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How to lower my carbon footprint


Howard

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I think this thread belongs to PPS because it concerns my environmental impact. So seeing the planet getting better encouraged me to do more to reduce my carbon footprint. I already do a few things to help, some on a regular basis, others every now and then.

 

I already take the bus and walk instead of owning a car and driving. I tend not to follow fashion and wear my clothes to the thread or until they don't fit me anymore. I try to get my proteins from plants 4 times a week but since beans (soaking them overnight and then boiling them until tender) are harder to cook than meat, I seldom keep the promises I make myself.

 

I want to try to shop more in second hand shop for clothes. Right now, when I can't find something I want new, I go to second hand stores. I want it to be the other way around, thus saving unecessary production. I recycle more than I throw out. I reuse plastic bags. I also want to stick to my promise I make to myself to eat at least 4 meals with protein not from animal product. I would eat more, but when I do, I get gassy. I don't want to go all out vegan due to health concerns.

 

I usualy eat pork and chicken because they are the cheapest meats. I want to make better choices to animal products that enter my body. I would prevail meats that are easier to raise, that is uses less food to make 1 calorie of meat, like poultry. I want to eat fish that are usualy discarded from fishing nets, like sardines and herrings. I still would consume eggs and milk because of their nutrients. In as far as beef, I'm trying to track down a butcher who sells cull cows. I think it would be environmentaly sounder to eat an animal that had another use during its lifetime than one that was strictly raised for meat.

 

I'm curious if you have had the same thought of becoming greener? What are your plans for being so? Do you already do things to help the planet? Do you have any suggestions for me?

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mexicanpotato

I think you're going great in your save the planet journey. You should look into the zero waste movement and try to buy things in bulk, remember it's not about reducing all the way down to zero waste, it's just about reducing your waste as much as your conditions let you. Maybe consider buying second hand electronic devices since their production is really polluting.

 

I have always been pretty concerned about the environment, that's why I went vegan almost a year ago and convinced my family to go vegetarian and we do our best try to be zero waste. I also have been using public transportation more often and sometimes I use my bike or walk when the place I need to get to is near. Also today I made my first second hand clothes purchase and I'm really happy and I think from now on all of my clothes are going to be second hand because I stopped buying fast fashion two years ago but I also ran out of clothes hahah

 

And also you can inform yourself about the topic, read, watch documentaries, join climate strikes, become an activist or advocate of sustaintability

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Personally I try and get locally produced / grown stuff whenever possible, as opposed to goods flown halfway round the world. But I live in a rural area, so that's probably more easily done here than elsewhere.

 

Vegan does not work for me (health reasons), but what I do is shop local and / or organic whenever possible. I don't follow fashion either, I buy new stuff when I need it (=when something no longer fits or is beyond repair); I also have two friends who I swap clothes with. I also make my own clothes when I have the time (read: now) and fix things instead of throwing them out at the first sign of damage.

 

When I moved house I got most of my furniture second-hand, some even for free, and upcycled it shabby-chic style - I'm not a cheapskate, I'm eco-friendly! 😄 Plus, it was fun.

 

And there's donating stuff that's no longer needed instead of throwing it out. E.g. a surprising number of electronics is fixable and / or recyclable.

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You don't actually need as much protein as the average person is consuming. Cutting out dairy, pork and beef, while still consuming poultry and eggs would be a fairly environmentally friendly choice. Chickens are less harmful than cows and pigs.

Vegetarianism isn't actually all that hard nowadays though, nutrient-wise, convenience-wise or taste-wise, and (as long as you're not consuming lots of dairy), would probably get you a lower carbon footprint still. You don't have canned beans where you live? Takes 5 minutes to cook those. Also, falafel and hummus are amazing, just saying :) 

 

Other than that, keep in mind that carbon isn't the be all and end all of the crisis. The ecological crisis is actually more threatening to the continued existence of humanity on the planet. You know, ecosystems collapsing, species dying out etcetera.

