Hallowe’en 2009

Originally uploaded by karchibald1

Four for four – YEAH!

(Derby girl, Robin Hood, Hunchback of Notre Dame, vampirate)

Eco-Sabbath

Steps to take today 

• stop everything. At the end of the day don’t track your impact! Because this is your day to relax, reflect, and unplug, don’t worry about sharing your experience with the rest of us. Keep this one for yourself.

• turn off the faucet, run the water gently when needed, soak the dishes, sponge-bathe

• power down

• eat food from within Ontario

• don’t drive

• stop making trash

• don’t buy anything new 

7:28 am, 11°C outside, 17.5°C inside

Leo and I are just enjoying the early-morning candlelight, talking about No Impact week. I asked him what he liked most about the week: reducing garbage, eating local food, etc. 

LEO: Eating local food. Especially that bread.

KATE: What did you learn this week? What did you think about?

LEO: I thought about that soup we had with that bread, and I want some RIGHT NOW. 

End of day report

12 noon, 13°C outside, 18°C inside 

We enjoyed another quiet evening last night, reading by candlelight, and an early bedtime, which was a treat we don’t enjoy often enough. It’s so quiet in the house with no power – there is nothing humming, beeping, flashing… even with the at times outrageous volume of our sons, it feels peaceful, silent, calm… 

I walked down to the LCBO after Leo went to bed to pick up some wine and beer for the weekend, a trip I would rarely take on foot in the evening. It was awesome, and I hope I remember after a few days “off-plan” that it didn’t really add too much time to my trip, and added a whole lot of enjoyment. Walking down just made the whole trip seem less rushed, less urgent, less of a chore. The walk was super-nice, I took my time and browsed in the store at things I might not have glanced at if I was in the car and in rush-mode, and I meandered home, finding the wind and sprinkling rain not at all unpleasant. In hindsight, just the act of taking the car somewhere to “save time” creates, or at least heightens, that feeling of urgency and haste, which so much of the time is just unnecessary. So what if I get home 10 minutes later with the bottle of wine? So what if we start the DVD 20 minutes later? I can use that time to be outside, see people, look at and think carefully about what I’m doing on my errands. This feels like a big realization, but yet something small I can change almost every day to enhance my quality of life considerably. 

We used the stove top for maybe 10 minutes this morning, and the coffeemaker for about 5. Matt and Leo cycled down to the market for apples and fresh cinnamon buns for breakfast – lovely! While the boys made apple crisp for our trip, I went for a run through the gorgeous leaves strewn about the sidewalks of downtown, and just lapped up the weather and the scenery of the city. I got rained on a bit, but it was pretty refreshing, to be honest (especially since I haven’t showered in a couple days!), and the colourful leaves against the grey sky – wow. So nice. I did take a super-fast shower and despite a pang of regret at using some extra water, I feel a like a million bucks now. Imagine Monday, when I can do laundry – I’ll feel like a movie star! 

We’ve adjusted our schedule again somewhat, since it’s pretty yucky outside, and no-one – even our intrepid team leader – wants to go outside and pick up garbage today. The forecast looks a little more promising tomorrow, and my mom came up with the idea of cleaning up the garbage on the road at the end of their driveway. So, today will be about taking stock of what we’ve done, and tomorrow about doing something outside of our own home to make a difference. 

Now Matt’s out getting his exercise before we hit the road, and then we’re off for a tour of the eastern-region grandparents. I don’t imagine I’ll be able to resist checking in later today, but I can’t imagine we’ll have anything No Impact-worthy to report. In fact, I imagine the rest of the weekend will be pretty high-impact. 

Even though I’ve been aware this trip was coming, and have been totally OK with going off-program for the weekend, I’m feeling sad that our week is coming to an abrupt end. Maybe we’ll do Sunday night bedtime by candlelight when we get home, just to end the week on a note that fits with what we’ve been doing, and finish it all together, at home. Yeah. I like that. 

I’ll do the final round-up posts and thoughts tomorrow night when we get home – I feel like the time we’ll have on the road today and tomorrow can provide some great time for family discussion about what we’ve all gotten out of the week. 

Garbage

• 2 plastic apple bags (1 reusable, 1 recyclable)

• 2 pieces of waxed paper trash found in garden

• cores from 8-10 apples for apple crisp

• 2 candy wrappers from yesterday

• 1 lollipop stick

• 1 piece of cardboard from Tootsie Roll

• 1 foil eyeball wrapper

• l plastic candy wrapper

• 1 piece of saran wrap

• 1 coffee filter and grounds

• 1 cardboard cracker box

• 2 plastic/foil bubble wrappers from antihistamine

• 1 soy milk carton

• 1 plastic bag from cracker box (non-recyclable) 

For our final day, we’re sorting through the week’s trash to see what is recyclable, compostable and what goes straight to the dump. 

The whole week (Sunday to Saturday) yielded one plastic shopping bag of garbage and recycling, and 1 large ziploc bag of compost. 

The shopping bag full of garbage breaks down into about 60% recyclables, and 40% garbage, so just under half a grocery bag of garbage all week – that’s not bad for a family of four! 

Purchases 

• $11.60, market for local apples and fresh-made cinnamon buns

• $20, gas for trip 

Tomorrow

Giving Back

 Energy

 Steps to take today

• turn off the faucet, run the water gently when needed, soak the dishes, sponge-bathe

• power down

• eat food from within Ontario

• don’t drive

• stop making trash

• don’t buy anything new 

End of day report

8:02 pm, 4°C outside, 18.5°C inside

I think water reduction has been one of the least difficult challenges for us – I do think we’re pretty conscious of our water use. We turn it off while brushing teeth, we don’t run it if we’re not actively using it, we don’t water lawns, wash cars, etc.

Things I do miss: washing machine and dishwasher. Whether or not the dishwasher uses more or less water than hand-washing, it also uses electricity, so it’s turned off for the rest of the week. Once I did notice I was running the water a little too long while washing vegetables, and I think we should do that thing with the pop bottle in the back of the toilet, but generally I don’t think we struggled with this one too much. 

