Adventures of an Enviro-mentalist

plebeian

Yes, that hyphen is deliberate.

So here's the plan. As someone who has had to temporarily drop out of university due to depression, and the fact that said mental illness both makes it hard to find a job and is made better by setting and achieving goals, I've set myself a little project over the summer: to make the family home much more environmentally friendly.

We already do a fair amount of green stuff. We grow some of our own veg, we recycle somewhat and we have a wood-burning stove and a shed full of logs that were once dead trees in the garden.

The main problem is the amount of waste. TVs and laptops are left on standby 24/7, food often goes off well before it was ever going to be eaten. My parents work 15 miles away, so I'm not expecting them to cycle to work, but their workplaces are less than 1/2 mile away from each other so the not carpooling is criminal. It's also only about a mile into town - easily cyclable even for them, even with a bit of shopping on the back.

My aims are thus:
- Get everyone onto a more vegetarian diet. As I have the most free time, I'm left to do the cooking and thus can control the meals. For the same nutritional content, meat production generates four times as much CO2 as veg. Also, source food as locally as possible.
- Be vigilant about wasted energy and food. Switch TVs and computers off when they are clearly not in use, cook nearly off food and freeze it.
- Having already fixed what was formerly my grandfather's bicycle, get the parents on it whenever possible. I already cycle everywhere I can, mainly because I can't drive.
- Recycle everything that it is possible to recycle. Macro-recycle, preferably. Buy something brand new only when it can't be sourced second hand AND is needed or would enable items to work (eg a new bike part to make the whole bike functional).

Dear moneysavers, I would also like to ask for your help.
I would also like to be able to make as much as I can myself. I have heard of people making their own body butters and cosmetics before - I want to know how far I can take this. I want your recipes on how to make everything. They don't necessarily have to be all-natural, though if they are made from things that I can grow myself that would be a real boon. From cleaning products, to shampoos, to bike degreaser - all would be helpful.

Any other eco-ideas would also be much appreciated.

Yours gratefully (and hopefully),
Will

Mcfi5dhc

Good luck with your quest, also I hope your depression gets itself sorted soon

My advice would be:
Chillout about Tvs on standby - its a bit of a myth that we could all retire a few years earlier if everything was switched off every night. If you do it, fine, but you might save a couple of pence a week by doing it. Also, you'll spend a fortune (and years) trying to find alternatives to GU10's - if you don't want to pay for them, just change the fittings - I know you didn't mention them, but most days someone does.

Buy/beg/obtain an electricty moniter so you can see how much your using real time - a lot of eleccy companies give them away for free now.

Use FREECYCLE - be prepared for a few timewasters, but generally its quite good.

Use moodgym - google it if you have never heard of it.

Car sharing is good, if you are going to drive diesel or LPG is great - petrol is like throwing fivers out of the window every five miles. Don't change your car to save fuel though, you'll probably never recover the depreciation.

Making soap & cleaning products is easy peasy - from there you can learn how to make all the other cosmetics you used to buy. Go on amazon for books on this

Buy non-perishables in bulk - i.e. from Costco. Don't buy perishables unless you will be using it 100% on the day (or next day at a push)

Avoid anyone who says solar-thermal panels are a good idea

Can't think of anything else, sorry

plebeian

Thanks for that Mcfi5dhc.
I've signed up to Freecycle and put something out to offer.
Having had to Google GU10s I think we might have them somewhere. Have to ask my dad about that.
Are there any books you'd recommend?

Gigervamp

If you want to learn how to make soaps and cosmetics, I highly recommend the yahoo group UKSoaping and the Soapdish forum.

