Another Sustainability Bit

Not for everyone, if you work night shift for instance, but... getting up early and going to bed early is an easy way to use less energy. The more daylight you use, the less electric lighting you need. I can't say I excel at this one, but I think it's time to work harder on that one. Most days I get up by 6:30 a.m. at the latest, because of needing to download software updates before 7:00 a.m. (end of unlimited download time), but really I should be getting up around 5-5:30 a.m. to maximize use of daylight hours. Even in the winter I wouldn't need much light first thing, because I know where most everything is anyway.

Another savings of energy is to plan out the day's activities appropriately. Things that require you to be moving between several rooms (like cleaning, for instance) should be done during daylight hours. Plan projects for the evening such that all the items you need for it are already together in one place, so you can minimize turning lights on and off. We've partly gotten away from that here, and need to get back to it more thoroughly. I think kung fu has contributed to that, because we get home late and scatter to do various things for a bit before settling in. One thing that would probably help is if I remembered to feed Peredur a little earlier than usual -- before we leave for class.

Speaking of planning the day, I think tomatoes are in my future, later this morning :D

Sustainability - Clothing

When it comes to clothing, what is sustainability? Take socks for instance -- is it the socks you mend so they last a little longer? The ones that cost a little more but are made of more durable materials? The ones made of natural materials? The ones you knit yourself? The mismatched pairs of single socks (hey, at least they're the same style!) ? I haven't knitted my own socks yet, but have all the rest in the current inventory, so I guess I think the answer is "All of the Above". I almost always hang dry them too, so they last longer.

Other clothing's been a little tougher... I started to make some of my clothes a couple years ago and then stopped for various reasons. One is that I've been losing weight and a lot of the stuff I'd like to make is at least partially fitted. But happily I haven't had to buy a lot of clothing in the meantime. Partly I make do with looser fitting clothing, and recently I've been able to fit into a few pieces of older clothing that I'd held onto, but I've also gotten clothes from other people. That last bit's been a little funny this summer, as I've changed a bit more quickly in the past couple of months, so pants have been good for shorter periods of time. Glad I didn't have to buy them new! Suspenders helped the pants to work for me a little longer too :D

Most recently has been a bag of clothes from friend Barbara G in Spfld. She got a bunch from her relatives and picked out sizes she thought were worth my trying. Got 4 pairs of pants for now, although I suspect two pair will be out the door in another few months, and on to the next owner. When I return the rest of the bag to her a couple weekends from now it will include a pair of pants I wore in July, and maybe some other clothing as well.

Our town held a clothing swap in June. We couldn't go because it was the same day as Sommer Draw, but I think it's really cool that people got together to do this. Everything had to be clean and in good repair, and I expect the clothing ran the full gamut of casual to business to "Sunday best". Any leftover clothing went to Goodwill, Salvation Army or similar nonprofit. One lady I talked to beforehand was thrilled to be able to clean out her closet and planned on not bringing anything back -- her gift to herself was more space :D

I'm going to try to start sewing again soon though, at least for Fitzw -- he's a bit more stable size-wise, lol

Energy Use

The Archdruid Report has started in a new direction in the past month, towards practical approaches to living a lower energy use life. Part of that approach is learning about how energy, matter, etc. really works in the world. It's useful to understand how nature does things, as the natural world has worked most of the bugs out of the system over many centuries, so if we observe it and learn from it, we have a better chance of lowering our energy needs by mimicking Nature.

For instance, energy use produces waste heat, which sometimes can be captured and used before it fully dissipates. Some buildings are designed to do this (usually in manufacturing or power, but not only them). A simple method Fitzw and I've talked about for the home, if you have a clothes dryer, is to run the exhaust duct over and down into and through a container of water and then back up again. The water acts as a lint trap and the room receives the exhaust as clean warm air -- useful in winter. Not sure how useful that is for us at this point, as I don't use the as often as some folks, but it's a good thought and would definitely work for some folks.

At our old house the water from the washing machine dumped into a sink next to it. I would catch a few buckets of rinse water (2nd rinse is best), and then dump that water back into the _next_ load of laundry. Saved water, electricity, and fill-time, so a winner all-around.