Another whole day with very minimal electricity was a bit of a challenge, but the novelty is still fun. I think we used less today than yesterday: I turned on the burner for about five minutes this morning to warm some milk for coffee, we plugged in the coffeemaker for the few minutes it took to brew coffee, and I may have had the burners on for 15 minutes heating up lunch. We didn’t use any electricity making supper, just chopping and slicing. I made tea this morning, and couldn’t decide between boiling water on the stove or using the electric kettle – used the kettle. 

I have a good list now of things I want to research more after the week is over and I have more computer time back! Find a definitive answer on beer bottles, kettle vs. stovetop, find out where our bulk bagels come from, dishwasher vs. hand-washing… there are more… I’m going to compile all of them at the end of the week and embark on a fact-finding mission.

The kids are still hangin’ in there like champs. We went over to our friends’ house this afternoon, and they did manage to get some TV time in, which made them pretty happy. After a brief moment of not wanting to leave that playdate, we made it home without any fuss or renewal of pleas for TV time. Funny how warm we all felt at someone else’s house – Leo was all rosy-cheeked as we left. I don’t think we’re noticing feeling too cold at home, but a rise of a degree or two made us all nice and toasty. 

Tomorrow morning – another morning of no power, am hoping we can continue the path of reasonably pleasant playtime by candlelight without a massive hue and cry over the lack of terrible TV shows to watch. Our hope is that it’s not pouring rain – our no-impact week is scheduled to end with a contribution to the earth, and we’re thinking of a small-scale garbage pick-up somewhere in the neighbourhood, then a walk or bike to the market to pick up some fresh produce. Then we’ll cram in Sunday’s activities, since we’re heading out of town in the afternoon, but Sunday mostly consists of continuing what we’re doing with some reflection on what we’ll all take away from the week. 

I’m kind of bummed, honestly, that we’re going to miss out on the last 24 hours, I feel like we all take away so much each day, and doing without various things becomes easier and easier every day.

I’m starting to think about, really, what we’ll all be left with after this week is over, and if and when another “experiment” like this would be helpful. Could we go whole hog one day a week? Once a month? I don’t know, but I do know that getting through all the challenges of this week has really made it clear how much more our one little family can do to leave less of a mark on this earth. 

I’m not out to convert others to do what we do, or to become “difficult” in any way: I’m not going to refuse a drink at a restaurant because they’ve used electricity to chill it, I’m not going to tell my kids they can’t watch too much TV or create waste at someone else’s house, and I’m not going to turn my nose up at food or drink that is served to me because it’s not from somewhere close by. All I really want to do is make sure that the four of us, every day, are living as thoughtfully as we possibly can and that our usual household practises don’t create excess waste, be it wasted energy, trash, money, water, gas… anything. 

Really, could it be as simple as that? Don’t waste stuff! I think it just might be. 

Meals, drinks, snacks

Coffee (fair trade, organic, ordered in bulk, 10 pounds at a time. Not locally grown, and shipped from Uxbridge)

Milk (organic, from Guelph, Ontario, in reusable bags)

Soy milk (organic, “prepared” in Quebec)

Water (filtered at the tap) 

Breakfast: fresh local bread with unlocal PB&J 

Snacks: cookies (homemade, non-local ingredients), apples (Ontario) 

Lunch: quesadillas (Ontario cheese, tortillas made by Weston), leftover soup 

Supper: A finger-food picnic in the living room by candlelight: carrots from down the road, crackers (random crackers we had in the pantry), Ontario cheese, summer sausage from Kitchener, homemade tofu spread, Ontario apples, homemade red pepper jelly and dill pickles. 

Garbage

• 1 piece of saran wrap (insidious…)

• 1 cheese wrapper

• 4 apple cores

• 1 coffee filter and grounds 

Purchases 

• $40.70, local beer/wine for home and hosts this weekend – this feels like an insane splurge after this week of almost no spending – exciting!

Tomorrow

Giving Back and Eco-Sabbath (compressed since we have to go out of town tomorrow)

End of day report

8:44 pm, 4°C outside, 20°C inside

A good day, after the fire incident. The kids were surprisingly stoic about getting home in the rain after school, and we had an awesome supper and play by candlelight. Matt read stories, and now they’re both in bed. Max is still vying for TV time, but the parents are about to play a board game and come up with some captivating activities we can substitute for TV.

So, we had a few “cheats” that will likely continue through the rest of the week: we used the stovetop – probably 40 minutes today, the computer for about 15 minutes this morning, and 15 this evening (even this much use is an embarrassing reduction for me – it’s hard!), and the coffeemaker. I did forget to add the milk frother (battery-operated), and it’s out of commission so far, but I miss it….

A couple times I really wanted to cheat but didn’t: I drank a cold cup of coffee earlier since the microwave’s off, I had to defrost some frozen berries quickly for lunches, and managed to do so by using a burner I had just turned off – very crafty!

Despite his rocky start to energy day, Leo was very supportive: when I was boiling some water on the stove, the burner was clunking a lot, and he said, “Maybe it’s saying ‘turn me off, it’s energy day!!’”

Now for a board game and debate over whether beer bottles actually constitute garbage – I guess they are kind of a step up from recycling since they’re returned for deposit? But they’re just recycled by the beer store, right? I’m not actually saving any energy by taking them back to the store rather than putting them in my blue box? Sure, I get cash back, but in terms of environmental impact, is it the same difference? Would really like a beer, though, I’ll tell you that.

Meals, drinks, snacks

Coffee (fair trade, organic, ordered in bulk, 10 pounds at a time. Not locally grown, and shipped from Uxbridge)

Milk (organic, from Guelph, Ontario, in reusable bags)

Soy milk (organic, “prepared” in Quebec)

Water (filtered at the tap)

Breakfast: fresh local bread with unlocal PB&J, homemade granola (non-local ingredients) with soy milk

Snacks: cookies (homemade, non-local ingredients), apples (Ontario), frozen berries/mangoes (definitely not local)

Lunch: quesadillas (Ontario cheese, tortillas made by Weston)

Supper: vegetable soup (stock made from vegetable peels and ends from the freezer, then added local leeks, carrots, potatoes), sausage made in Kingston from Ontario pork, Ontario potatoes, salad

Garbage

• 1 coffee cup that the server used to fill my refillable mug – argh! I got tiny tears in my eyes (I’m not even joking) when I realized what she had done. She thought I was out of my mind because I insisted on taking home the cup for my garbage collection.