Ken68

Good for you Pleb....foraging is great, a manual system of solar hot water is do-able and cheap to set-up, would make good use of your time.
Radio instead of TV. Electric blanket throws instead of switching on the heating. Ideal for spring/autumn. Collect rainwater and have a filtering system to use in the house.
Lots more.

plebeian

Hey Ken68.
I was thinking about foraging, there are some woodlands nearby and it would make a nice short bike ride or long dog walk (or a picnic lunch if I'm lucky!) Any guides you can point me towards?
Water conservation is a bit out of my league ATM, though rainwater collection sounds good, especially as with the amount of cycling I'm doing I can sometimes end up with 2 or more showers per day... eep! I'd also like to try a grey-water recycling system (filtered waste water) for plant watering, which would help during the summer when there isn't so much rainfall. That's a bigger project, though.
Thanks muchly everyone!

pmorrisjones

Re- 2 showers a day. Can you have one shower and one good wash (strip washes my parents used to call them) at the sink? I have measured water use (sad g.t that I am - but on a water meter) and 2 bathroom sinkfuls of water is still less than a shower (have to change water after my "bits" are done - sorry old habits and all, also too much info.)
Re-depression - don't wack yourself out doing too much - allow yourself to smell the roses too. Aims are good for depression but taking time for just dreaming is good too. Good luck

radiohelen

The Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall river cottage books have lots of foraging info in them. Most libraries have them or can get them for you. The River cottage bread book is ace - tells you how to make a bread oven from clay you've blagged. Most foraging is common sense though and there's lots of internet info available. We made fantastic hedgerow jelly and last autumn with a few bits of internet info. We've been living off nettle quiche/gnocci for the last few weeks.... it's gorgeous.
As for recipes for soaps/cleaning products - head on over to the Moneysaving Old Style forum because it's full of things like that. I've been buying white vinegar in bulk for years now since learning about it's magical powers on there. Most people get by with vinegar, bicarb and stardrops along with some bleach/disinfectant.
We've been trying to recycle as much as we can with our baby - you can see how we've been managing at www.recycledbaby.co.uk.
Hx

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I would suggest increasing the vegetable content of meals first, then gradually reducing the meat so you don't meet with outright rebellion. For example, if they want a chicken meal, I suggest one where the meat is cut into small chunks - you can reduce the meat from 1 breast per person to 2 between 3.

Spaghetti bolognese can be transformed into a yummy vegan sauce just by substituting grated courgette for the meat and chucking in random veg. I would add steamed broccoli and a touch of chilli, but that's just me - it makes it more of an Arrabiata then, but it convinces the suspicious that the sauce is a specific recipe and not just one where you have 'stolen' the meat away from them.

If you like curries, but usually have pure meat, I would suggest introducing a little side dish of a mushroom one, maybe a potato one and hopefully they will like them enough that you can gradually make more veggie curry than meat, maybe being able to cut down to just one portion of meat between 3 with massive servings of veggie curry.

I would be wary of the car sharing. I used to be dependent upon other people for transport and I hated it. I was constantly having to do everything when their needs in mind. As you don't yet drive and haven't got a lot of work experience, you don't know just how miserable it can be to have no means of getting home without relying on someone else all the time - once you have had a prolonged period of independence, you might feel differently about it.

And as apparently, the majority of 35 year olds already have the start of arthritis in their necks, the odds of forcing your parents onto a pushbike is unlikely and probably a bit dangerous. You wouldn't get me on a pushbike now.

I applaud your aims, but implementing changes needs to be subtle.

rubytuesday

Richard Mabey's Food For Free is a good book on foraging.

foxgloves

Getting an electricity monitor is a good idea. We found our supplier (Npower) gives them away free so we asked for one, rigged it up and it really shows which appliances are gobbling electricity. You can programme it with the unit price you're paying and set a daily target too. If our figure goes over a certain amount, we stop & have a think about what we've done that day that's used more power than usual. I have to admit it wasn't initally being green that got me into wanting to reduce power bills, it was the huge amounts of bonuses that the energy company bosses pay themselves. I decided that we weren't going to add a single penny more to their pockets than we had to. So far, we've had a reduction on monthly payments for both gas & electricity, plus refunds on both too. Reckon this monitor will get it lower still