Consider some of the most obvious edits that we can make to our daily lives:
- Changing our light bulbs and turning off the lights
- Carpooling to work
- Starting a garden (and composting to fertilize it!)
- Um, recycling?
- Riding your bike for short distances instead of driving
- Unplugging all unused electronics
- Turning down the heat or air conditioning in your home
The only way to motivate all of us to make such simple changes, and possibly dozens of others, is to help people find a reason, their own personal reasons. People only do what they want to do, right?
This article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine by Michael Pollan suggests a few reasons for living a greener lifestyle, and he also addresses the most basic question: why bother?
Pollan suggests that perhaps it is a matter of personal virtue. Virtue, defined as moral excellence and rightousness, is certainly one motivator. As many people feel anger over watching someone litter (you can see the result immediately), there are others who would feel the same if their neighbors weren’t recycling.
Pollan also suggests that perhaps each individual could influence others to become more conscious of living a sustainable lifestyle, that it isn’t such a lonely effort after all. That perhaps it could become cool to NOT have things, instead of having everything. I think this as a viable possibility. This type of infectious cultural movement is seen in many places - otherwise how could we have such a difference in sustainable living habits in communities from, say, Portland, OR to Omaha, NE?
And, once we find our reasons - whether to feel better about our personal values, to join a hip cultural green trend, or to preserve the earth for our future generations - all it takes is that one bold but very difficult move to make a change, and just maybe join your local carpool or learn something about gardening. Once you start a garden, you never know what challenge you might feel like tackling next. Solar panel roof? You go.
Brian O’Malley, the chef/instructor from Metro, informed me about the Nebraska Food Cooperative. Here is their mission:
“To foster a local food community and promote a culture of stewardship by cultivating farmer-shopper relationships, promoting the enjoyment of healthful food, increasing food security through diversity, and enhancing overall rural sustainability.”
If you are a person who believes in supporting locally grown, organic food, then this is exactly where you should be shopping!
In order to participate in the Co-op, there is a membership fee. You can buy a share of the Co-op for $100 if you live in Nebraska and become a voting member (help to decide what’s going on, since you are a part-owner), and then pay a $20 membership fee, which is waived the first year. Or, you can pay a fee of $40 per year to be a non-member shopper.
You can shop for the most unique and most tasteful groceries online, and then have them delivered to your area at least once a month. For example, Jane’s Benson Health Market is where I would need to pick up my food order on delivery day. Their website provides delivery pickup times and locations that are nearest to you.
There are a lot of smart benefits to consider. You’re buying from people in your community, which supports your local economy. Because you’re purchasing goods from a short distance, you’re also supporting food which requires less transportation cost. And, bonus - your food is so much healthier when you eat local!
The Co-op website includes a downloadable list of foods that you can order, which include in-season fruits and veggies, frozen pies, jams and jellies, local livestock, homemade crafts, handmade soaps, Thanksgiving turkeys, and so much more! And, the more we can support the Co-op, the more products will be able to be provided.
I also found this cool tidbit - they’re coming out with a cookbook. The cookbook, entitled Twelve Dishes from Here, will benefit The Nebraska Food Cooperative. Copper Core Consulting, a faculty/student consortium at Metro’s Institute for the Culinary Arts, is helping to create the book. The release date will be in early fall 2008, and they are asking for input regarding price, content, and design. So, if you have time, please visit www.mccneb.edu/culinary to provide your opinion.
Please check out the Co-op’s website and let me know if you are involved or if you’re thinking about doing so! Thanks!
The power of one person. The power of one family. One country. One oil spill.
One Earth Day.
The Power of One was the theme of this year’s Earth Day Omaha. While I originally imagined it referring to the power of one person, it transfers to various subjects.
After this year’s Earth Day Omaha, my coworkers started a discussion with me over lunch. They asked about the events. How it went. Then they started to discuss their own recycling woes, their opinions about being green. My boss asked me what else our office could do to be greener. (A lot.)
So the power of one Earth Day inspired how many conversations, I wonder?
And just whose idea was it to start Earth Day Omaha?
You know there’s usually one member of a family who makes recycling easier for everyone else. There’s one member of a neighborhood committee who initiates green discussions and efforts.
Hey, there’s only one Oprah. Someone needs her to go crazy green. Endorse Earth Day.
Earth Day could join the ranks of Eckhart Tolle and Obama. And Dr. Phil.
You don’t have to be a super-national endorser of feel-goodness, though.
All you gotta do is teach your kids to protect the world for their kids, who can then chide their friends for not car-pooling to school, who then might even convince their parents that they need bikes for trips to get ice cream, and so on.
