[RD] What are YOU doing to fight climate change?

[Narz]

I ride a scooter instead of a car (and I bike), I don't eat much meat, I don't buy alot of crap.

 

[tjs282]

I started writing an answer to the OP and it turned into a massive rambling Wall'O'Text. So I've spoiled it (frankly I'm amazed it's still under the character-limit).

Spoiler Don't say I didn't warn you... :

Food:

This is where we're probably most virtuous, climate-wise.

I'm vegetarian: no flesh of any description, but I do still eat dairy and eggs (free-range only!). Though my wife and sons aren't vegetarian, their meat consumption is still pretty minimal, and generally limited to diced bacon ('Speckwürfel', e.g. in soups or on pizza), salami (usually pork- or fowl-based; 1-2 slices per person per day, average); with chicken (in deep-frozen ready-meals, or restaurants/ takeout) or fish-fingers (only with the MSC-stamp!) maybe once a week. Even before the local burger-joint turned into a kebab-shop, they seldom ate beef (and kebabs are also a rare treat, not something we do regularly).

We shop at a fairly low-end supermarket, and their selection and product-labelling is limited. For fresh fruit and veggies, though I don't studiously seek 100% locally-sourced, I am careful to check the country-of-origin on everything I buy, to ensure that the majority of it was grown as close to us as possible. Most of our staples are grown in Germany (potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, beans, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, apples, and seasonal stuff like strawberries and asparagus), the Netherlands (tomatoes, cucumber, bell peppers) or at least still somewhere in Europe (e.g. Spanish aubergines and citrus fruit, Italian grapes and peaches). The only exceptions to that rule are fresh ginger, likely from Africa (not sure); and bananas, which inevitably seem to come from Central or South America (b-b-b-but... bananas!). I also try to buy organic/fairtrade wherever I can.

We do buy packaged rice and pulses (mainly lentils) and tea/coffee. I semi-justify this in that though they may well have come from further afield, bulk-transport of dry-goods requires significantly less fuel per kilo than fresh produce (not only because it can be packed tighter, but also because somewhat less environmental-adjustment is needed to keep it from spoiling).

I also assume that most of our wheat-based foodstuffs are (mostly) made from German grains, but wouldn't like to put money on it; pretty sure our beer is 100% German, though! We also regularly eat soy-/veg-protein based stuff (fake-sausages, tofu, etc.), and buy deep-frozen peas/spinach, and canned pulses/maize as well, but it's very difficult to know where those ingredients are sourced from. Fruit-juices have generally unknowable origins (although admittedly the mangoes and pineapples likely aren't grown in Europe...).

Cooking is all-electric (hob, oven, kettle, microwave, espresso-maker).

When we're done cooking/eating, edible leftovers are boxed, fridged/ frozen, and saved for later. All food-packaging is shaken/rinsed out and put in the 'Gelbe Sack' — allegedly to be sorted and recycled (although I have no idea how tightly that's actually regulated/monitored — if at all). All other kitchen-waste gets composted, and later used for potting-plants, or dug into the flowerbeds as additional fertiliser.

(To improve aeration/decomposition — and hence minimise methane emissions! — I subdivided our compost-bin into 3 separate sections: 1 to fill, 1 to rest and 1 to use; when the 'to use' section is completely emptied, it becomes the new 'to fill' section)

Domestic (B+, very good!):

We buy our electricity from a utility-company which claims to source from renewables (and there are certainly plenty of wind-parks in my local area). Not sure about the gas-supply, but it's more likely to be fossil- than bio-gas.

Almost immediately after buying the house, we had a solar-heating system installed for hot water, with the hot-water and central-heating systems both 'topped up' by a gas-fired boiler (minimum set-point of 60°C). Over the summer, the temperature in the 'Wasserspeicher' rarely if ever drops below 90°C (and the central heating is switched off) so we burn little to no gas; but even through the winter (on clear-sky days) the system still continues to absorb/store heat.

Stored hot water is fed to both the dishwasher (via the hot-water pipe to the kitchen sink), and to the washing-machine (via a mixer-box, for 30-40°C washes), so the heating-circuits in those applicances are also rarely if ever engaged. Although the washer has a tumble-dry mode, we generally hang-dry the washing either outside, or in the utility-room (depending on the season/weather). Tumble-drying only ever happens (occasionally) during the winter, when air-drying would take too long and/or raise the humidity-level too high (the house is very well insulated, so we get a lot of condensation forming on the upstairs windows in winter) — or for emergencies involving illness/ bedsheets (I trust I don't need to elaborate further...).

