Change the World Wednesday – 19th Mar

Clorinha’s first baby photo

Still crazy, this week I’m here at 1am. It’s too hot to sleep despite the fan. We had 43ºC (that’s hot, even in ºF – 110 something).

Let me introduce you to Clorinha. She’s still at home with Mommy, and will be for another two weeks. I have called her Clorinha because Daddy was Cloro (bleach), and she’s a little girl Cloro, she has the same markings as her Dad.

CTWW isn’t actually up yet on Reduce Footprints, but I was here, so you get the introduction.

Yes, in a can

One thing I have changed in my life since I have become more environmentally aware, cans. I avoid cans like the plague.

I restrict my cans to sardines, I love canned sardines in olive oil on toast, and I have an emergency ration of feijoada (black baked beans with meat) which is easily heated without having to cook a whole meal in the evening which also heats up an already hot house.

I use about one can of each a month, sometimes less.

At my advancing age, a little more BPA can’t do too much damage. My endocrines are already disrupted.

But I generally stay away from canned goods, including drinks and beer.

However, last week at the supermarket, I weakened. I saw these wonderful cans of Guinness. Now I live in Brazil, Brazil does not make a good beer.

Four cans just leapt off the shelf into my shopping cart

A few weeks ago I bought two bottles of Stout made in Brazil. It was so unpalatable that half the first bottle went down the sink, the other relegated to the shelf in the beer box. To call this product stout was criminal, it was no more stout than caramelised pigs’ swill.

Now to find a quality brew like Guinness is a rarity here, I weakened. I would have preferred bottles, but they weren’t available.

Oh, and the stout was like heaven.

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CTWW is up now, but I’m going back to bed. I have had a quick read and will visit some of your blogs later when  the head is a little clearer and I have coffee.

This week’s challenge is a little easier.

This week, do not use or buy any paper towels or napkins. Instead, use cloth napkins and cleaning rags.

 

OR … If you never use paper towels or napkins, please review your paper use and determine if there are other ways for you to conserve. Can you use less toilet paper? Could you say “no” to printed receipts? What about printer paper, gift wrap, magazines and catalogs … can you give them up? Choose at least one area where improvements could be made.

 

OR … If you’ve basically eliminated paper from your life, please share your tips and ideas for doing so.

Part One

I do have a roll of paper towels in the kitchen, I bought a double pack about two years ago, and have just started the second roll. The last time I used one was to hold a juicy homemade hamburger more than a month ago. In my defence, I will say that I bought them before the previous CTWW challenge not to use them.

Part Two

If I used less toilet paper than I do, I’d be using my finger. I generally use one double piece for a wipe, then have a bum shower with soap and water.

Other paper reduction, I have stopped paper bank statements, I use the net.

I don’t buy magazines or newspapers, so there’s no problem there. Junk mail is a problem, not a big problem as most of it is little A5 sized flyers, the plain paper ones go on the compost heap, but the bigger glossies come at the rate of about two a week. Brazilian delivery does not understand “No Junk Mail”, although I have had strong words with some when I catch them. Which is why I am the neighbourhood velho caduco (grouchy old man).

Part Three

I can’t make any claims there. I use scrap paper for notes alongside my PC. Old papers used on one side get folded in four. I have a printer, but only print essentials for work on recycled paper. It hasn’t been used for more than two months, it’s probably rusted up.

Well, there you have it; my CTWW.

Simple Green Ideas

Have you painted the house recently?

Have you painted anything recently?

Then you’re bound to have one of these lying around…

Used paint roller

Need to find a further use for it?

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Try something simple like this. Okay it doesn’t need to be in the kitchen, it can be for the BBQ area, beside the backdoor for the kids to wipe sticky fingers before coming into the house, in the shed for greasy hands….

Use your imagination.

Change the world Wednesday – 24th

April is nearly done, less than a week to go. My commitment to eat no beef for two weeks every month (1st & 3rd) has been successful.

I will continue with this as it has certainly not harmed my diet, although I do love my beef. I have instead turned more consciously to pork, chicken and fish, which all featured in my diet as much as beef.

Quite frankly, I haven’t missed it.

One thing, it has made me more conscious when organising my shopping. Actually, I don’t organise it, I hate lists. I just go along to the supermarket with the idea of essentials and things I know that I am running out of, and make up my menu as I go along the aisles.

It has made me aware of things like “Smart Bacon”.

If a bacon was smart, it wouldn’t end up as bacon in the first place.

Have you ever heard of this? It’s stupid. It looks terrible, it certainly looks unappetising.

