Posts tagged ‘Reduce’
Reduce: Factory Farmed Eggs
Treehugger included an article on urban chickens the other day. Check out these photos – they look so cute!
Chicken friends! (Photo by Todd Parsons on Good.Is)
Although I don’t eat eggs myself, Mr Teeny-bop does, and I would love to be able to get his eggs from chickens I know are free range. I buy the free range eggs in the supermarket, but you know that free range doesn’t always mean the kind of free range you think of when you imagine the chickens. Sometimes it just means they have a tiny hole in the barn they can go out of if they want to get outside – tough to do when there are hundreds of chickens in the barn. I was telling Yankee Elv last night when we were grocery shopping that you can’t fall for those ‘cage free’ eggs – unless they’re labelled free range, the chickens don’t even legally need to have access to the outside world. ‘Cage free’ just means they’re not in cages. They can still be crowded into a tiny space.
I know a lot of people say eggs aren’t vegan, and technically they’re not (that being said, technically I’m not vegan). I personally believe that eggs from pet backyard chickens are ok to eat even on a vegan diet though. I just don’t like the taste. Another bonus – the chickens can eat food scraps. This is especially good if your compost bin or worm farm tends to get a little full…
Lots of people have chickens in their backyard. The people next door used to, and the people over the back still do (I hear them clucking all the time.) Sometimes they break out and come into our courtyard, but I don’t mind. The birds are too big for the cats to want to chase them and Loodle doesn’t even notice them. In Brisbane, it’s ok to have chickens in urban areas, but you have to have a yard of a certain size to own a rooster. It’s to do with reducing the noise from them crowing.
Very occasionally I’ll get eggs from my co-worker (she has chooks), but it’s a pain in the neck to arrange and she travels a long way into work everyday, sometimes by train. It’s not the most convenient thing to have to transport eggs like that too often. I don’t know the over-the-back neighbours so we can’t share in their bounty. I wonder if there is some kind of egg-share thing going on in Brisbane. It would be cool if so, people could sign up and give away (or sell) any eggs their backyard chickens produce, after they’ve taken the ones they need.
I wish I could have chickens, but in a rental house, it’s just not possible. One day, I will.
Reduce: Paper
I hate paper.
Ok, I don’t really. Actually, sometimes I love paper – like when I want to read a book (that I already own or have borrowed from the library – I try to avoid buying new ones). But I do like to avoid using paper unless I really have to. I’m especially conscious of it when I’m at work – reading on-screen and using notepads made from old company letterhead.
This article outlines some tips you can follow to help you reduce your reliance on paper. I don’t think digitising your existing paper is necessary for any reason other than personal preference though – you already have the paper anyway.
The other thing I would suggest is to consider other sources of paper that you can also reduce:
- Paper cups and other disposable ‘crockery’
- Tissues and toilet paper
- Paper towels
- Paper and cardboard food packaging (buy in bulk to reduce the amount of packaging).
Of course, that’s just reducing. There’s an awful lot of reusing and recycling that could occur – but reducing should come first.
Reduce: Cotton Tips
What can I do to reduce the number of cotton tips (q-tips) we go through? Although the ends are made of cotton (biodegradable), the stems are plastic, I think, so you couldn’t compost them.
I used to at least buy them in cardboard boxes, but these days I can only find them in plastic containers… and I don’t think it’s the right kind of plastic to recycle either. I tried keeping the containers to reuse, but I just don’t really have anything to use them for. Maybe I’ll try Freecycling them.
These are the cotton tips I bought most recently from Coles.
I can’t think of a replacement for the thing we use them for the most – nothing else cleans your ears quite the right way! Even Yankee Elv, who has the cleanest ears ever, uses them to itch the ear her hearing aid goes in.
Ideas? Anyone? Beuller?
EDIT: Jun, aka Beuller, commented below that in Asia people use reusable metal ‘ear diggers‘ (nice name) to clean their ears. Thanks Jun!
Reduce: Reliance on Transport
Lately I’ve been making a point of leaving work by about 5pm (sound normal? not for me) so that I can walk from work to the city (Brisbane CBD), where I catch another bus home. I really like it!
Normally I have been catching a bus, or occasionally taking the train, into the city. Since they’ve closed down my original bus stop due to road work though, I’ve been increasingly irritated by the need to schlep ages down the street in the wrong direction just to get to the bus. The only thing that made it worthwhile was that at the time I normally leave, it’s too dark for me to feel comfortable walking, and the traffic has thinned out enough that it’s much quicker. Last week though, I had an early mark and the traffic was so bad and it was still light, so I thought – hey, you haven’t walked into the city for ages, why not do it?’ So I did.
It was really pleasant; a nice time for me to stop multi-tasking and just think. It’s good exercise, and I liked watching the sun set over the river. So this week I’ve walked every day except today. I like it much better than my frenzied morning dash to the bus, I don’t hurry, it’s just nice and relaxed (although I do walk fast, I can’t help it). I like that the footpaths are typically quite wide and not crowded where I’m walking, so I don’t get pedestrian rage (kinda like road rage for walkers). I like that even just in the week I’ve been walking, I’ve started noticing the sun is setting slightly later as time goes by – the season is turning back to spring… eventually.
I’m very much enjoying trying different routes and discovering little quirks about this awesome place I’ve lived in for ten years. I love that this city never runs out of new things to see and explore. Yesterday when I was walking, I was looking at all the viewing nooks as I crossed the William Jolly bridge (another new route). I was also noting all the different kinds of manholes (yeah, weird, but I’ve been editing some work on manholes lately and it was actually kind of interesting to see what I’ve been reading about).
The William Jolly, or Grey St, Bridge. (Yoinked from stephenk1977's flickr photostream, full credit to him).
I like that it’s one less fuel-driven trip I’m taking. Even though it’s public transport, which I totally support, even reducing my use of that (and subsequently increasing my use of footpaths) is a good thing, I think. Tomorrow I’m going to try going along the boardwalk past North Quay.
Today I had to work late and I found myself ticked off that I didn’t get my daily walk. Looking out the window into the growing dark and seeing the silhouettes of trees, and then having to turn back to my laptop, was fairly frustrating.
I think I’ll keep it up.
Note:
Access stephenk1977′s flickr photostream here.
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