This post in the environment series might require a bit of effort, but I think it’s effort well spent. And it’s also cost-effective effort, which allows me to justify my decision to include it in the series. In brief, this week, we’re going to talk about meat and animal products.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for a very long time, you should already know that meat and animal products are viewed as harmful for the environment. Animals take up a lot of resources which could be used directly to feed people. Animals also generate huge amounts of pollution in the form of methane gas and excretion. Whether or not you think meat is morally ethical, you should be able to question whether or not it is environmentally ethical.

I’m not here to lecture you on what you should and shouldn’t eat, but I am here to encourage you to think about cutting down on meat, if you eat meat, and to reduce the amount of animal products like dairy and eggs that you consume. All of my vegan and vegetarian readers can smugly pat themselves on the back and move along (unless they would care to think about the environmental issues of soy and the practice of shipping exotic foods thousands of miles). As we all know, I am a repentant ex-vegan, in that I think meat is morally and environmentally wrong, but I eat it anyway. However, I don’t eat very much of it, for what that’s worth.

The Minimalist just did a series in which he addressed the fact that almost all of the recipes he features are loaded with meat. So he did a series of meatless recipes, or recipes with greatly reduced amounts of meat, to show people that it is in fact possible to abstain from meat eating. Of course, his recipes weren’t very fun or exciting, but I have to give him an A for effort, because he at least got readers to think about the issue.

And if the Minimalist did it, so can you. Think about the frequency of meat-eating in your household, and ask yourself if that frequency can be reduced. If you eat meat every day, maybe you can have a vegetarian night once a week, and see how that works out, and play around with recipes, and then slowly bring it to two, three, perhaps four. Maybe you’ll get so into it that you will find yourself slipping into vegetarianism or veganism, if you give it half a chance. Experiment with food: Americans are often vegetarians because they hate meat, rather than because they love vegetables, so start loving vegetables, because they are awesome.

While you’re thinking about the amount of meat you eat, consider dairy products and eggs too. There’s always room for experimentation in the wide world of food, if you’re willing to think outside the box (or the refrigerator case). You might even find that you feel better physically, because a lot of people have mild reactions to dairy and don’t realize it until they eliminate dairy from their lives.

By reducing the amount of meat you eat, you’ll be doing a small but meaningful part to help protect the environment, which is a very good thing. You should also be able to lower your grocery bills, because meat is often expensive, especially if you resist the temptation to buy disgusting overpriced meat facsimiles. Enjoy meals without meat, rather than trying to make them as much like “normal” meals as possible. Get into the wide world of vegetable awesomeness, my friends.

The other day, Baxt and I were discussing adventuring plans which involved going to Mendocino twice in rapid succession. I pointed out that we could bundle the plans together, thereby visiting Mendocino only once, for efficiency, and there was a pause, and then Baxt said “I like efficiency,” and so do I, so this week’s entry is all about trip planning.

Apparently gas prices have fallen somewhat, but they are still pretty darn high, so thinking ahead about where you need to go and when will still save you money. It also, of course, helps out the environment, by reducing the amount of emissions from your car. (Or, if you’re a leech like me, other people’s cars.) It’s also easy. Given these three criteria, I’d say that planning ahead officially meets the rules for my saving the environment with minimal effort series.

There are times in your life when walking, biking, or busing just aren’t an option, for a myriad of reasons. I still highly recommend putting serious consideration into each trip you take, to determine whether or not you really need to take a car, but once you’ve determined that a car really is necessary, you might as well make the most of it.

The thing about trip planning is that it involves sitting down and thinking ahead a week or so. You think about all of the tasks you need to accomplish, and you generate a list, either in your head or on a notepad or wherever. Then, you start thinking about which missions can be bundled together, and you bundle them, and then you go do them. Along with trip planning, it’s a good idea to come up with a grocery list of doom which will sustain you for a week or so, so that you can cut down on grocery store trips. I’m also a huge fan of the master list of things I pretty much get every week, which I can use to start a weekly list.

