Responsibility - rant part deux

Someone mentioned the things that they are personally taking responsibility for, to lessen their footprint on the planet.

I have mentioned here and elsewhere some of the things I have done over the years that are within my ability to control in terms of lessening my footprint.

Beginning with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, I became aware of the damage humans were doing with chemicals.  In 1969 I left Canada for Sweden aboard a freighter as a passenger.  As we sailed down the St. Lawrence River, I noticed the suds that news programs had been warning us about - all the phosphates that were being sent down our waterways from detergents.  I vowed to find phosphate free detergents when I got home. 

As a first time home owner I planted a vegetable garden - because that was what my parents had done, and so I did the same.  For the five years we lived in our first (mortgaged) house I grew the standard assortment of veggies - lettuce, carrots, peas, beets, radishes.  My little garden plot wasn't very big and I had to fence it off to keep our dog from 'helping' by digging things up.  Unfortunately when we moved to our current house, the soil was poor and since I was busy with Life Happening (the move, the death of my father, beginning the weaving program at the college) I didn't have the time or energy to try and improve the soil to the point where a garden would grow. 

A hardware company offered a 'digester' to deal with household compostible waste and I bought one.  As I diverted vegetable waste from the garbage to the digester, our garbage output reduced considerably.  And the end result was waste that could actually go into the soil to improve it.  A few years later the municipality offered large compost bins for free and I made the ultimate sacrifice and got up early enough that I could snag one.  We have used it ever since and Doug routinely takes the compost from the bin to use in the yard.

A local initiative was begun where people could bring their newspaper and other recyclable papers which would then be shipped to a recycling depot and we began saving all the newspapers and such.  Again our garbage at the curb reduced.  Significantly.  The initiative grew and recycling containers began to spring up at various locations and tins, glass, cardboard and paper could be dropped off.  Again our garbage reduced.

The original group called R.E.A.P.S. then pressured for plastic recycling.  In BC we have had glass drink containers (at first) with deposits that would be paid back when returned to the depot, and the group pressured for plastic drink bottles to also have deposits.   Eventually most drink containers had deposits added and people could return those to depots to get their deposit money back.

A couple of years ago, the BC provincial government instituted province wide recycling programs.  The bad news is that a lot of the stuff that we carefully sort and put into the blue boxes still winds up in landfills, but I continue to sort the things out in hopes that if enough of us do it, some business in the province will actually begin to recycle the plastic.

We have dedicated the space beneath the counter for the blue boxes and the small garbage bin for things that cannot be recycled. 

The end result of all of this is that we wind up putting the garbage bin to the curb every second week and it might have one small bag of garbage in it.  The recycle gets put to the curb every second week, and since our local newspaper stopped production of a daily paper, our paper recycle might go out once a month.

There are areas in my life where I could do better.  Over the years I have been guilty of travelling - a lot - by air.  With no longer teaching for guilds, my air travel will drop about 90%.  Quite possibly more.  I drive a minivan because we did shows and it was the most economical way to get us and the booth stuff to where we needed to go.  I also drive to Olds, partly because flying from here to Olds is difficult, partly because I can bring a van load of things to enhance the class.  If I'm teaching a class elsewhere, I try to just bring one checked bag on the flight, mailing the rest of the things ahead of time.

We have replaced most of our lights with LED bulbs instead of incandescent.  We recently upgraded our house with extra insulation, and bought a more fuel efficient furnace a number of years ago when our old furnace was threatening to quit.

Our vehicles are as fuel efficient as we can afford, and I have been seriously looking at a hybrid once I'm no longer teaching and need to drag teaching materials around.  OTOH, there are now quite a few options and it might be possible to downsize to a large sedan and still fit most of my teaching stuff into a car instead of a minivan.

I try to buy 100% cotton clothing, but that's difficult, especially outerwear.  So I have some jackets made from polyester, but they don't get replaced every year but get worn 'out' - usually around 8 years or longer.  I have some wool coats as well, and those last at least 10 years.

We don't eat 'fancy' foods although we do enjoy out-of-season fruit during the winter.  We don't have kids so we never had to worry about things like Christmas (over) giving and I gave up decorating for holidays a long time ago.  At first I was simply too exhausted to do it, then I just didn't care anymore.

I do still use plastic bags - because I have them.  They were purchased in bulk for customers to carry away their purchases at the craft fairs.  They exist.  I will use them, but not replace them.

I buy in bulk where possible, but our food needs are modest and bulk isn't always economical, when you wind up throwing excess away.

In terms of my weaving practice, I decided many years ago to not weave with synthetic yarns.  All the yarns I use will degrade back into the earth.  I have a lot of rayon in my stash, but since finding out how damaging the production of rayon is to the planet and the human beings who work in the factories, I don't want to use it any more.  Since it exists and I have it in my stash, I will weave it up but not replace it.

(Yes, rayon is 'natural' in terms of it's chemical make up - it's cellulose.  It may be man made, but it is not a petroleum product.)

None of what I do is particularly large or important.  But all of it is within my control.  When the natural gas pipeline blew up about 28 km (as the crow files) from my house, we had no natural gas for some weeks, just as winter was settling in.  We then were on reduced rations for some months afterwards.  We kept the thermostat at 66 F (our thermostat is pre-metric) and used a couple of space heaters to keep the house livable.

A friend asked me why I bothered because no one else would be doing it.  I told her I couldn't control what anyone else did, but I could do the right thing myself.  By reducing my needs, there would be natural gas for others down pipeline.  (The pipeline services people for hundreds of miles south of us.)

So no, I cannot, all by myself fix what is wrong with our planet.  We have ignored climate change to the point where we are in serious trouble and too many people continue to ignore it.  Corporations continue to do business as usual when they could look to ways to reduce their energy needs, or join the movement to reuse, recycle, or just use less.  Instead of constantly lining the pockets of shareholders, shareholders could redefine when enough is enough.  When you are a billionaire, unable to spend a tiny percentage of your wealth in your lifetime, perhaps you have too much?  At the very least wages could be raised so that those people at the bottom could have at the very least a living wage instead being homeless.  I try very hard to not purchase from companies I know have bad track records in terms of not paying their employees a reasonable wage.

I have been privileged to live in Canada where I have benefited from universal health care.  Times have been tough, but we have managed to make it to this point in our lives.  The very least I can do is pay attention to what I can do to make my footsteps on this planet as light as I can.