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Saturday, November 24, 2018

Unconventional choices



The talking orange head’s current tweets intend obfuscating the coming century of deadly climate change. I’m not on a rant about his flaming ideas. I believe we may save ourselves, and it’s up to the grands to remake the world. Interestingly, personal wealth then will count for little, in my opinion.

I was raised by depression era parents who used it up, made it do, wore it out, in order to survive. Caution and conservation were not in the national conscience in the thirties, the forties, even the fifties, when the country’s consumers were being overwhelmed by convenience.

Except for my parents. And my mixed neighborhood of mostly Italian, some Irish, some Black, oh, and Scandinavian, Slovak—you know, hard working factory and lower level management types. It never occurred to me we could move, but I guess it did to my dad. He told me he preferred to be the big fish in a small pond to a small fish in the big pond.

My parents were the center of the neighborhood; the source of advice and help. Dad taught my brothers how to use tools and build. Mom taught us to budget, to manage. In the sixties, when the back to earth, one acre, Mother Earth movement swept the country, my friends were astounded and delighted to find I already knew how to garden and can my produce.

My siblings and I didn’t come into the world full blown environmentalists. It was drilled into us, one aluminum can, one paper plate, one gram of sugar at a time. I could say our mom over did it, but in the great scheme of recycling, she underdid it, no fault of her own. Her fellows-in-arms simply weren’t out there with her, recycling, conserving.

We do have a mom story. She was such a dedicated recycler back in the seventies, when there was a bounty on aluminum cans, she enlisted all six grandchildren. Any trip any where, most any time, involved any grandchild in the car being put out to collect cans, and meeting grandma at the top or the hill or the cross road, dragging a sack of booty. Freeways were not out of bounds.

In the late eighties, when we were moving here, mom still had can collecting in her blood. She convinced my sister to make one last run.  When mom didn’t crest the hill eventually, Jan turned around and went back down. Mom was sitting in a ditch, with a broken ankle, tended by some very judgmental passersby. Mom closed down that career, whether of her own volition or on direct orders from her youngest child I really don’t know.

Dad, and five of six. Recycling cans is still a couple years off.

So, where does this put me, at seventy five and carrying on. When my girls were growing, we were total conservationists. I even drove straight pins into the wall, to mark the upper and lower limits of winter heat. I could not afford more than fifty dollars a month; put on a sweater. Put two on. I still have upper limits on heat and cool, though you cannot drive straight pins into electronic thermostats.

I know the lessons “took” for Beth. I’ve frozen at her house in the winter. She has a stock pot on the back burner. And so forth and so on. Shelly, the younger made her children’s clothing and knit their sweaters, and her work out ranked mine any day of the week.

For my current household, conservation simply is business as usual. In many ways, being already so cheap, finding new conservations is not easy. I’m always open. Here is one I looked into and adopted. The other was pitched to me by a therapist I so admire. It is a WTF are you talking about.

Number one, panty liners. I’m an old lady. Sometimes I laugh or sneeze or cough, or am just caught unaware, and thankful for a panty liner. One night I idly wondered how many I’d put in the land fill, and blushed for shame. A small amount of googling turned up several brands of built in panty liner panties that go in the wash. I bought a couple weeks’ worth. Small victory, but a win, nevertheless.

Number two, the bathroom in the middle of the night. You may recall, it was the reason I fractured my trochanter and spent the final month in rehab. I finally came to grips with the need of a bedside commode, until I exit the after effect of anesthesia.


Motria, one of my favorite therapists, takes great delight in my “water closet.” I can’t bring myself to tell her a water closet actually is the water container on the wall, with a chain. Anyway, Motria said just put a plastic bag in the container, add clumping kitty litter, and voila, a package for the landfill. I declined. “But you put your cat litter in the landfill!”

My cat is a commitment I made and will fulfill. If anyone tells me how to keep his litter out of the landfill, I will do it. But I’m not about to add to the landfill what goes down the toilet.

I’ve doubled my general output with this treatise on conservation. I could go on and on to list what we do. Like Prince Harry, turn off the lights. My grandchildren were addicted to paper towels. They flew daily, like snowflakes. I tried to end it. They were addicted. I decreed, one towel per day. Then open the towel drawer and use the towels that can be reused. Now I see the same paper towel on the counter for a week.