• 4 apple cores

• 1 coffee filter and grounds 

Purchases 

• $10.77, local food from local deli

 Tomorrow

Water

Energy

Steps to take today

• assess current energy consumption habits. Walk from room to room in your home. List everything in each room that uses energy to operate (i.e., electricity, oil, gas, batteries). Put a star next to any item that you would ordinarily use in the remaining four days of your No Impact Experiment. Next to each starred item, indicate if you are going to ELIMINATE or MITIGATE your usage of that item.
• Unplug! Turn it off. Power down. Go off the grid. For the truly adventurous, turn off your electricity completely and see what happens
• eat food from within Ontario
• don’t drive
• stop making trash
• don’t buy anything new

10:49 am, 10°C outside, 19.5°C inside

Lights turned on this morning? Zero.

Children set on fire this morning? One.

Let me explain. We were sitting around the kitchen table by candlelight in a charming family tableau. It was just as we had pictured, quiet moments spent together, doing things we enjoy and engaging in meaningful conversation. Really. Max was reading a book, Leo was playing with Tinkertoys, Matt was getting breakfast, and I was making school lunches. Leo was bent right over his toys, trying to get the pieces together, when WHOOSH! His hair caught on fire. I’m not talking some smoky smoldering, I’m talking a flame that had to be extinguished by whacking him on the head a few times. Luckily, his head was not burned, just some minor singeing, and I must say the smell of burning hair nicely masked the smell of the cigarettes from next door. And thank heavens for all of us, Leo is nothing if not a good sport. He was a little surprised by the whole thing, but quickly broke into gales of laughter at his adventure. Matt and I will be a little more vigilant from now on.

Energy reduction/elimination is harder than I thought. For one, thing, I shouldn’t even be on the computer, really, but it was log on for a few minutes of quick typing or waste paper transcribing things to type in later. We do have the choice to eliminate or reduce use, so I’m afraid I’m not going whole hog on the computer.

Last night Max and I came up with a pretty detailed list of all the energy-suckers in each room. We’re still not 100% cool with the elimination of the TV (when I said how happy I was that this week made us more considerate of the earth, Max said, “Yeah, well what about being more considerate of your CHILDREN?”), but it’s happening. It’s really only going to be an issue Friday night (traditionally Friday Family Fun Night when we all watch a movie together) and Saturday and Sunday mornings. We can hack it. Matt and I will pry ourselves out of bed and do something fun… maybe a walk to the market, hot-tub at the Radisson, buy a local treat at the Goat kind a morning… it’ll be good.

I’m writing a lot about our week, so we’re not going to eliminate the computer altogether, but will power it down and turn off the power bar when I’m not doing No Impact Week “business.” That will be horribly difficult for me, actually – I live online, I love my laptop and cruising around cyberspace when the kids are in school or bed.

Fridge and deep-freezer are staying on, although Vanessa Farquharson did do a pretty good job convincing me we could live without them. Right now, they’re jam-packed with food, and we can’t eat all the perishables within the next few days.

Coffeemaker likely falls into the same category as computer – absolutely essential, but we’ll unplug it when we’re not using it this week.

Dishwasher – hmmm. When we got the dishwasher, we hemmed and hawed about whether it did, as people tend to say, waste less water than washing by hand. I still don’t know the answer there, but it obviously uses electricity to run. The fact that I despise our dishwasher, and the cruddy job it does as washing our dishes, means that it might not be hard to switch to hand-washing for a few days, anyway. We’ll still be using the hot water, but less electricity.

Just back from my stroll to John’s Deli, where I found some lovely organic, local squash and garlic, and picked up some made-in-store sausages for supper. I think I’ll roast some potatoes and squash, and we have a salad in the fridge we need to use up, and the kids and I can have sausage while our resident vegetarian can enjoy last night’s soup again.

I am loving the shop-as-I-need it lifestyle, walking to different stores every morning to pick up just a few things for that evening’s meal. I think I could get used to that rhythm. OK, I’d better sign off for now, it’s been the 10 minutes I allotted myself to have the computer on. I’ll post this part of the day now, and then add to it at the end of the day when I give myself another 10 minutes to write. If you’re lookin’ for me – call me, don’t email!

The list (E=eliminate, M=mitigate)

Porch

• light (E)

Front hall

• light (E)

Living room

• two lamps (E)
• TV (E)
• DVD player (E)
• PS2 (E)

Dining room

• light (E)
• computer (M)
• stereo (E)

Kitchen

• pendant lights (E)
• main light (E)
• under-cabinet lights (E)
• stove lights (E)
• pantry light (E)
• fridge (M)
• coffee maker (M)
• stove/oven (M)
• radio (E)
• microwave (E)
• dishwasher ?

Back room

• light (E)
• deep freezer (M)
• furnace (E)
• hot water tank (M)

Leo’s room

• light (E)
• moon light (E)
• nightlight (E)
• clock radio (E)
• light saber (E)

Max’s room

• light (E)
• clock radio (E)

Kate and Matt’s room

• light (E)
• two lamps (E)
• two clock radios (E)

Bathroom

• light (E)
• shower light and fan (E)
• washer (E)
• dryer (E)
• clock radio (E)

Upstairs

• hall light (E)

Food

 Steps to take today

• eat food from within Ontario

• don’t drive

• stop making trash

• don’t buy anything new

11:55 am, 10°C outside, 19.5°C inside

Besides my eensy-weensy hangover, which may be caused by exhaustion more than alcohol, I enter Day Four feeling wonderful. The step-by-step introduction of challenges is really working for me, just tackling one thing each day, yet carrying it over to the next day when we add something new.