This also saves you time, because you’re not running around all over the place trying to get things done, since you have an orderly plan, and you have made yourself more efficient. If you’ve got multiple household residents, try to bundle your trips in with theirs, thereby making yourselves even more efficient. Or consider setting up a joint agreement with a friend, where you take turns driving for errands, instead of both taking your cars to the same place all the time.

I realize that all people are not as controlling as I am, and, therefore, that trip planning may be more challenging for some than others, but I promise it’s worth the effort. And the savings, of course.

A few months ago, a strap on my favourite pair of sandals gave out, rendering them totally useless. I promptly brought the shoe to Makela’s, and the woman behind the counter seemed confident that it was fixable, so I left the shoe with her, and a few days later she called, and I picked my shoe up, and lo and behold, it was fixed. I have, of course, gone back to wearing my favourite sandals everywhere, and I suspect that another strap may give out soon, but that’s ok, because I’ll just fix that strap..

I like to use things up. And that’s what this week’s “saving the environment with minimal effort” post is all about. Using things up is an important part of being environmentally conscious, because the more usage you get out of things, the less things you need to buy. And, naturally, the more money you save.

Most things which break are fixable, especially if you buy high-quality things in the first place. And often the cost to fix something is fairly low, especially if you are capable of fixing something yourself. You might be surprised by the number of businesses in your area which would be delighted to fix things like shoes, broken lamps, computers, chairs with woeful upholstery, and so forth. Many of those businesses are small, run from the home, and therefore typically low cost.

When I’m thinking about replacing something in my house, I always think about whether or not it really needs to be replaced. First, can it be fixed and used as it was before? If it can’t be fixed, can I repurpose it and use it for something else? When a pair of pajama pants gives up the ghost, I can cut them up into rags for cleaning. When my sheets tear, I can hang onto them and use them as drop cloths later. When a sweater becomes too holey to use, I can felt it and turn it into a cat bed, or use the felt in various craft projects.

When something breaks, think outside the box. And by the same token, don’t replace something that isn’t broken. If you don’t like it, figure out why you don’t like it, and how you can make it likeable again. If you’re bored with your living room, the solution is not to buy a new living room, it’s to rearrange the furniture, change the art, maybe change the covers on your throw pillows. Use your imagination. Use it up and wear it out.

Today’s post in the how to save the environment with minimal effort series is less about something you can do than something you don’t have to do. In other words, it requires even less effort than usual, because you don’t even have to do anything! I figure that helping others might have exhausted some of you, so I ought to give y’all a break.

One of the many exciting ways in which you can help the environment and your pocketbook is buying less stuff. Stuff is hard on the environment, because it requires energy to make, and sometimes energy to use, and then it winds up in a landfill, or goes through a succession of hands until it finally ends up in a landfill. This entire situation could be bypassed by not buying the stuff in the first place.

In the long term, of course, I would like to see us make less stuff, in response to less consumer demand for stuff. But in the short term, you can at least cut yourself out of the stuff life cycle and fly free, like a bird.

Before buying something, it’s always a good idea to ask if you really need it. Especially in mall situations, where people are subject to the Gruen Transfer. If you’re wandering around a yard sale and you see something superneat and incredibly cheap, do you really need it? You’ve been living all this time without one. If someone recommends a book to you, do you need to rush out and buy it? Maybe you should get it at the library first, see if you like it enough to own it. If you see a mesmerizing kitchen appliance, will you really use it? Do you really need another fill-in-the-blank? I know Susie has one, but do you need one?

Sometimes, of course, you really do need stuff. I had to buy underwear recently, for example. But it’s important to distinguish between necessities and superfluities, and to question your need for objects before buying them. In addition to saving you money, which is always nice, this can also cut down on the amount of stuff in your life. Which makes it easier to move, easier to rearrange your house when you get bored, easier to live a simple lifestyle. And you can show others that forgoing the American stuff addiction doesn’t leave you bereft.

