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Good Eats

Lousy Smarch weather.

But it's April now, officially spring, and time for my last small change. Last month's change was "go to bed early", which I did. Sort of. When baby wasn't up late for whatever nefarious reasons that babies stay up late, or if I wasn't kept up with a buzzing brain (more on that later). The main idea was to keep the computer off more often than not, and I did my part there. Lots of non-computer work was done, the lights were kept to a minimum. Success.

April's change was difficult to decide on because I struggle with the context, but I've recently come to a kind of detente with the issue. As of this Thursday the farmer's market is open again for the season, so we will: eat local. Not "eat local" entirely, which is I suppose an admirable goal, but eat local produce daily, as much as possible, plan our meals to be more in tune with the growing season and do some preserving. I haven't been buying out of season fruit for a while, but we also haven't been really good about hitting the market on weekends. Now it's time to make that happen.

I still have a lot of questions about the whole locavore thing, which I feel aren't sufficiently answered by what I've read. To take one example: whether or not to eat meat. I have a friend whose One Small Change this month is to reduce meat consumption to be more environmentally responsible and humane, and I have a friend who has abandoned veganism because she feels that eating locally-raised pastured animals instead of an all-plant diet is more environmentally responsible and healthy. There's a whole movement right now to promote the consumption of saturated animal fats, and then there is a bunch of research that suggests not only that the exact opposite is healthier, but that eating meat totally eclipses the benefits of eating local. There is just a lot of conflicting information out there. While a lot of these questions can (and should) be hashed out using actual, high-quality data, I think Michal Pollan is probably right about his Food Rules: eat real food, try to keep it in season, avoid sugar and eating too much. I'd add: if you feel comfortable eating animals, eat less of them, and only the ones who weren't treated like objects. If you don't want to eat animals, there is nowhere near sufficient research to suggest that there is a health problem with that. You can rock a local diet and still be vegan or vegetarian or pescatarian or whatever, and decades of research has your back no matter how much crap Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver want to give you. Just don't be what my midwife calls "pizza vegetarians",subsisting on bread and cheese. Vegetables, in abundance. Three servings a day is not abundance. 

There is also the question of whether a planet of 7 billion (SEVEN. BILLION.) people can be fed by local organic producers. Someone answer that for me with data. I want a peer-reviewed analysis. It does not seem to be forthcoming. Overall, the issues that eating touches on are myriad: personal health, environmental health, animal treatment, global economics, socioeconomics. There are questions of efficiency, affordability, access, privilege, race, class and gender. Yes, gender: who is cooking all of these meals from scratch, spending many extra hours planning and shopping and cooking? Where your food comes from is not an apolitical issue. It evades easy answers.

But, for me, it finally came down to this: fresh produce is good for our bodies; organics are easier on the environment, especially when they don't have to travel far; while my household is low-income (different from poverty...it's good to know the distinction), we have a steady income (for now) and can afford the fresh produce; our local farmers have self-chosen their careers, seem to enjoy them and have access to the urban amenities of a developed nation (which isn't true everywhere). It seems good to support them since we can. There is, I will admit, the little (and sometimes abrasively elitist) issue of taste. My friend gave us a jar of home-canned dill pickles and THEY WERE AMAZING. My kid ate all of the pickles and then made me dig out the garlic cloves, which she also ate. My husband couldn't figure out why she had such terrible breath.

Despite my reservations and qualifications, this change seems like a good idea.

I like food. 

Lite Brite

It is March the First and time to check in (I just started to type "scheck", it's been that kind of week) about my One Small Change from February, which was supposed to be to walk, bus, or bike to any destination within a 5 mile radius of our house. I ended up really not doing that at all, primarily because of an epic bout of teething and some pretty severe separation anxiety with my toddler: she wasn't sleeping, and I couldn't (can't) put her down, and I was falling asleep in my soup and damned if I was going to ride up to the food cooperative on a bike and tackle the epic chore of whole foods shopping and bicycle packing with a squirming, pissed-off one year-old.

What I did do was keep the car trips down by staying home or in the downtown area most of the week, driving the car only once or twice a week for errands or to get to church. Our mileage was pretty nil not counting the two 180-mile round trips up to see my family this month. I only filled the car up once, even with those trips, and I think that's an achievement. In the summer months, and once I have made some changes that should help me to use my time more efficiently and have more energy,I may try some bike errands, but until the baby is much older I will just use the car sparingly and efficiently. M'kay.

I like my March challenge a lot: go to bed early.