I feel much more thoughtful this week about every single thing I consume, and that consideration is certainly something that I will take forward after this week. I now look at every single thing I am considering buying, and think: Do I need this? Could I make it myself or get it secondhand? Could I find it somewhere without any packaging? If I must buy something in packaging, can I re-purpose the package? Where did it come from?

A few days ago, I would have said I thought about all those things a fair bit, and I did, in a broad kind of way. However, once I started applying those questions to everything – no exceptions, no, “well, it’s TOOTHPASTE, I need it!” – it all changed. By considering those basic questions as many as hundreds of times each day, I know that every the product I consume is one that I’ve really, *really* thought about. Does that mean every thing I ever buy will be fairly traded, local, healthy, free of packaging, and secondhand? Nope. Does it mean that I’ll do everything in my power to make as many purchases as possible that are lower-impact? Absolutely.

Hearing how excited Max was when I told him the house only created three pieces of non-recyclable/compostable garbage yesterday, and seeing how happy Leo was that we brought our own bag for a cinnamon bun today so we didn’t have to waste one… well, that’s some pretty awesome icing on the proverbial cake. The concepts are simple, really; the kids have zero difficulty understanding why we’re asking the questions we are, and honestly, if I’ve encouraged them to think a little bit about what they eat, wear, play with and how we get around, then that’s a great accomplishment.

End of day report

6:27am, 10°C outside, 21°C inside (yes!!)

Our local supper was 75% successful – Leo, Matt and I loved our roasted vegetable soup with toast fingers, Max was a fan of the toast, but not the soup. We had decided on shopping for food grown in Ontario for the rest of the week, and if I’d given this a little more thought in advance, we could have had a more tantalizing, complex meal, for sure. Tomorrow is market day, as well as as a school day for both kids, so I hope that I can pop down there to pick up some supplies for our meals for the next few days. I think I’ll spend this evening browsing cookbooks for inspiration. I am definitely in a rut of meals – I have my standards that we all love, but none of them are focused on local ingredients, and obviously, the whole local thing gets a little more challenging the further we get into autumn. I hope that tomorrow, we can pull off something we all love from local ingredients.

Oh. Except we’re not supposed to use electricity tomorrow. Yeah. Huh. I guess we could BBQ, except I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t actually know how the BBQ works and Matt won’t be home until after supper. OK, this is going to be harder than I thought, and the thought of eating a cold meal in a cold, dark house is not really doing it for me right now.

Well, crap. Googling raw food has thus far not inspired a lot of excitement. I think this challenge would work best for me if started on a summer weekend. All the recipes I have found involve a bunch of shopping for things we don’t have on hand, and a reasonable amount of prep work. I’m game for giving it a shot, but I don’t think I have the time or emotional fortitude to spend the three hours I have to myself tomorrow biking around town to pick up ingredients, then morphing them into something healthful and beautiful that my children won’t eat. I found a great-looking recipe for a burrito kind of thing, but almost none of the ingredients would be available in season here right now. Maybe we’ll stick with local and just try to minimize the amount of stove cooking we do, I don’t know… Or… cheese and crackers for supper? I do have some kielbassa in my fridge, as well as some summer sausage from the Mennonites in St. Jacob’s, Ontario. We could have a cold platter of finger foods from the fridge and pantry… maybe that’s the answer for tomorrow. Then we only have Friday to get through before the weekend where other people will feed us.

Speaking of which, there’s some cheatin’ on my mind. Matt’s parents are about to embark on a southern trip for the fall/winter, so weeks ago we made plans to go visit them in Brockville on Saturday, and my mom invited us to her place outside of Gananoque for a Hallowe’en candy-making party on Sunday. None of these things are really changeable, and forking over cash for four bus tickets is just not going to happen. So, we’re going to drive. Although we are adjusting our plans to minimize driving: we normally would come home from Brockville on Saturday night, and then head out to Gan on Sunday afternoon, allowing for a quiet morning at home. But our plan now is to sleep over in Brockville and go directly to Gananoque on Sunday morning, cutting the driving time by about an hour. That’s something, right?

Meals, drinks, snacks

Coffee (fair trade, organic, ordered in bulk, 10 pounds at a time. Not locally grown, and shipped from Uxbridge)

Milk (organic, from Guelph, Ontario, in reusable bags)

Soy milk (organic, “prepared” in Quebec)

Water (filtered at the tap)

Breakfast: bagels (don’t know where they’re made – bought in bulk at No Frills) with butter (Ontario) and honey (Ontario); homemade granola (non-local ingredients) with soy milk

Snacks: cookies (homemade, non-local ingredients), apples (Ontario), frozen berries/mangoes (definitely not local)

Lunch: Leftover mac and cheese from last night (local milk, cheese and butter, not sure on the flour or pasta)

Supper: vegetable soup (stock made from vegetable peels and ends from the freezer, then added local leeks, carrots, potatoes), local bread, butter and parmesan cheese (probably not local)

(I must add to this that while there is a bunch of stuff here that doesn’t fit our local requirement, I do have a house full of food that was already here, which I’m certainly not going to turf in order to go buy more local supplies. So, even the things here that aren’t super-local could be more so in future.) 

Garbage

• 1 piece of saran wrap

• 1 Qtip

• 1 gum package

• 1 piece of gum

• 1 soy milk container

• vegetable scraps from making stock

• 2 coffee filters and grounds

• 1 granola bar wrapper from a snack Max was given at school (he ‘fessed up to this as soon as he got home!)

Purchases

• $1.70, cinnamon bun

• $10.90, local produce at health-food store

Tomorrow

Energy

Transportation

 Steps to take today

• throughout the day, keep a list of everything you eat, where you eat and where you purchase your food

• don’t drive

• stop making trash

• don’t buy anything new

11:04 am, 14°C outside, 19°C inside

Whose damn idea was this, anyway?! I just schlepped 38 pounds of groceries home on foot, and have the sweat and sore arms to prove it (plus, I weighed the bags when I got home). The walk was pretty horrid, but honestly, besides that, my outing was a resounding success.