 

Do you have night lights outside your house turned on at night? Like a lantern or something? If so, turn it off. We are rapidly losing all of our insect species (like seriously, we are on track to lose literally all insects within a hundred years), without which, no ecosystem can survive. Obviously pesticides are the main culprit, but night lights kill a ton too. They swarm towards the light, and then they can't leave anymore, and they die right there.

 

Plant (local, not invasive) plants in your garden that attract insect species. If everyone has tiles in their gardens instead of plants, that is first of all bad for flooding because the water doesn't sink into the ground (yes, here my Dutchness shines through again), and second of all it is also bad for wildlife. Don't plant invasive species, they'll drive out local species causing them to go extinct blabla. 

 

Certain types of fabrics (notably fleece and anything with sparkles) release a ton of microplastics into the environment every time you put them in a laundromat. Don't buy those, and if you already own them, I guess don't wash them? Microplastics are bad for marine life.

 

Don't wear sunscreen when swimming in the ocean or in lakes, especially anywhere near corals. Or wear that special environmentally friendly sunscreen that's probably more expensive.

 

If you have a cat, don't let it roam outside. Cats kill wildlife, and have driven innumerable species of birtds, reptiles, small mammals and amphibians to extinction.

 

Vegetarianism helps here too. Waste produced by cattle releases too much nitrogen into environments surrounding farms, which runs off into local bodies of water. That causes too many nutrients to end up in a water source all at once, which causes algae to bloom. The algae uses up all the water's oxygen, and all life (that needs oxygen, which is almost all life) in the water dies out. Google 'dead zones', 'Algal Bloom'. This is an especially big problem in the Mexican Gulf.

Fertilizer does the same thing. The practice of 'cover crops' (growing a useless crop on temporarily unused farmland so that the topsoil doesn't wash away) helps prevent this. This isn't something you can individually change. We need legal changes to fix that.

 

Especially in the Americas a lot of beef comes from farms that were cut into the Brazilian rainforest. Vegetarianism (and especially veganism) is the single biggest thing you could individually do for the planet.

 

Don't use spray deodorant.

 

Did you know that candles are made out of crude oil? I didn't, until fairly recently. Sucks. I like candles.

 

Oh and be aware that there's Dutch bias here, but get a bicycle? Don't know how feasible that is where you live.

 

Don't buy tropical hardwood furniture, obviously.

 

1 hour ago, Howard said:

I'm curious if you have had the same thought of becoming greener? What are your plans for being so? Do you already do things to help the planet? Do you have any suggestions for me?

Yeah, but not really recently because of the whole corona thing though. I've been a vegetarian for almost 2 years now (and barely ate meat before that), still working on convincing my family to join in. I'm slowly heading in the direction of veganism, but that shit's hard. I feel like I need a degree in nutrition before being able to really pull it off, and then actually keep track of what I eat, instead of just eating whatever I feel like eating. Not a fan of that haha.

 

I'm also trying to join Extinction Rebellion, but the 'welcome to XR' meeting got cancelled because of corona.

 

I never drive (despite having a license), I'm not planning on having kids, I shop for clothes maybe once every three years, recycling and reusing plastic is second nature so I don't really count that. Dunno, it doesn't feel like enough, but I don't think anything ever will.

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18 minutes ago, Laurann said:

You don't have canned beans where you live?

I do, but they cost 2-3 times as much as dry beans. I am a bit of a cheapstake.

 

19 minutes ago, Laurann said:

 

Do you have night lights outside your house turned on at night? Like a lantern or something?

No. My landlord is very electricity and water wise.

21 minutes ago, Laurann said:

Certain types of fabrics (notably fleece and anything with sparkles) release a ton of microplastics into the environment every time you put them in a laundromat. Don't buy those, and if you already own them, I guess don't wash them? Microplastics are bad for marine life.

I buy cotton/polyester mix, and wool. Is polyester ok? I don't like other fabric type because they are hard to iron.

 

23 minutes ago, Laurann said:

Did you know that candles are made out of crude oil?

I did not know that. I keep my candles for emergencies, like being out of power.

