Day one - cycling / walking to and from work everyday

For the first post I am going to choose an obvious solution: to replace my journeys on public transport to work by walking or cycling. According to this map (here) my journey to work is 2.84 miles by train and 3.7 miles by tube. This, according to www.carbonfootprint.com, produces 0.01 tonnes of carbon dioxide per week. Therefore it would take just over 400 days of cycling or walking to work to replace the carbon used in our plane journeys. I have recently bought a bike and I am planning to one day cycle to work but not right now so I think I'll shelve this idea. Another argument against this could be that the trains, buses and tubes would still run regardless of whether I got them or not, and would still produce the same amount of carbon dioxide, I would just have the guilt removed slightly.

Travel and our carbon footprint

I feel we are pretty good at keeping our carbon footprint to a minimum. We consciously don't leave electrical appliances on standby and as a vegan and a vegetarian we avoid the contribution to the world's carbon footprint which is made through livestock farming amongst other things. Livestock farming is a particularly large producer of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as not only do its animals, production methods and transportation of its products from farm to abattoir to plate produce a large carbon footprint, the production of soya beans for use in animal feed along with cattle ranchers “alone will destroy 40 per cent of Amazon rainforest by 2050,” (Friend's of the Earth, What's feeding our food? The environmental and social impacts of the livestock sector, p.13). However, one of the major bugbears of climate changes activists – airline travel – became a necessity as we flew to Switzerland for a wedding. Yes, we could have travelled overground but due to the constraints of work we had to fly.

Our flights to Geneva and back for B and I, and B's brother produced (according to the carbon footprint calculator at www.carbonfootprint.com) 0.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide. I know there are numerous companies which offer the chance to offset your carbon footprint (0.86 tonnes can be offset for around £20) but as George Monbiot says:

“Any scheme that persuades us we can carry on polluting delays the point at which we grasp the nettle of climate change and accept that our lives have to change. But we cannot afford to delay. The big cuts have to be made right now, and the longer we leave it, the harder it will be to prevent runaway climate change from taking place. By selling us a clean conscience, the offset companies are undermining the necessary political battle to tackle climate change at home. They are telling us that we don’t need to be citizens; we need only be better consumers. “ (here)

Therefore I thought I would look at some alternative ways to offset the carbon footprint created by this journey. B's brother cycles to work everyday so I will discount his share as he will be able to burn off the carbon produced after half a year or so of cycling to and from work each day. That leaves us with 0.5733 tonnes of carbon to replace. So each day this week I will hopefully discuss a different possible solution and then come to some sort of conclusion at the end of the week.

stuff we have made recently

Hooks made from the left over bits of table leg and some old meat hook style things we had lying around

D making bread
We found an old table top, we made the legs from banister posts and painted them, sanded and varnished the top = new coffee table!!
Table making! (I'm working on my improvised work bench)
Lunch.

We have been making a lot of stuff recently. We got a really nice bread recipe from a friend so we have been having a lot of that. No luck on buying the coagulant for making tofu yet so that is yet to happen, however we may be borrowing a soy milk machine for a while which will be fun. Asides from that not much to report right now

Back to work etc

We have both been busy busy busy the last week but have been fairly good at taking lunch with us and making our own food most of the time. The main issue with it in my mind is that I never seem to take enough with me, then when I take lots I don't eat it all and it gets smushed in my bag. Several days a week I leave the house at 9am and get home at 11pm, so I need 2 meals with me. I also cycle a fair distance and get super hungry. However, I don't want a bag full of 2 lunch boxes (heavy and awkward to carry), neither do I want to spend loads on eating out all the time or go hungry (a hungry B is not a pleasant B). I also tend to have a lot of fruit, which if you carry it about too much get spoiled, I am not a fan of bruised fruit. I can buy lots of food at the start of the week and keep it at uni, but obviously some foods keep better in the fridge...which brings me on to these articles I have been reading recently about dedicated eco folks living without fridges.

This was something that had never even occurred to me, I think I was so entrenched in total acceptance of having a fridge tht I had never even thought about not having one. the only time I have had any part in buying a fridge the one we chose was very eco-friendly but living without one - that was an alien thought! Having read a bit about it I am thinking about doing a trial, there are several things which mean we can't leap in straight away. Firstly, our fridge is a fridge-freezer, most people who I have read about who don't have a fridge still use their freezer, and cool their fridge-foods with frozen water bottles or ice packs, we would have to leave our fridge on to do that which would somewhat defeat the point of not using it. Secondly, we don't have a cool box or the money to buy one at the moment. Lastly, I am not sure what good it would do us at the moment to try this as we have just stocked up on frozen veg and I don't really want to melt that. I think it would be better to wait until such time that we could buy a cool box and not risk our food going off, thus wasting it, and then seeing if we could turn the freezer off too.
But I definitely want to try it at some point, preferably before the end of the year.

B:)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/19/living-without-fridge-green

http://www.goselfsufficient.co.uk/living-without-a-fridge.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/garden/05fridge.html?_r=1&8dpc

make it ourselves.

We had a fairly successful couple of weeks of making most thngs ourselves in terms of food, I made some more bread that was edible. But it got me thinking about other things we buy 'made' like tofu and soy milk, musli, catfood, cat litter, jam etc. So I think this is going to be an ongoing project.
We have been thinking about making cat food for a while now, the main thing is how to cook it. Neither of us eat meat, we would want a seperate pan for cooking meat for the cats in, also we have to figure out how to buy it. Do we go to a butchers (smells bad!) or to the supermarket (not keen on supermarkets generally, they are a bit too busy) or get someone else to buy it for us? I have assumed that the meat in our catfood is not free-range or organic etc as the tin makes no mention of it. I would prefer our cats to eat meat that has had a happier life and was more ethically raised BUT at the same time, canned catfood is convenient, they like it and neither of us has to cook it. I think I might brave a butchers shop and see how much meat costs (that is another thing I have no realistic idea of) and maybe try a week of making their food. I think I could probably cook a lot at once and then freeze it.
I used to make granola but have just got out of the habit but making tofu and soy milk - that is entirely new. I am going to see if I can find a soy milk recipe which doesn't use a specific machine, and the tofu demo I saw on youtube seems fairly simple so I will give that a go next weekend... watch this space!!

