B.Y.O.T. (takeout)

I like to go out for dinner every now and again, and since we were out hiking yesterday, it seemed like a good day to go out. Also, we were at a B&B so it was either go out for dinner or eat hiking food in our room - go out for dinner was the much better choice. When we go out for dinner, it's highly likely that there will be leftovers...and there should be with the portion sizes given out by most restaurants! East Side Mario's was having a special where you could buy any pizza for $9.99 with the purchase of a beverage. Since both small and regular size pizzas were in the deal, I picked up the regular vegetarian (really, really good if you happen to be going). Now, I found the nutrition information online, and my pizza would have had 1080 calories. According to this site, I need to consume 2095 calories a day to maintain my weight (really, I should look at maybe dropping the 5 lbs I gained while vacationing!). Since I do eat two other meals in a day, and we snack while hiking, eating 1080 calories for dinner is overkill...not to mention I would have been way too full to enjoy the evening.

So...did I get some lovely styrofoam takeout containers? No! How anti-green would that be? Since I knew I'd be going out for dinner, I brought a couple pieces of reusable plastic containers with me and put the leftovers in them. Added bonus...I didn't have to wait for my takeout containers! For those of you who worry about others putting your food away, this takes care of that as well. And since you're already carrying a trendy cloth bag with you, you can just slip your takeout into your bag. (Ok, maybe my bag isn't that trendy, but yours might be) This was my first time bringing tupperware to a restaurant, but I'll definitely continue. It's easy, convenient, and I'm saving the world by reducing the amount of plastic and styrofoam needed!

No Space Gardening

One of the items on my list of wants when we were looking for a house was space for a vegetable garden. Unfortunately, the house we ended up buying had almost everything we wanted except room to garden. The yard is fairly small, but what really stops the vegetable garden is the fact that it's been highly landscaped (very attractively), with a lot of trees and shrubs. There's maybe a 3' X 4' plot in the exact middle of the yard that gets enough sun for a vegetable garden. This year, that's not stopping us! Our deck gets a fair bit of sun, so we have some container plants that are providing us with a few fresh veggies. Our neighbours gave us two tomato plants that they started from seeds, we planted a couple of potatoes that were sprouting in the basement, and my favourite is the four lettuce plants I bought at the grocery store and stuck in a pot.


Lettuce is one of those veggies that we really like to have some around for burgers and sandwiches, but find it really difficult to go through an entire head before it goes bad. The great thing about growing your own lettuce is that it doesn't go bad! We pick a leaf or two every time we need some and leave the rest on the plant to get bigger. So far, it's been over a month since we've bought lettuce in the store and the garden has kept us well supplied. Best of all, we haven't wasted any!

Container gardening is one eco-experiment I'll be doing again next year. Even living in an appartment in the city, container gardening would let you grow some of your own vegetables. It's great to be able to head out the backdoor (or balcony) to get some fresh tomatoes and lettuce whenever I want a sandwich. I'm not sure how the potatoes will work out yet - it's a fairly shallow container, but the plants are definitely growing. I'll have to wait until the fall to see how the harvest is. Next year, I think I'll add a handful of bell pepper plants to the collection.

How Low Can You Go?

Today our hydro, water and gas bills all came in the mail. This isn't as depressing as you might think, I like to check out our resource usage and compare against other months, and national averages.

Electricity:
Our average daily use: 11.51 kWh
Average Canadian household: 31.86 kWh
Average United States household: 30.71 kWh
Average European household: 12.79 kWh

As you can see, we're doing fairly well right now compared to the national average (just over 1/3), though I know there are people who do more. I think we've gotten to the point where if we make any more changes, we'll start seeing an impact on our lifestyle. So, why is our daily usage so much lower than the average? We use almost all CFLs in our lights (we have 46 lightbulbs in our house, I counted); we only have a couple that are the cold white light, or that take a few seconds to flicker on so we keep them in low usage areas. Our televisions and DVD players are attached to a power bar, and the power bar is turned off when they're not in use. This eliminates the vampire power still being consumed even when appliances are turned off. Our appliances are all fairly new, and all EnergyStar. And, last but not least, we turn things off when we're not using them! My laptop is fairly energy efficient, but it still uses 30 watts when it's plugged in, by unplugging the laptop when it's not in use I can save about 420 watts, or almost 0.5 kWh per day.

Electricity usage in Europe and the United States
Electricity usage in Canada

Water:
Our average daily use per person: 130 litres
Average Canadian: 329 litres
Average American: 380 litres

Again we're lower than the average, but I'm not honestly sure why. We shower regularly! We do try to make sure that we only run the dishwasher and washing machine with full loads. We do water our lawn, but we avoid overwatering. We have a low flow showerhead and a front load washing machine, but we haven't done anything else to conserve water.

Water usage statistics

Natural Gas:
Our annual usage: 1302 cubic metres
Average Canadian usage: 2700 cubic metres

Since natural gas usage varies widely by the season, I thought it was more useful to look at the annual usage - not too hard to do if you keep all your bills. Again, we're lower than the national average but not as dramatically. I'm sure the fact that we purchased a smaller house helped here, and the programmable thermostat we were given as a housewarming present means we don't heat the house while we're sleeping. It's also been helped along by my husband's insistence that if I'm cold, I should put on a sweater instead of making him miserably hot! :)

Have you ever checked your resource usage? How do you compare?

Why Didn't I Think of This??

