EcoHabits Explained - Living with the Planet in Mind
With dinner eaten, the table cleared, and my husband monitoring the kids’ bath time, I begin my now ritualized game of “Low Water Kitchen Clean Up.” Turning a mundane task into a game might sound a bit silly, but I’ve found the added challenge of conserving water while doing the dishes has brought an element of fun to this chore. Another added benefit: without the constant sound of water running, I can catch almost every word of one of my favorite NPR shows, “Fresh Air,” which airs just after our dinner time most nights.It started last winter, when the lack of rainfall in Southern California started spelling “drought,” and I learned that one half of all the state’s energy usage came from importing water into this semi-arid region, the implication being that my running water creates carbon emissions - yikes! And then we had good friends over for a fun family dinner, after which dear Jackie very sweetly offered to clean up and shooed us out of the kitchen. She fully opened the tap and let the water run while she moved the plates around and found containers for leftovers - tasks that didn’t require water at all. This went on for a few minutes, and I listened from the next room, sure that she would turn the water off - or at least use it to clean something. It would have gone on for many more long minutes had I not slipped back to the sink to do the dishes myself and gave her the job of serving dessert. It hit me at a gut level at that moment that when resources are convenient and cheap, boy is it easy to burn through them without weighing the consequences of our actions.
Since then, my nightly ritual entails scraping - not rinsing - dishes before they head into our super efficient dishwasher, loading the cups, glasses and utensils - again without water - into the machine, packing up the leftovers and recycling, composting or trashing the rest. Up to now, I have not turned on the water, and all I have left are the items I hand wash - mostly the knives, pots and pans. So I gather the remaining items into a pile near the sink, select the largest to be my soapy water container, and fill it with dish liquid and a small amount of water. I scrub what needs to be scrubbed, and finally, I turn on the faucet and rinse what needs to be rinse as efficiently as I can. My drying rack is full, and my dishwasher is ready to run, and I have been able to hear most of “Fresh Air.” This ritual is not only my game, it is an EcoHabit.
We’ve come to think of EcoHabits as anything you can do on a regular basis to lighten your impact on the planet. It might mean using less of something like shopping bags, as Jessica describes in her essay, Changing My Bag Habits. It may mean switching to a more earth-friendly product to clean up after your pet, as told by Rina in her piece. It could be deciding to stop taking Styrofoam containers with your takeout, as Annie relates in “Lunch to Go, but not Forever.” We hope that these real voices from real lives will inspire you to create EcoHabits of your own, and when you do, we’d love to hear about them.
A final note: change is hard, and we all need reminders when trying to establish new patterns. Experts say that it can take up to four weeks to change a habit, (but as for my husband consistently using the cloth shopping bags, we’re talking months (years?) We’ve been inspired by Will Bowen’s work with “A Complaint Free World” bracelets: he encourages people to break the complaining habit by moving his purple bracelet from one arm to the other every time they complain, gossip or criticize. We encourage you to find a visual reminder to reinforce your EcoHabits - whether you move it around is up to you.
We love the magazine bead bracelet from World of Good (http://www.worldofgood.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2597), made from old magazine pages, by formerly homeless people in Brazil who now earn enough to stay off the streets. They are a fashionable alternative to the silicone bracelets and start conversations with their unusual beauty. Or if you’d like to make your own, here’s a recipe to get you started - fun to do with the kids, or friends who might want to try out some EcoHabits with you:
EcoHabit Magazine Bead Bracelet
Old magazines and catalogs
Glue
Water
Cup
Paint brush
Juice box straw or coffee stirrer
Thin elastic cord
Squirt a little glue into a cup and stir in a small amount of water. Cut a lot of long skinny triangles - roughly ½ inch wide and 11 inches long - out of a page from a magazine or catalog. One triangle will make one bead. To make a bracelet, you will need about 14 beads or fewer than that if you want to intersperse them with other beads.
Lay a triangle with the side that you don’t want to show facing up. Brush a small amount of the glue/water mixture onto the triangle. Take the straw or the stirrer and roll the wide end of the triangle around it. Continue rolling until you reach the point of the triangle. Slide the bead off the straw. Make more beads the same way. Let the beads dry for about one hour.
String the beads together, join the ends, slip it on and be reminded of your fabulous eco efforts.
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Jessica Tuck & Annie Barnes - Ecoists
Jessica is an actress and co-Content Editor of the EcoPerks website. She serves on the Santa Monica Green Garden Tour committee, creating awareness about sustainable gardening and is an active member of the TreePeople organization. She lives in Santa Monica, with her husband and 4 year-old daughter, in their solar powered home.
Annie is a co-Content Editor for EcoPerks, with a background in education and publishing. She is on a mission to raise her two boys with a keen environmental awareness, which often entails discussing global warming over dinner, and occasionally bursting into the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle†song her son learned at school. Her passion for fresh organic food means that she can often be found at the local Farmers’ Markets and tending her home garden in Los Angeles, California.
Tags: , EcoHabits, low water dishwashing, magazine beads