When you do buy stuff, I could tell you to get stuff that’s fair trade, or made with sustainable labor, and yes, these things are important, but I would also tell you to avoid stuff that’s excessively packaged, stuff that’s designed to break quickly, stuff that doesn’t precisely meet your needs. Avoid stuff made from plastic, seek out stuff made from durable materials. Look for stuff that can be repurposed and retooled until it really does fall apart, and think about stuff that can be broken down and recycled somehow, rather than stuff that needs to be thrown away. Look for stuff that can be repaired. Look for stuff with a classic look which will still appear stylish in 10 years. And hell, look for stuff on sale, because for some reason, good stuff, really good solid stuff, is often on sale if you know where to look.

At all costs, avoid disposable stuff, because in the heirarchy of evil stuff, disposables are at the top. And they’re often expensive, to boot.

Go forth and don’t buy something!

I think that this week’s suggestion for saving the environment with minimal effort is pretty obvious, and many of you are probably already doing it, but hey, it bears discussion anyway. And, of course, one might argue that “minimal effort” is a bit of a misnomer, in this case, but it’s enjoyable effort, so I think it still belongs in my Wednesday series.

Today I’m talking about transportation.

Why drive when you can take a bus? Why take a bus when you can take a bicycle? Why bike when you can walk?

Americans, as we all know, are very into their cars. And really, that’s a habit we need to break, for all kinds of reasons. And I get to be especially self-righteous about it, because I don’t own a car, and in fact I rarely ride in cars. So rarely, indeed, that I almost got carsick the other day with my father, because I was unaccustomed to riding in a car.

I walk pretty much everywhere, and I think that most people should do the same. In a small town like Fort Bragg, there’s no reason not to walk or bike everywhere, other than needing to get to a distant locale, or transporting something heavy. And when this is the case, I take what passes for public transit in this town, sighing all the while, but I’m willing to bet that most of my readers live somewhere with a better public transit system, so they have no excuses.

Walking is awesome because you aren’t in any sort of mechanized contraption at all, which is great, and you’re getting exercise, which is also pretty awesome. Also, you get to stay in contact with your community. I often run into people while walking, and stop to talk with them, and I read notices and take note of what’s going on around me. These are all things that people miss, in cars, so walking is like this magical world where you actually meet people, instead of being isolated in a box.

Bicycling is faster, for sure, which makes it a good alternative for people in a hurry, as well as people who need to go a fair distance; it’s much easier to bike 10 miles than walk 10 miles. And you also get exercise biking, and kind of get to see what’s going on around you, which makes it pretty excellent. I’m all about the biking, especially for commutes.

I would argue that bussing is a step down from biking and walking; while it gets you where you need to go, you are pretty isolated from the outside world. But you do get to interact with people on the bus. On our bus, of course, that means you get to interact with the crazed fringes of society, since most people in Fort Bragg with money and sanity have cars, but I like the bus drivers, and I’m friendly with them. And taking a bus is better than driving, because you’re on a motor vehicle, but it’s a vehicle that would have been moving anyway, and you’re sharing the environmental cost with others, so, you know. Yay.

Driving, in my opinion, should only be reserved for the most dire of circumstances. If I owned a car, I would virtually never use it, especially because at this point I would feel guilty for driving to Harvest when I could take the bus, or carpool with a friend. Trips to the City are about all I would use a car for, and that’s only because our public transit system sucks too much to take it to the City; I would have to pay a small fortune to bus to Santa Rosa, and then take a commuter bus into San Francisco, and I just can’t cope with taking the MTA to Santa Rosa. But I would totally take a train, if we had one.