At this point all I put in the trash is paper from the mail and tissues. That last will end as soon as I lay in a new supply of handkerchiefs. And, the damn kitty litter, and food packaging. I confess I have not located bulk fig newtons, and I simply have no idea how to dispose of my cat’s litter.


48 comments:

  1. One roll of paper towels lasts me a month. Like you, I'm a big believer in using traditional towels that can be washed instead.

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  2. Dear Joanne, you inspire me. This posting of yours has given me several ideas for ways in which, I, too, can practice conservation. Thank you. I hope next year at this time to have become a much more concerned citizen of our world. Peace.

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  3. I come from a family of make do and menders as well. And have followed their example. It is a work in progress though. Always more to do, and (hopefully) less to send to landfill.

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  4. Could comment endlessly: my youngest son is a landfill waste reduction specialist. Kitty litter: I use the pelletized sawdust kind. It goes on the garden as mulch, and when the soil is turned in the Spring it adds water-holding capacity and nutrients. Also smells better, although the cats track it around a little more.

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  5. Tissues, paper towels, box board are all composted in this province and much is recycled. We send little to the landfill.

    Thanks to Carol for the info on kitty litter.

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  6. I hear you. I was just thinking today that I suspect my daughter put her turkey carcass in the trash instead of making turkey bone soup, as I did for 49 years.

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  7. A thought-provoking post Joanne and so like my own upbringing. I never knew my parents to waste even a crust of bread - it would be bread and butter pudding next day. How times have changed.

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    1. Bread crusts always were part of our stewed tomatoes. I wonder who has ever had either of those wonderful dishes, these days.

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  8. My grandparents were adults during the Depression. They passed along their frugalness to my parents who, in turn, raised us similarly. Things I remember being told: Lights out when leaving the room, don't let the water run when brushing your teeth, and, for sure, put a sweater on if it's too cold in the house.

    I think mom puts the heat up a bit now, but there were many years when I'd go for a visit and need to either borrow a sweater or keep my coat on when in the house!

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  9. I can relate to your be kind to the earth actions, and when I was eleven about 60 years ago, I joined a group "Friends of Fur-Bearers" and have been a member ever since. The group is now called Defenders of Wildlife. If we all do a little it adds up to a lot.

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  10. I enjoyed reading your story about where you learned conservation principles and how you employ them. I do try in different ways to help the earth but I know I can improve in consistency and approaches. You gave me a good one with the panty liners.

    I found this article about an environmentally friendly way to deal with cat litter. I'm sure there are a few other products on the market though they may not be so readily available where you live. https://www.petmd.com/cat/care/are-there-eco-friendly-cat-litter-disposal-options

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  11. Great blogpost❣️We do our best to recycle and reuse and all the other “r’s.” Here in Louisiana it isn’t always easy to find a recycling depot, but we have found one that will accept our plastic bottles. While we are in The Netherlands twice a year, that is another matter. Plastic, milk cartons, and tin cans are picked up twice a month from a collection place across the street from our apartment. Paper and glass are picked up twice a month from a collection place outside our gate. Compost containers are also emptied twice a month. So that leaves real garbage. We can usually get by with depositing that one black plastic bag in the garbage disposal across the street once in the six weeks we are there. That real garbage disposal costs us about $2.50 per bag. The other pick ups are all free. Great incentive to separate and recycle. As for kitty litter, I am not sure where that goes. We don’t have a cat. 😉Linda@Wetcreek Blog

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  12. Hari om
    You know this is a subject dear to my heart! Recently came across a place that does recycle the wrappers which do not go to regular recycle... check out www.terracycle.com for even those difficult plastics like shampoo bottles and such. If there is no depository in Peninsula/Hudson, there could be a school social project in it... YAM xx

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    1. I did, too, reading about the devastation caused by palm nut harvesting. Very good post!
      My parents raised us to think forward, too!

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  13. Oh Joanne! Thank you for this reminder! I try, I really do- I am married to Mr. Plastic Paper Towel Overabundance! It is a losing battle, I am hoping to balance it by doing the sensible things...Good to know about panty liners by the way...

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  14. About to make beeswax soaked fabric bowl covers, trying to eliminate plastic wrap.

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  15. I scoop cat litter daily, using plastic bags (from pre-bagged produce, nuts, and other food items) that would otherwise go into the trash. Some weeks when we put the trash out all that's in the can are the seven bags of cat waste.