The power of recycling one newspaper equals putting you in the habit of recycling every newspaper.
I think you get my point. I love this year’s Earth Day Omaha theme.
Um, hello!!! Earth Day Omaha is this Saturday! From 12 PM to 6 PM in Elmwood Park there will be a schedule of musical performances and guest speakers who know a thing or two about being green. From 6 PM to 8 PM, Omaha can enjoy a beer garden, live music, and food. Nice start to a fun Saturday! (Yes, I said “start”. I know you crazy Omahans aren’t going to quit there! You’re going to go straight home and change your lightbulbs to energy-conserving swirly versions.)
One great way to know how to become involved with Omaha’s green initiatives is to visit the Green Omaha Coalition website. The Green Omaha Coalition is working steadily toward a larger membership with more participation from the community. Their goal is to make Omaha one of the greenest cities in the country. Remember this article, about the 50 Greenest Cities? We can be a part of that list, too, especially by partaking in events like Earth Day Omaha.
The Green Omaha Coalition has five subcommittees which include Public Agency, Green Education, Green Neighborhood, Green Business, and Design and Construction. You can contact any of these committees here.
Right now, the Green Neighborhood Council is working on a Green Neighborhood Scorecard - a way for neighborhoods to measure their environmental health. They hope to implement this Scorecard within the next month. The Scorecard would be used by neighborhood leaders to call attention to specific environmental concerns. Hey - if we don’t know there’s a problem, how can we fix the problem, right? These scorecards will help to shed some “lime-light” on the situation. (Tee-hee.)
The Green Business Committee aims to develop a Green Business Directory that would serve as a resource for Omaha area businesses to contact for recycling and green education assistance. (This is something that I’d love to have as a resource for the small business that I work for! Can’t wait.)
ALSO, if you’re looking for Green Tips, I have found a jackpot! The Nebraska State Recycling Association’s website features a lot of green-focused articles. These articles are also categorized according to your needs as a citizen, as a business, as an educator, and information about how our government is helping. Here you can find a list of recycling locations, interesting facts, a list of state nature areas, and more.
Interesting fact from the Nebraska State Recycling Association: The average person produces five pounds of trash PER DAY. Whoa! Of course, you’re not average if you’re like my friend Mimi, Pro Recycler! We’ll have to learn more from her soon.
Use your treadmill? Eat your vegetables? I think we can do better for a Friday.
Besides reading Why Not Lime? on a regular basis, you might want to give some of the following suggestions a try.
1. Quit doing so much. Give your brain a little breathing space. Do something that involves letting loose a little bit. I enjoy reading posts on Think Simple Now, and I would like to recommend this one in particular. It coincides with my tip #5 today.
2. Use products with natural ingredients. Here’s a great collection of articles on product ingredients and what they mean from Gilden Tree. The first article helps to answer some of the mysteries surrounding what is involved when looking for truly organic products and what “natural” means. All of the articles provide guidance on what to look for when shopping for products that are good for your body.
3. Replace soda with oxygen. When I’m sitting in the office all day, I’m so tempted to grab a soda to help wake me up in the afternoon. Soda inevitably makes my brain feel anxious and my stomach kind of queasy. So, this winter, I started doing “wall sits“. The wall sits were intended to help strengthen my legs for an upcoming ski trip, but they also help to wake me up. Or, if you prefer, you could take a quick trip up and down a flight of stairs, or step outside to enjoy the day.
4. Eat dark chocolate today. According to WebMD, this delicious treat lowers blood pressure and contains antioxidants. Remember that everything’s better in moderation. (Even moderation? Haha.) Also, if you’re the social type, keeping dark chocolate at your desk provides an excuse for your coworkers to come and chat for a minute.
5. Give it up! Spend a weekend day cleaning out your closet. It’s spring, and unloading your unwanted or unnecessary belongings feels refreshing. I recently took some of my clothing to a consignment shop and collected $23. Omaha has a few consignment stores. The one I went to is the new and trendy Scout in Dundee.
Ever wonder if the greener products work just as well as the ones that you’ve already used?
Huddler is an awesome website that just contacted me, to let me know just how awesome they are.
This new site allows you to rate your green products and to check product reviews. Basically, it’s a Consumer Reports for those interested in sustainable living. I’m pleased to see that Seventh Generation laundry detergent got a strong review, and my friend Mimi approves of it as well. (I need some!!! And remember, at Whole Foods, you can just keep refilling the same laundry containers. Sweet.)