The whole family biked to school this morning, which worked well. Matt pulled Leo on the trailer bike, which I was already reluctant to attach to my own bike, but my heels have dug in even further since Leo FELL OFF the damn thing in the middle of a busy intersection the other day. (A fall most likely precipitated by some “fancy move” he was executing on the bike, like hanging off one handlebar or balancing on the seat – I kid you not.) Anyway, he was fine, and we’re hoping maybe rattled enough to be a little more careful in future. Probably not, though.

From the school drop, I walked downtown with my reusable bags filled with reusable bags and containers, telling my 13-year-old self to suck it up and figure out how to refill containers at the natural food store. I clenched my jaw, and in I went. Now, I shop there sometimes, but not often enough, really, and generally think of it as overpriced. But, today, when price was not my only consideration, when I was actually trying to eliminate all packaging – this was the place to go.

First stop, milk. We’ve been going through it in ridiculous quantities since my new best friend the milk frother came into my life. The milk frother was an attempt to stop buying 1L cartons of cream – both expensive and over-packaged ($3.19/L). Very successful… the frothy goodness makes me forget I’m not getting maximum creaminess in the coffee. But now instead of going through a 2L carton of milk every three weeks or so, we were going through them every few days. This will not do – I could see a garbage bag bursting with 2L milk cartons by the end of the week, and No Impact Man quietly shaking his head behind me. Not to mention, if our milk consumption is increasing, so is my concern over the crap in non-organic milk. So, I figured if anywhere is going to have an answer for me, it’s the health food store. First choice, glass bottles of milk, returnable so the farmers/milk people can reuse them. There they were: beautiful, smooth glass bottles of organic milk. I cradled one in my hands, and oh my, it was nice. That’s what I want! Perfect! Except, um, they were $6.49. For one litre of milk. $2 of that is a deposit, but still, I’d be paying $4.49 – not that far off the price of a 2L carton at No Frills. So, twice the price. Not cool for this budget, even if it is saving the earth and our family’s health. However, just below the gorgeous glass bottles were bags of milk – 4L of organic milk for $9.70 or $2.43/L. Cheaper than cream, comparable to non-organic milk in a carton, and each bag can easily be washed and re-purposed when emptied. (Let me just say, this right here is the most challenging part of this week so far. I HATE washing ziploc bags or old milk bags. Hate it. Hate doing it, hate it when they don’t get super-clean, hate having them hanging all over the kitchen to dry, hate the little spots that form during the stupidly long drying process, hate using them if they’re not totally clean, hate using the milk bags because they’re ugly and the plastic is too thick, and…Catch my drift? But. I’m doin’ it.) OK, that’s enough on milk – I think we have our solution here.

Next, I needed some pasta. No problem! Filled up an old resealable tortilla bag with whole wheat macaroni for thee bucks. Awesome. Comparable to the normal grocery store.

Honey: filled up my old honey squeeze jar for about $2 more per litre, but the honey is local and unpasteurized, plus I didn’t have to buy a new jar with the honey.

Also picked up some coconut, quinoa, black beans and chick peas, all in my own bags, all for way cheaper than buying pre-bagged or canned at the store.

I did have to use three spice bags from the store, but I’ll rinse ‘em (argh) and take ‘em back to refill.

The one place I struck out was tofu. I thought I remembered big vats of tofu there that one could scoop into containers, but these were not to be found. I did find some organic tofu that only came in one layer of plastic wrap, so that’s what I went with. The plastic is different than the stuff at the grocery store, and I’m hoping I can recycle it. It was a little more expensive than at No Frills, but fits my lower-waste needs for this week. I think I can do better, though, will investigate further.

Grand total: $45.55, and the only things that will end up in the recycling/garbage are two tofu wrappers. Oh, and, I guess, my receipts – I wanted the store receipt to do my dorky price-checking and comparisons, and I think if I hadn’t taken the Interac one, they still would have printed it and thrown it out. However, I think I can keep them and use the backs for little notes, or as bookmarks or something crafty like that. Not too shabby overall, for my first foray into package-less shopping. I will definitely be frequenting the health food store more often now that I know it’s not crazy-expensive and nobody looks at me weird when I pull out and refill all my wrinkly old bags.

Quick jaunt to the video store to return a DVD, picked up some cash at the bank, then bought some apples at the farmers’ market before heading home. I’m pretty sure my walk home eliminated the need for me to go to my weight-lifting class at lunch, saving me the quandry of how to get to the gym at Loblaws without a car.

Next challenges of the day: plan and create a waste-free supper that we can eat in a very short window between (walking) trips. Have to pick up kids at 3:30, get Max to piano at 4, home at 4:30, eat, then back to school for a meeting at 5:30, then head home close to 7 to get kids to bed on time for the sitter. That’s a lot of walking for my kids, and a lot of places we have to be in a short period of time. This is my worst case scenario: dragging unwilling children to places I have to get to on time. I despise being late, and as anyone with children knows, trying to rush them is generally ineffective if not downright counterproductive. This will be hard. I will take solace in the fact that the sitter is coming so Matt and I can go out to see some live music, and drink beer by the pitcher so we don’t create any empty bottles tonight!

Also, I need to create some kind of home-made air freshener to negate the stench of cigarette smoke seeping through the wall from our new neighbours. Ick.

The damn mail just threw our success with garbage right out the window – the kids each have a subscription or two to magazines, and today each kid got one, this month, conveniently wrapped in plastic so they could include some extra paper junk in there. We’ll pull it all out when they get home and see what we can do about that.

End of day report

12:51 am, 10°C outside, 20°C inside

We did good today! The kids were freakin’ awesome walking and biking to and from school a bunch of times.

Had a little unanticipated slip-up in th garbage department when we went out to a live show tonight. We carefully ordered draft beer to avoid producing bottle waste, but our water came with straws, and the nachos came on a sheet of paper with two disposable plastic cups of dipping sauces. Damn. Didn’t see that coming. Matt got it together by the end of the night to request water, no straw, but I must say, I felt kind of defeated, carrying my oily garbage home from the bar. Besides that, though – wonderful to have a night out and see some great music!