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  16. You are amazing. We do pretty well at recycling, but you have us beat, hands down.

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  17. My mom "jumped" on the recycle bandwagon early on. She embraced it. Recycled all she could. Put egg shells and vegetable peels in the garden to decompose, etc. I recycle and repurpose a lot, but I do use more than I should of paper towels, wiping down the sink that is stainless steel and shows water marks. My OCD prevents me from liking the water marks so I wipe it down way more than it should.

    betty

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    1. Wipe it down with a regular teatowel that can be washed and reused. It's what everyone I know does, we all have stainless steel sinks.

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  18. Great ideas and I need to follow them more! Thank you for all this inspiration.

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  19. Here, for some reason, there is less awareness of recycling, but you gave me a lot of points to think about.

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  20. We throw away too much bread. My mother would have made bread and butter pudding.

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  21. I was raised in an upper middle class home with no thought of conservation. but it must have been in me because once on my own I have always conserved. Being a working artist, nothing was wasted. food leftovers went into a container in the freezer until full and then turned into soup. paper would be saved until the small truck was full and hauled to the paper plant. aluminum cans collected and glass saved and taken to a place that accepted both. this was before recycling was a thing. carried my own bags to the grocery, even reusing the plastic produce bags, also before it was the thing to do, which evoked eye rolls from the cashiers. also at home...lights off, don't let the water just run if it's not being used, don't stand there staring into the refrigerator, shopping at thrift stores for clothes, thermostat set to cool in the winter and warm in the summer. these days my husband and I produce about one large size plastic grocery bag's worth of trash a week or longer, mostly unrecyclable food packaging, while my neighbors haul out one of those containers on wheels or more every week. everything else either gets reused or hauled to the next little town over that has single stream recycling. paper towels are for absorbing grease and that's about all. as soon as this last package of sponges is done, I'm switching to cloth. newspaper now goes to the vet and other paper and cardboard gets recycled. I'm appalled at how little awareness so much of the population still has.

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    1. I think being self employed is a powerful motivator. We began our enterprise bagging our sales in plastic bags. One customer questioned them, and we switched to paper. I bought a large stamp of our logo and stamped it on every bag. We kept a roll of plastic bags for those days it was raining.I wonder how many thousand paper bags we went through.
      Once you begin recycling and reusing, it all is a no-brainer; you just put stuff in the proper trash can, and when it's full, take it away. When I'm gone, there will be four or five trash cans to dispose of.

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  22. We do recycle, but definitely not as much as we could. However, I have to say that nothing of our food is wasted as whatever we don't use, the cats, raccoons, and other critters are happy to get. Sometimes I wonder at how much the raccoons love sweets. And although we throw out excess bread for the birds, we find the other critters (including the feral cats) like it too.

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  23. I guess we all do a range of things to reduce climate breakdown, reduce landfill, reduce deforestation etc. Jenny and I have been vegetarians for many decades, which helps cut down the deforestation caused by cattle ranching and growing soya for animal consumption. We have a council recycling bin which fills much faster than the landfill bin. We keep our oil-fired heating as low a temperature as possible. And we use our car very rarely, preferring public transport wherever possible. But at the end of the day only governments and local authorities can make the massive changes needed to finally arrest climate change.

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  24. Sometimes we all have to flow with it. Put the kitty litter in the trash. LOL I have one of those old triangle sink strainers from the 50's. It's totally worn out. I use it every day to separate the recyclables.

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  25. PS: Nice to see your tree at the top change colors. :)

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  26. Going to the supermarket is always a challenge in between e-numbers, packaging and where exactly the stuff's been produced. At the moment I'm very disappointed to discover that my favourite organic peanut butter is now being sold in a plastic jar. I must admit I never envisaged going into my seventies as a complaining old bat in the shops but I'd like to think that my grandsons inherit a world worth living in.

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  27. It's all I can to not gag as I use paper towels to wipe up warm odorous cat puke. Paper towels are a must.

    I had a cup on the bus experience this past year and thought of you. I was in Brisbane last March and neglected to return the electrical plug converter kindly loaned to me by the hotel staff. Returning my rental car at the airport, I forgot my very handy mobile phone holder that clips onto the car air vent. I was just in Brisbane again, staying at the same hotel, and promptly returned the converter as I left!