People use all sorts of excuses to justify car use. “But it’s so quick, and easy,” they say. I would argue that we shouldn’t be hurrying through life. Making time to get outside and interact with the community is important, and yes, walking, biking, and bussing take longer than driving, but shave an hour off your tv time if it’s really that big an issue, or ride a bike to do errands instead of going to the gym. I think that most people find that once they start walking away from their cars, they can make time to enjoy their lives a little more. The curse of convenience can be overcome, and you might even find yourself enjoying it; walking to do errands helps me to unwind, and keeps the world a bit more interesting, for me.

We Americans are also addicted to a sense of panicked, frenzied time crunch, and I don’t think that’s a good thing either. By slowing down yourself, you may find that the world around you slows down too, because it has no other choice. And sure, people might grumble at first, but they will get used to it, and they might even see the advantages of your slower lifestyle, and start joining you.

So, my car driving readers, the next time you leave the house and you’re about to grab the car keys, set them back down, and look up a bus schedule, or haul out your bicycle, or put on a pair of sensible shoes, and take a walk.

This is yesterday’s sunrise. See how the light is all creepy, red, and polarized? It would have been even more amazing with a really monstrous digital SLR, but this picture is still pretty damn awesome. The sun literally looked like a ruby in the smoke, and the light was bright red. For several hours. And again almost all day today. I really cannot describe the light; if you’re been near epic fires, you’ll know the kind of light I am talking about, it’s so orangey-red that you almost feel like everything is on fire.

And now, this from the National Weather Service:

“A RED FLAG WARNING MEANS THAT CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EITHER OCCURRING NOW…OR WILL SHORTLY. A COMBINATION OF STRONG WINDS…LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY…AND WARM TEMPERATURES WILL CREATE EXPLOSIVE FIRE GROWTH POTENTIAL.”

I think this means that more epic sunrises can be expected. The red flag warning is not projected to be lifted until Sunday.

The exciting thing, in my point of view, about saving the environment with minimal effort is that it also tends to save money. Which I think adds further ammunition to my argument that anyone can make a difference in the condition of the environment, and that we should be promoting the fact that you can save money and help the Earth, rather than telling people that they need to buy stuff to make a difference.

So, this week, we’re going to talk about cleaning.

Cleaning with harsh chemicals is not so awesome from a number of perspectives. If you have, say, pets or infants, you should be avoiding harsh chemicals because they can be harmful. Inhaling fumes from cleaners is not good for fragile minds and lungs. Also, animals and children have both been known to be in places where they shouldn’t, and that raises a risk of ingestion of icky chemicals, which is not good.

Harsh chemicals are also not very good for you, either, and they hurt the environment. The whole process of making cleaning chemicals, packaging them in shiny plastic things, advertising them in glossy print magazines…you get the idea.

The green industry has obligingly come up with a whole slew of “environmentally friendly” cleaners which they want to sell you for exorbitant prices, complete with special “fresh green apple” and “luscious lavender” scents, but I’m here to tell you that those really aren’t a good option. Sure, they are better than harsh chemicals, but they are still not ideal.

What you really need, my friends, is a big old jug of vinegar, and a box of baking soda. And some lemons. That’s really about it. Oh, and some rags would be a good idea. Vinegar, lemon, and baking soda will stand in for pretty much any cleaner you can imagine, naturally, and they will do a terrific job. If you look under my sink, all you can see is a big old jug of distilled white vinegar and a box of baking soda. No clutter of toilet bowl scrubber, all purpose cleaner, glass cleaner, countertop cleaner, floor cleaning solution, etc etc.

So, how do you use these three magical cleaning ingredients? It’s pretty simple.

Vinegar makes a great all purpose cleaner. You can use it straight, or mix it up in a 50/50 solution. It’s absolutely terrific for cleaning windows, either with a soft cloth or some of that old newspaper you have sitting around. Spritz vinegar on your counters, toilet, tub, shower, sinks, whatever, and wipe it off or allow it to sit briefly and then scrub. For stubborn stains, make a paste with baking soda and vinegar; baking soda is a very mild and very effective abrasive which can be used anywhere to lift stains.

Vinegar also helps to break down soap scum and water stains, and you can apparently throw it in with your laundry as a fabric softener, although I have not tried this. Lemon juice works in much the same way, only it smells vastly better. You can also use a little trick I’m rather fond of for polishing brass: smear some baking soda into a lemon rind, and rub the rind on the brass. Voila, shiny!

Pretty much the only thing you can’t use vinegar and lemon juice on is silver, but don’t worry, that’s why you have baking soda. Pour boiling water and baking soda over a tray full of silver, allow to rest 20 minutes, and then go to town on the polishing action. And for regular old dishes, consider keeping a big jug of castile soap around; it cleans both dishes and people!

Ditch the sponges; use rags, which can be washed and reused until they fall apart. In addition to being softer, more all-purpose, and more environmentally friendly than sponges, rags also have the advantage of not harboring bacteria, so they are better for your health. Yay! Depending on the size of your house and your level of commitment, you can also use rags to mop the floor for a cleaner finish, and take a tip from my food service days; use your feet to scuff rags across the floor, rather than kneeling to mop with rags. You  may look slightly silly scooting around on the floor on a pair of rags, but it will spare your knees and back.

Basically, what it boils down to is that I am not willing to clean my house with something I won’t put in my mouth. Not that I go around licking counters or anything, but it just seems like a generally good practice.

In the numerous conversations I had with friends last weekend, almost every one included the line “the end of days is coming” or “did someone order an apocalypse?” We were, of course, referencing the crazy weather this weekend, but we were also more generally talking about weather around the country and the world. And seriously, people, it is starting to feel rather apocalyptic out here on the third rock from the Sun.

The thunder/lightning/hailstorm we had on Friday? It was weird. Really, really weird. We don’t get thunderstorms, and it reminded me of Vermont summers; Baxt commented that it reminded her of the Midwest. This is not the sort of weather we have on the California coast. And rain in June? Highly suspicious. When I stepped outside on Friday afternoon, it filled me with excitement, but also puzzlement, because that sort of weather is very out of place here. The air smelled like ozone, and it was heavy and warm and still, and it reminded me of the time there was a tornado in Vermont, and we all ran out to see.

We also apparently had a lot of dry lightning strikes which sparked fires, lots and lots of little fires, and planes kept seeing more. Our fires didn’t make the news, because they weren’t very large, and they were primarily in wooded regions, rather than residential areas, but I definitely took note. This is a very dry summer, and those fires could have been a lot worse if people hadn’t been on top of things.

So just in Mendocino County, we had fires, strange weather, and the occasional earthquake. To be fair, occasional earthquakes aren’t that unusual, so no one really notices, and perhaps it is not fair to count them in my apocalyptic assessment of planetary health. In the Midwest, we’ve got epic flooding, which appears to be getting worse by the day, and I just read in the Times that people are thinking about abandoning entire towns rather than trying to rebuild them.

And here we are, talking about offshore oil drilling while New Orleans is still floundering in the filth we haven’t bothered to clean up. Is it just me, or is there a profound and perhaps even willful disconnect?

I know that unusual weather does happen now and then, and that it’s hard to draw any conclusions from a limited data set. The fact of the matter is that freak thunderstorms do happen, and if I had, say, two thousand years of data from this area, I might find that the statistical anomaly of Friday’s weather wasn’t all that unusual, in the grand scheme of things. And obviously flooding in the Midwest happens, because it’s happened several times in my memory, and so do earthquakes and fires and all sorts of other things. So it’s not really fair to say that there’s more peculiar weather now than there was before, because I don’t really have enough data.

But, I tell you what, it feels pretty darn apocalyptic to me. And it seems like a sign that we should perhaps be paying attention to. There’s a message in the weather, and I don’t know about you, but I am reading it loud and clear. I can’t help but wonder if this is the Earth’s form of intifada (which means “shaking off” in Arabic, as I hope we all know). It’s almost as though the Earth is twitching, like the muscles of an impatient horse, to see if it can shake some of the flies away.

