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Scaling back eco-nagging: going zero waste lifestyle


shootingstar

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https://torontolife.com/city/life/i-went-green-maybe-a-little-too-green/

i'm not sure I could...ie. wash my hair without shampoo (soap wouldn't work since it would leave film/dullen my hair probably), make my own deodorant (well, I don't use any...ok.  I've asked dearie to smell me...he doesn't notice anything most of the time), etc.

I don't have a garden/grow any balcony container veggies, etc.  I cook from scratch 99% time at home, make sure when I buy fashion, it truly are garments that will last for several years/I will wear instead of fast fashion crappy clothing, I try to buy local veggies/fruits in summer-fall often, I don't own/use car for past few decades.  I live in a condo which is smaller carbon footprint probably than a large single family dwelling home..bulk use of water, gas, etc...  It would be nice, one day that largish condo buildings had solar panels to draw upon some of their own power,  However solar panel technology has to improve, otherwise it's a ton of panel installations.

For sure, I couldn't stand eco-nagging in a relationship. I can change my habits, because I want to, not because of a loved one lecturing me.

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It is really hard.  Some towns are easier than others, if they have stores with lots of bulk items.  

It's a struggle with the way our foods are packaged.  Celery for instance.  You can not get bulk celery these days.  It is always packed in a plastic bag.  Plastic bags are not recycled in my town.  Recycling is so messed up in my town.  It's a bummer and makes it super difficult to be eco-conscious. I try to do my part.  I am proud of my footprint.  It is not bad compared to many around me.  My truck is decent sized, but we could not function without a truck. You can't get to the trailheads without a vehicle.  We also use our vehicle for community projects to haul tools.

Our home is very small.  It's one of the smallest in our neighborhood.  I would never fit or be happy in a condo.  

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20 minutes ago, Dirtyhip said:

It is really hard.  Some towns are easier than others, if they have stores with lots of bulk items.  

It's a struggle with the way our foods are packaged.  Celery for instance.  You can not get bulk celery these days.  It is always packed in a plastic bag.  Plastic bags are not recycled in my town.  Recycling is so messed up in my town.  It's a bummer and makes it super difficult to be eco-conscious. I try to do my part.  I am proud of my footprint.  It is not bad compared to many around me.  My truck is decent sized, but we could not function without a truck. You can't get to the trailheads without a vehicle.  We also use our vehicle for community projects to haul tools.

Our home is very small.  It's one of the smallest in our neighborhood.  I would never fit or be happy in a condo.  

I don't buy celery because I find the veggie sucks out flavour from other things in a dish I cook.  I think it's wrapped partially in plastic at local stores.  It didn't used to be like that.

We just live our lives.  We don't talk to family members or close friends about our habits....but then, most of my siblings chose to buy and live in homes approx. 15 min. walk from a bus, others from a subway station. I have no idea about their recycling and other stuff. One sister only has a bit veggies growing in her garden, rest are bushes, green plants and flowers.  Yea, they have cars, some only 1 or using only 1. Another sister is like me, never drove a car.

No one in my family is vegetarian at this time.  I honestly doubt it will happen because already they do try to eat healthy often and cook from scratch probably 90% of time. My large family is one that enjoys trying all sorts of foods.  I think it's more how myself and siblings were raised as children in poor family...so then each carried some of our money-saving habits over as adults.  

In my building our garbage pickup company decided to no longer pick up recycleable bottles and plastic jugs.  So a board member packages it up and I think the board gets some money back for our budget.

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24 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

It continues to astound me to see people in restaurants order food and how much food they leave behind on their plates to be thrown out.  

Agreed.  Much of this is unreasonable portion sizes.  Some things just don't keep either.  Fried food is not good the next day.  You can not reheat this very easily and make it palatable.  

I've traveled before and had to toss food.  The portion was way too large and I had no way of keeping it.

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24 minutes ago, Dirtyhip said:

Agreed.  Much of this is unreasonable portion sizes.  Some things just don't keep either.  Fried food is not good the next day.  You can not reheat this very easily and make it palatable.  

I've traveled before and had to toss food.  The portion was way too large and I had no way of keeping it.

Maybe.  In past few months, I didn't notice overly big portion  servings at the restaurants where we ate.  Either some people are incredibly picky eaters and leave behind a ton of food on their plate (restaurant would provide doggie bag) or didn't know how to order food based on a menu.  Who knows...  We were eating in clean restaurants with decently prepared foods at mid range prices and generally rate well according to 'Net reviews.