 

23 minutes ago, Laurann said:

Oh and be aware that there's Dutch bias here, but get a bicycle?

I do have a bicycle but it needs repair. I'm also too cowardly to ride in traffic or during the winter.

 

I don't agree with much activism because they often blame large companies while 60% of pollution is made my consumers. I think generaly available education on the subject would, in most cases, be more effective than legislation. Then again, it's an opinion.

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I think it's safe to say you're doing better than most people. If everyone does something along those lines, then we get some decent legislation passed to help with the rest, we might be okay. 

 

If you want to take another step, maybe try composting? It's something I want to set up at my school. You can have your own bin for a little while, then there are places you can take it to that compost it and sell it again. I don't know that I've described it well, that's just my general understanding. 

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AspieAlly613
1 hour ago, Laurann said:

Vegetarianism (and especially veganism) is the single biggest thing you could individually do for the planet.

Wait, even bigger than living the non-driver lifestyle (including not living in a suburb, shortening your bus commute)?

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AspieAlly613
10 minutes ago, Ella Joy said:

If everyone does something along those lines, then we get some decent legislation passed to help with the rest, we might be okay. 

If everyone did this stuff, we wouldn't need legislation.  Oil companies only mine and process as much fossil fuel as they think people will buy.  The problem is that, in the United States, we can't all do this stuff.  As an example, my city of Hartford, CT is livable without a car.  However, 90% of residents of the greater Hartford metro area live outside of Hartford and commute in.   These suburbs only became heavily populated as automobiles became prevalent.  If the entire population of Greater Hartford were condensed into an area with the same population density of the actual city of Hartford as of the 1950 census, we would all fit in a 6-mile radius, and our current bus system would only need minor modifications to service the entire metro area.  The problem is that dozens of towns would have to be abandoned into ghost towns, or better yet, converted to either wooded area or farm land to feed the population locally.  People aren't ready for their hometowns to be disestablished, and I can't blame them.

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6 hours ago, Howard said:

Do you already do things to help the planet?

I've gone vegan for environmental reasons (though I was already vegetarian for non-environmental reasons, so it was a pretty small step ;D )

--> I've also looked at the carbon foodprint and water requirements for various vegan foods and try to stick to the ones that are on the lower end where possible (I'm not super strict about this one - more of a "keep it at the back of my mind" kinda thing)

 

Don't own a car, and walking everything up to ~4 miles

 

6 hours ago, Howard said:

Do you have any suggestions for me?

Just do whatever YOU feel comfortable with! :D

There's nothing worse than telling others how they should live their life - that is usually very counter-productive :D 

 

3 hours ago, AspieAlly613 said:

Wait, even bigger than living the non-driver lifestyle (including not living in a suburb, shortening your bus commute)?

Well, yes and no. The carbon foodprint of the average diet is higher than the average transportation footprint of a person.

That being said, the difference in carbon footprint of someone following an average diet vs. someone following a vegan diet is smaller than the carbon footprint of transportation.

So the statement that your diet is a person's largest contributor to carbon emissions is correct, but compared to "0 carbon emissions from transportation", going vegan would be a less impactful lifestyle change. (All of this based on US data)

 

All of that being said, it shouldn't be about which extreme to choose :)

"No meat" vs "no cars" isn't really the choice we should be making - it's all about being mindful of your impact in general, and reducing it to a degree that you feel comfortable with in all sectors.

 

Also to be clear: While it's awesome if people try to decrease their carbon footprint (they 100% should if they are able to!), there's also a TON of emissions from industry, so political action is certainly still needed. (Or really aggressive consumer behavior against companies with a high footprint, but that's not gonna happen)

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I'm concerned about that too.

I have considered selling my car but it's currently impossible with the location of my workplace. In my city I only travel by public transportation for my weekly shopping. I can't go vegan for health reasons either but I eat more eggs, milk and fish than beef or pork.

 

My life online has a big carbon footprint. The quarantine is a disaster for this. To minimize the data handled by datacenters I clean up my mailboxes and bookmark sites instead of google searching. Streaming is also quite bad for the environment. I do it for video because there are less alternatives but not for music.

