This past Saturday we made a German pancake for breakfast, the recipe is on Zannes site, it was a truly wonderful eating experience with homemade whipped cream and all. Try it one morning it doesn’t take that long and is really not terribly labor intensive. It is certainly worth the effort and something everyone can take part in the making of.
Have fun making your food, savor the taste of your food and converse while eating your food.
I listen to KUOW a lot. I like NPR, not all the time but I usually feel that they deliver solid news service. A week, or so ago I heard an article talking about energy efficiency in housing. One part of the panel was acting as a detractor and said that if energy efficiency, in public housing, really made sense then land lords would be all over making their buildings efficient. I wonder how many people really believe that line of horse S$%^. I guess it depends on who is paying the heat bill and how a building is heated. The apartment I live in right now is cold, almost as cold as my farm house in western Mass. (one of the reasons I spent so much time insulating the edition I put on that place), none of the windows are double pane or have storms on them. I have one electric base board in the bedroom and a little in wall forced air electric heater in the living/dining room area. I pay the electric bill. I am sure my landlord couldn’t give two s*&!@#$’s about the heat loss of this building. The building once had radiators, they were probably steam, which is super hot, and was probably created by an oil or coal fired furnace. You can bet that this system was removed at some point in an effort to decrease costs for the landlord. Once again the buck is passed and the waste continues. The tenant isn’t going to do anything because they don’t want to invest in something that won’t give them a return and the landlord is happy to pass on the expense and the cycle never ends.
Lets do something about it. Stand up and organize to force energy efficiency in all buildings.
I started working for GreenPeace this week. That’s right I am one of those people out there asking you to help the environment, or save the trees, whales, polar bears, you know more than likely you have encountered one of us somewhere sometime. I am sure a lot of you avoid us like the plague, even if you are on board with the cause you are on a deadline, or its raining, etc.. If you read my blog and you believe in what GreenPeace is about than stop and talk to one of us, I promise we are not about the hard sell and lets face it who can’t afford a few cents a day to help ensure a watchdog like GreenPeace stays around. We are all about clean air, water, preserving natural spaces and peace. If you really do believe in any or all of these things then don’t avoid the next GreenPeace person you see on the street. Who knows if you are in Seattle it might be me. Check them out.
How many plastic bags have you used this week? How many do you think end up here? If you think because you don’t just let them float around in the street that they won’t end up there, or in this tree, you are wrong. The best way to not let them end up there is to not use them. Buy a reusable bag, make one, find one do whatever you need to to not ever use a plastic bag again. Beyond the waste of it all the amount of energy and resources used to make them is just silly. Come on it isn’t that hard to carry a reusable bag around with you, I keep mine in my right hand coat pocket and many stores will give you a small discount for bringing your own bag.
Little changes can make big differences if large numbers of people participate.
But coffee can be very unsustainable. The way it is grown, harvested, shipped and processed are all topics for later posts. Today I am concerned with the end user. Caffe Ladro is my favorite Seattle coffee place. They show great interest in providing coffee that is is fair trade, shade grown and all those things that any good environmentally conscious consumer wants in their coffee house. As I sat there with Izzy, doing alphabet games I started to count the number of cups and lids that left the cafe. I was as guilty as everyone else, there on our table were two cups, no lids mind you, one for my americano and one for Izzy’s hot chocolate. I carry a thermos to work with me every day and thought to myself how many paper cups have I saved over the past ten years by using my thermos? Of all the people who came in to get a cup of coffee only three, that I saw, had reusable containers. That makes for a lot of coffee cups used and thrown away. I kept thinking this is why some decisions need to made from the top down. If the cups were from a sustainable source like Sustainable Party then it would be less of an issue. Don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that people should not be responsible for their own actions but there are so many things to think about in our lives. If the coffee place we go to thinks about beans and how they are processed I don’t see any problem with them making the decision of what kind of cup we use for us. It just gives we the consumer one more reason to shop there instead of the place that doesn’t think about those things.
Be responsible think about the things you buy and why you buy them.