I will eat a mediocre dish at a restaurant.  I made the decision to order it, pay for it, etc.  I'm not a food snob. I rarely order fried food dishes.  We don't prepare it at home.  It was never my thing..I will eat it as a guest in someone's home.

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I wouldn’t be able to be in the same room with that woman.  If you are a royal pain in the ass in one area of your life, you are invariably a pain in the ass in other areas.  
 

The poor husband should have reset her expectations or her militant attitude and told her he wasn’t part of her extreme lunacy. 

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2 hours ago, Randomguy said:

I wouldn’t be able to be in the same room with that woman.  If you are a royal pain in the ass in one area of your life, you are invariably a pain in the ass in other areas.  
 

The poor husband should have reset her expectations or her militant attitude and told her he wasn’t part of her extreme lunacy. 

This thread really required reading the link. :D  I didn’t until your post. 
 

My first thought is one person is less than a drop in the bucket, but at least her sharing on Instagram is spreading the word. I can see how people go on war paths against corporations to try to have a bigger impact. But choosing to eschew wasteful stuff can have an impact if enough people do it. My opinion has always been that our consumer lifestyle is just horribibble and we need to change it. But it is of course quite hard since I am at least as lazy as the next guy. :D  However, I am also contrarian a lot of the time, which leads to where I might eco-nag my wife sometimes. She loves micky d’s but I hate the wasteful packaging as well as paying all that money for salt and fat. She gets even with me by eco-nagging me aboot plastic grocery bags. Funny, in the Plastic -A Toxic Love Story book I am reading, they said an analysis showed that plastic bags need to be re-used aboot 4 times to come close to breaking even ecologically, but all I can manage is one time for doggie poop. But thankfully that is as far as our econagging and disagreement goes. Well, there is the 20 year old van where we are both proud of saving resources, but she is aboot at the end of her rope! :D

 

 

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What I got out of the story is that she went hardcore eco-warrior, her husband was slightly on board but not fully on board.  She eased up, and he made some changes to met her in the middle.  It seems like a nice story.  

I can relate to her milk comment.  We ran out of milk  I've been sick and have done next to nothing the last couple of days, so we are out of fresh bread, milk, etc.  AS my husband left this morning he said "we are out of milk."  He does not make any of these items, and would likely buy them, if I didn't make all this stuff at home.

Our garbage was big this week.  I have a grocery sack mostly full.  I had to throw my helmet away this week.  Usually our garbage is about a 1/2 grocery sack.   This is way less than most.  We continue to evolve.  My husband is so fantastic.  He sewed nice flannel patches into the elbows of my wool thermals.  I had worn through the elbows.  That just extended the life of my wardrobe.

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3 hours ago, Randomguy said:

I wouldn’t be able to be in the same room with that woman.  If you are a royal pain in the ass in one area of your life, you are invariably a pain in the ass in other areas.  
 

The poor husband should have reset her expectations or her militant attitude and told her he wasn’t part of her extreme lunacy. 

Thank you for speaking my mind. :) 

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3 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

 But it is of course quite hard since I am at least as lazy as the next guy. :D  However, I am also contrarian a lot of the time, which leads to where I might eco-nag my wife sometimes. She loves micky d’s but I hate the wasteful packaging as well as paying all that money for salt and fat. She gets even with me by eco-nagging me aboot plastic grocery bags. Funny, in the Plastic -A Toxic Love Story book I am reading, they said an analysis showed that plastic bags need to be re-used aboot 4 times to come close to breaking even ecologically, but all I can manage is one time for doggie poop. But thankfully that is as far as our econagging and disagreement goes. Well, there is the 20 year old van where we are both proud of saving resources, but she is aboot at the end of her rope! :D

She must view you as uber frugal or somethin'.  

I had no idea about using a plastic bag 4 times to start its breakdown abit..

I can be extreme...now I have 200+ clean empty yogurt containers.  He is more diligent to keeping the pile to around 10 empty ones. There is a contrast in this area in 2 places.

Dearie and I eco-nag semi-joke each other, for wearing hoely, ragged clothing around the house.  We each really do wear down our clothing to holes. :D

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2 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Thank you for speaking my mind. :) 

She is an absolute lunatic control freak, clear as day.  She so desperately wants to control everyone’s actions until it comes to diapers, you know, because if the post partum depression left her without energy for that.  But hey, she has freakish maniac energy for everyone else to do what she wants. 
 

Also bull crap stupid:  “we have sooooooo many old tshirts to use as paper towels, and you should, too.”  Nobody has enough old tshirts to use them that way consistently, and hey, you can buy purpose-made towels that are reusable and dry quickly.  And taking them to the dentist? How completely dumb, and quite possibly or probably unsanitary.  And newspaper for dog poop?   That is quite possibly the dumbest thing going on here. First, why do you even have newspaper to begin with, do you enjoy killing trees? Are you not aware that biodegradable poop bags have been available for years?
 

The husband is a wimp, too.  You know what is sensible?  “Simple answer, I buy milk because I like it and want it, and you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to”.  Non-problem, simplified.  
 

There is more, but I will just get pissed again if I reread it.   It is one thing to cut down on waste, it is an entirely different thing to make it your life’s mission to force it on others. 

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9 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

I might bang her once, because it would be wasteful not to.  I would draw the line there, though, because she would be insufferable  if she was talking. 

...I would put up with it as long as I could in order to maximize the resource use.  Set and match.:cheerleader:Reduce, reuse, recycle.

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9 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

She is an absolute lunatic control freak, clear as day.  She so desperately wants to control everyone’s actions until it comes to diapers, you know, because if the post partum depression left her without energy for that.  But hey, she has freakish maniac energy for everyone else to do what she wants. 
 

Also bull crap stupid:  “we have sooooooo many old tshirts to use as paper towels, and you should, too.”  Nobody has enough old tshirts to use them that way consistently, and hey, you can buy purpose-made towels that are reusable and dry quickly.  And taking them to the dentist? How completely dumb, and quite possibly or probably unsanitary. 
 

The husband is a wimp, too.  You know what is sensible?  “Simple answer, I buy milk because I like it and want it, and you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to”.  Non-problem, simplified.  
 

There is more, but I will just get pissed again if I reread it.   It is one thing to cut down on waste, it is an entirely different thing to make it your life’s mission to force it on others. 

RG, why are you so worked up over a blog post?  Relax.   

59 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

She must view you as uber frugal or somethin'.  

I had no idea about using a plastic bag 4 times to start its breakdown abit..

I can be extreme...now I have 200+ clean empty yogurt containers.  He is more diligent to keeping the pile to around 10 empty ones. There is a contrast in this area in 2 places.

Dearie and I eco-nag semi-joke each other, for wearing hoely, ragged clothing around the house.  We each really do wear down our clothing to holes. :D

Using four times is to offset the footprint, is how I read it.  Plastic never really biodegrades.  

 

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Just now, Dirtyhip said:

Using four times is to offset the footprint, is how I read it.  Plastic never really biodegrades.  

The biodegradable poop bags are the rose in the thorns in RG's diatribe - I had never heard of those  I might try those, but I will never run oot of castoff ones.  And yes, the book said using it four times would help offset the resource use, but better just to avoid them, but much easier said than done.

But the "compostable" foil chip bags are barely if at all compostable.  They persisted in my compost years after being dumped there.  Sort of a scam.

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8 minutes ago, Dirtyhip said:

RG, why are you so worked up over a blog post?  Relax

I don’t like control freaks.  Unrealistic and extreme make it worse. 
 

“There was a problem- my husband enjoyed his steak, but I wanted to move us to a plant-based lifestyle”.  Yeah, it is all about you and what you want, an inconsiderate crazy person “deciding” what the “problems” are, according to her.  I wonder if the husband has any sort of backbone at all. 

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Just now, Randomguy said:

I don’t like control freaks.  Unrealistic and extreme make it worse. 
 

“There was a problem- my husband enjoyed his steak, but I wanted to move us to a plant-based lifestyle”.  Yeah, it is all about you and what you want, an inconsiderate crazy person “deciding” what the “problems” are, according to her.  I wonder if the husband has any sort of backbone at all. 

Yeah, I raised an eyebrow at that one too but it sounds like she realized the error of her ways and backed down a tad.  The husband sounds like Hip's, easygoing and respectful of what makes his wife happy.  And he gave her some ribbing, so there is that. :D

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14 minutes ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

Yeah, I raised an eyebrow at that one too but it sounds like she realized the error of her ways and backed down a tad.  The husband sounds like Hip's, easygoing and respectful of what makes his wife happy.  And he gave her some ribbing, so there is that. :D

Ok....  I'm a much messier person than dearie. For past 29 years, he hasn't tried to change me.

Instead he lets me get messy in my areas of home....then he watches me run around trying to find my keys, mitts and says:  "Why don't you put that stuff in the same place so you can find it later?"  