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hypnopompic
24 minutes ago, AspieAlly613 said:

Wait, even bigger than living the non-driver lifestyle (including not living in a suburb, shortening your bus commute)?

Here you go:

 

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/medium/public/2016-05/global_emissions_sector_2015.png

 

  • Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (24% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation. This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.[2] 
  • Transportation (14% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector primarily involve fossil fuels burned for road, rail, air, and marine transportation. Almost all (95%) of the world's transportation energy comes from petroleum-based fuels, largely gasoline and diesel.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data

 

 

Aaaand here:

 

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/11/How-much-of-GHGs-come-from-food-768x777.png

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Dreamer23 said:

it's all about being mindful of your impact in general, and reducing it to a degree that you feel comfortable with in all sectors.

That sums it up perfectly.

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The sooner the aviation industry start running turboprops on Hydrogen the better. The technology is already out there. Jets may take longer 

 

Mind it doesn't help when I've had to change from a diesel 135 carbons to a petrol 170 carbons to be emissions zone compliant 

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4 hours ago, Howard said:

I'm curious if you have had the same thought of becoming greener? What are your plans for being so? Do you already do things to help the planet? Do you have any suggestions for me?

I walk everywhere, and only take the bus to get to the city maybe 3 times a year. I wear only secondhand clothes that are given to me by people getting rid of them (including underwear, socks, and shoes) and wear them until they fall apart. I use handmade sanitary products that can be washed and reused. I wash clothes only in cold water. Most of what I eat is sourced within NZ. 

 

4 hours ago, Howard said:

. I also want to stick to my promise I make to myself to eat at least 4 meals with protein not from animal product. I would eat more, but when I do, I get gassy.

 

Regarding the gas you mentioned, have you looked online for suggestions about how to prepare those things in a way that won't cause that issue? I don't eat many beans but I'm sure I remember seeing someone saying soaking them in a water with vinegar in overnight, then cooking them twice or something, removed the enzymes that create the gas. I can't remember the exact suggestion but it was something like that. 

 

Mostly what I do is just put all the veggies, spelt etc into a crock pot with broth and leave it on low heat. It seems to remove anything that would cause gas as I hardly ever seem to have it. I use soup bones to create broth as you get a lot of calcium etc from real broth, and I figure it the animal had to die anyway then may as well try to use all parts of it! But yes here in NZ animals (beef and sheep) live on large open pastures, not kept in factories or anything like that. I avoid factory farmed products personally as best I can.

 

Have you tried tofu for protein as an alternative to meat? (Not sure the environmental impact growing it may have though as I don't eat it myself, been tempted to try it thoug!!)

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1 hour ago, Howard said:

Is polyester ok?

Google says no :( 

 

30 minutes ago, AspieAlly613 said:

Wait, even bigger than living the non-driver lifestyle (including not living in a suburb, shortening your bus commute)?

Yes.

If you're only counting carbon footprint then it might be close, but you shouldn't do that.