A while ago I began to have a creeping, unsettling awareness that I am a morning person, which this short but enlightening little quiz from the BBC agreed with (check out the graph you get to figure out precisely when you need a coffee and a nap, unless you're like me and have practically fallen over around 3 p.m. every day since birth). Given sufficient sleep, I hop out of bed around 7 a.m. in a good mood, ready to get going and then around 8 or 9 p.m. I have to fight sleep (if I force myself to stay awake, though, I won't be tired again until after midnight). Being a lifelong self-professed night owl, this came as a bit of a shock, but I've come to accept it and now it's time to man up and deal.

There are numerous happy consequences of going to bed early, but the explicitly environmental one is this: if my kids go to bed at around 7:30 or 8, and if I go to bed at 9, and if I do not use the computer while my kids are awake, then I will not be using the computer for more than an hour a day if that's how I choose to spend my time. My plan is to do one quick 15-minute e-mail check every morning (I have some commitments and responsibilities at church that necessitate staying in the loop), then have a focused session on the weekend to do specific things like upload pictures, look at blogs and Facebook and compose my own blog posts. I'm really looking forward to a kind of turn off, tune out, drop out experience, to misquote the late and reputedly sparkly-eyed Dr. Leary...and having enough energy to really get things done during the morning, when I'm clearly at my best.

In honesty I can't promise that my own change of habit will affect my kilowatt hours: my husband is an owl to his core, and will ever need an immediate cup of coffee and some Me Time no matter when he wakes up in the morning. I am going to suggest, though, that he might want to consider a lightly earlier bedtime, or perhaps a one-light rule after some point in the evening, for reading or some other non-electronic pursuit. It's his call, though, he's the master of his own destiny. In bed.

At some point in the future, though, I will be back at school and all bets will most likely, sadly, be off. I hope to have secured some healthy habits for myself in the meanwhile, like getting sufficient sleep and using weekend hours (when I have an extra set of hands and eyes for childcare) to their full effect. 

For now, if you need me, just call. Before 9:30.

Rule #1: Cardio

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

-H.G. Wells

 

Keeping it short and simple, my One Small Change for the month of February: we will walk, bus, or bike to any destination within a 5 mile radius of our house. We happen to live quite near the epicenter of our little community, which is nice, but it also means that there is almost no place we ever go that we will be driving to get to. Except, of course, out of town trips or emergencies.

For now I will leave the ramifications of this particular challenge up to your imaginations: health and fitness, budget, blah, blah, blah, I need to go fix the tube on the trailer.   

One Small Bag

It's been a while since I've posted...two weeks to the day, as a matter of fact, and one month since I began the One Small Change challenge, which means that it's time for show and tell. For those of you who are visiting for the first time, I committed to "reduce and, wherever possible, eliminate our family's use of plastics".

Without further ado, I introduce you to The Bag:

 

This bag (not new!) contains everything plastic that came into this house for the entire month, recyclable or not, excluding a few items that were given to us by other people (namely, the gifts that my daughter received for her first birthday from other people...I didn't buy them, so I'm not including them). It also happens to contain the entire trash output of our household for the entire month of January*.

Let's take a look inside, shall we?

 

Whoa, yeah, okay...I rinsed everything, don't panic. It seems like a lot more when it's dumped out like that, doesn't it? I want you to look at this very carefully, and while you're looking I want you to think about this: this pile of crap is going to be (not) rotting in a hole somewhere until we have become house pets for our chimpanzee overlords. Even after that, really. 

Dear Grandchildren so great you won't need to trace your lineage all the way back to me in order to tell your friends that you are related to the President,

I'm sorry I'm dumping this bag of Forever trash on you. Yes, I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway.

Love,

Your source of mitochondrial DNA

Looking closer, we find:

 

Caps from glass milk bottles and paper drink cartons,

 

Various and sundry food wrappings (just so we're clear, I don't normally come home with little ice creams, these just happened to be free),

 

High-dose vitamin C for the crushing of viral and bacterial coups d'etat, with the more plastic-intensive version on the left and its bulk replacement on the right,

 

Bubble wrap that I was disappointed to find inside the box of a new toy for my kids,

 

A big pile of "Wha...?" (mostly the brittle plastic wrap off of the outside of bottles),

And my secret shame, the apparently four times I grabbed something in a rush.

