Steps we have taken lately to SAVE THE WORLD

Here's a shameless thread where we humble brag on ourselves to feel better amid the chaos is 2020. What stuff have you done lately to save the world from carbon creep?

Our family?
1. Go pooless. And soapless.
2. Stop using laundry juice
3. Stop using a clothes dryer (any tips on getting towels that aren't a crispy mess? I hear spinning at a lower speed gets less water out and they don't dry as rigid then, will try next load)
4. Buy space heater and turn the home heat down to 60. I want to do 50 but the bewombèd people in my house threatened to keelhaul me, a most painful execution indeed! 😔🤣🤣
5. Switch to incandescent light bulbs
6. I've begun slowly building buy-in with the idea of a rocket mass heater. I'd love ideas about where to locate one in a traditional colonial style house. There's not really a central room as such, sort of a 2x2 of rooms with two floors so 8 total rooms. Then there is a kitchen and an office off one side with a bunny rabbit room upstairs. They are SO goddamn cute 🖤🖤🖤🖤🐇 Maybe I can post a floor plan in the RMH thread sometime soon.
7. Transitioned to a vegan diet and am trying to focus on local food primarily.


So what things have you cool kids done of late? Details!!

Nice topic!
To comment on yours:
1. I collect shower water and I have shampoo, conditioner and soap in bars, but have to admit that I need to redesign the system because it's annoying. All bars look the same and they become gooey too fast. They need their own containers that will drain them, and maybe some shelves in the shower.
4. This year I began using twigs from fences that didn't take root to heat the house. I decided that I prefer fences that take root, because they're easier to maintain. And if they grow too fast, they're just extra mulch or compost. So the dry ones get cut for burning as they're already dry!

I started to eat only local food; the pandemic helped with that. Some is from the garden, the rest is from local farmers. It's very cool to know them in person! So I didn't eat a single banana, orange, avocado, coconut etc this year... only a bit of pineapple, when I visited a friend and she only had that to offer. I actually ate more meat than before, and a surprising diversity of it. Lamb, rabbit, chicken (local native breed), beef, duck, quail, pork... no wild game (I do respect permie hunters but not the other kinds of hunters... and I think that wild game doesn't eat healthy).

I taught a number of workshops more or less related to permaculture. I would describe them to earn a badge but I probably don't have proper photos or something... Anyway, these were: talks about permaculture in general, teaching crafts with natural fibers, drawing workshop in a permie garden, and exhibition of artworks is coming. In general, I try to apply permaculture principles in my artistic practice.

I tried to support other people's publishings, translations and other educational projects as much as possible.

For the first time I made a proper plan of what I want to grow and where, and I made a drawing of the garden with zones etc. Now it's all changed after the season so I hope to properly do it again.

And I encouraged everyone to grow their own food!

I plant trees.

Olga Booker wrote:I plant trees.

I cut a tree in half :D
It still has a birdhouse on it, looks happy and will regrow. The half that fell was huge though, and I made a new fence with it! I only used a small garden saw and it took me three days.

Also, I have friends who do completely opposite things to save the world... let's hope we all win somehow.

Olga Booker wrote:I plant trees.

There is an excellent short film called The Man Who Planted Trees. Well worth a watch.



It's done in a beautiful water color style. Such a heartening story! Makes me want to plant 100 acorns a day for 10 years.

I have been exposing myself to gamma radiation and exploring anger therapy.  I feel it won't be long until I'm able to save the world.  

Also, I floss regularly...

Saving the world, or saving ourselves?  The world would be absolutely fine without humans.  Inevitably, an asteroid will hit, or a super volcano will erupt, or the sun does the solar flare thing, or another naturally occurring event happens like it has probably thousands of times in the earth's history, and it resets earth back to zero.  Then it starts over again, kinda like the dinosaurs.  Maybe the next set of evolutionary creations are the "special" ones.

I absolutely believe we are making the world worse for ourselves, and our current neighbors, but I also believe it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.  Nature will overcome man's greed in due time.

Since I'm one of "ourselves", I'm into organic gardening, using the minimal amount of chemicals (I don't even wear deodorant anymore), planting trees, trying to grow fungus, and living as minimal as possible.
I don't think any of those things I do will make any difference in the long run as far as the earth/planet is concerned.

Sooner or later nature hits the reset button on the "world".  Enjoy it while you (our species) can, and know that nothing on the earth is permie-nent.  Just look at our history.

I heard that life on Earth could survive the death of the Sun. Theoretically. I hope there is some life on Venus and Mars too, but seems like it was there only in the past.

I began saving the world at 8:37pm local last night. By 9:03 I had the environment sorted out; by 9:42 the socio-political issues were take care of; at 10:17 disease and famine were gone and at 10:48 we were all immortal and god-like. Then I went to bed. When I awoke this morning, some bozo had gone and mucked everything up again overnight. I'm giving one hour for the guilty party to step forward.

D.W. Stratton wrote:

Olga Booker wrote:I plant trees.

There is an excellent short film called The Man Who Planted Trees. Well worth a watch.

It's done in a beautiful water color style. Such a heartening story! Makes me want to plant 100 acorns a day for 10 years.

Thanks for the share, was reminded I had to watch that.

Also, I believe they mentioned it in podcast 61...

One upshot of this crummy year is that a lot of people I know are making good changes to make the best of it.

As I've bemoaned elsewhere, we are in the midst of a terrible drought with rationing. We usually use a minimal amount of water (literally, the minimum usage amount/fee) so we were good before, but we've gotten better. Since we have no rainfall (which I usually use in the gardens) we are now using all our graywater, even things that I normally would let go- all laundry water, buckets in the shower to catch whatever we can, and any water used in kitchen production. It all goes in the garden as spring is beginning here and the clouds just keep passing us by.

We also have made real efforts to not eat anything imported this year. It's generally pretty easy but I let a lot of treats slide- this year I haven't. We try to keep it local as much as possible, but are avoiding imports.
Sadly, the biggest change in my overall consumption in terms of saving the earth was not something I even tried to do: I didn't travel this year. Usually I have a few air trips, within the country and then a long-haul up to the northern hemisphere, but this year there have been none.

Nice idea for a thread, DW.

In response to your #4: Have you considered a half-dozen dog-heater beds for the places where people sit or are still? I find it's more comfortable than the hot-dry air of a space-heater.

There's some more detail here: https://permies.com/wiki/110283/pep-electricity/Create-Micro-Heater-Bubble-PEP

I forgot to add the TINIEST step but maybe one that makes me feel the best:
replacing plastic dishwashing sponges with loofahs!! My spouse (chief dishwasher) loves his plastic sponges with scrubby backs. I can only use so many in the garden and felt terrible every time I threw one away. Then last year I had a massive loofah harvest and they are our dish sponges now! Whenever one gets manky, into the compost it goes, and no plastic guilt.

I am saving the world every day too!
Poo less for years, i got compliments for my soft soft skin, but does that save the environment?
I've stopped eating torture meat, just eat the local cows when it's available, chicken, what people offer me.
I loooove creating bio diversity, plants herbs trees, propagation is key.
Saving seeds and spreading them to people, or guerilla style.
I can't have RMH i live second floor, but wood is no problem, my neighbor has got a lot of fields and trees just fall down dry and need to be burned. Ashes going into garden. Feeding soils.
I try to pollard nitrogen fixing trees to shred to make paths in the veggie garden and grow mycellium in them.
I grow copious amounts of herbs for food and medicine.
I  buy less and less of the system which kills the planet.
I wear clothes that people give me. Ok some t shirts i get from the internet.
I like to teach women skills.
I think out of the box, i don't believe in group think scientists are group thinkers. Meh. Science i love, but scientists, they're pretty,pretty limited by their own.
I have love for working class people, the poor, the outsiders.

OK, so I plant trees.  But it's not the only thing I do.  I have been off grid for 25 years, except for this new house that we've just moved into, but we are working on it - as fast as we can!

Yes, I have seen the movie "The man who planted trees", but long before that, I had read the book.  After all Jean Giono is a prolific French writer and he was part of the curriculum in our literature classes.

I have never had a dish washer, a microwave, a clothes dryer, an electric cooker, a freezer, a hair dryer, never used deodorant.  I have not used shampoo, detergent, cleaning products for years.  My washing machine is one of those: https://uktwintubs.co.uk/product/7-2kg/  It uses 365W for washing and 185W for spinning.  I know the power consumption of every appliance in my house - which you need to if you are on solar power.  By the way, I don't iron clothes either, but if I really, really need to then I use one of those cast iron "iron" that you heat on the stove top.

It was 1999 when I started in earnest to lower my carbon foot print, but I had been aware of my faulty living long before that.  It was then that the TV went and I curbed my use of plastic.  I stopped buying anything with palm oil in it which was not easy then because they used about 50 different names for it, so reading the labels was fairly confusing.  By the way, I am sure you know that it is not only in food produce.  It's almost as difficult to avoid palm oil as it is to avoid plastic: https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/which-everyday-products-contain-palm-oil

Plane travelling went a long time ago, except for the one time when my eldest son had a stroke on the other side of the world.  We have a big 4x4, but we use it only 3 or 4 times a month.

It goes without saying that I gave up on many things that came from far away, and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. We eat local or grow our own.  I am trying to avoid supermarkets, I go to local shops if I need to.  My entire house is furnished from second hand , inherited or gifted furniture and my wardrobe also is second hand.  I can't remember the last time I bought a new item of clothing.  Of course, I recycle, re-use, re- purpose, mend, repair and what not.  There is very little waste in our house.

We often stop on the side of the road and pick up rubbish and where we lived before, we had a "clean the village day" twice a year. That included cleaning the stream and its banks, cutting dead branches, clearing gutters & gullies, weeding the communal gardens and many more.  Always ending with a meal that every one contributed to.

A few years ago, we switched to an ethical bank that did not invest our money into arms deals and/or drug money laundering.  We can choose witch green good cause we want to support and 1 cent of every card transaction is automatically given to those by the bank.  Of course you can add to your donation if you wish to.

We have had WWOOFERs for many years and although we never preached, just the fact that those young people lived with us changed the course of their lives.  With no expectations, we shared what we had and many a time, sometimes 6 months or even a year later, we'd receive a letter telling us that somehow, their stay with us really changed their lives, some even ended up going for a PDC.  Only a lit candle can light another candle.  Sometimes, you don't need to do anything, you just need to be.

We've just sold our well established Permaculture site and home to a young couple who wanted to have a foot on the ladder and carry on the project.  We now have bought 8 hectares of very degraded land and we are starting all over again, hence: I plant trees, loads of trees and it fills my heart with joy - but then, I'm just a simple soul.

Madame Booker, I hereby confer upon thee the honourary degree "Master of Badassity." Wear it proudly.

***bar soap, shampoo etc. Can be placed in mesh (cheesecloth, cotton made bags or stuffed into pantyhose or sox) and hung when not in use. No need to remove, just wet, use and hang when done.

We are more passive "heart" permies than active "dirt" permies...we don't "grow" our food and such. We are wildlife folk, outreach, rescue and rehab of nature's victims takes all our time...

This year we cat proofed our 1/2 acre property, added nesting boxes, dozens of feeders, and left all yard "grooming" tools in the shed. Our property is now hip deep (and more) in natural "weeds", grasses and other natural growth. Snakes, frogs, butterflies, and birds have swarmed our tiny nature preserve. Goldfiches are at the feeders a dozen plus, at any time, yet elsewhere everyone is bemoaning their lack. Our hummingbird feeders are host to dozen's of Anna'swho will stay with us ALL winter, despite snow!  The bird diversity and numbers and song has been staggering!

Everyone was at their wits end with bugs, flies and wasps this year (one of the reasons we scalped the property, to deal with mosquito's) and yet we had NO bugs this year at all, my thanks to our wild birds feeding their babies!

No more composting produce scraps, we literally tossed them out for the birds and allowed them to naturally be consumed or decompose - oddly no flies or bugs, again, thanks to the birds.  

As the rain has finally come, we will cautiously burn off small sections of the grasses and weeds (surrounded by 6 foot solid, metal roofing, fence), over the next few months, to clear the spent growth and return the nutrients to the earth. Our goal now is more wildflowers, and another summer of unhampered natural growth, our little oasis for nature's creatures.

Oh, and I (lacking time and skill) have purchased and given out almost 1,000 fabric masks - I believe each one will save approximately 700 disposable masks from the landfill annually! Plus, reduce the disgusting littering of masks, and lessen entanglement hazards for wildlife.

Douglas Aplenstock wrote:

Madame Booker, I hereby confer upon thee the honourary degree "Master of Badassity." Wear it proudly.

Well, kind Sir, I thank thee!

And:

Blimey! as they say in English, thank you so much everyone for all of them apples and pies! Never expected that.  As I re-read my post, I only noticed the spelling mistakes, (but then it was 1:00 am my time when I wrote it), and the fact that I told a lie.  I did buy some item of clothing recently, I bought some new knickers!

Have a lovely day you kind people!

Olga Booker wrote:Douglas Aplenstock wrote:

Madame Booker, I hereby confer upon thee the honourary degree "Master of Badassity." Wear it proudly.

Well, kind Sir, I thank thee!

And:

Blimey! as they say in English, thank you so much everyone for all of them apples and pies! Never expected that.  As I re-read my post, I only noticed the spelling mistakes, (but then it was 1:00 am my time when I wrote it), and the fact that I told a lie.  I did buy some item of clothing recently, I bought some new knickers!

Have a lovely day you kind people!