  • Animal agriculture also causes major habitat loss, notably in some of the most critical ecosystems in the world, like the Amazon rainforest, and we desperately need those trees and those ecosystems. 80% of agricultural land use is in service of animal agriculture. Part of that is land for grazing, part of it is for feed production.
  • Animal agriculture is also responsible for a large portion of air and water pollution (like nitrogen, phosphorous, antibiotics, pathogens, sediment and pesticides), and of course for the previously mentioned algal blooms (eutrophication) and dead zones. Agricultural runoff is also part of what's killing the Great Barrier Reef. The algae living in coral reefs produce a ton of the world's oxygen, and reabsorb CO2. We can't lose these things. (But sadly we almost inevitably will. We're kinda late.)
  • We feed a third of grain and soy we produce to livestock, not directly to humans, so the pesticide insect 'armageddon' (as the Guardian puts it) could also be lessened by going vegetarian/vegan. Going vegetarian/vegan is not really consuming differently, it is indirectly consuming less, because animals are very inefficient nutrient converters.
  • And let's not forget about animal agriculture's use of freshwater. Countries like South Africa and Pakistan are already running out of freshwater, and that's expected to become more and more of a problem in the future as reservoirs and aquifers continue to dry up, to the point that experts are predicting future wars will be fought over water instead of oil.
  • And aside from the changing climate and the ecological crisis, livestock is also pumped full of antibiotics. I'm sure you've heard that doctors aren't allowed to prescribe antibiotics to humans for every little thing anymore because it creates 'superbugs', antibiotic resistant bacteria. Well the same thing happens when you give them to animals. It's actually a very serious problem. And at the risk of this being 'too soon', we could drastically reduce the number of new zoonotic viruses if there was less animal agriculture.
  • And then we haven't talked about fish yet. Biggest issues are obviously overfishing, as well as nets trawling (scraping off the fertile bottom of the seafloor, destroying reefs and other ecosystems in its wake, causing habitat loss), and fish farms causing pollution.
  • And then lastly you've got things like violent crime rates in areas that have slaughterhouses going up because of the trauma those workers endure in there. 

So yeah, I think it's very important not to focus only on carbon emissions. That's only a small portion of the problem we're facing. The 6th mass extinction we're in right now is what I'm more scared of.

 

Anyways, this should not be a 'one or the other', 'transport or diet' thing. We really need every little bit of help we can get, and even then, the future is looking pretty bleak. We aren't at all on track to stay under the 2 degrees warming we need to prevent catastrophic changes.

 

 

5 minutes ago, Not Pan Ficto. said:

Have you tried tofu for protein as an alternative to meat? (Not sure the environmental impact growing it may have though as I don't eat it myself, been tempted to try it thoug!!)

Tofu is great, you should try it! The taste really depends on what you do with it though. You need some kind of sauce or something. On its own it doesn't really have a taste. 

And the environmental impact is minimal in comparison to meat. Soy is grown in the Amazon rainforest, but most of that soy is used for animal feed. It's better to just eat the 1 kg of soy in the form of tofu than to indirectly eat 100kg of soy in the form of beef. (I pulled that number out of my ass. The ratio might actually be way worse.)

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22 minutes ago, Not Pan Ficto. said:

 

Have you tried tofu for protein as an alternative to meat?

I often have it in restaurants but I don't know how to cook it properly. I prefer beans and nuts as plant protein.

 

7 minutes ago, Laurann said:

Countries like South Africa and Pakistan are already running out of freshwater, and that's expected to become more and more of a problem in the future as reservoirs and aquifers continue to dry up, to the point that experts are predicting future wars will be fought over water instead of oil.

Sadly, war over water already happenned. Siad Barre, the Somalian president prior to the civil war, was at war with Ethiopia over land inhabited by Somali and in that land was a river. The countries were divided as such by the UN due to the lack of freshwater in Ethiopia.

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1 hour ago, Dreamer23 said:

Just do whatever YOU feel comfortable with! :D

There's nothing worse than telling others how they should liv their life - that is usually very counter-productive :D

Agreed 1000%! I've had to deal with so much controlling behavior already that those kind of people would be wise to not mess with me.

 

55 minutes ago, Skycaptain said:

The sooner the aviation industry start running turboprops on Hydrogen the better. The technology is already out there. Jets may take longer 

 

Mind it doesn't help when I've had to change from a diesel 135 carbons to a petrol 170 carbons to be emissions zone compliant

The Bear has been using turboprops since the 50s, no idea what kind of fuel they run on though. Their contra-rotating props make for even greater efficiency; the only drawback is the noise made by said props.

 

I read that in India *every* car is a diesel, and breathing their smog is comparable to smoking 44 packs of cigarettes a day.

