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The 3 R’s of conservation

FarmerTan

"Self appointed king of Arkoland"
Ha! I'm a carcass bandit too!
We ended up with over 20 huge Turkey carcasses after our church made and delivered Thanksgiving meals to the county jail. We had broth from those for YEARS. I got SO sick of canning, lol!

Our chickens eat all the stale bread, etc that we produce here, then their droppings and any other scraps they can't/don't eat gets composted. We pick up leaves in our town and use it for mulch. I could go on forever.

We burn anything safe in our woodstove for heat. Ashes get composted.

We sometimes only have a 13 gallon garbage bag out at the curb in a two week period. If it don't stink, it waits another week. My city has one of the biggest dumps in the state of Michigan. No need for me to make it bigger.
 

shavefan

I’m not a fan
We ended up with over 20 huge Turkey carcasses after our church made and delivered Thanksgiving meals to the county jail. We had broth from those for YEARS. I got SO sick of canning, lol!

Our chickens eat all the stale bread, etc that we produce here, then their droppings and any other scraps they can't/don't eat gets composted. We pick up leaves in our town and use it for mulch. I could go on forever.

We burn anything safe in our woodstove for heat. Ashes get composted.

We sometimes only have a 13 gallon garbage bag out at the curb in a two week period. If it don't stink, it waits another week. My city has one of the biggest dumps in the state of Michigan. No need for me to make it bigger.

I love it brother
 

FarmerTan

"Self appointed king of Arkoland"
T
I love it brother
Thank you. LOL! I'm supposed to be a good steward, the way I see it. The older I get, and the closer to the finish line, I realize what my Native ancestors meant by laughing at the idea of land ownership. I mean, this is fleeting. Don't hold anything too tightly down here on Terra.
 
One of the areas Singapore lags is single use plastic: it's everywhere. Everyone buys their food at the hawker centre, it comes in a plastic or polystyrene bag, in a plastic bag, with plastic cutlery. Some places encourage customers to use their own containers which they wash and reuse after but it is a minority. I know this isn't about recycling but few private condos have recycling points so everything just goes down the waste chute.
 
The extension of this idea that has always bothered me has been the super thin plastic vegetable/fruit bags that are pretty ubiquitous. By sheer coincidence a new local organic grocery store a few blocks away that opened up a few weeks ago has compostable single use "plastic" bags which I had not seen before (we went for the first time today). There is a university across the street so the grocery store feels a bit like a trader joes meets a coop rather than a real grocery store but I love this idea. (We do compost as well so this is easy for us).
I remember when we didn’t use bags at all. You just put the loose fruit and vegetables in your basket and then laid them on the counter grouped together. No plastic bag at all.
 
Use both sides of a sheet of paper when writing or printing. I find that most don't.

Many years ago as my office became more computerised, I decided to go paperless. First I forced myself to do it. It wasn't easy as reading off paper (rather than a screen) was ingrained in me. Once I had achieved my goal, I then had to force my staff, kicking and screaming, into going paperless.
I hate handling paper and have converted to Evernote to take notes electronically on my computer and my iPad. A side benefit, your notes are now searchable.

I also stopped all the paper bills coming in the mail. I now receive an email th at my bill is ready, click the link in the email, log in and download the bill in PDF format.

When I pay a bill I do it electronically. When I buy something that involves a regular payment, if they don’t have electronic payment, that’s a deal breaker. I have one health insurance policy that I bought 20 years ago that I still have to pay by mail. I hate it.
 
I remember when we didn’t use bags at all. You just put the loose fruit and vegetables in your basket and then laid them on the counter grouped together. No plastic bag at all.

My wife does this ... then the checkout person and I enjoy watching the lemon roll around trying to escape ;) To be honest I think this approach does make sense even today.. I do not think the bag is doing anything other than sorting things a bit upon checkout.
 
The extension of this idea that has always bothered me has been the super thin plastic vegetable/fruit bags that are pretty ubiquitous. By sheer coincidence a new local organic grocery store a few blocks away that opened up a few weeks ago has compostable single use "plastic" bags which I had not seen before (we went for the first time today). There is a university across the street so the grocery store feels a bit like a trader joes meets a coop rather than a real grocery store but I love this idea. (We do compost as well so this is easy for us).

Another innovation in bags at the grocery store (plastic) is they've come up with a design that helps extend the storage life of produce brought home and left in them. They're a greenish color and reportedly allow the fruit and produce to 'off-gas' the chemical compound such foods exhale that causes deterioration and result in rapid ripening and ultimately rot. Having such a single-use tool that will then go into the landfill seems counter-intuitive but the result speaks well for the improvement in real money savings of the produce. I don't know if the 'plastic' has a starch lattice structure to decompose in an acceptable time frame but I'd hope the need has been considered and engineered in.
 
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shavefan

I’m not a fan
Another innovation in bags at the grocery store (plastic) is they've come up with a design that helps extend the storage life of produce brought home and left in them. They're a greenish color and reportedly allow the fruit and produce to 'off-gas' the chemical compound such foods exhale that causes deterioration and result in rapid ripening and ultimately rot. Having such a single-use tool that will then go into the landfill seems counter-intuitive but the result speaks well for the improvement in real money savings of the produce. I don't know if the 'plastic' has a starch lattice structure to decompose in an acceptable time frame but I'd hope the need has been considered and engineered in.

I go shopping weekly so I never saw those green produce bags having much utility for us. If a lemon (or whatever) goes bad before we use it, I throw it in the compost bin. I'd rather throw a 25 cent lemon in the compost than a plastic bag in a landfill.

Also, I read somewhere rather recently that the structure of landfills don't lend themselves to allowing decomposing of much. Something about not enough oxygen IIRC.
 
One of the areas Singapore lags is single use plastic: it's everywhere. Everyone buys their food at the hawker centre, it comes in a plastic or polystyrene bag, in a plastic bag, with plastic cutlery. Some places encourage customers to use their own containers which they wash and reuse after but it is a minority. I know this isn't about recycling but few private condos have recycling points so everything just goes down the waste chute.

I wish our Muni would go harder on incineration. Everyone thinks burning trash "stinks", but that was not true even 40 years ago when our City built a small waste to energy facility. Now that our City is almost 6 time what it was then, incineration makes even more sense than landfill and even blue boxes.
 
I hate handling paper and have converted to Evernote to take notes electronically on my computer and my iPad. A side benefit, your notes are now searchable.

I also stopped all the paper bills coming in the mail. I now receive an email th at my bill is ready, click the link in the email, log in and download the bill in PDF format.

When I pay a bill I do it electronically. When I buy something that involves a regular payment, if they don’t have electronic payment, that’s a deal breaker. I have one health insurance policy that I bought 20 years ago that I still have to pay by mail. I hate it.
A book of checks lasts me years now!
 
Lets keep this on track. Reducing and reusing. Great tips so far, let’s hear more.

I have helped several friends disassemble their decks in the last year. I took home all the old treated lumber and am using it to build a shed and also a woodshed. I’ll have to buy some sheeting and such, but I’ll have the toughest shed built with 2x6 treated studs!
 

FarmerTan

"Self appointed king of Arkoland"
Lets keep this on track. Reducing and reusing. Great tips so far, let’s hear more.

I have helped several friends disassemble their decks in the last year. I took home all the old treated lumber and am using it to build a shed and also a woodshed. I’ll have to buy some sheeting and such, but I’ll have the toughest shed built with 2x6 treated studs!
Speaking of decks, I use old pallets for stacking my firewood on, then when they start breaking down I turn them into compost pile seperators.
 
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