Or he just scrubs the bathtub, because he's fed up. Then he shows me.."see?"  Or he pushes my overload of clothing into a bigger pile on my side of closet.

It works pretty well our lifestyle.  :D  

Come to think of it, I don't chat up with good friends and family about recycling, eco-lifestyles.  Either we do it or not.  It's not worth much conversation...not especially if I don't see my friends and family members far away often. More important things to learn. Seriously.

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7 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

Some do.  There are biodegradable plastics.  We use them in the compostables trash.  At the end of the week, they have already started to break down.  

LOL, I meant common plastics.  I do realize it exists.  Out of all the plastics that we get from the grocery, I can't think of any that are biodegradable.  

Really, I wish more places used them.  I assume cost is prohibitive.   No one seems to use it.  Maybe it is different in Canada.  Here, forget it.

11 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

I don’t like control freaks.  Unrealistic and extreme make it worse. 
 

“There was a problem- my husband enjoyed his steak, but I wanted to move us to a plant-based lifestyle”.  Yeah, it is all about you and what you want, an inconsiderate crazy person “deciding” what the “problems” are, according to her.  I wonder if the husband has any sort of backbone at all. 

The bib thing at the dentist was over the top.  I would never think that this is a good thing to encourage.

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1 hour ago, Randomguy said:

She is an absolute lunatic control freak, clear as day.  She so desperately wants to control everyone’s actions until it comes to diapers, you know, because if the post partum depression left her without energy for that.  But hey, she has freakish maniac energy for everyone else to do what she wants. 
 

Also bull crap stupid:  “we have sooooooo many old tshirts to use as paper towels, and you should, too.”  Nobody has enough old tshirts to use them that way consistently, and hey, you can buy purpose-made towels that are reusable and dry quickly.  And taking them to the dentist? How completely dumb, and quite possibly or probably unsanitary.  And newspaper for dog poop?   That is quite possibly the dumbest thing going on here. First, why do you even have newspaper to begin with, do you enjoy killing trees? Are you not aware that biodegradable poop bags have been available for years?
 

The husband is a wimp, too.  You know what is sensible?  “Simple answer, I buy milk because I like it and want it, and you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to”.  Non-problem, simplified.  
 

There is more, but I will just get pissed again if I reread it.   It is one thing to cut down on waste, it is an entirely different thing to make it your life’s mission to force it on others. 

I have a real good suggestion for old socks. You could use one or two today.:whistle:

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18 minutes ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

Yeah, I raised an eyebrow at that one too but it sounds like she realized the error of her ways and backed down a tad.  The husband sounds like Hip's, easygoing and respectful of what makes his wife happy.  And he gave her some ribbing, so there is that. :D

Happy couples work together and meet in the middle.  This has worked for us for over 25+ years. 

 

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3 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

Yeah, I raised an eyebrow at that one too but it sounds like she realized the error of her ways and backed down a tad.  The husband sounds like Hip's, easygoing and respectful of what makes his wife happy.  And he gave her some ribbing, so there is that. :D

Yeah, but K DOES sound easy-going and all, and I strongly suspect that they decide things together, whereas the freak in the article sounds like a spaz that reacts only and is often mystified when there is worldly pushback to her ideas.  
“Just because you had a psychotic episode does not mean I give up steak or any damn thing else I eat “.

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30 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

Yeah, but K DOES sound easy-going and all, and I strongly suspect that they decide things together, whereas the freak in the article sounds like a spaz that reacts only and is often mystified when there is worldly pushback to her ideas.  
“Just because you had a psychotic episode does not mean I give up steak or any damn thing else I eat “.

We do tend to negotiate.

24 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

I have a feeling that a lot of chicks think compromise means her partner just gives in to whatever. 

Sometimes he wins, sometimes I win.  We do have a trailer, an an e-bike that I never wanted.  Oh, and a motorcycle that I never thought we should have bought.  I finally just said, "fine."

Happiness of your partner is important.

So far he is on board with the homemade soap, all my homemade food things, and giving up paper towels.  ;)

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49 minutes ago, Dirtyhip said:

We do tend to negotiate.

Sometimes he wins, sometimes I win.  We do have a trailer, an an e-bike that I never wanted.  Oh, and a motorcycle that I never thought we should have bought.  I finally just said, "fine."

Happiness of your partner is important.

So far he is on board with the homemade soap, all my homemade food things, and giving up paper towels.  ;)

I want some soap, please!

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