 

As for moi, I have no idea if it helps at all, but I eat a lot of liver and actually like it. I don't need anything fancy; I'm more or less a human garburetor. One exception is fast "food"; I won't eat stuff from McGreasy's, mainly out of principle. I have a mostly monochromatic wardrobe so matching is never a problem, and I look really hard for poly-cotton blends; not only is such clothing easy to maintain, I find that it's much more resistant to fading than straight-up cotton, much slower to wear out and insulates well even if the fabric is light. I also use a lot of old stuff in my day-to-day living, primarily because I appreciate the quality and styling of decades past, so once I get hold of something it's often here to stay, rather than being dumped in a few years for something new. If something is beyond practical restoration I'll rat it for parts, wiring and fasteners, make one good thing out of two or more, stuff like that. I search rather obsessively for this stuff as most new things are not worth my while, and will often do without certain tools or borrow them until I can find and secure quality tools.

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2 hours ago, Laurann said:

And the environmental impact is minimal in comparison to meat. Soy is grown in the Amazon rainforest, but most of that soy is used for animal feed. It's better to just eat the 1 kg of soy in the form of tofu than to indirectly eat 100kg of soy in the form of beef. (I pulled that number out of my ass. The ratio might actually be way worse.)

I think the difference for me is that, being in NZ, I think the delivery of the soy to my country may cause more impact than eating a steak from a cow sourced from a farm that's a few hours away?? It's a difficult one to balance, for sure (and yeah that frikken sucks about the soy farms, they're destroying the rainforest to grow crops to feed all the cattle.. it's so sad) :c

 

But yes if I could find local tofu (I'd have to Google to find out if they can grow soy in other countries!) I'd definitely like to try it :)

 

 

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Anthracite_Impreza

I don't give a shit about carbon emissions, but I'm here to wave the vege-vegan flag because there's absolutely no need to eat animals at all any more and yes, livestock farming destroys the ecosystem far more than internal combustion or even steam engines ever will. The lives of other animals matter too.

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I recently went vegan. Well, I do still have some multivitamins and beauty products that technically aren’t vegan, but once I’m done with those I’ll buy vegan ones instead. It’s actually not as hard as I thought it would be, especially since I’ve found that I like a lot of replacement meats better than real meat, I like tofu scramble better than the eggs I used to have for breakfast, and I’m fine with putting almond or coconut creamer in my coffee. Since I have two cats I still have to buy food with meat in it for them, but oh well.

 

I try to recycle as much as I can. For a while my apartment complex didn’t have a recycling dumpster but I still sometimes brought some recyclables to work so I could put them in the recycling bin there. Here in California stores can’t give you single use plastic bags anymore so most of us around here reuse our bags, but even before that law I preferred to recycle my single use plastic bags.

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I've also cut down on eating meat and might just stop entirely soon.

 
This thread is lacking the most important thing, though: not having children.

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Anthracite_Impreza
6 hours ago, Still said:

This thread is lacking the most important thing, though: not having children.

Damn, forgot about that one. Yes, stop having children (or just have like, one). The population is way too fucking huge already.

 

Oh and rather than build new vehicles, look after the ones who are already here. They need love, they need looking after, they could keep going forever if anyone actually gave a shit about them. And, incidentally, a well cared for combustion system will be more efficient, as well as it just being the right thing to do. My cars have full services every single year. This is probably the only time me and eco-warriors will ever agree on petrols/diesels, so take heed.

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Oh yeah I prefer used cars and don't mind second-hand clothes unless I'm looking for something specific, but that's more for financial reasons. I'm not having any kids either, but that's more for personal reasons. I guess it is a plus when those choices happen to be "greener", win-win.

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It might help  if wealth weren't  cocentrated among so few. Saw a Dalai Lama quote about there being enough for everyone's NEED but notenough for everyone's GREED. 

Vegans would have a hard time clothing themselves - cotton has an incredibly high carbon footprint - huge quantities of water are required to grow and process it -thnk it's alreay been mentioned that manmade fibres are made from petroleum.

Dairy alternatives can have a devastating effect on the environment - almonds are a very thristy tree,not to mention that the bees used to fertilise the blossom need a variety of nectars. Being restricted to one can wipe out an entire hive - bit like us being restricted to one food.

