Mindless Consumerism

Well, the day has finally arrived. Blog Action Day!!! And I've remembered. LOL. Okay, it was easy once I'd posted a reminder to myself on my own blog. :-)

I have to admit that I haven’t long been an advocate for environmentalism. Hey, are you impressed with my use of big words there? That's me just trying to distract you from my admission. :-P It’s not that I didn’t really *care* about the environment….. actually maybe it is that I didn’t really *care*. :-(

I like to think that it was more I didn’t really understand the impact my mindless consumerism was having on our environment -rather than I didn't really care. At the end of the day though, the results were the same.

What’s that saying? When you know better, you do better. I hope now that I *know* better, I’m doing better.

Rather than looking at things from a global perspective, I want to blog today about my own journey into understanding more of my impact on the earth. I'm sure someone else can and will cover things from a political and a global perspective.

I think my awareness of our impact on the environment really increased when it started to become *our* problem rather than someone else’s problem. One of the things we really noticed when we moved from the town to the farm was a lack of rubbish collection. Apart from the fact that it would accumulate in my laundry until DH had a chance to remove it (which wasn’t often enough for my liking), it wasn't simply a matter of putting our rubbish out on the kerb and forgetting about it. It remained our problem to deal with from start to finish.

Now I’m the first to admit that back in those days I was a consumer extraordinaire. I wasn’t considerate of the amount of landfill being created. In fact, I LOVED Christmas Day because it meant that all the packaging on the new toys could be removed from my home and annoy me no more. The fact that that packaging had to go *somewhere* didn't even enter my mind.

The biggest impact for me came one day when I went with DH for a drive to our other farm. The farm where he had dug a hole to bury our rubbish. There, staring me in the face was around 12 months of our own rubbish. Believe me, there is NOTHING like coming face to face with your own waste to make you really THINK about the impact you’re making on the earth. One garbage bag doesn't seem like all *that* much but when you add garbage bag upon garbage bag to a pile (or a hole in the ground in our case) plus a few major clean outs - you get quite a LOT of garbage. I began to wonder how long it would take us to run out of room in the scrub.

To multiply that amount of waste by the number of people living in Australia alone was mind boggling. I couldn't even begin to fathom multiplying it by the number of people in the world (not that all cultures are quite as bad as us). Would there be enough acres to house it all? The simple answer is NO. It was at that moment that I realized I couldn’t continue on with my “consumer extraordinaire” lifestyle.

We had a similar experience when it came to water consumption. The farm we are now living on (which isn’t the same one we originally moved to) has no piped water. All of our water has to be caught and stored in rainwater tanks or carted in a truck. When you have a FINITE supply of water it really makes you aware of what you’re using.

The fact of the matter is that we all have a FINITE supply of water. We all have a FINITE amount of land in which to store our waste. But by outsourcing these problems, I wonder if we’ve made them too “out of sight, out of mind” for people. They’re not MY problem – someone else can deal with that.

I wonder if it would make a difference if we were all brought face to face with the effects that our choices make? If it were made *OUR* problem once again (like it would have been in Pioneering days). Do you think maybe we'd all wake up to ourselves and change some of the choices we make? I wonder if it would help us to switch from "mindless consumerism" to "mindful consumerism"?

Well, one thing I do know. I have a long way to go before I can even begin to consider myself “green”. I only hope that as I learn more and know better I can do better.

It's so easy (and I'm as guilty of this as anyone) to stick our heads in the sand and hope the problem will go away. To think that it's too large a problem for "little óle me" to deal with. But just like those small parcels of rubbish can add up to a very LARGE pile of landfill, so can our small babysteps toward "doing better" add up to a big difference when it comes to minimising the damage we're making to our environment.

It's a topic that we could debate for days - the whys, hows and whats. I just want to leave you all with 1 challenge. What tiny baby step are you going to take this week to lessen your impact on the environment? If you have time - put your baby step into my comments section. That way we can all get some "babystep" ideas from one another. :-)

Here's one from me. We had to go to a regional centre for an appointment today and I resisted the urge to "browse" the shops and just stuck to my list. I'm a terrible one for purchasing items that I didn't even know I needed (or wanted) just moments before. And I didn't set 1 foot inside Toyworld even though I know they're having a 25% off sale. Believe me, kids toys are my biggest weakness so that was quite a feat for me! :-)

Electricity Challenge

Inspired yet again by Rhonda Jean I have decided to make my current "cut our spending" challenge the electricity bill. As with most frugality projects, this also has an impact on the environment so there are lots of benefits all round.

In timely fashion, our latest electricity bill arrived in the mail yesterday. As expected, it was quite a large bill. Thankfully, our usage was a little down on what we used last winter. But it was still quite a shocker. The total of the bill was $762.94!!! Our average daily usage was 45.5kWh.

I know.... :-( Thankfully winter is our worst month for electricity usage by FAR! Our usage over the rest of the year hovers closer to the 20kWh per day mark.

Interestingly enough, the topic of electricity bills has come up on a yahoo group I'm on. So there's been lots of talk about electricity usage around the place of late. So yesterday, as part of that discussion, I was contemplating why our winter electricity bill is so high.

We don't have any gas here so ALL of our power usage (other than the solar hot water system which is at it's lowest effectiveness during winter) is electricity.

The tumble dryer is 1 culprit. Once upon a time I would wait for finer days to do my washing. But now that I wash 7+ loads a week, I just don't find that practical. I need to keep up with a load a day or I get overwhelmed. We do have plans for an undercover clothes line but with starting from scratch with our own place, these things all seem to take time (and money) to get established.

