Thursday, January 14, 2010

"these are a few of my favorite things"

A few small things I've done the past few weeks to have less impact:

1. when I do have to eat out :/ I don't put lids on my drinks to keep my plastic consumption down. I also re-use the straws.
2. renting books at the library instead of buying them
3. trying to stick to eating food that don't come in packaging (which so far only consists of fruits and veggies)
4. using cloths to clean up messes instead of paper towels
5. switched to a tooth paste that doesn't have sodium laurel sulphate in it
6. Pledging to buy nothing new for one year (only buying used, or borrowing)

Things I need to work on
1. watch less tv
2. drive less
3. I've had 3 sodas in the past two weeks, but would be preferable to cut soda out completely
4. learn to grow things and not kill the things I grow

projects to try when I get back into town next weekend:
1. make my own toxic free hand soap
2. make my own toxic free shampoo
3. check out other farmers markets and try to find local dairy farmers who treat their animals well to buy milk from

mans best friend:
Vinegar and baking soda-they can be used to clean everything! counter tops, bathrooms, your hair and teeth! The list goes on!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

the current buzzing of thoughts in my head

Over the past month or so bees keep making their way into my "life" (mostly threw media) one way or another and it has led me to become completely fascinated with bees and beekeeping! It first started with the discovery of an on line novel called 'Bee Quit' (www.readbeequit.com) which is a novel about the looming environmental catastrophe we need to save our selves from. It doesn't mention bees much but for some reason, having a dead bee on top of a smoke stack and the title made me ponder bees, and the disappearance of our bee population. Then a few weeks later after the "No Impact Man" showing I did for my community a woman introduced herself and gifted me a home made jar of honey that, she mentioned, was from her own bee hive. 'Bee hives in Los Angeles?' I thought to myself. I didn't realize that one could keep bees in within city limits! This made me fascinated. Then for xmas my mom got me "Pushing Daisies" which I had never seen before. One of the main characters keeps bees. She has cute little (non-conventional) bee hives and loves her bees to death. She keeps them on a roof top in the city. Once again, 'bee hives in a city'? Then the last straw that broke the camels back into my obsession with bees was reading an article about how they are about to remove the ban on bee keeping in NYC and mentioned urban beekeeping. That was it! I was hooked! Since that article I have spent way too much time reading everything I can about bee keeping! There's a group here in L.A. called Backwards Beekeeping that I'm hoping I can meet up with during one of their regular meetings so I can talk to people who have their own hives here in L.A.

I'm a little sad though because I live in an apartment complex on the first floor which would make it impossible for me to own bees but right now I feel like "if there's a will, there's a way" and I'm determined to find a way!!!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

get fresh!

My "no impact as much as possible" month of january is going ok. It was a slow start...the first couple of days I didn't do anything differently but now when I have to go grocery shopping and stuff I actually stop and think about the things I'm purchasing. I guess the biggest thing I'm focusing on, since its an obvious harm to the environment and the solution is easy, is cutting plastic out as much as possible. The first time I went grocery shopping it was tough because everything I "needed" to buy was wrapped in plastic. I was finally able to go to the farmers market today and was excited that I was able to buy a head of ice berg lettuce there because it ment that (not only was it local) but it wasn't wrapped in plastic! I'm able to get all my other fruits and veggies at the grocery store with out any plastic but the lettice is always wrapped in it so I was excited to buy some non-plastic lettuce today! I saw Beth's video from Fake Plastic Fish about all the plastic she consumed last year so I've decided to keep tract of all my plastic consumption during January and compare it each week to see if by the end of the month its a smaller amount then at the start of the month.

I definitely have still been doing stuff that has impact :/ but like for example there have been several times when I was tired or busy and was SO close to driving to mcdonalds, etc to get food and stopped and thought about it and was able to talk myself out of it due to the impact it would have on the environment and every time that happened I went home and ended up eating a super nutrisious and FRESH meal, which was always so much more enjoyable then scafing down greasy, fatty fast food! Or every time I am tempted to buy a bag of those delicous morsals of chocalte that are each wrapped in its individual wrapping. I may REALLY want that chocolate but its silly to buy them with all the waste that is created from their individual wrappers :/

I've been lucky enough to have the time every day to think of different changes I can make to my life that is better for the environment. I haven't had a chance to implement all these changes but at least I'm coming up with the ideas and getting a concrete plan to prepare myself for them so maybe they will stick!

My latest obsession has been bees! I don't have any more time to write about it at this moment. I thought, being out of school, I'd have more time to blog about my efferts but alas with a broken computer, working an extra 15 hours and trying to rid my life of all my junk on my 2 days off leaves me with very little time to come here and write but maybe within the next couple of days I can write about my new obsession with bees! <3