Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Carbon Fast — Day 5

Remember your baptism today, and the power of water.  Try to conserve: Leave a bucket in the shower or kitchen sink, and collect “grey water” to water the plants.  Have a lawn?  Consider a rain barrel so you can water the lawn with rain.

If you visit the bathroom in our apartment, you will be greeted by an array of plastic jugs.  We use these to collect the cold water that comes out when we’re waiting for our pipes to warm up before showering.  Technically, this is not grey water, since it’s fresh out of the tap and perfectly potable, but that’s all the more reason not to let it run down the drain.  We share our apartment with a decent number of houseplants that happily drink this water.

I’ve toyed with the idea of using grey water to flush the toilet, but we haven’t taken that step yet.

While the tip suggests using a rain barrel to water a lawn, I recommend using that water for a vegetable garden — much tastier than all of that grass that leads to so much wasted water and oil (in the form of fertilizers and gas mowers).

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Daily action from http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf

Carbon Fast – Day 4

Make one of your journeys more environmentally-friendly today.  Could you combine two trips?  Carpool rather than driving solo?  Bike or walk, or take the bus, instead of driving?

This line of questioning occurs almost every time we venture out of the house.  Ideally, the answer is bike or walk.  If we drive, we think about how to maximize the trip, by making multiple stops in the area we visit.

Hopping in the car to run to the store for just one thing?  Think about whether you really need that item immediately.  Can it wait?  Can you make do with something you already have or find something similar at a store that is bikeable or walkable?

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Daily action from http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf

Carbon Fast – Day 3

Go meat-free today.  Choosing meat-free meals is one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

Yesterday and today’s carbon fast actions barely created a ripple around here.  Before I became vegetarian, the Fridays of Lent required a bit more thought, and they often included some type of fish.

Despite some potential health benefits and (perhaps) having a smaller carbon footprint than meat, fish and other seafood still have environmental costs.  In the Midwest, most seafood must be shipped a good distance to reach our stores and tables.  Demand for fish leads to overfishing, a serious problem in many parts of the world, especially marginalized areas where people rely on the sea for their food.  Fish farming, commonly used for salmon, involves feeding the fish lots of unnatural food, like corn, along with artificial coloring to provide that nice “healthy” pink hue.

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Daily action from http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf

Carbon Fast – Day 2

Turn down your thermostat by at least one degree.  Aim for 68 degrees (or lower) during the day and 60 degrees at night.  Program your thermostat if you can.  Always turn the heat off when you leave home.

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Daily action from http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf

Carbon Fast – Day 1

Remove one light bulb from your home and live without its light for the next 40 days.  This will decrease your energy use and act as a reminder of your Lenten Carbon Fast.

If you pick a light in some obscure part of your living space that you never use anyway, that kind-of defeats the purpose here.  What light are you removing and why?

I put tape over the light switch for the overhead light in our kitchen and used the pull chain to turn off the light that is part of the ceiling fan in our bedroom.  Why two lights?  Well, I picked the kitchen light, but my husband wasn’t crazy about the idea, so we added the bedroom light as a back-up.  If having the kitchen light off REALLY isn’t working (i.e., if we’re cutting off fingers in the dark) we can turn it back on and still have the bedroom light out.

I wanted to pick a light whose absence we would notice, and the kitchen light qualifies.  I certainly noticed this morning, but it will actually become less noticeable as the days get longer and the mornings get brighter.

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Daily action from http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf