Top 3 Tips for Eco and Ethical living

[MamaBear76]

Please share your top 3 tips - I am an eco mum in training...

1. Reusable nappies
2. When making a meal, make double and freeze the other portions in zip lock bags
3. If you need to use car, try and combine trips as much as possible.

The things I'm best at are:

• using public transport or walking
• remembering bags for life whenever I go anywhere
• low energy lightbulbs
• do two things whenever the oven is on
• only boil the amount of water you need in the kettle each time

Nothing groundbreaking, sorry.

Forgive me if too obvious & you want specifically mum-related things, but I would say

Don't fly
Avoid using a car unless essential
Don't buy stuff unless you really need it & freecycle/charity shop when you can

I think the best description of how to be minimal impact I've heard is to be a poor vegan who doesn't travel

I read a great article about approaching greener lifestyles. It broke it down into 3 basic areas as a starting point:

1. Input - what we bring into our homes and lives and how we can make the right choices, cut down if necessary or change sources (eg. food, clothing, magazines, newspapers)
2. Use and daily life - eg. how we travel around, how we use energy to cook out food, entertainment, electricity etc
3. Output - how to minimize it in the first place and use of recycling, freecycling, charity shops, composting, wormeries etc etc.

ALways stuck in my head - Input, Use, Output simple three things that cover just about all of it!

I think the key to adopting a more eco-friendly and ethical lifestyle is to make small steps, rather than the all or nothing approach.

For example, if you normally fly 3 times a year, reduce it to twice a year and take the train or drive the other time. For most people that is far more achievable than just giving up flying altogether.

If you are a meat-eater, try going vegetarian for, say, 2 days a week (will save money too).

If you normally drive to school, decide to walk or cycle one day a week.

Those are all things we do in my family. My eco-resolution this year (having given up shopping for a year in 2008, see earlier thread) is to have one TV-computer free day a week for the family when we do radical stuff like read books and talk to each other instead.

But you asked for three top tips for a novice, so mine are:

1. Reduce energy consumption in the home (which means maximum insulation, low energy bulbs, switching things off, washing at low temperatures -- I'm sure you already know all that stuff).

1. Shopping for food locally from independent retailers and buying fairtrade/organic where possible. Get a locally produced organic veg box and buy meat in bulk direct from farms, or support your local farm shop.

1. Travel less and when you do, use pubic transport rather than driving.

Good luck - let us know how you get on.

Sorry, that should have been public transport, although the other kind sounds quite interesting!!!

About bread: have you got a local independent organic baker you can buy from? Maybe at farmers market? Buy in bulk and freeze?

This is what I actually do, not what I should do:
I've stopped buying kitchen roll, cling film and foil
I only clean with my Good Housekeeping recipe (10cl vinegar 20cl water 10 drops eucalyptus in a spray bottle)(OK I might use Ecover Jif stuff occasionally
Wash at 30° and use ecocycle on dishwasher

there's a great section on the bbc ws, called bloom or something, you can choose different actions which are graded for impact, ease, cost etc.
I went on a course once mostly about climate change and they basically said if you give up flyimg you can drive as much as you want, the recycling etc is OK as far as it goes but our energy use is the biggest problem. I know it's not a popular view, but I really think we are going to have to rethink our assumptions about travel.

www.bbc.co.uk/bloom/
there- have a look- interesting and fun.

Don't use aerosols
Avoid excessively packaged food and try to buy local produce wherever possible
Share car journeys
And basically Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

There are a couple of good carbon / footprint calculators at
Resurgence magazine here and on the Quaker Living Witness website here (the latter link is a pdf, or you can get it via their website here, both are quite helpful in figuring out where are the best places to start making a difference. There's also some interesting stuff on the Ethical Consumer website.

Bikes.
More jumpers lower heating.
No or little meat and more local food.
And no flying.

That makes four, you can take your pick

I tried a couple of those carbon calculators recently, it was a bit disappointing, one gave me a footprint of a bit too high, the next one gave me a household footprint of several times too high. They seem utterly variable in how they measure and what they count as important (so one didn't count food miles or consumption habits at all, the other prioritised it. etc).

True, a lot of the carbon calculators are rubbish and very simplistic, but the Quaker one in particular seems good, and useful for identifying what things are significant within your life.
Maybe its worth looking at a few of them to compare and contrast, but I think they can be helpful.

North of England to Southern France, 4 people - is it greener to drive (via Eurotunnel) or fly, does anyone know?

Drive, definitely.

Oh good, that's what we're doing, thanks

1. Read
2. Read
3. Read

The more informed you are, the easier it is to make the right choices. Although it can start becoming obsessive - for instance, I'm wondering whether to use Moltex or Nature disopsables when not using reuseables - which is greener? Sainsbury's clean home which has an ecolabel or ecover...

Things to read - Guardian (esp. Thursdays), Independent, Ethical Consumer, Friends of the Earth's Save Cash, Save the Planet. Also, It's not easy being green is back on TV - Weds, BBC2, 8pm.

Alternative top 3:

1. Reduce
2. Reuse
3. Recycle

Oh, I like that Quaker carbon calculator. I do well on that! Better than on the previous two. You just have to choose the right carbon calculator for your particular quirks.

Buy secondhand

• viz. various MN threads along the lines of "where can I get an eco-friendly cot"!

Imagine you are living in the time of rationing (perhaps we all will be soon) - save, economise and re-use like we used to in the olden days.

Avoid disposable things. As a geologist I feel particularly worried about the landfill issue. Take a few risks with hygiene and stop using so many tissues, wipes, bags, packagings...

Riven

My very expensive stone ground flour costs £3.63 for 3 kgs - I use 350g per loaf, which means the flour costs 42p a loaf, yeast costs about 7p, 2 teaspoons of sugar & one teaspoon of salt (total estimate 5p??) so cost pre baking =55p I use a breadmaker & it was on for about 3.25hrs.........so I don't know it it's cheaper or not