Another interesting site I found is a blog called Fake Plastic Fish. Beth is trying to completely eliminate disposable plastic use from her life. I like her post about plastic women’s razors, and the history of marketing for shaving for women… but I’m kind of an info geek like that.
Also, I know this is a little bit late, but I think it’s a good example of how we can make things healthier by using less chemicals. I guess I hadn’t thought about the extra dye that’s left on the egg after you peel it, until this video!
When I was a child, I had my own garden. It was a tiny squared-off section of my grandparents’ much larger garden where they grew everything from asparagus to yellow squash to sweet corn. They lived in the country, so there was space for an orchard with various fruit trees that grew cherries, apples, plums, and more, and bushes of raspberries and blackberries were a treacherous source of sweetness. There was an entire plot for potatoes - more than we could ever eat - and they raised chickens for the eggs.
Mint grew next to their house, and I’d chew on it because it was fascinating to me that something so weed-like could taste so good. Who knew I’d be buying it at Hy-Vee in little plastic boxes for homemade mojitos 20 years later?
My food’s path from the land to my dinner table has become wide and more complicated than my grandparents’ organic practices. It’s so much easier for the current urban dweller to pick up all of his food from the grocery store, although sometimes a farmer’s market in the summer might call his name.
I’d like you to imagine that you have just decided to move into the country to start your own 20-acre organic farm.
What would you grow? Would the physical labor of working the land, living in the dirt, buying work clothes for their durability, appeal to you?
To be an organic farmer, you would have the satisfaction of providing one of the most basic human needs. You could plant seeds and foster them into green bean plants, dig potatoes out of the soil, kneel to collect ripe red strawberries, and maybe even cook them into preserves to sell at a farmer’s market. You could gather eggs from the nests of feisty hens who have no choice but to give them up, day after day.
If the thought sounds terrifying, I understand how you feel. Most people feel the same way. I have found that these are activities that are more easily approached when you have been raised in a farming environment. But if the thought appeals to you, there are first generation farmers, and with the new demand for an organic food supply, it’s apparently becoming easier to begin your own farm.
This article from the New York Times inspired my post today. It provides a glimpse into the new organic farms, and how they are able to survive in the midst of the current corporate farm take-over. The article specifically mentions two organic farms that have been started by two sets of partners - both a male-female partnership, neither of them are couples - who are first generation farmers. The links throughout are awesome, and the multi-media interactive feature gives some sound clips from the actual farmers.
Even if you don’t feel ready to start your own farm, maybe you’d feel comfortable starting your own garden. Whether you’re growing fresh basil in your apartment windowsill or working a 10×10 foot plot in your backyard, it would at least give you the opportunity to know the exact origins of your food. You could even start a garden for therapeutic reasons, like as a really productive hobby.
Do you like to garden? Would you garden if you had the space and the time? What do you think of being a first generation farmer?
My good friend Gabby has been reading my blog, and she had an awesome question the other day.
Gabby wanted to know what she needed to do to start living a greener lifestyle. She wanted to know what the first steps are to living the LIME life.
Alright, so there aren’t any rules for starting. In fact, I’ve just started focusing on living a greener, more organic lifestyle since I’ve started this blog. This blog is my journey, and I’m inviting everyone else to join.
I’ve learned a lot the past few months. So. Here are three basic principles that I would recommend keeping in mind. While they aren’t necessarily specific practices, the big picture should help to guide you in making greener lifestyle choices.
1. Consume less. This is easy to imagine if you’ve had a parent or grandparent (or maybe you?) who lived through the eras of The Great Depression and of the World Wars - rationing, saving, and reusing products were so important then, and these practices still are now. The word “consumer” seems to have a positive connotation, right, because we’re all consumers, and we like new things. But click on the link to the definition of “consume” and you might rethink the word. Wherever and whenever you can, find joy in buying less and requiring less. Less is more.
2. Recycle and reuse more. Recycle the things that you don’t need, and keep around something that you think you could reuse. Don’t keep too much stuff around, though, or you’re going to end up on that TLC show Clean Sweep, arguing with your family about whether you have valid reasons for keeping your large collection of plastic bread wrappers and teen romance novels from the 80s. Try not to throw stuff away if you can 1) reuse it in a short period of time, 2) recycle it, or 3) give it away to someone who would use it.
3. Support green companies. Hey, you have to consume, so if you’re going to do it, try to buy from a company that is trying to support our environment as well as your health. Look for companies that are using all-natural ingredients, giving back to the community, using less packaging, or supporting green practices in their production process. The little bit extra that you might pay for these details will come back to you in a positive way.