Meals, drinks, snacks

Coffee, soy milk, water

Breakfast: bagels with butter and honey; homemade granola with yogurt (Leo), soy (Matt) and cow (Kate) milk.

Snacks: cookies, apples, frozen berries/mangoes

Lunch: quesadillas (kids), bagel with tofu spread (Matt),

Supper: home-made mac and cheese, salad

Late-night menu: nachos!

Garbage

(I realize I totally forgot to document compost yesterday – oops! There wasn’t much, though, a couple coffee filters and grinds, and a few bits of Leo’s lunch he couldn’t finish)

• 2 coffee filters and grinds

• 1 lettuce-bottom

• 2 dryer sheets

• 1 cheese wrapper

• 1 greasy package of paper and cups of sour cream/salsa from our yummy nachos

• 3 straws

• 2 plastic bags and 2 flyers from kids’ magazines

Purchases

• $45.55, groceries

• $6.50, apples

• $20, pitcher of beer

Tomorrow

Food

Trash

Steps to take today

• Empty trash bag from yesterday and discuss what waste we can reduce/eliminate (we did this last night)
• Put together a no-trash travel kit for the week with a reusable drinking receptacle for hot and cold liquids, a handkerchief/old t-shirt, Tupperware®, utensils, and reusable produce bags.
• Stop making trash. Reduce it. Reuse it. Recycle it. Just don’t throw it away.
• Keep a special bag at home or the office to collect trash you make by mistake or necessity throughout the week.
• Don’t buy anything new!

7:12 am, -3°C outside, 16°C inside

Leo and I are sitting here drinking our lattes (OK, I’m the only one drinking a latte…), getting ready for No Trash Day. Leo thinks we will do a good job today at making as little garbage as possible. He is ready to use his new handkerchief today, and he’s a good candidate for one – we’ve all been passing the sniffles around for a few weeks, thanks to the new germs that always seem to find us in the fall term of elementary school.

We had a little debate last night about whether or not renting videos constituted buying something. At first I thought no, then I thought yes, then I thought no, but realistically I wasn’t going to walk down to the video store at 9 in the cold, dark evening, and the car trip down would fill me with too much guilt, even though we are still “allowed” to drive for another day, then I thought yes, but couldn’t it be mitigated by the fact that we would be supporting a local business? By this point, I was annoying myself, so we decided to watch a trashy movie on cable to keep my eyes occupied while I was knitting (very non-consumerist of me, huh? Don’t I deserve a little TV while saving the world by not shopping?). But, we didn’t actually get the channel the movie was on. After being bored stiff by a show on tiny ants for a few minutes, we unfortunately (for our brain cells) stumbled on Desperate Housewives, which fit the bill for 45 minutes worth of knitting. Will hope to do better for the next few nights of knitting time… maybe find something somewhere between boring insects and inane barbies?

8:27 am, -3°C outside, 16.5°C inside

Well, No Impact Man, I’m afraid I’m gonna let you down… right… now. It’s that time of the month (explains a few things about the number of cookies I needed to eat yesterday), and I’m just not up for going no-waste on this one. I’m an open-minded kind of person (I teach doctors how to give pelvic exams, for crying out loud), and definitely cringe at the amount of feminine garbage that I create each month, but… this particular challenge just isn’t on. ‘Kay? ‘Kay. Moving on.

9:33 am, 1°C outside, 16.5°C inside

Just finished intense negotiations with Leo about whether gummy bears were a necessary purchase. I was hoping to have a nice walk downtown in the sunshine and refill some of our containers with wholesome bulk goods, but in reality, the walk there may be nice, but would surely be followed by a public “discussion” about why we really don’t need gummy bears, and then we’d be faced with a gummy bearless walk home, no doubt tinged with regret on both of our parts (and only one of us would be able to keep that regret quietly to herself). Think I’ll hold off on the bulk food buying until tomorrow, when both kids are in school, and perhaps we’ll hit the library today, where everything is free, and I can pick up a DVD or two for knitting time.

12:32 pm, 10°C outside, 16.5°C inside (why isn’t it warmer in here?!)

After a brief, hushed discussion (well, hushed on one side) about why we don’t walk shirtless around the library, the following conversation ensued:

LEO: Because it’s public?

KATE: Yes.

LEO: Why is it public?

KATE: So that everyone has a nice, warm, dry place to come where they can learn things and borrow books to take home.

LEO: What if someone was a Nazi?

KATE [totally ducking the question]: Um, well, I don’t think there are too many Nazis around these days.

So, yeah. Leo and I may have different reasons for vilifying the Nazis (one based on a series of archaeological adventure movies from the ’80s, one based on knowledge of actual history), but the question ended up stumping both of us, and leaving me with an unsettling mental image of creepy, hate-filled people lurking in the stacks. Then we had some cookies.

Leo’s quote of the day: “Why don’t we buy it in bulk?” He honestly has no real sense of what this involves, or rather, he does get the concept, but doesn’t understand why everything isn’t available in bulk for us to gather in our own containers (join the club!). He pictures a store with spigots for cow milk and soy milk, along with grains and honey and gummy bears. Where is the bulk milk store? Maybe it exists and I just don’t know about it…

End of day report

6:22 pm, 11°C outside, 18°C inside

Meals, drinks, snacks

Coffee, soy milk, water

Breakfast: bagels with butter and honey; homemade granola with yogurt (Leo), soy (Matt) and cow (Kate) milk.