I love that your "I plant trees" was just an intro to build up drama :D

My much better half and I began our journey together over five years ago. Most of the steps we have taken are of the "vote with your dollar" and lifestyle change type. For instance:

-we eschew all food listing palm ingredients. This has led to us (and by us, I mean my much better half) making our own phyllo, pizza crust, and bread, and sooo many cookies, among other deliciousness.
-we eschew all personal hygiene products containing palm ingredients.
-we try to get as much of our produce in-season from local farmers' markets.
-we try really hard not to buy grocery store meat of any kind. We try to buy from local butchers who source their meat locally, from sustainable, ethical, and organic or better farms. This means that I have slashed my meat intake to perhaps a fifth of what it was.
-we mine traditional plant-based diets for flavour inspiration, and get creative with flavour and texural meat alternatives in traditional meat contexts, and use tricks like adding cocoa powder and/or peanut butter for a measure of "browning" in the flavour profile.
-we curb food waste by making meal plans and having strategies for using up leftovers.
-we try to choose glass and silicone over even hard-wearing, longer-lived BPA-free plastics.
-we like to store as many appropriate goods as possible in mason jars.
-we do some garden work-trade with friends out of town for a donation of produce at harvest, and throughout the year.
-we are working on our canning to keep more of said produce longer.
-as much as we would like to see far-off places, we are limiting travel to daytrips for canoeing.
-we purchase locally-made bar soaps
-and, I am currently participating in a positive conversation about the steps people have already taken to make things better, where we can each take from what the other is doing and, if it works for us, we can use it, too. Sharing wisdom saves the world, too.

Some of the things I would love to do would be to be able to live closer to where I work, to live somewhere the cost of living doesn't so readily outpace earnings, and somewhere I can perhaps own a house and land, on which to expand our steps in the same light.

Great posts, people! I think voting with one's dollar and living one's convictions as much as practicable are some of the common threads I have seen here. Which other common themes are we seeing?

-CK

D.W. Stratton wrote:
There is an excellent short film called The Man Who Planted Trees. Well worth a watch.

It's done in a beautiful water color style. Such a heartening story! Makes me want to plant 100 acorns a day for 10 years.

I remember watching it years ago. It doesn't matter that it's fictional, it's still a beautifully presented and heartening story and a reminder of how things are invisibly connected. Although the message is endlessly repeated that CO2 has now become a pollutant, plants love it, and the increase is at least partly responsible for the increased greening of the earth, which should also help raise the water table, as the film emphasizes.

Chris Kott wrote

I think voting with one's dollar and living one's convictions as much as practicable are some of the common threads I have seen here.

You are absolutely right, voting with one's dollar is an answer.  If it hurts the pocket, changes will be made.  However, they need to know if we want to change the balance of supply and demand.

Another thing that I do is that I write very nice, polite letters to big companies.

For example, a few years ago, while I was eating a toast with organic peanut butter, I idly looked at the label and to my horror, realised that they were now adding palm oil to it.  It is a fairly reputable British company and I sent them a letter to say that although I had bought and enjoyed their peanut butter for many years, I would no longer do so as I noticed the recent addition of palm oil in their product.  They replied that it was OK because their oil came from a sustainable palm oil plantation.

I then pointed out to them that mono crops, by its very definition, is unlikely to be sustainable and that in any case, they'd already destroyed, land, habitat and ecosystems for the sake of greed - after all there is no need for that oil except as a bulking agent.  Not withstanding that the oil is very high in saturated fat and not especially good for one's health.  They never replied to that one but I've noticed that they have changed their label and proclaim now that ingredients contain "sustainable" palm oil.  I do not claim that I alone made this change happen, and maybe there are more people like me out there, but it is a tiny little change.  Just a tiny step, and if more people voiced their concerns, maybe, just maybe a few, more changes could happen.

Still, I'm grateful to them, I now make an outstanding peanut butter at a fraction of the cost!.

Please explain the incandescent bulbs to me.

Gray Henon wrote:Please explain the incandescent bulbs to me.

https://permies.com/t/led

Joshua Bertram wrote:

Gray Henon wrote:Please explain the incandescent bulbs to me.

https://permies.com/t/led

Thank you.

'Saving the world' isn't my words. I'd say 'I do my best not to destroy planet Earth'.

All you (topic starter) mention I do too. Most of it I already started before 2020. Maybe in some of them I became more active (like riding my bicycle weekly to the farm where I can buy locally grown organic vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs and cheese).

This year I became very active in doing the PEP BBs. Already over 40 BBs now!

And last year I decided not (I mean: never) to travel by airplane anymore.