I am sympathetic to environmentalists, in my own Catholic, leaning toward free market kind of way! I like Roger Scruton and Front Porch Republic and Crunchy Cons, etc. I believe in conservation. I am a fan of the Catholic Environmental site, St. Kateri Conservation Center. I think clean water is a really important thing. However, I am pretty much a hypocrite about it all. I drive all over kingdom come practically every day, polluting the atmosphere. I am wasteful and I am sure I leave a huge carbon footprint. I am a first world, spoiled, one percenter for sure. I want to mend my ways, but I am terrible at forming good habits. I was doing well, at least remembering to bring my bags to the grocery store, until I stopped remembering to do so, probably a few months ago. How did I fall out of that habit, I wonder? I was being so good for a while there. Anyway, for days now I've been thinking about my New Year's resolutions, mostly spurred by the idea that my two youngest are already talking about how they want to go vegan for Lent. I guess the season of Advent reminded them of Lent and Sean's 1 year anniversary of becoming a vegetarian is coming up soon (his 18th birthday is 12/22 and on his 17th, he officially gave up meat.) I honestly don't think vegan diets are healthy. I think you need some animal protein and fat in your diet, at least once in a while. I think vegans eat a lot of weird food that is highly processed and also I think they tend to eat lots of sugar which I think is worse for you than animal products. And I think we were made to eat meat. I agree that we probably eat way too much and that we should be better about how we treat animals, but I still think occasional, humanely raised animal products is better than veganism. The weird thing about my kids though, is that the vegan thing is I am pretty sure, just to be cool. I don't see them actively wanting to fight for animal rights or caring about the environment. I wish I did see that, even if maybe I wouldn't quite agree, at least it would be wanting to be vegan for a better reason than just, let's be cool and be vegan.
Anyway, that aside, here are my ideas about improving our habits in terms of the environment:
Goals:
To reduce trash
1) First of all, I need to call the recycling people because our one little bin doesn't begin to hold enough of the recycling we are trying to do. So we just need a bigger container for it all, or more than one. The paper bags I put out there get blown over and are subject to messy investigations by wild animals.
2) Be more conscientious about buying things with less packaging. I need to get the whole family on board with this.
3) Cook more at home - I really need to plan better. We produce so much trash via take out and buying pre-made stuff at the store.
4) reuse stuff more - like aluminum foil. I can't think of other stuff right now, but I know I throw things out that I could reuse.
5) Get things like this: http://mightynest.com/shop/kitchen/food-storage/bees-wrap-set-of-3
6) Conscientiously avoid plastic as much as possible. I am convinced that plastic is really the environmental problem of our time. Not only is it made from fossil fuels, it is garbage we must recycle (but don't efficiently) because it does not biodegrade, plus it is dangerous to animals and changes our hormones because it contains phytoestrogens. I personally think we need legislation to restrict plastic use. It is great for medical purposes and for shipping food long distances, but we don't need it in many other places. Except legos. We do need legos.
7) The one thing I am happy about is our composting service. Thank you to a certain friend who told me about it! I really appreciate it.
8) Use cloth more than paper. I am addicted to paper towels. I should get cloth napkins now that I don't have lots of littles. And I could really reduce my paper towel consumption if I had a better system with dish towels.
To eat local food more:
1) I do love shopping at our local CSA which I can walk to. I need to be better at incorporating that food into our meals before it rots! I waste too much food this way. I've just got to get better at meal planning and cooking at home. I am lazy and in very bad habits.
2) I love shopping at another place too, a store in town that only sources food from local places. I've been buying my meat there, and some other stuff too. The beef is raised by the husband of our parish's children's choir director. I mean she was the director for many, many years but I think she stopped when they moved out into the country to start the farm apparently her husband had always dreamed of owning. What I should do is combine going to this store with also shopping at regular store to buy stuff you just have to get there (like pet food, etc).
3) I would like to preserve seasonal food to eat out of season instead of relying on stuff shipped in from other countries. However, this is a very intimidating thing for me, which will take baby steps for me to ever get to. Instead I'll probably buy preserved foods from local businesses for the most part.
To reduce electricity usage:
1) We are so careless with leaving lights on, not unplugging things that ought to be unplugged, turning up the heat too high, etc. etc.
Bigger things:
1) Try to have one day a week where I don't drive anywhere. Right now this seems impossible because my main role in life is to drive S, B and V (with D) to all their stuff. But I could try to arrange things so that at least one day a week, I don't drive or only go out once for a short trip or something.
2) Get solar panels on roof. I tried to look into this before but never got very far. We really could reduce reliance on the grid using these. I notice the Montessori school up the street has solar panels as do the some of the houses in the groovy eco-village type development nearby. There must be a way to do this. I think this should be our next major house project.
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