Snacks: cookies, apples

Lunch: leftover fajitas

Supper: potato skins with salsa, cheese, sour cream, mixed vegetables with sesame/garlic/dijon sauce

Garbage

• 1 2L milk carton (Recyclable. Switch to glass or bags. Our recent switch to lattes in the morning has decreased our spending on and consumption of 1L cream cartons, but now we’re blazing through the milk. But maybe we’re using less coffee? Hmm.)
• 2 coffee bags (Garbage. Unavoidable? We buy the coffee in 5 lb bags which reduces the number of bags we go through, but we do order it from another city and have it delivered – probably not ideal.)
• 1 butter wrapper (Garbage. See yesterday)
• 1 potato bag top (Recyclable. Unavoidable.)
• 1 lottery ticket (Recyclable. Unfortunately. Didn’t win.)
• 1 plastic strip from top of a resealable plastic freezer bag (Recyclable. Unavoidable.)
• 6 tiny yarn ends from finishing a glove
• late-breaking, surprise addition! Matt, desperate for a coffee at school today, used a disposable coffee cup. It’s now in the bag. (Recyclable. One-time purchase.)

The garbage bag looked fuller today than yesterday’s, but there are actually fewer items in it, and the biggest ones (coffee bags) are very occasional items. Tomorrow, I am going to shop around for some food and drinks (milk, in particular) that come with minimal packaging.

MAX: Hot gazubies, we did well!

Purchases

$1.33, coffee – Matt

Tomorrow

Eliminate the car…. yikes.

Consumption

 Steps to take today

• create list of things we need to obtain this week, see what we can eliminate and figure out ways to get everything else without purchasing new items

• don’t buy anything new!

• track a normal day’s garbage creation by collecting each family member’s garbage for one day (trash, recyclables and food waste)

9:30 am, 4°C outside, 17°C inside

(We hadn’t sparked the furnace before this week, we figured we may as well tough it out until the end of the experiment)

I am the first to put something in my garbage collection bag – damn! Didn’t even think about the kleenex I used to blow my nose. However, this reminded me that last week I threw out a queen-sized bed sheet that had a tear in it. Luckily, that garbage can didn’t have anything else in it, and hadn’t been emptied this week. Retrieved the sheet, and now it’s in the laundry, and the kids and I are going to make it into handkerchiefs this afternoon. Lesson learned!

Not sure about collecting compostables in our little bags – won’t it be smelly? What is the point of keeping the food waste if we’re already composting it? I guess we can attempt to use more of the food that we eat, and put less in the compost. I already usually keep carrot, celery, onion peelings and ends in the freezer to make stock, but for example, how can we re-purpose an apple core? Anyway, we’re in for the full experience, so we’ll do this, although we might keep our food waste in the freezer so the house doesn’t start to smell like the compost heap. (It’s so freakin’ cold in here, though, I’m not sure the food would go bad… maybe we *could* get rid of the fridge if we never turn on the heat.)

12:45 pm, 8°C outside, 17°C inside

Created more garbage by making our own handkerchiefs, but just a little – the elasticized corners of the old queen-sized sheet. I’m ready to cut, but the sheet on the floor is currently being used for an exuberant game of Indiana Jones Goes To Akator, which seems to involve Leo running around the first floor, jumping and thumping loudly, and occasionally waving “the key to Akator” (a hideous coconut monkey head Matt bought at a thrift store last year and spray painted gold to be the idol in an Indiana Jones scavenger hunt). The thing is disgusting, so I’m sad/happy to report that this secondhand purchase is still kicking around. Photo evidence below.

Done! 59 hankies – just like that. Maybe when we get to the no-TV, candlelight portion of our week, I can embroider pretty little things on them. And, well, maybe not.

End of day report

6:30 pm, 8°C outside, 18°C inside

Meals, drinks, snacks

Coffee, hot chocolate with milk

Breakfast: Bagels with cheese, butter, honey; homemade granola with soy (Matt) and cow (Kate) milk.

Snacks: Cookies, apples

Lunch: Trashy mac and cheese (Kate and kids)

Supper: Chicken/tofu fajitas with cheese, guacamole and salsa.

Purchases

Zero! I think this particular challenge may not be too much of a stretch for us. Accustomed to living within modest means, we rarely buy anything new, and my tendency toward sparseness around the house means we don’t generally do a lot of shopping unless something is really necessary. Which isn’t to minimize how much I lust after cute running gear and new fall outfits for all of us, not to mention the ROLLER SKATES I desperately want, but usually, those kinds of purchases are just not in the cards. Maybe as the week progresses, this will prove to be a harder step.

We did make a list of things we need this week, but it’s pretty short – I feel I must be forgetting something. Max needs new gloves, which I’m hoping I can find at Value Village, while I’m still driving, and we need to pick up a couple prints at the photo-finishing place for Matt’s parents who are about to leave for the winter. Not sure how we’ll deal with the latter yet…

 Garbage collected

• One foil butter wrapper (Garbage. Unavoidable if we want to keep eating butter, which we emphatically do.)

• One 2L milk carton (Recyclable. Switch to returnable glass jars? Do milk bags create less waste? Would we be able to use this much milk before it goes bad? Research this.)

• One avocado bag (Garbage. Buy avocados in reused bags from home.)

• One macaroni and cheese box (Recyclable. Buy macaroni in bulk in reused bags.)

• One cheese sauce bag (Garbage. Buy the powder in bulk in reused bags.)

• One Premier Fitness flyer (Recyclable. Make No Junk Mail sign for mailbox. Done!)

• Two plastic tofu wrappers (Garbage. Buy another kind of tofu – bulk, in our own containers.)

• One bed sheet elastic and bits of spare fabric (Garbage. Make mummy wrappers for dress-up box with extra fabric.)

• Four apple cores (Compost. Unavoidable, but we could probably eat more of each apple, and compost less.)

• Four avocado pits (Compost. Unavoidable. We’re likely to eliminate this purchase when we start local shopping.)

• Peel from four avocados (Compost. Unavoidable.)

• Three bits of chicken fat (Compost. Unavoidable.)

• Two tea bags (Compost. Could switch to loose tea, but still composting tea leaves.)

We’re feeling pretty good about the garbage today, but I have no doubt this will become harder when I do the big grocery shop this week.

Random questions that popped into my mind as I plan the rest of our week

Can we get rides with other people if they’re going to the same place we’re going anyway?

Can we cheat on eating locally rules when we’re at someone else’s house for supper?