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  28. Our families have been living Make Do and Mend for generations..so well done you for passing on these invaluable skills and habits. sometimes you yearn for something new, just because!!

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  29. For my self I was raise not to waste any thing and else have empathy for others.
    Coffee is on

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  30. "Use it up, wear it out,
    Make it do, do without."
    I found that in a book some years ago, and was glad to see the rhyme--I'm 76 and was raised on that motto, but without the "do without", and always cheerfully said. I never felt we were doing without or were anything but well off, just felt we were doing the obviously right thing.

    I still darn socks while talking on the phone...

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  31. Built in panty liner panties that go in the wash? That sounds handy, certainly better than the thousands of disposable "depends" that must be cluttering up landfills everywhere. I still "use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without" but not as well as I could. I slip into "Oh why bother?" now and again. I do recycle almost all food packaging, plastics, cardboard, newspapers etc, so my landfill rubbish is just one small bag per week. Plus Lola's clumping clay.

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  32. https://www.worldsbestcatlitter.com/ This cat litter is amazing. You scoop and then flush the kitties business down the toilet. It's made of corn husks (or similar) so is biodegradable. It is also excellent at controlling smells. My friend has a posh cat (a Somali, called Loki) and when looking after him I have used this and been very impressed.

    Steph

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  33. I use too much fuel. It's my hands that get cold, but it is daft to turn the heating up just for the benefit of my hands. I use a fan heater. As for cat litter, it's a nightmare to dispose of. Not least because it can create problems for pregnant women. thankfully it didn't for me, I was dealing with litter from 2 cats when I was pregnant with my second child and had no idea of the risks.

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  34. I think recycling is harder in small communities. I have "cans only" trash bins throughout the park. I would love to be able to gather the glass and plastic, as well, but cannot find a place to take it without driving into a major city. The cans only bins have to be dumped and rebagged because of the idiots who decide to toss garbage in those bins. I compost and have a very large cattle feeding trough next to my vegetable garden. I invite all my campers to put vegetable peels, egg shells, etc. in it. Only a few participate, as it is "Too much trouble". It has been easier to get the children in the park to nag the parents. Maybe I can influence the next generation! People use too much toothpaste! The mechanics are what clean the teeth, if half of the dollup you add to the brush ends up in the sink, you use too much. It was actually a dentist who enlightened me. My husband is absolutely the worst offender of bathroom product waste. This is learned from childhood. He uses too much soap, too much toothpaste, too much deodorant and too much toilet paper! I have preached this for 44 years and it falls on deaf ears!

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    1. My dad preached "two sheets of TP!" I don't agree with the number, but it's for sure you needn't rip off yards. I started with tooth powder. Just enough for once on the brush. Half a dab. I always looked on my parents as being cheap, but with or without their understanding it, they were conserving their planet. Perhaps people will begin to understand it.

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  35. Being a product of the depression, one of the things my mother recycled was Christmas wrapping stuff. Having no money when my kids were small, I did the same thing. I also used real ribbon and ironed it year after year. My kids hated it. LOL What I changed to was pre-wrapped boxes. It was a real struggle to save all those boxes, but I did. Eventually I gave them to my eldest, who has no money and uses them happily. LOL I still use pre-wrapped boxes, but less of them now that the family has scattered.

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  36. We were brought up to re use and recycle...not that I was pleased to find my favourite big red steam train recycled to a younger cousin....and still do, but, living in the land of the plastic bag there is stuff we cannot deal with so bag it up and leave it in the council collection point.

    Thy have closed said point recently, so I went to their offices to ask them where to dump our bags.

    Oh...nowhere. You are responsible.
    No we are not. You are by law 8839.

    But we don't have the money to collect out in the sticks..
    Pull the other one, it has bells on. If you employed the local firm rather than one from the capital you'd have plenty of money to pay for the collection.

    You'll have to burn and bury it.
    Can't do that. Forbidden by law 8839.

    If you dump it illegally we will fine you.
    Try it. We'll see what the Constitutional Court have to say.
    And while we are waiting I am bringing my rubbish to your offices...as the responsible authority.

    And so I am. Three times so far.

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  37. I deleted your comment in case you didn't want to have your email address out there. I sent you mine. Oh, I went off to my hair dresser without my front teeth today. I tried not smiling, and she didn't say a word.

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