Since I've been posting food waste photos on Fridays, the plastic bags I've been throwing out have really been bothering me. I realize that even if the food wasn't wasted, the bags still would be, but I thinkg the fact that I'm seeing all the bags at one time is what's really making me think about the waste. Since plastic bags are a petroleum product, they're created from non-renewable fossil fuels. I thought there had to be a better use for fossil fuels than carrying my vegetables home from the grocery store and then spending eternity in a landfill. A quick Google search showed some retail solutions where I could buy a reusable mesh/fabric bag for produce. That seemed like a good idea but a little pricey, so I kept searching. This forum was also looking for bags, but some members pointed out they'd be easy to make and all you'd need is some sheer fabric and a drawstring. Now, no one would ever call me an expert seamstress but I was confident I could manage the (max) four straight(ish) lines this would required. :)

I immediately went to the basement to look for a sheer curtain I thought might be down there - which is when I realized I need to clean the basement. Temporarily defeated, I went to the Salvation army the next day (by bike, not car!) and picked up one curtain and two things that might have been related to a curtain.


A few minutes with the sewing machine (alright, more like an hour, I had to read the manual again to figure out how to work the machine) and I have an awesome selection of bags, enough for all my grocery needs. I made three different sizes to suit apples/onions/bakery, peppers/broccoli, and mushroom/beansprouts. I figure three large, six medium and three small will be more than enough for my grocery needs. Here's a picture of the large and small bags in use. The large is holding 10 apples with no sign of strain, and the small is actually holding a couple of peppers...the bags are roomier than I thought they'd be.


No more plastic bags for me, I'm one step closer to being able to go plastic free! And with enough leftover fabric that odds are good some people are getting bags for Christmas.

Another bonus...as I picked to and from the grocery store, I added five more empties to my collection.

Green Dishwasher Detergent

I've been reading Green For Life and was inspired to try out the green dishwasher detergent recipe she's written about. In fact, there's so much information in this book, that I've decided I want to own my own copy (right now, I have the library copy). Luckily there's one available on bookmooch right now, so hopefully I'll have my own copy soon.

The Recipe
Mix equal amounts of Borax and baking soda. Use 2 tablespoons per dishwasher load in place of commercial detergent.



She also suggests using distilled white vinegar in place of a rinse agent (like JetDry), but since I still have rinse agent in my dishwasher, I didn't try that out this time. Maybe next time.

The detergent was easy to make, and I happened to have Borax and baking soda at home, so I didn't need to purchase anything! But...the real test....are the dishes clean?



Now, I know what some of you are thinking; "the dishes can't be clean if you're not using a lot of harsh chemicals and getting a lemon-fresh scent" Wrong! The Borax and Baking Soda combination is commonly considered to be an excellent substitute for toxic cleaning chemicals. Don't believe me? Search on Google, you'll find tons of articles including this one which says the same recipe can be used for laundry detergent. I'll have to do some more research to make sure it'll work in a high efficiency washing machine before I try that out though.


Ok, so now you're convinced the soap substitute is ok, but is it environmental to wash dishes using the dishwasher compared to washing by hand? And can't you get the dishes cleaner by hand? Absolutely it's environmental, and no, you can't get them cleaner by hand. This excellent summary shows why dishwashers are the right choice environmentally speaking: "Scientists at the University of Bonn in Germany who studied the issue found that the dishwasher uses only half the energy, one-sixth of the water, and less soap than hand-washing an identical set of dirty dishes. Even the most sparing and careful washers could not beat the modern dishwasher. The study also found that dishwashers excelled in cleanliness over hand washing." Keep in mind that the dishwasher can use much hotter water than your hands can stand, and that hot water is great for killing bacteria. The key for environmental use of the dishwasher is that you must only run full loads, let the dishes air dry, and you shouldn't pre-rinse all the dishes (really, that's why you HAVE a dishwasher, so you don't have to wash the dishes!). Scraping food off before loading the dishwasher is recommended, but rinsing wastes water. You don't have a family of six that makes enough dishes each meal to run a full dishwasher? That's ok, neither do I! I speak from experience when I tell you that the dirty dishes aren't going anywhere, you can let them sit in the dishwasher for another meal or two until it's full enough to run. It doesn't take long. :)

So, environmentally speaking I should continue to use my dishwasher, and I should switch to a Borax/Baking Soda detergent mix (possibly with vinegar instead of rinse agent). Does it make sense financially? For my analysis, I used the prices available right now at my local No Frills grocery store. Yes, I could probably get detergent cheaper by buying on sale, but I can probably get baking soda cheaper by buying in bulk and on sale as well, so I figure it probably evens out. Since I couldn't get exactly the same sizes of everything, I'll break it down into a price per 100g to compare costs.

Traditional Detergent
1.8 kg of No Name lemon scent dishwasher detergent @ $3.29
Cost: $0.18 per 100 g

Earth-Friendly Detergent
2.13 kg of Seventh Generation Eco-Friendly dishwasher detergent @ $7.99
Cost: $0.38 per 100 g

Borax & Baking Soda mix
2 kg of Borax @ $5.27 or $0.26/100 g
500g of No Name baking soda @ $0.99 or $0.20/100g
Cost: $0.23 per 100 g (50 g Borax, 50 g baking soda)

So the Borax and Baking Soda mix isn't quite as economical as No Name dishwasher detergent, but significantly less expensive than some of the earth-friendly alternatives. I suspect I could probably bring the price down a little by looking for Borax and baking soda at a warehouse club like Costco to see what bulk pricing can do. Even if I can't, the price difference isn't that big (and I'm not using No Name detergent right now). I'm going to call this eco-experiment a success, and homemade dishwasher detergent will have a place in my house! (and hopefully this means I'll never run out of detergent again...so annoying when that happens....)