As far as what I used instead of plastic, there was a lot of this:

Glass, some more glass, fabric, and, not pictured, the Glorious People's Reusable Yogurt Containers (tip: Sharpie + yogurt lid + tare weight = WAY MORE AWESOME THAN THOSE HORRIBLE PLASTIC BAGS FOR BULK DRY GOODS). Seriously, that is how I got almost all of my food, bath products and cleaning supplies home this month (and how much of it is still stored): from bulk at my local food cooperative, in containers labeled with tare weight (another tip: my co-op has a reusable container shelf, which I raided shamelessly every time I went there). I might do a tutorial on this for people who are interested and haven't done it before. It's incredibly simple but I could see it being intimidating.

I want to point out the handful of plastic items (and a very small handful it is, I might add), that I cannot stop buying. Like these:

I have a diabetic, insulin-dependent dog. That is not quite as annoying as (but much more expensive than) it sounds. She requires twice-daily injections with a fresh one of these guys each time, and there is no alternative to plastic. Boo.

Other musts include multivitamins for me and my kids (which can be somewhat reduced by buying the largest quantity available and purchasing vitamins in glass bottles when possible), prescription medications, baking soda for household cleaning that comes in a big plastic ziploc bag...really, that's kind of it. I was surprised by both how ubiquitous plastics are these days, and the fact that alternatives exist for almost any situation. Humans did manage to get along without them for, like, 250,000 years. CRAZY, I KNOW.

I can't really overstate how profoundly mind and life-altering this challenge has been. It has necessitated a number of changes in our lives that I anticipated but wasn't fully ready to appreciate. Namely:

-For the most part, I couldn't shop at mainstream grocery stores. In the future if I do shop at one, items without plastic include produce (if not using plastic produce bags), glass bottles without plastic lids (kind of rare), items in all-paper packaging (like flour and sugar) and cans that aren't lined in plastic. Most stores aren't prepared to accommodate bulk food purchases in reusable containers, nor do they sell most non-food bulk items, like soap, shampoo, and dish and laundry detergents. My local co-op does, and yours probably does, too.

-I could not buy much of anything at the last minute, for convenience. Most of the plastic food wrapping that I brought home (like the bag from a box of crackers and the Veggie Booty bag) came from moments when I was out and my kids or I got hungry and we had to buy something quickly. I learned very rapidly that I needed to bring food out with us, and that I needed to know of a few places that serve convenient food that isn't wrapped (cafes that have local baked goods are handy). 

-We ate much healthier foods. Next time you're at the store, try finding a processed food that's not in plastic packaging. Such a thing might exist, but I certainly didn't find it. We ate fresh fruits and vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, eggs, plant oils, milk, simple condiments, herbs and spices. I made my own yogurt. More than a few times I stood in the kitchen at night and lamented the fact that there was nothing to eat that was already prepared (and ended up sitting down with apple slices and peanut butter or a handful of walnuts and a banana). It's possible that I lost a couple pounds, but I don't own a scale so I have no idea. I am aware that a lot of what I purchased in bulk must have come shipped in larger plastic containers, so our eating wasn't entirely plastic-free. I'll come back to this issue at a later point.

-I saved money. With the exception of children's toys, which cost significantly more if they are made of all-natural materials (and are otherwise ethically produced...another topic), a simple restriction on buying like "no plastic" produces an overall effect of attentiveness and caution. I was able to eat healthier foods at a lower cost because I was buying in bulk, which is cheaper than buying the same foods already prepared. Otherwise, I simply didn't buy a number of things that I might have prior to the plastic ban, like bottles of soda or chips or cheap toys. In a few cases, I put off a purchase until I found a version that didn't include plastic in its packaging, and that delay made me think more about the purchase and whether it was really necessary. 

-I went ahead with some long-overdue changes. I use cloth diapers on my baby, but I had been using disposable wipes. Those, however, come wrapped in plastic, so I switched over to cloth wipes as well. No big deal. Other sources of plastic (and other waste) were tissues, which I replaced with some rockin' cloth handkerchiefs that I will post about soon, and some toiletry items like deodorant that I am planning on making myself at home once our commercial supply is gone. Here I just think: what would great-great grandma do? (Probably take mercury internally and submit to blood-letting, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater)

-I learned a lot about where our materials come from and where they go. I hope to write a longer post on these issues, since this challenge has been one significant part of a larger shift for me in what I want to write and think and talk and be about, but the gist is that plastics (and papers, and many metals) are not inexpensive to make in terms of energy and environmental cost, and there is really no such thing as "recycling" them. For the most part, it is better thought of as "downcycling" since the utility and quality of the material is reduced. Glass, on the other hand, is infinitely recyclable since it retains its chemical structure when broken down and reformed. Even better, you can easily refill glass bottles and jars, and if you're storing food in them there is nothing to worry about in terms of leaching. Go Team Glass. No...go Team Way Less New Stuff.