What inspires you to live a greener life? Remember, I’m always learning, too, so I love to hear what you all have to say.
(Here, you can see that we are in disguise. I am hippie Cher, and she had these awesome 50s housewife glasses. Although we would have done this just for the blog, we didn’t. It was Halloween.)
I am bringing Mimi into the picture because she is a recycling queen, and she is very environmentally responsible.
And here, you can see that I am a model Why Not Lime? model, a.k.a. “Tree Hugger”:
… or tree leaner, as it were.
(Mimi told me to do it.)
I went to Mimi’s house the other night, and she shared a great deal of tips for recycling. Because I would like to interview Mimi for you at some point via video, I am going to share just a few of my favorite green tips that I learned from Mimi.
#1. She uses Seventh Generation and Method cleaning products, although she thinks that Seventh Generation is probably better. I think this would be a fairly simple switch to make. Just choose the environmentally safer brands instead of the not-so-safe brands. I’ll have to delve more into that topic later.
#2. She has stopped using plastic and paper bags at all stores - not just grocery stores. Yes, when you see Mimi in the mall, she will be carrying reusable cloth bags, just ready to be filled with… whatever it is she gets at the mall.
#3. Mimi has stopped using plastic bags in her smaller trash cans. Her goal is to use no plastic in her trash cans, except for the recycled ones in her tall kitchen garbage can. I just bought some Seventh Generation ones today. I’ll have to Consumer Report them for you.
#4. Mimi’s mom likes to take in soda/pop cans, so she sets them aside for her. Mimi’s mom also collects them at work. Apparently her mom makes a killing at the grocery store. If you’re not redeeming cans for nickels, like Iowa cans allow, there are “Golden Goat” locations around Omaha where you can collect money for non-nickel cans. I copied them from the Keep Omaha Beautiful website and pasted them below.
#5. Mimi’s whole family recycles. There are separate bins for different types of recylables. It is a smooth system that she claims has taken years to create, but they are diligent recyclers. After the system is down, it’s easy. So the lesson learned is to take one step at a time towards becoming more of an earth friendly consumer - don’t let it overwhelm you and your buying decisions.
THANKS to Mimi for being my star today, and I’m sure we’ll see more of her lime-savvy tips later - hopefully in a video blog.
Golden Goat Machines - 13 locations (24 Hours)20th & Vinton (Bag’N Save)51st & Harrison (Bag-N Save)107th & M (Bag’N Save)86th & West Center(Center Plaza)770 N. 114th St. (Cub Foods)30th & Ames (Phil’s Foodway80th & Blondo (No Frills)1402 Harlan Dr., Bellevue (No Frills)601 Galvin Road So., Bellevue(Shopko)90th & Fort(Shopko)144th & W. Center (Shopko)30th & Weber (Shopko)
I’ve been thinking of ways that I can make my house more green - or “lime” - the freshly squeezed version of green.
Like Spricket 24 suggested in the video yesterday, I could change all the lightbulbs in my house. I could start a compost pile (gross). I could even unplug everything that I’m not using. All of these steps are easy and could save me money. Or, they could save you money when utilized in your home.
But I’m in a unique situation. I have a roommate, and I don’t pay for electricity, or heat, or water. My roommate is also my landlord and owns the house. I rent a portion of the house and pay a flat fee every month. Money will not be my motivating factor in this situation, as it possibly could be for most others. Maybe even you.
My first lifestyle change: learning what to recycle, and how to recycle it. This is the current state of the recyling bin at my house.
There is a lot of sand in this bin. You can see the trail of sand from where I dragged it out of seclusion against the wall. There are also several other items that I dare not touch. It’s a man’s garage, and I don’t want to screw anything up.
I came home the other day, and my roommate was cleaning out his magazines. He had a stack of magazines nearly as tall as me, balancing against the wall. Outside of my bedroom door, there is now a pile of magazines waiting to be picked up on Thursday morning.
According to Keep Omaha Beautiful, I need to put the magazines in paper bags, and according to me, I need my roommate to do something with all that sand.
Keep Omaha Beautiful’s website provides a list of various items that are recyclable. Basically, clean paper. Newspaper. Paper books. Phone books. Magazines. Also, aluminum and steel cans, and plastic jugs and bottles… even my yogurt cups? Really? You have to check out this list! Apparently they don’t want my pizza boxes though. Hmm.
Good thing I stopped eating pizza yesterday. Again. Next time I’m at the grocery store, I will have to ask for paper bags instead of plastic. I need to stock up!