Today I made some pretty successful bread, hopefully D will post a picture of it later. The reason I am so proud of this is because my previous attempts at bread have all ended up being hard lumps of stuff that scrape the roof off your mouth as you spend 15 minutes trying to chew it enough to swallow it! Today I made a sort of fruit loaf, which is quite crumbly but tasty and, most importantly, leaves your mouth intact!! I am going to try t make a savoury loaf on Friday. B:)

a two-week extravaganza

Last week we didn't set ourselves a challenge as B had a big project to finish for university and we had family staying so in light of this we have decided to set ourselves a big two-week challenge which is to make all the things we use (within reason). The first week is going to be more of an experimental week as many of the things, such as cat food and cat litter, we have not made before and the second week will be more hardcore when we will attempt not to use anything which is ready made. We will post updates (and hopefully some pictures and maybe even a tutorial) on what and how we do. D.

waste = food

Yesterday I watched a documentary (about 50mins) called Waste=Food (you can find it on google video). The film was based on part of the book Cradle to Cradle and talks about how industrial waste an be used as 'food' for the next round of making, eg a companies effluents could be used as raw materials. The basic premise is that if you look beyond the products direct lifespan while it is still in the design process you can design it in such a way that you can reuse/reclaim most or all of it for reuse in the future. It also looks at how environment affects humankind using the Herman Miller factory and the Ford as examples. Those particular buildings have also been designed in such a way as to work as closed loop processing facilities and also buildings and their plots are green with living roofs and wild life encouraged, leading to a more natural and therefor sustainable way of industrially producing, along with happier teams working in them.

http://www.hmeurope.com/our-business/environmental-concerns/

http://www.ford.com/our-values/environment

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cradle-Michael-Braungart/dp/0099535475/ref=ed_oe_p

Last week we decided to increase the difficulty of our challenges by not shopping at chain stores for a week. The first hurdle we came across was what constituted a chain store. Some such as Tesco, Asda, Boots and Starbucks are easy to identify as they are at the forefront of the homogenisation of the high street. However, what about independent stores which have more than two or three stores? Does this constitute a chain store? We decided to use common sense and judge each place on its own merits.

The week started well with lots of packed lunches which negated the need to go to chain stores during the day. We are also lucky enough to have a local mini-high street which is relatively untouched by chain stores, apart from betting shops, so most of our evening needs came from here. However, the day I forgot to take lunch turned into a bit of a nightmare. I work in central London where the rising cost of rents has forced many independent stores out of business. Also, as a vegetarian who doesn't really eat dairy or eggs (I refrain from calling myself vegan, as I do occasionally eat dairy) the choice of ready food in central London is further reduced. I'll admit that I don't know the exact location of all vegetarian restaurants in the local area but as a temp who gets paid by the hour, the less time I spend searching for lunch, the more I get paid so it is my best interest to get something to eat as quickly as possible. After an agonising half an hour of wandering round like a zombie I managed to find a café which claimed to be independent and sat down to chips and beans.

There were a few hiccups during the week; a trip to Fresh and Wild, a health food store which is owned by Whole Foods, and meeting a friend in Pret were the only digressions. Still I think for two people to work in central London and only use chain stores twice during a week is pretty good going.

D.

Fact of the day : 1 sheet of A4 paper contains 10L of virtual water - that is water taken to make it, transport it, contained in it etc.
Fact courtesy of http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/costingtheearth_20080103.shtml
virtual water http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=866
B:)

Just quickly, this week we are trying to avoid using chain stores as much as is possible, a bit hard as I work in one, obviously for things like banking and working we will have to go there but for eveyday living we are trying to shop indie. More on this later. B:)

eco-project 1

This week we have not been buying coffee from chains and therefore not using those throw-away cups. This has been a relatively successful albeit a quite easy project. We are going to continue this in a sense by taking our thermos cups out with us and asking people to make the coffee in them rather than in paper cups, when a coffee stop is needed!! We will also be carrying our own spoons, although we already usually have one item of cutlery about our persons for lunch-box-eating needs.
A reason that we will not necessarily be continuing the no chain coffee is that a lot of them serve fair trade coffee, and that is something definitely to be supported, also because there isn't always a lot of choice as chains by their very nature are everywhere!
I think this project was slightly self defeating as, when I really wanted a cup of tea when walking the other day, I went to a newsagents that sells tea and was given it in a polystyrene cup with a plastic lid, possibly worse than a waxed/plasticised paper cup as used by pret/costa/eat etc. So I think that this needs to be redirected to being more about avoiding disposable cups than chains.

One of the reasons for this is well put by Michael Braungart and William McDonough in their book Cradle to Cradle (p27, Vintage books, last edition published 2009) "... you may be referred to as a consumer, but there is very little that you actually consume - some foods, some liquids. Everything else is designed for you to throw away when you are finished with it. But where is "away"? Of course, "away' does not really exist. "Away" has gone away."
So although we still sometimes fancy a coffee on the run, and often the easiest place to get one is in a chain coffee shop, we are attempting to stop contributing a cup, a sleeve, a lid, and possibly a stirrer to landfill each time.

B:)