(I figure both of these things are allowable in the name of a) carpooling and b) common courtesy, but I don’t know… probably if I was really hardcore I’d say no to both.)

Looking ahead

No new purchases, PLUS no garbage tomorrow… deep breath….

No problem!

Tomorrow is Day One of our No Impact Week, and I’m feeling good about it. I think it’s going to be hard in ways we can easily imagine (not buying any food with any packaging at all, walking/biking to and from school come rain, sleet, snow…), and in ways we haven’t yet thought of. But, I think we’re all game. I hope.

Tonight over supper, we all talked about what we thought would be the most challenging parts of the week, and what aspects of the week we thought would be educational and inspirational after the week is over and done with. We’ll see at week’s end if our predictions match up with the way things actually unfolded.

Max (eight) is most concerned about Day Five’s challenge to reduce energy use (i.e. turn off the TV!). The kids only have TV time on the weekends, so he’s not worried about the first couple days of this challenge, but we definitely will need to use some creativity to get through those weekend mornings, and it seems likely the parents will have to give up their little sleep-in next weekend. Max thinks that the most educational part of the week will be reducing consumption, and coming up with ways to get what we need without buying new stuff.

Leo (four) is primarily concerned with missing out on Lego Indiana Jones on the PlayStation (are we sensing a theme here?!), but doesn’t seem like he’ll be losing any sleep over that at this point. I think he’s pretty excited to save and examine our garbage for the week to see how we’re doing in reducing our trash.

Matt (thirty-six) thinks that the trash-reduction is likely to be the most challenging step, given how little we can now buy that is not grossly overpackaged. Not that we’ll be buying new things, but we go through a lot of stuff that we already have that will create trash this week - canned foods, toilet paper packaging, plastic wrap, etc., etc. He is looking forward to the time we’ll spend together in conversation that we usually miss out on. If we’re eliminating extra lighting, we’ll be “forced” to hang out in close proximity to the candelabra and create moments that just didn’t exist before to talk, play and be together as a family.

I (thirty-five) am fairly certain that Tuesday’s challenge to give up fuel-guzzling transportation will be the hardest. While I’m pretty sure that I could, albeit grudgingly, give up driving and hoof it around town for a few days, I’m equally confident that the children will hate this and that our walks to and from school will be long, torturous, and (according to Environment Canada) wet affairs. This will push my listening-to-whining-while-walking-painstakingly-slowly capabilities to the limit. We also have two out-of-town visits with grandparents planned that can’t be rescheduled, so will be using some serious creativity, if not downright cheating, to get around that. I am most excited for slashing both consumption and garbage. After an initial panic about things like tofu which comes wrapped twice in plastic, and then wondering about buying in bulk if I have to use plastic bags to collect my little spices, I took a breath, gave it some thought, and am now super-excited to get started on that kick. I have tiny plastic bags in my purse from old produce purchases, so anytime, anywhere, I can buy fruits, vegetables, or bulk dry goods without having to use a new bag for storage. I think looking at what we throw out Day One vs. the rest of the week will be really eye-opening, and I hope we can maintain a whole lot of these consumption/waste habits after the week is up.

A few random things I think might be hard:

I guess booze is pretty much out, unless we go for a family-sized bottle of something, or a keg (hmmm!). Our drinks of choice are beer and wine, both of which create waste pretty quickly. Given the whining I’m anticipating as we walk everywhere, I’m a little sad at the thought of missing out on the odd glass of wine after bedtime.

I’m about out of my cheap but wonderful exfoliating face wash… can’t buy new stuff now, need to keep washing my face! Perhaps I’ll embark on a make-it-yourself-facial-cleanser search, despite my initial distaste at the idea of this kind of endeavour. I suppose just because I make it at home doesn’t mean it has to be some kind of oily patchouli mess.

We’re about due to run out of a few staples, now that I think of it. Toothpaste is definitely running low, and I’m not sure about the toilet paper situation. We’re allowed to buy food – surely toilet paper can be counted in that category – it comes from the same store!!

We dry our clothes in the dryer a lot. I like my dryer. I like soft, lint-free, warm clothes. Darn.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say part of my reluctance to adopt some of these strategies is definitely a kneejerk flashback to being a consumerism-obsessed pre-teen in a house run by two commited political and environmental activists. While I have certainly moved well beyond that phase, the thought of using some kind of unflavoured, unpackaged, unbranded product, or bringing my own greasy, crumby ziploc to the health-food store to refill, or schlepping a granny cart to the store for groceries brings that 12-year-old back for a quick second. [Eyes rolling: "Are you SERIOUS?! Put BAKING SODA in my mouth?! That's disugusting! What about the fresh minty taste? What will my friends think if they see a used baggie filled with bulk baking soda on my counter?! PuhLEAZE!!"]

However. It’s been 23 years, and I’ve come to realize a few things. The thoughts my parents were trying to foist on me as an adolescent weren’t born out of a desire to torture me and make me a smelly, unpopular loser. Shorter showers, less packaging, eating local, organic food, and reusing stuff is smart, not dorky. And they certainly told me all this at the time, I was simply too busy being self-absorbed to notice. It’s kind of like that Far Side comic where the owner’s talking to his dog earnestly for a while, and all the dog hears is “mumble, mumble, mumble, DOG FOOD! Mumble, mumble, WALK! Mumble, mumble, mumble, TREAT!” For a few years there, all I heard was “Mumble, mumble, DON’T SHOWER, mumble, mumble, mumble, NO GRAPES! Mumble, mumble, mumble, TAKE THIS GRANNY CART DOWNTOWN WHERE ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE!”

Luckily for all of us in my family, it didn’t take too long for my earplugs of self-absorption to be tossed aside in favour of a more involved, engaged, active life, and I’m excited to embark on this week with my family and see where it takes us. And if I’m left feeling whiny and put-upon, I’ll think of this woman, who did a whole lot of stuff to green her life over the course of a whole year, including getting rid of her fridge. That’s her fridge, people! Anything I have to do for eight days is going to be a hell of a lot easier than that.