Here's a list of my life-style-related blogs from October and November:
Blog Archive http://sharingvistas.blogspot.com/
- ▼ October (15)
- Recycling in Carmel
- Empty NYC streets mean bicycling is easy!
- Nature Cuts Our Energy Use
- Vegetarian in Carmel
- E-Waste at City College
- My Eco-Contact in Tonga
- 19th Avenue Beautification Project
- Baking Soda and Vinegar
- Not Strictly Vegetarian
- Changing Habits
- Faka'uha Rain Bath in Tongan from Water Logged an...
- Washing Dishes, Taking Baths
- Lessons Learned and the Log So Far
- Water Logged and Carbonated
This period took in Superstorm Sandy and all that made us aware of in terms of climate change and bio-mimicry in protecting from future storms...the election and environment-related issues like labeling genetically engineered products (which lost) and imposing a tax on over-sized sugary-drinks (1 cent per ounce on sugar-sweetened beverages sold within city limits)...the beautification of 19th Avenue began with the planting of succulents and other drought-tolerant plants...an all-vegetarian Thanksgiving Day...Buy Nothing Day and, new-to-me, Local in Plaid shopping following Thanksgiving Day...the cap and trade...the ban on plastic bag ordinance also meant having to pay 10 cents for a paper bag, and people started bringing their own!
On a personal level, the death of a cousin motivated me to review commercially grown flowers, and my birthday made me aware of how successful I'd been in getting my eco-messages across.
Vegetarianism played very big in my Life Style Project, as can be seen by several blogs.
Literature and movies also figured in because I was so conscious of mentions of the environment.
I've cut down on my use of water for bathing not so much by becoming a dirty old woman as by bathing only when I need to, which isn't every day.
I hope I've given baths a better name. Baths do NOT necessarily use more water than showers. On one of the three very informative posters I got form the Water Department, a chart says that taking a bath uses 36 gallons of water and taking a shower uses 25. I know most of my baths are a lot less than 36 gallons, and I think the assumption with baths is that people fill the tub half-way up or all the way up. I use more water than I did for a sponge bath in Tonga during my two years there, but I really fill only a couple of inches of the bottom of the tub. I don't come close to filling it half-way up.
I've been walking more, and I haven't been taking elevators. (I have taken the escalator at BART. It was going up and down with or without me, anyway.)
My meque seems to be fully conscious of why it's a good idea to take our own bags shopping, and he's no longer holding tight to his old habits. (He did take a picture of his Trader Joe's bag on top of his car, but we never managed to get it from his iPhone to my blog.) Our relationship survived what I reported on October 15, which shows what a wonderful, forgiving person he is.
I did a lot of reading on the environment in the newspaper and put some of the major news on my blog.
I've been using cold water for my clothes for a long time, but now I'm also using the short cycle of 30 minutes.
I'm using Bon Ami instead of Comet for my sink, and I have to say that it's not nearly as effective in getting stains out, but I like the fact that it's not as harsh on the environment.
I'm thrilled with the three posters on the San Francisco Water System, which I will use with my own students and offer to Earth Day in April 2013.
I've enjoyed doing this project as part of the wonderful course on environmental science with Peggy Lopipero-Langmo, and even though I now plan to devote my blog to my memoir of my mother, I'm sure my Eco-Mission hasn't ended here!
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