Overall, this was an amazing challenge. It was fantastic. It was a little difficult, and it pushed me to rethink much more than just what I'm throwing "away" (something to think about in and of itself: where, exactly, is "away"?).

Please stay tuned for my February challenge. I think it's a good one. I get a little tired even thinking about it.

*The rest of the month's waste was non-plastic recyclable items, kitchen scraps for the municipal compost program, the last of the baby wipes, and used insulin syringes.

Just One Word: Plastics

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Benjamin: Yes, sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

-The Graduate, 1967

****************

I realize that I said I wasn't into the whole resolution thing, but I'm thinking this doesn't count. This isn't about New Year's, it's not even about Earth Day. Really, it's about my great-great grandchildren, and yours, should there ever be any.

Last week I was directed to the One Small Change challenge at Hip Mountain Mama, and it seemed like something that would both motivate me towards further improving my carbon footprint and give me a gentle template for doing so. The deal is this: on (or around...ahem) January 1st, I will post one change my family will be making to reduce our impact on the environment. On February 1st, I will check back in to let you know how I did that month, and announce a change I will be making in February. So on and so forth on March 1st and April 1st, and then on Aprill 22nd (Earth Day) I will make a list of all the changes I made, and talk about what differences they have made in my life. If you're interested in joining, it's not too late: just add a comment to the One Small Change post over at Hip Mountain Mama and blog about what you're up to.

I thought for a long time about what one change I would make this month. It had to be something simple, in that I wanted to be able to encapsulate the change in a few words. That way, my partner and I would both know what's up and be able to follow the same "rules". It couldn't cost anything, because we are a one income, low-income family, and we don't have any extra resources to devote to lifestyle changes. On the other hand, I really wanted it to be something kind of big. We're moderately careful people in our habits: we only own one car, my partner bikes or walks to work, I walk or bus with the girls where feasible, we use organic, recycled, renewable and biodegradable products as a matter of course, we buy all green power, I do virtually all of the family's shopping for non-grocery goods at secondhand stores. There's a lot we can and should change, but we're not exactly long distance commuting in an H2 and clubbing baby seals on the weekend. It was hard coming up with something that would cause us to dig deep and make a change that would have a broad and lasting impact.

Enter Dustin Hoffman and one small word: plastics.

I realized that in the last year, since having a second baby, our habits around disposable plastics have backslid quite a bit. In particular, I haven't been using our canvas grocery bags much lately, and there is a giant plastic sack in my laundry room holding scores of other plastic sacks. Gross. Initially I thought my first move in the challenge would be to use my canvas grocery bags, but then I thought a little further. It's not just about bags, it's about petrochemicals and the life of plastics on this planet. It's about plastics. 

So, our One Small Change commitment for January: Reduce and, wherever possible, eliminate our family's use of plastics.

The fine print: We own a fair amount of plastic things. We will be evaluating what we have and replacing plastics with renewable materials where it seems like the safer thing to do (particularly with food containers and toys). The goal here is to stop bringing in new plastics.

So, why am I picking on plastics?

Bisphenol A, phthalates, the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, plastics that biodegrade, to list a few issues with the life cycles of plastics that don't even touch on the production process, which begins by sucking up 8% of the global share of oil use. Plastics should be reserved for the small handful of vital applications, not coralling our groceries for the 20 minutes it takes to get them from the store and into our cupboards.   

I went around the house today to document our biggest streams of plastics:

 

 

 

 

It was stomache-turning, frankly. It is right after Christmas, so the plastic toy meter is completely through the roof. One of my goals this month is to finally ask my family to avoid plastics. Asking my family to change their buying habits vis a vis my children is not something I'm comfortable with, but I need to keep in mind that I'm a lot less comfortable with the impact of plastics on the enviroment and our health.

After the sucker punch of my non-exhaustive plastic documentation, I thought I'd show a little of what will be our alternatives:

 

 

Ah.

This month will be really interesting, and just the right degree of challenge. I already know how to reuse my glass bottles, bring canvas bags to the store, stop buying processed foods. It's the consistent application that will make all the difference. Perhaps most intriguing to me is how this choice will impact ostensibly unrelated areas of our personal life, like our physical and fiscal health. You can't rush off to the store and grab one or two last-minute things when you're not bringing home any plastic. You can't buy a candy bar.

I'm excited. Come back in a month. I'll have things to show you.