultaneously excited and nervous about contacting people in real life. I’ll keep you all updated.
Reuse: Bioregions
Sweden has pioneered these funky areas called bioregions. A bioregion is an area that is set up to be self-sufficient from an energy perspective. For example, you might use waste cooking oil from a Maccas to fuel a car, or excess heat from central heating to provide heat to another business. Biofuels are used (from waste wood). This all started as one man’s vision, and now it’s being implemented across the European union.
I mentioned in an earlier post how Sweden is the only country with a Zero Population Growth (ZPG) that I could see on the Breathing Earth simulator. What with these bioregions, Sweden is also the (western) country that uses the least fossil fuels.
Sweden is the eco-bomb!
Clearly, Sweden is the bomb. If it wasn’t so darned cold then maybe I would go live there. Except I’d have to learn to speak Swedish, which could be a challenge.
Apparently Nordic languages are hard.
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