Buy only, or mainly, local produce sounds like a great idea but variety will be reduced and we will once again be restricted to seasonal produce.English apples are naturally harvested in autumn, to have them available most of the year requires them to be chilled - refrigeration not good for the environment.

Soil health is esssential to crop production - soil health depends on animal dung, it's how the system has evolved, migh also be beneficial to return to crop rotation. 

If you choose not to have children then that's fine, but there reallly is enough to go round if we 'share' resources not hog them

 

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mexicanpotato

 

3 hours ago, Tanwen said:

Dairy alternatives can have a devastating effect on the environment - almonds are a very thristy tree,not to mention that the bees used to fertilise the blossom need a variety of nectars. Being restricted to one can wipe out an entire hive - bit like us being restricted to one food.

That's an important topic, the rising demand of almond milk is having negative effects on the bee population all across the globe so if you want non dairy milk look for one different to almond.

Rice, oat, pecan, cashew, soy, coconut, quinoa are great options but oat and rice are my personal favorites,

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26 minutes ago, mexicanpotato said:

 

That's an important topic, the rising demand of almond milk is having negative effects on the bee population all across the globe so if you want non dairy milk look for one different to almond.

Rice, oat, pecan, cashew, soy, coconut, quinoa are great options but oat and rice are my personal favorites,

I didn’t know that about almond milk :(. I’ll try to use different kinds. I’ve used cashew milk before and it did make a nice coffee creamer.

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15 minutes ago, Gloomy said:

I didn’t know that about almond milk :(. I’ll try to use different kinds. I’ve used cashew milk before and it did make a nice coffee creamer.

I think Cashew milk has similar requirements to almond milk.

Environmental impact is also not just water - this page has a pretty well sourced chart with water use, land use, and carbon emissions of various types of dairy alternatives:

https://blog.datawrapper.de/cow-milk-and-vegan-milk-alternatives/

Though be warned - that chart seems to be based on a volume based (so "per cup") measurement. That's why almond milk has a lower water impact according to that chart than dairy milk - which is correct if you are measuring cup vs cup. The water consumption statement above is likely based on "per calorie" - since dairy milk has almost four times as many calories per cup compared to almond milk (so based on a per calorie measurement, almond milk is also barely better in CO2 emissions).

That being said, I don't think people will usually replace drinking one cup of dairy milk with four cups almond milk, but rather do it on a volume basis.

If you do that, you'll not only reduce water-, land use, and carbon emissions, but also decrease your calorie intake, which is always a nice side-benefit! :)

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2 hours ago, Dreamer23 said:

That being said, I don't think people will usually replace drinking one cup of dairy milk with four cups almond milk, but rather do it on a volume basis.

If you do that, you'll not only reduce water-, land use, and carbon emissions, but also decrease your calorie intake, which is always a nice side-benefit! :)

Yeah, don’t drink as much dairy alternative as the amount of milk I drank when I still drank milk. I really only use it for my coffee, just a few tablespoons at a time, so I guess that’s good.

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4 hours ago, mexicanpotato said:

 

That's an important topic, the rising demand of almond milk is having negative effects on the bee population all across the globe so if you want non dairy milk look for one different to almond.

Rice, oat, pecan, cashew, soy, coconut, quinoa are great options but oat and rice are my personal favorites,

Cashew nut production has its own dark side :(

http://twistedfood.co.uk/the-uncomfortable-truth-behind-how-cashew-nuts-are-made/

 

Soy is a popular crop in South America - jungle is cleared primarily for soy production but the soil is very poor in nutrients and is turned over to cattle. 

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DarkStormyKnight

Not flying is also super important (not that anyone should be right now) but planes stick SO MUCH pollution into the atmosphere. Cutting down on food waste by eating everything you buy can also help a lot. 

 

Personally I'm about the same as you with my habits, try to not buy new clothes, recycle, eat vegetarian as often as I can. I don't own a car and have to walk or take public transit everywhere. I do wonder about my energy sources since I live in an apartment where I don't get a say in that but it can't really be helped.

 

Glad everyone here is thinking about the environment!

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