I believe that part of being sustainable is being aware and responsible of your surroundings. Turning off a light that isn’t being used, not holding the refrigerator door open while you decide what to eat, turning the heat down at night and when you are not in your house, carry your own bag to stores are all simple things you can do to effect your environment. When thinking about how you live you are thinking about the environment right around you. It is very hard to think about environmental issues on a global scale but it is easy to do when thinking just about your own space. I believe that thinking globally is important but sometimes you have to be more topical to think on a large scale.
Last weekend Zanne, Izzy and I went out for our Sunday breakfast at our favorite breakfast place. It was cold this past Sunday, really cold by Seattle standards in the twenties. The wait staff tried very hard to get people to use a door not right by where all the patrons were sitting. They put signs up on the door large with many colors. It didn’t work, people would look right at the signs and just walk right though the door. I was flabbergasted at the apparent lack of awareness or maybe apathy that these people showed. The wait staff placed some chairs in front of the door and people would take the time to move the chairs hence holding the door open longer, the last resort was to lock the door. It is unfortunate that things had to come to that. People never cease to amaze me with how stupid and complacent they are.
Change the world. Disrupt the apathy.
Plug in America covers all things about plug in vehicles. Plug ins are cars that are available now for us to buy that can make substantial differences in carbon emissions. Yes I know when you plug in you are still using dirty energy because the electricity is probably made with coal but the end result is far less emissions and less cost for you: Plug in America has all the numbers. Buying a plug in also sends a message that you are concerned with emissions when gas prices are low. I keep hearing this argument that consumers wont want to buy hybrids or other more sustainable vehicles if the price of gas is low. What are you all crazy. If gas is 1.25 a gallon and you own a car that gets 60 MPG that means you can go 600 for about 13 dollars compare that with your Hummer or Escalade getting around 8-10 MPG wait it is going to cost you 75 dollars to go the same distance. Save the money pay off your credit cards.
Don’t let apathy run your life. Think about the decisions you make.
That is a great question and it is one which can be easily answered on a basic level and more complexly answered when it comes to how it must come to function in our global community. Simply put being sustainable is making the world around you able to continue to be the way it is as you pass through it. We should want to leave as small an impact on the place we are as we can. To do this many things must be taken into account. Simple things like recycling, reusing, using things fully and making our living spaces efficient can make a great impact but a grand scale must be created if we are reverse the effects that have reared their heads. One simple way to become more in sustainable in your day to day life is to only buy what you can afford. Over consumption has led, in great portion, to our current environmental and financial disasters. It will take time but if we all learn to live a little more simply the system will evolve and constant growth will not be necessary to maintain it. And lets face it the credit card companies are doing nothing to make the current situation any easier. As money gets tighter for everyone they are raising peoples interest rates and making it harder for people to pay off their debts. There is nothing sustainable about credit in this fashion lets all come together and force them to act responsibly.
Cut up your cards. Pay with cash.
That is what we called it when everyone would get together on a Friday at a local restaurant and order lunch. I always brought my lunch to work when we lived in western Mass. I did this for a lot of reasons. The primary one was to save money and time. When I lived in western Mass and was doing construction we were a one income family so the idea of eating out for lunch everyday just seemed silly. I was more interested in spending that money in more productive ways and wanted to go to Sunday breakfast as a family. This was also a time issue for me. If I brought my lunch I didn’t have to drive anywhere which meant less time wasted and more time getting paid.
After a while it began to become more about sustainability for me. My lunch was always packed in reusable containers and my Happy-Sack was always in there. The themos was always full and I tried my best to produce as little waste as possible with regards to my lunch. Try it. Making your own lunch can save you a lot of cash through the week and produce a hell of a lot less waste.
As we glide our way through life we should really begin to do more than just stop to smell the roses. We should start to shake people out of their apathy. The world of convenience has led to a world buried in trash and one in which people are content with mediocrity. Rise up out of that hole and find a better place. One in which you chose the scary path don’t let the fear mongering of the past eight years destroy your ability to be creative with your lifestyle. We all need to find ways to challenge ourselves to make a better world for ourselves and those who come after us. The generation before me has fed the convenience monster to the bursting point and it has done so. Their mess will be hard to clean up but if we bind together we can make it happen.
Apathy can hinder this. When you see it call it out. Make yourself heard. Don’t be afraid anymore.
