Attempts at green living/gardening

[ladyjanelly]

 So we're trying to be a little more concious of our impact on the planet. 

I think our number one contribution has been the decision to not give birth to kids, thereby eliminating the lifetime consumption and waste produced by those extra humans. 

However we've started paying attention to what our household consumes and discards.

There's all kinds of questions.  Like: to recycle solid waste like aluminum, plastic, etc, we have to buy these special blue bags from the city.  And a seperate garbage truck makes the rounds to pick it up. And the thing belches this black smoke out of its exhaust pipe.  I mean...is that green?

To send yard waste to be chipped and composted, we have to buy specially made big paper bags from the hardware store (or walmart or whereever), and again, the big stinky truck comes to get it, and they compost it and I dunno where it goes after that.  

We decided instead to buy a few plastic 30 gallon garbage cans that we can use forever and recycle our own weeds and leaves and crap into compost and use it to top-dress our lawn so it'll use less water and look more healthy.  We started putting all of our vegan food scraps in the compost too. 

We pulled 120 gallons of weeds in the last week.  None of them more than 7" tall.  It's crazy how active the weeds get in the spring. Last week was the first warm one where we had the time to work outside.  The good thing is that the grass is still blah-colored so everything that's green is weed.  

Anyway, back to the green stuff--we've been trying to choose low-garbage-producing garbage and to recycle everything that qualifies and bring our own bags to the grocery store when we remember.  But--the fabric bags used a lot of resources and energy to produce too. Where's the break-even point where it's the ecologically superior choice to make? How many times do we have to use it to be good?

I got a permanent plastic cup for Chick fil A but really--how many styrofoam ones would I have to use to equal the heavier plastic one and all the water used to wash it each time?  

So many questions.