APLS Carnival - What sustainable living means to me
APLS stands for Affluent People Living Sustainably and is a the newest addition to the green blogosphere. I’m happy to be a part of this month’s carnival, and watch this space for more APLS posts!
Wikipedia defines sustainable living as follows:
Sustainable living refers to an individual or society’s lifestyle that can be sustained with limited exhaustion of natural resources. Its adherents most often hold true sustainability as a goal or guide, and make lifestyle tradeoffs, such as transport, housing, energy, and diet that favor sustainability.
I like this definition because it allows for a continuum starting at the typical American who tries to recycle curb-side to folks who are trying to do more to folks who are setting the bar for the rest of us in terms of truly sustainable living. You don’t have to be carbon-neutral (which I think would be nearly impossible for most of us here in the United States unless you went entirely off-grid), homesteading, or otherwise completely outside of the mainstream to make more environmentally-friendly choices.
In real terms, our efforts to be more sustainable (because I won’t claim to be living sustainably yet) include:
- Obsessive adherence to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle (trying to get that trash down to one can per month and doing pretty well). We don’t just recycle, but we choose products with less packaging (or buy bulk), compost just about everything that could possibly break down, including our pet waste, and reuse as much of the rest as possible.
- Reducing our dependence on pre-packaged/processed food, trying to eat local for a year, growing and preserving a lot of our food, and making petroleum neutral choices at the supermarket.
- Choosing a “green” house. Our home was built to the Built-Green Colorado specs, meaning that it’s full of Energy Star appliances, low-e windows, and good insulation. We’ve added to that some very energy efficient blinds and ceiling fans to reduce our dependence on the A/C & heat. We’re also hoping to supplement that with a few other items from Sierra Club’s Earth Day recommendations.
- Using water-wise and organic gardening/landscaping practices. My husband will tell you I’m the water nazi when it comes to irrigation, so you can bet we’ve got a lot of local (and therefore, here in the high desert plains of Colorado, drought-tolerant) plants in the yard, not a lot of grass, and whole lot of drip irrigation covered by a nice thick layer of mulch.
- Trying to purchase more earth-friendly products. This started out with a penchant for natural skin-care and cleaning products and has expanded to toys, kitchen gadgets, and now more recently, bedding, towels & clothing.
- Trying to reduce the amount of “stuff” we accumulate, passing things on to others using Craig’s List and Freecycle, trying to get things second-hand, and making a lot of fun stuff from scratch with environmentally friendly ingredients.
We’ve got two small children, so there are very few radical or drastic changes made here at ChezArtz. Most everything, except our up-coming year of eating local, comes in baby steps and in the form of easy, gradual changes (this keeps my husband happier too!). We also have to face certain realities of our situation. For example, we just bought a house in a new neighborhood. I’m not going to beat myself up about the environmental impact of that, but on the flip side, I am not going to pretend that the house being “Built Green Colorado” makes up for that impact.
And there’s so much more I’d like to do:
- Give up paper towels (maybe when the kids are a bit older and a lot less messy).
- Start using a Diva Cup.
- Really ban environmentally-questionable convenience items like packaged snack foods, cereals, bottled waters when we travel, and soda.
- Figure out a better transportation situation (not that our cars are bad, and not that, with both of us working from home, we drive that much, but I struggle to come up with the answer to the question: “is a hybrid really better?” Maybe I’ll just hold out for the plug-in).
- Install solar panels at our house and convert at least our water heater to solar.
- Get those power strips that keep appliances and computers from sucking power all night long while we sleep.
- Get some chickens for eggs and fertilizer (we actually plan to do this in the spring!).
- The list goes on, and on, and on…
The funny thing about sustainable living is that it ties in to almost every other philosophy that I have. Live gently on the Earth. Live gently with our children. Live gently with our neighbors (whether next-door or in another country). Give back to the Earth. Give our children a better world than the one we inherited. Give back to our fellow man.
Suddenly, I feel like each shovel of compost I spread, each cucumber I harvest, each day I spend connecting with my children and my husband, each week I plan the meal around what’s in season, each time I avoid buying high-fructose corn syrup-ridden food at the store, each time I vote or write a letter to a politician to agitate for change, each time I say “No” to consumerism, that I’m making a larger statement about who I am and who I want to be. Maybe it all goes back to Gandhi and being the change we want to see in the world…
August 9th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Amen! I completely grock your last paragraph. For me, writing my blog has really got me thinking about all these changes on a daily basis, and all the thinking translates to really feeling and being the change we want to see!
August 13th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Great post! I especially like the permission you give yourself to do things at a pace that is realistic for you - I think that is important!
August 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Great post! I am also making some steps, with others planned for the future. We have looked into solar water heating but can’t afford it yet…
August 15th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Slow and steady wins the race.
I am finding that for families (with mine, anyway) small steady changes are better than the all or nothing approach. They will rebel and ultimately reject your ideas if you push too hard. Keep on keeping on.
August 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Yup, I think the specifics matter less than the intention to live gently on the earth. Being the change you want to see and also letting yourself make tiny changes- kaizen, continual improvement.
August 17th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
We’re getting chickens in the spring too! I love the idea that it is a continuum because we really are at different places in our journey. We’re all traveling in the same direction, though, and that’s all the matters. Keep up the good work.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
It’s mindful living and it sounds like each individual action is giving meaning to your life. Very nice. Bet it makes you feel good, not in a prideful way, but whole.