February already..No!! Is it a joke, yesterday we were getting ready for the holidays, new year, new resolutions..and we're already a month into the new year. Well the good news is that we're getting closer to Spring.
One month has gone by on my One small change and it's now time to update. I once read that you need 27 days to form a habit. Well I had 31 days to get rid of plastic bottles. Our small change for the month of January was to stop using plastic water bottles.
How well did we do? B-
Yes our performance deserves a B-. Because we tried hard and were good about leaving with enough water for everyone. In the store I chose glass bottles over plastic ones even if they were way more expensive.
B- because I bought two bottles of soda. I know!! Soda and in plastic!! I know it's bad for my health and all but I just can't kick the habit. Well we all have our flaws. Otherwise I would be perfect and you would all hate me ;o)
And also because my dear beloved husband is adamant that he needs a Gatorade after soccer practice.
But we'll keep at it and I am sure we'll get there. I got rid of paper towels after all, this should be easier.
Our challenge for this month is to start composting. I've been wanting to do this for a while now. It's just that I could never put together the $200 for one of those fancy compost bins. I thought about worm composting for..a split second but I just couldn't. Too icky, and imagine if my kids discover the worms. Tarek would get a total kick of bringing them indoor. He spent the whole summer putting worms in his bed. "Mama they like clean sheets"..
Well worms were out and so I had to come up with an idea that would not break the bank. I found my answers in this post by Angie @Simple Mom. A regular trash bin and a drill is all I need to start.
Suzy @Hip Mountain Mama has launched a challenge to make one small change a month and blog about it. I read about this challenge a while ago and devised a plan but never got to blog about it. The plan is to make one small environmental change between now and Earth Day and blog about it each month.
I have become interested in environmental issues after becoming a mother. I knew our way of living as a civilization was not sustainable but I was just too busy with the hustle and bustle of grad school, first job, getting married and working to really make any significant change in my life. I was just burying my hand in the sand because I was scared.
My friend Carol was the first one to introduce me to “green movement”. She had suffered a cancer very early on in her life and by researching about her cancer, realized the impact of toxic exposure on our lives and health. I started eating organic, using natural personal care and cleaning products…
But the real wake up call came when we watched Al Gore’s movie and then it clicked. I realized that deep down I used to think that my small changes wouldn’t really make a difference. I was waiting for someone, somewhere to come up with a solution. And I was so wrong about that, the solution was in us. We had to be the agent of change if we want our children to be able to enjoy clean water and nature. Everything we take for granted.
My first urge was to change everything right away. I made a list and an action plan and I got overwhelmed. It was a humongous project and the cost was really big. Nothing we could afford in one time. Plus it was hard to be consistent with so many changes and new ways to doing things.
So over the past 4 years we made small changes one at a time:
Recycled
Turned off the lights when we left a room
Turned the thermostat down
Took my own bags to the store
Installed a low flow shower head
Used freecycle to get rid of things we didn’t need
Bought organic and local foods
Stopped watering the lawn
Clean with natural products
Use natural cleaning products. I tried making my own but Salim hated the smell of vinegar. He complained about living in a pickle jar ;o)
Used rags for cleaning.
Used reusable lunch sacks.
Put a brick in the toilet’s water tank
Unplugged chargers when not in use
Totally switch off electronic devices when not in use
Started using cloth napkins
and the list goes on. Some of the changes were easy to implement and Salim was very helpful with them. Think of it anything technical was easy to change: the flower heads, changing the thermostat, unplugging electronics… Others took a lot of stubbornness on my part to win the argument. The personal care products was my toughest challenge, Salim missed the “good smell”, it took a lot of testing and some very funny moments to finally make the change.
It’s not that Salim didn’t understand the need for change but he was reluctant to change. He didn’t mind it as long as it didn’t mean too much change. Laundry had to still small flowery and his shampoo had to make suds.
I failed at other initiatives like cloth diapering because my husband thought it was just too hard and I was guilty of not really pushing it. And others are still on my list. So I was thrilled when I read Suzy’s post about One Small Change.
We stopped using plastic water bottles a while ago but I was still buying them once in awhile. We were out, my water bottle was empty or I forgot to take one…My small change in January was to stop buying plastic bottles. No more bottled water for us and when it comes to other beverages we decided to choose glass over plastic.
Why? it leaches chemicals, it uses a lot of energy and resources to produce and ship around the world. There are no real supervision of the quality of the bottled water.Most often it is just filtered tap water. So I choose to use a reusable bottle and fill it with my filtered tap. I will not be part of the commercialization of a vital resource.
If you have any doubts, watch the movie Tapped. Here’s the trailer.
Monday is my grocery shopping day . I am not a big fan of going grocery shopping so I try to keep it to a minimum. Supermarket and three kids under five is not really a good mix. So I plan two weeks worth of meals, make a list , make sure nobody is hungry or thirsty and hope nobody has a meltdown until we get out.
Salim often offers to do it for me and I always say yes but never actually ask. I never really knew why until this morning. Food shopping has become a complicated affair, let me explain:
We eat organic, locally produced and seasonal fruits and veggies. Other products should be free of colorants and preservatives. Personal care products need to be paraben free, fragrance free and anything you need to twist your tongue to pronounce free, I try to keep the packaging to a minimum and I have to keep on a budget. Easy...humm...not really.
Produce might seem like an easy task but what if you want to eat organic but it's coming from Chile. Imagine the amount of gas needed to transport the item. I might as well dip it in petroleum and then eat it. So I came up with this rule, I will buy products in this order of preference:
When it comes to beauty products I have a list of products that are safe and I stick with them. I compiled it using the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics database. It might seem like a lot of work until you realize that some companies put lead in your lipstick or mercury in your mascara!
That seemed pretty easy but now there's another component to the equation. Should my money be spent to buy products from companies that have poor workplace policies or environment policies. Now I use Goodguide to help me make those choices.
So much for living a simple life. There has to be something wrong with our civilization if the simplest act of feeding oneself is such a difficult task. I hope you're not making the same face my mother in law made when I explained this.
After a lot of procrastination or maybe I should call it "Time management issues", I finally took steps to start eating local. Reading
It only took me a couple of minutes on google, I searched for a CSA Farm (Community Supported Agriculture) and found a great website: Local Harvest.
From there quick search by zipcode and a little email to Mountain Lake Organics and I'm set to pick up my trial basket on July 3rd. Thank you Marnie for the quick response, can't wait to meet you!!