One of the reasons I'm such a strong proponent of insulating (homes and ourselves inside our homes) is that the investment of energy and materials into insulating cuts down on constant energy usage. Do the job right and you won't be using as much energy on a daily basis for _decades_.

Reduce, re-use, recycle, in that order.

Best way to save resources is don't use them. Think about purchases you make. Do you need it? What about the packaging? What happens to that plastic bottle? When you recycle it, is the recycling plant nearby? Do they ship it to China? Does it actually get recycled at all or does it end up in ocean with all the other plastic crap, entrapping animals or getting slowly broken down and eaten -- to perhaps eventually end up back on your dinner plate. And fish get used not just directly as food but also as nutritional supplements for growing fruits and veggies, too.

Second is re-use, and that's a great way to save energy and resources. We make too much stuff, and a lot of it wasn't worth the materials and energy used to make it. Friends, family, swaps, freecycle, Craigslist, tag sales, Salvation Army, Savers, etc. -- lots of choices out there. There are even clothing stores that specialize in good used office clothing and the more upscale goods. If you're handy with a needle, sometimes you can even re-tailor things from these places to be more suited to you. I've gotten silk blouses from a few dollars each from Savers in the past, so you never know what's out there.

And third, recycle -- and that isn't just paper, metal, and plastic anymore. But again, see my comments above, questioning where your recycling goes -- with the economy down, the need for paper for packaging/shipping boxes goes down, and literally tons of paper is sitting in dry dock, waiting for a company to buy them. Fitzw has figured out a barrel for us to use this year, to start making paper bricks. Even with reducing junk mail, we still end up with quite a bit of paper, so it's time to look at using the paper as a heat source. Recycling is also things like composting food scraps, or using them to feed appropriate animals, or repurposing things.

I might actually get that punching/kickbag made this year.... stuffed with old worn out clothing. And maybe if the stuffing needs changing down the line, the cotton and linen bits could be used to make paper by then ;)

But there must be other ways to re-use energy as it works its way from the sun down to background heat. Each part of our lives needs to be looked at, and thought given to what can be done to improve. We'll never be as good at it as Mother Nature, but it's certainly worth a try.

Water and Energy Use

I was thinking about this because of going to the hot tubs, wondering whether hot tubs or taking ibuprofen/anti-inflammatories used more water and other resources.

We go to a commercial facility, East Heaven, rather than having one of our own. So, there's the gas to get there, plus whatever energy is used to heat, move, and clean the water. When possible, we combine a trip there with other activities, which helps some. And East Heaven is able to clean and re-use a lot of the water, probably better than I can do it at home, although I haven't run numbers on that. Also, they use bromide salts, which aren't as nasty as chlorine.

Oh, and East Heaven's been in business since 1981 -- those are some venerable hot tubs :D They're well maintained, so I expect they'll be around for a good while yet.

I tried looking up how much water it takes to make pills (on average) -- it would be used for harvesting, manufacture, and processing of the ingredients, manufacturing the pills themselves, as well as for making the packaging (usually plastic) in which the pills come. Unfortunately I had no luck in this, as I kept coming up against "water pills" :P

Also, there is the fuel used to grow, harvest, manufacture, process, package, and transport the pills.

Then there is the possible long-term affects of the pills. One of the reasons I finally stopped taking anti-inflammatories this summer (only one aspirin since June 27), is that one of the possible side effects for Alleve was more sensitivity to bruising, and I was definitely bruising worse on self-defense nights than everyone else. I still bruise now, but not as badly. Diet change, stretching, some massages from Fitzw, hot showers and a few hot tub visits have kept things manageable.

And of course there are plenty of other possible side effects, which could lead to needing other medications... and then there's the effect on the environment, when those medications get into the rest of the ecosystem. Because people don't use all of the medication, even of the pills we take, nevermind ones that get flushed down toilets or thrown in the trash. Sewage treatment plants aren't really designed to deal with this stuff either, and so you see the reports of how much of various drugs are in the water, mutating plant and animal life, etc. That would, naturally, apply to people too, as we're part of the ecosystem.

I can't get away from all modern medications (or not yet anyway), but where I can, it's worth a try to do it, I think. And I think that the hot tub's water and energy use compares pretty favorably, even though I haven't done a scientific comparison of the numbers.