Maybe the Earth is thinking it’s time for a hard reset, in electronics parlance. It has tried error messages, and those don’t seem to be working out. So watch out for the Four Horsemen, homechickens.

So there I was, minding my own business, chatting with Baxt, when she said that she got epic hail at her house. And I was all like “Dude!” and she was all like “it was weird.” And suddenly, there was a huge-ass mother of all thunderclaps basically right over my house which caused Mr Bell to rocket into the air, followed by a wicked lightning strike, and I looked outside, and saw this:

And I was all like “damn, dude, those are some bad-ass clouds,” and then I popped into the alley, and saw this:

And I was like “HOLY CRAP.”

So I ran inside to say “holy crap” to Baxt, and I grabbed my camera, and I went outside to take pictures, and then it started raining, so I had to hide in my doorway and take pictures:

Look, kids, I am not from the Midwest. It does not thunder, rain, or lightning in June.

Ever.

Period.

The end days?

They are here.

Did somebody order an apocalypse?

For this week’s installment in the saving the environment with minimal personal effort or expense series, it’s time to talk about one of my favourite issues: packaging and containers! Packaging, as we all know, eats up tremendous amounts of natural resources. A surprising amount of packaging is not recyclable, and even when it is, it’s still pretty darn wasteful.

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to make packaging go further. In addition to, you know, helping the planet and stuff, some of the things discussed in this entry will also reduce clutter around the house and save money, which makes them even more awesome. Yay! Awesome!

Reusing bags is perhaps one of the easiest and best things you can do. I have a couple of sturdy grocery bags made from recycled Pete-knows-what, and they are insanely strong; I routinely use them to haul 40 pounds of cat litter home from the feed store. Most grocery stores offer a bag credit to people who bring their own bags, and reusing your own bags also means that you won’t end up with a crazy buildup of grocery bags rattling around the corners of the house. Hooray!

You can also reuse the bags you use for produce and other goods. I generally avoid bags when possible, and I try to wash out and re-use produce bags as much as I can. Just because you carried snow peas in a bag last week doesn’t mean you can’t rinse it, hang it to dry, and use it to transport cherries this week. When the bags finally start to shred, then you can bring them to a plastic bag collection site; most stores have them.

Furthermore, why stop with bags? Consider purchasing stuff in bulk and re-using containers, too. All of my soaps and bath supplies, for example, are purchased in bulk and pumped directly into containers I bring from home. You can also get things like rice, beans, nuts, dried fruit, candy, and so forth in bulk. Bulk foods are typically cheaper and way more fresh than packaged goods, and the selection is comparable (if not better than) the array on the shelf. In the case of bulk foods, make sure to get a tare weight for the container you use, so that you aren’t charged for the weight of the container along with the food; if your grocer doesn’t have an honor-system for tare weights, bring along an empty version of the container for the checker to weigh to determine the tare.

You can also expand your personal war on packaging a bit, if you feel like it. For example, you can stop purchasing packaged foods which are easy enough to make from scratch, like cookies, breads, sauces, and so forth. Home-made foods are cheaper, and I think they taste better. In addition, you can control the ingredients much more easily to create the flavor you like, or to avoid things you are allergic to. When you get in the habit of making things like pasta sauce in huge bulk batches, it’s not that big a deal, and I suspect that within a few months, you’ll be turning up your nose at the packaged stuff anyway.

For tea drinkers, consider giving up teabags. In addition to just being lame, teabags waste a lot of packaging. Once you get hooked on looseleaf, you won’t want to go back.

In short, avoid commercial packaging as much as possible, and reuse the bags and containers you have until they fall apart. This isn’t that hard to do, and it makes a pretty major difference. Like some of the other environmentally-friendly things I’ve recommended, bringing your own bags/containers/etc also saves you money, which is, you know, always a good thing. In most of the world, the practice of conserving containers and bags is routine, so why not join the club?