Why is it smart, because there’s no fat. Actually it isn’t even bacon, it’s vege protein. People have this aversion to fat; fat makes you fat. Generally that’s bullshit!

Looks absolutely hideous

Animal fat is natural in modest quantities. It’s where the flavour of meat is.

The people who have created the myth that animal fat makes you fat are the companies that sell cooking oil, vege cooking lard, margarine, etc. It has nothing to do with reality, but everything to do with making money.

It’s the same as the myth about cholesterol. Every cell in your body needs cholesterol to reproduce. The doctors who tell you that you must reduce your cholesterol are doing the dictates of the BigPharma companies who make and sell drugs to reduce cholesterol. Sure you can accumulate too much, but the levels that the doctors use are well below what you need. So many people are scared into taking these drugs needlessly.

I did meet last week’s CTWW, not a paper towel, nor serviette used.

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On with this week’s CTWW.

We’re visiting the toilet again.

I call it a toilet, some countries euphemistically refer to it as the ‘bathroom’ or a ‘restroom’. To call it by its real name offends their warped sensibilities; they are to afraid to refer to anything that promotes/suggests certain body parts or bodily functions. I wonder who these paranoid people are?

A restroom, for pities sake! I have never rested in one yet.

This week, use less toilet paper. Rather than just pull it off the roll, count out no more than 6 sheets per use. If you accepted this challenge the last time we ran it, and did well, see how low you can go.

 

OR …

If you are already a toilet paper conservationist or have switched to cloth (oh yeah, some use cloth toilet paper), please share other ways that we can conserve paper.

A bidet

Well, the first part is easy.

I have long adopted the European/South American bidet-style of washing my bum after an initial wipe with two pieces of toilet paper. to get rid of the ‘dags’*.

Sprays the nether regions with warm water

I don’t actually have a bidet, but my shower has a hose with a rosette nozzle that does the job fine.

You can get kits to attach to your cistern, but that is a cold water job.

The cost of such a kit, would soon be offset by the saving in toilet paper.

Washing your bum is certainly a lot more hygienic than smearing faeces across you skin then wiping hard using a lot of paper to make them disappear.

A bad case of dags

*dags – the crap encrusted wool that dangles behind a sheep.

Hence the phrase, “Rattle your dags” when you want someone to hurry up. Because when a sheep so endowed runs, sometimes the hardened dags actually rattle.

Change the World Wednesday – 17th

Soon they will look like this – image: Musings from a Stonehead

I have beetroot on the boil, ready to make some pickled beetroot to put in the fridge. I have to store it in the fridge because I don’t have sealing jars.

In the middle of my second ‘beefless’ week. The first week was a success, although I nearly faltered this Monday…

“I almost committed a heinous crime. This is my second ‘beefless‘ week of the month in my resolve to limit the amount of beef I am responsible for. I planned lunch, a lovely pork roast that would warm the cockles of my heart today being coolish, cold sliced pork to go with a salad on a day not cool like today and at least two days of pork sandwiches for nibbles. Then I realised I was going to use beef dripping to cook it in the roasting dish. See how easy it is to fall into little traps. Yes, I buy my dripping, because I don’t roast enough to collect the real McCoy. I used to buy pork lard, but I just recently discovered that the green pack was beef dripping, much preferred because of the flavour. So in the spirit of the ‘beefless‘ week, I will dry roast it and save the lard produced.” – Life is but a Labyrinth

An aside – Someone turned the sun off…

It was a lovely sunny morning and now it is so dark I have to turn the light on at 9am to see the keyboard. I fear for the worst.

For those of you who liked my post yesterday, you might like to check the post on wine racks on my blog Things that Fizz & Stuff for rustic wine racks.

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Here we go! This week’s CTWW.

This week (yes, one whole week) banish paper towels/napkins from your life. This includes paper towels in public restrooms and disposable napkins in restaurants.

 

OR …

Never use them? Great, please share your tips & tricks for getting along without them.

I am a fiend.

My hamburgers are bigger and juicier

Generally, I don’t use paper towels.

However, I do have them. Why, you might ask. Well there is no substitute for paper towels when you are eating a homemade hamburger; at least not my homemade hamburgers.

When I make a hamburger, it’s not just a hamburger, it’s an adventure. Hamburgers are not made to be eaten with a knife and fork, they are made to be eaten in the hand. My hamburgers are so juicy that to eat one without being folded in the mandatory paper towel you would have juice running down to your elbows.

My coffeepot

So in this, I am a fiend.

But I don’t use them generally in the kitchen, there I prefer washable cloths for all those small spills, or big spills like yesterday pouring coffee from the bule (coffeepot) into the thermos flask, the spout slipped off the flask in mid-torrent and I had coffee all over the stove top.