By far though, I think our biggest problem is heating. We built our house in such a way that we get a wonderful lot of winter sun through the north windows during the day. Unfortunately with the bedrooms on the south side, we struggle with the temperature in the bedrooms overnight. We don't heat them all the time, only when one of us is sick. We seem to have a tendency toward asthma and croup so whenever someone gets a cold they get a horrible cough during the night and the only thing that helps is warm air. With 2 column oil heaters and a fan heater for heating the bedrooms during this time, I think that's where our biggest usage problem lies. I've seen some bedroom heaters that are very economical that I've been wanting to get for the kids rooms. Looks like I need to bump them up to a higher priority on my "to buy" list (for next winter).

While this all sounds really bad (our electricity usage I mean), we have made HUGE improvements in our electricity usage since we moved house. It used to cost us around $3000 a year in electricity. Around $900 in winter and summer and $600 in the in between seasons. The reasons for it being higher were partly due to paying for many of my FIL's older appliances (he had an outside room at our house for his own use). Installing a solar hot water system and purchasing our own fridge (we had an old one on loan at the other house) have also helped as has going to a single meter. We were paying for multiple meter readings at the other house with a separate meter for farm usage. Here the farm is all on our house meter (but it's actual usage of electricity is fairly minimal).

The first year we were in our own home, our usage dropped by almost half. Since then the bill has been creeping up a little - partly due to increasing electricity prices and partly due to the fact that I just haven't focused on trying to keep it down.

We've made a start with the $$ side of things. DH rang our electricity provider yesterday and asked if we were on the best deal they could give us and they've offered us a 5% discount on all future bills. So that's $$ in our pocket for very minimal effort. :-)

For the purpose of this challenge though, I'm going to focus on kWh's rather than $ as that seems to be the best comparison to be made. Our electricity costs, being rural, are higher per unit than some so the easiest way to compare is to focus on our actual usage in kWh's. It's also a way to measure in between bills as I can read the meter as often as I like. :-)

So, I talked to the kids the other day about doing an electricity challenge and they are all excited about the fact. We've decided that we'll begin next Monday when I've taken a second meter reading and we can use that as a comparison as to whether we're making progress with our efforts. I'm focusing on the environmental benefits rather than the $$ benefits with them. They discuss the environment quite a bit at school so it fits well with what they're learning.

For the past couple of years, we've continued to budget the $3000 that electricity was costing us at our old home and have been using our electricity savings toward paying for our solar hot water system that we installed when we built this house. Now that the costs for that
are covered, DH and I had a conversation the other day about what we might do with our electricity savings. For some time now, I've been interested in installing solar panels for our electricity use. The cost has been somewhat prohibitive for us. So DH suggested that we earmark these savings for saving up for this. I was so excited that he seems to be finally on board with the idea!!! So, that's what we'll be doing. Another "compounding" effect for both our finances and the environment!!! We save money and energy and those savings go toward the possibility of saving more money and energy in the future! :-)

Reduce the Trash and Keep the Cash!

Now there's a line that might sound a little familiar to some of you. That's cos I've pinched it from Cindy (www.cindysporch.net). She sends out some really inspiration emails if you join her email group (it's free). This month she's issued a challenge for us to all take a fresh look at what we're disposing of and see if we can cut down on buying things just to use them once and throw them away.

For some time now I've been trying to cut down on the amount of waste we add to landfill. It's so much more obvious, when you don't have a weekly garbage service, just how quickly garbage accumulates. I have to admit, at times I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle with "stuff" and in particular with how much we throw away but I figure the real loss is only if I stop fighting and trying to improve in this area.

So for June I want to look at our garbage with fresh eyes and make an extra effort to cut back on how much simply goes to landfill. Not spending money unnecessarily is one benefit of not buying too many disposable items. Considering the environmental impact of all our waste (wasted resources as well as our landfill problems) is just as important if not more important than any dollars we save. Isn't it wonderful how many of these things go hand in hand? What's good for us and our pockets is often good for the world we live in as well.

I've recently taken one small step with my deodorant usage. Up until the end of May I've been using a Rexona spray can. I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a crystal stick that I've heard others talk about. It prevents body odour by inhibiting bacteria growth. So far I've found it wonderful. It's possible that come summer I may have to reassess what works and what doesn't as it doesn't stop you perspiring. But I figure even if I only use it for half the year it's got to be better than never at all. There are so many benefits on many levels from this change. For an outlay of $7 I have a product that's expected to last me at least a year. I have cut back on the nasty chemicals I'm placing on my skin (which tend to get absorbed into the body) and there is a LOT less packaging ending up in landfill as a result (1 small plastic container over the course of the year instead of numerous spray cans).

Another small change I made yesterday was to not use fruit and veg bags in the grocery store for things that really didn't need it (like the single large sweet potato I bought and the 2 fresh corn on the cobs). I do actually resuse these bags in my toilet bins but generally we only need 2 a week (1 for each toilet) and most weeks I accumulate more than 2. Just a small habit change really (I tend to reach for a bag out of habit more than anything) and not one that will save me any money. But a small step toward reducing our rubbish all the same.

Throughout the month I'll try and blog more about my progress in this area of "reduce the trash". If you feel like sharing what you're doing in the comments section that would be great - we all love to read new ideas and be inspired by what others are doing!

As a side note - Cindy now has the menu plan form up on her website for the month of June. It's very easy to print off and use if you're interested in menu planning - click on Treasures in the Kitchen and ít'll take you to a page which includes a link to the current month's menu plan. I've just printed off a copy and filled it in with my new pink pen (my DH bought me a set of coloured pens as one of my Mother's Day treats - he knows me well, I'm a big stationery fan. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE having lots of coloured pens to choose from - and they're soooo nice to write with as well).