Small Things You Did Today to Reduce Your Environmental Impact

One of the things I find inspiring about this forum is that so many people here live and spend in line with their values. I’d like to get inspiration to keep improving my environmental impact, from the small things you’re doing to reduce yours.

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I’ll start. Today I:

  • Used public transport and walked to avoid commuting by car.
  • Brought my own lunch to work, avoiding disposable packaging that would have come with a bought lunch.
  • Checked the fridge for veges that were close to turning so I could bring them to work for snacks.
  • Encouraged my sister to consider using cloth menstrual pads.
  • Chose a chocolate treat that was packaged in recyclable cardboard rather than plastic.
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Today I went by my office before the coffee shop to grab my glass keep cup for my flat white, and I brought my own lunch. I also brought crackers for toddler’s after daycare snack instead of a single-serve packet of chips (less packaging per serve). He also always has a banana which comes in its own biodegradable, compostable packet :wink:

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This day was mixed. Some positives:

  • I am re-homing items from someone moving out of town - taking some and passing on the rest to Buy Nothing.
  • Brought a water bottle and snacks on my hike, packed in my secondhand backpack.
  • Used up iffy vegetables in my dinner.
  • Didn’t use a paper napkin or towel during dinner or clean-up.

Oh no I’m gonna have to do this aren’t I… Or go even crazier and get expensive bulk bin chocolate… Why are bulk chocolate covered raisins so freaking expensive?

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And why am I such a poor judge of weight? Just one scoop… “That’ll be $47.70 thanks”.

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Remembered an unusual one from yesterday: I shared the location of a tree with edible fruit on public land on a local FB group, in case anyone wanted to pick it.

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Is it up on Falling Fruit?

Today I went to a multiple number of shops with kid #2 trying to source a big stainless steel drink bottle for her that has a flip top to replace her smaller Camelbak bottle for daycare and struck out. :unamused:

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I actually succeeded in eating all the perishable food in my fridge before going away for two weeks. I ate some weird combinations, but they were oddly pretty good.

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I love this thread even though everyday for me it’s just going to be “I biked instead of [insert fossil fuel method here]” and “I didn’t eat [things with large carbon footprint]”.

If I could stop flying all over the world my carbon footprint would be 20% of what it was headdesk.

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Oohh I’m checking this out for my neighborhood.

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You also can do Portland Fruit Tree Project - volunteering to glean trees, most food goes to a foodbank, volunteers get to take some home.

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I am following their FB page after it was mentioned at the meetup!

I put things back at the grocery store when I found similar items with less plastic in the packaging.

I drove to a distant suburb (boo!) To get used ceiling tiles for fixing my house instead of buying new.

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I bought a second compost bin, to give my other one time to rest. I haven’t set it up yet, but it’s there!

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I needed new sunscreen and bought some from a local company that sells in a tin and will refill it. The price was maybe $2 more than my previous brand, which was pleasing.

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Today I: drank water from my glass bkr bottle, had coffee in my klean kanteen cup, used a soda stream for fizzy water instead of bottled, walked to the pool instead of driving, made cookies from scratch rather than buying packaged ones, cloth diapered Bobbin.

On Friday I went through my fabric scrap bin and sorted the scraps by size so that I can make headbands and bracelets from the scraps rather than throwing them away. That felt like a huge win

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We finally tracked down a Kleen Kanteen (in purple colour) with a pop top for kid #2 and a book of 1000 Frozen stickers (and associated colouring/puzzles) for $2 to cover the bottle in time for daycare tomorrow.

Took advantage of the knowledge in this gram to pick up a box of fresh market garden veges.

Lots of greens. Initial cost of $35, ongoing cost of $30 if we sign up for a weekly box. Will see how we go with this week supplies before committing long term. Only plastic packaging in the whole lot was a compostable zip lock for the salad greens and a some elastic bands holding bunches together. So a lot less than if we’d bought this stuff from the supermarket.

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Took my own glass keep cup to get a coffee. I feel so fancy.

Is this just a normal small Kleen kanteen or do they do a kids size? We’re just about to upgrade Duckling to a Big Kid water bottle but we aren’t sure what to get him yet.

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It is an 800mL sized one, $35. Plain stainless was $30. There are smaller ones, but the idea was to get the kids onto bigger bottles so staff didn’t have to spend all their time refilling the smaller ones as the kids are getting older and drinking more. Her old one was a 400mL Camelbak Eddy bottle.

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Used the water from rinsing rice on my potted plants!

http://www.christopherteh.com/blog/2017/11/washed-rice-water/

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