This morning, I was more successful.

I also have paper serviettes.

Gasp, horror!

They get used for outdoor BBQs only. Indoors, I use cloth ones, when I use them.

As for paper towels in restrooms (how quaint that Americans have this peculiar name for toilets, I have never ‘rested’ in one yet), what can I say, I’m a man (men are just big boys) and a quick wipe on the jeans suffices. Old habits die hard.

My fav restaurants both have cloth napkins.

So while I commit these hideous crimes, I do so sparingly.

CTWW – Update

How to avoid paper towels…

Take the advice of our Foul Bachelor Frog

You can get more helpful advice from him every Tuesday on

Nether Region of the Earth  III

Change the World Wednesday – 27th June

Sometime later on Wednesday… I began this post (the AA spoof below) at 5:50am. My alarm went off at 5:30, and nothing, but NOTHING happens before that first cup of coffee.

I did participate in last week’s challenge, by NOT driving anywhere. The results are not as spectacular as one might think, because I don’t go anywhere apart from work, the supermarket and on Sunday I treated myself to dinner out, oh and a walk to the local market.

Big donk!

So, I didn’t drive 141 miles, I didn’t spend $61.88 and I didn’t emit 14lbs of pollutants.

Because I don’t have a car, I chose a model from my past. It was suggested I should use a Hummer at 12 miles to the gallon, but I figured that would be stretching the imagination a bit, so I chose my old favourite, 1956 De Soto with a gas gobbling 380 cubic inches (that equals about 6 cars with a 1,000cc engine) doing 18miles/gallon on a good day.

Just for your interest, the median price for gasoline here in Brazil is $6.82/gal.

On with Wednesday. I just had a break for lunch. Living alone one doesn’t just have lunch appear magically on the table; there needs to be a certain amount of physical effort, and then there’s the dishes…

Change the World Wednesday from Reduce Footprints.

For the next two weeks refuse to use (or buy) paper towels. Yep, 14 days … no paper towels. And … to make things just a bit more interesting … let’s include paper plates and single-use utensils, cups, etc.

Or …If you never use paper towels or single-use utensils, please share how you avoid them. We’d like to know how you handle “messy” messes (like pet “accidents”, cooking oil splatters & spills, etc.) … and what you use instead of single-use products for picnics, entertaining, etc. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with tips and ideas to help us all live without these products and reduce waste.

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Those old evils disposable stuff…

Paper towels are an evil, addictive waste of trees

Hello, my name is Argentum…

“Hello, Argentum”

I am addicted to paper towels, but I haven’t used one in four days.

*Pause for effect while audience claps*

I had to, you see I was making a white sauce and my nose began to run, it was an emergency! I couldn’t abandon the white sauce and run through the house for my old T-shirt rag. I have the ‘flu! I know I shouldn’t have them in the house, they are such a temptation. The roll has been sitting on the kitchen shelf for months, almost a year. I look at it, I hanker for the days when I could use one without guilt. But, I have resisted, each time my trembling hand reached out for that soft white dimpled chlorine bleached absorbent texture, I would catch myself and use the cold damp cloth from the kitchen sink instead and I would feel so ashamed that I had nearly succumbed to temptation, then I would make fresh Brazilian coffee and the world would be safe from the evils of paper towels; at least until the next spill, the next crisis.

It’s true. I do have a roll of paper towels in the kitchen. It has been there since the last similar ‘paper’ challenge and does get used for timely emergencies. But the life of a single roll of paper towels in my kitchen is about a year. They do get used for draining the lard from a deep fry, there is nothing like paper for that. If I have a paper bag (‘sack’ for our American cousins) I use that instead.

I don’t entertain, I don’t go on picnics, so I don’t have disposable stuff in the house. I don’t usually use paper towels, except for the odd emergency listed above.

da Meow survey his kingdom (The praça)

The last time I had a ‘pet’ emergency, was when da Meow, my previous moggy, decided to play ‘Chuck Chunder’ under the bedroom table. I simply got the kitchen shovel and swept the oubliette with the yard broom and hosed it off into the outside drain. Apart from a serious gag myself, no damage. The same thing happened when he presented me with a huge dead rat in front of the backdoor; cats do like to show off their prizes. da Meow was no different, he was a good ratter, at least one a day sometimes two from the canal along the street. I just swept it up and buried it in the compost heap, three months later, no rat and good quality compost.

Splatters and spills are always wiped up with a floor cloth with a little kitchen detergent for the greasy ones. My floor cloths are old clothes saved for the purpose.

So truly, I have little use for disposable stuff; the challenge will be easy.