Small Things You Did Today to Reduce Your Environmental Impact

Ooh I am up for a specific challenge! (Just not ready to give up my soy milk for a month).

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You could always do the full challenge but with a specific exception for soy milk?

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Ok, if I finish my uni report before July (very likely) I’ll go full challenge/except plant milks. If not, I’ll go a smaller challenge. Else I’m taking on too much. Just for me, not my household (but it will have flow over effects). Shall we make a PFJ thread?

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Yes!

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Ooo I’d be up for the spirit of a plastic free July! I need some accountability to bring silverware with me to work so I stop using the plastic spoons in the morning. I’m not sure we can/want to cut out ALL plastic but a step in the right direction would be great.

Also, I wasn’t following this thread regularly but @diapasoun, I’m ~3 months into vermicomposting in my apartment with a single clear plastic bin and would be happy to share thoughts on the process if you are still interested! I have dreams of making a more complicated system (and made a progress only to revert back this morning after an attempted worm colony escape) but until it’s actually necessary the plastic bin is good enough to be reducing my food scraps for a while :slight_smile:

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I made the thread!

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Used my Onya bread bag to buy a loaf of bread. Woot!

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Just ordered a second worm farm. Time to get serious about diverting our compostable waste from landfill.

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Yes, please share thoughts! What is the exact setup/ what is good and bad about it?

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Also interested in this! We are condo dwellers

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Forgot my keepcup today… so sat in a cafe and drank from a regular cup!

We took the train to ballet class. I looked at the shops on the way home but didn’t buy anything.

When the toddler wakes up we are going to take all our kitchen scraps down to the compost bin, add shredded paper and give it a fork. We have an extraordinary amount of butcher’s paper from when we had our stuff professionally packed away in storage. At least a year’s supply of carbon material for the compost!

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Talking to peeps at my work well ahead of time about doing an environmentally friendly secret santa this year. I personally am happy not participating at all, but if I set up an alternative secret santa with gifts like keepcups, cloth produce bags etc I know at least some of the people in my directorate will choose that one over the one where you receive useless plastic crap. Which can only be a good thing.

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Oh yes, the work secret santa. At our work, we play that dice game that they play in an episode of The Office. Everyone brings in 2 gifts under $5, which can be re-gifts. Initially it was just plastic novelty crap but people have started to bring the same gifts back the next time or re-gift other gifts. An enviro-friendly secret santa sounds way nicer!

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Yeah my work does the “stealing gifts” thing too… which I hate, but would tolerate if it wasn’t all plastic crap.

Just had a meeting with two people, external to my team, who had disposable coffee cups. They both confirmed they don’t own keepcups. Trying to decide if I care about their use of disposable cups enough to buy them keepcups as random presents. Hmm.

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I did something today and I thought “this reduces my environmental impact, I can post about it!” But I can’t remember which thing it was :confused:

Things I did today:

Refilled my reused wine bottles that are watering my plants

Made pie with nectarines that were going bad instead of throwing them away (not sure if this counts but food waste bothers me)

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It counts! That’s food you can now eat instead of having to purchase more, and stuff that won’t end up in landfill! Go you!

I’m sitting in the sun pretending I’m a plant in a greenhouse :smiley:
Our compost bins are going really well. We’ve definitely changed our habits to automatically putting food waste in the right bins. Next step is to switch from using a plastic bag for waste to using a small tub (possibly lined with paper) for our “waste/landfill” bin.

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Took my kanteen to Wegman’s. The win: she filled it no problem and I got a discount. The lose: she ignored my request for ½ the vanilla. The request I made twice :expressionless:

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Was given leftovers from a BBQ (where we were very much not anticipating leftovers) in a foil tin with top. Washed the foil for re-use.

CK and HaH, y’all would like one of our local cafes: Regulars can leave a mug there and use it when they’re there. :smiley:

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As we learned yesterday, one should always expect leftovers.

https://forum.ohmydollar.com/t/hah-grief-parenting-chronic-illness-gardening-and-maybe-money/406/1207

I think I have enough vegetable scraps to make a small batch of stock! I’ve made chicken stock once before but never vegetables only.

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Haha, this was so much food that even if I’d brought my usual tupperware set, it would have overflowed them! (I think we’ve gotten something like 8 generous meals out of the leftovers.)

Enjoy your veggie stock! I like using mine for rice. :3