Around the house, I/we do our best to avoid energy-wastage: switching off un-needed lights, shutting off the tap while soaping/shampooing, closing radiator-valves when we open windows to air the bedrooms in the winter, etc. Though oversights still happen from time to time (the boys aren't thoroughly trained yet!), we're generally pretty careful. Our light-fittings were/are chosen as much as possible to use the longest-lived, lowest-wattage bulbs I can find (initially bought fluorescents, now gradually switching over to LEDs as the fluoros fail). Most of our entertainment is electronic, and though I'm probably the worst culprit in that respect, my/our devices are always powered down after we're finished: nothing is ever left on standby if we can avoid it. For portable devices, we use rechargeable batteries over single-use disposables wherever feasible.

Gardening/DIY:

Almost all done manually. I use a push-mower (our lawns are very small, maybe 60-70 sq.m total); and secateurs/shears and a hand-saw for pruning. The only electric devices I use (semi)regularly are a small pump to run the lawn-sprinkler from the rainwater barrels; and a shredder to reduce prunings to compostability (or to spread on the flower beds, to suppress weed growth). I use a little artificial fertilizer, but avoid peat; also refuse to apply any kind of chemical poison (weeds are removed by hand, insects mostly left in peace). I have an electric drill, and an electric jig-saw, but generally use hand-tools whenever practical.

General consumption:

My philosophy with just about everything is, use it until it breaks, then repair it until that's no longer possible, and only then replace it. My cellphone is nearly 10 years old. My car was built in 2000/01, and we bought it second-hand in 2008, with ~78,000 km on the clock; but we've put another 160,000 km on it since (it will need replacing before next summer's roadworthiness assessment). Since I stopped instructing in 2005, I've continued to use that older divegear — though I did have to buy a new regulator last year (because our local dive-shop staff basically said that to cover themselves legally, they would have had to replace nearly every plastic/rubber part in the old one).

Transport:

Thankfully, our town is small enough that walking/ biking/ bussing within the city limits is easy, and the supermarket is literally 200 m up the road from our house, so almost all food-shopping can be carried with a backpack and/or bike-panniers. We also usually drive to visit family a couple of times a year, the longest journeys being the near-annual 2000 km round-trips to the UK (via the ferry-service from Holland) that we've made since I set up home here.

But commuting to/from work constitutes the majority of road-km driven, and this is our major failing. My wife and I both work for companies with offices in outlying villages, one located ~25 km south and the other ~20 km west of our house, respectively. Neither village enjoys a frequent bus-service (1 bus per 3 hours or so), and the bus-journeys themselves take well over an hour, one-way. I work ~8-hour days 5 days a week (= 200 km total commute), my wife does 5-hour days, 3 days a week in-house, 1 day 'home-office' (= 150 km), so bussing just isn't a practical option. We're effectively 'forced' to drive instead — about 15-25 minutes one-way — and we 'need' 2 cars to do it. Both cars burn around 7 L / 100 km, so between us that's around 1275 L of petrol per year.

When we still lived near the centre of town, I car-pooled with a colleague — but then we moved house, and shortly afterwards, he moved jobs. Unfortunately, none of my remaining colleagues fulfill the same conditions-of-convenience of both (1) living nearby, and (2) working the same hours that I do. Condition (1) matters because during rush-hour, it can take as long to get from one side of town to the other, as to get to work — so the total petrol burnt by 2 colleagues carpooling wouldn't be much different from what they'd burn if driving alone. And condition (2) is important because some of my colleagues are contracted to work fewer total hours per week than I am — and/or habitually start and finish (much) earlier than I do.

(We are broadly trusted to schedule our own working hours, centred around a core-period of 9:00–15:00: I usually start between 8:45 and 9:00 am, but some of my colleagues are already in the office as early as 7 am ).

If I was brutally honest (and/or just plain brutal) with myself, I could certainly drive less. The distance to/from my office is right on the practical limit for cycling (for me), so I aim to do that a couple of days a week between about May and October (the shortest [road-]route is usually un-bikeable from November to April, one way or another), but for me that means (1) waiting for good weather (I wear glasses, so cycling in the rain leaves me half-blinded — but also, yes, I'm a wuss!) and (2) committing around 1.5–2 hours per day just for the commute. OK, it's 'free' exercise too, but that's still a lot of time spent not doing more 'fun' stuff (like playing Civ — or interacting with its Fanatics). And yes, I'm also well aware that a lot of people spend similar amounts of time commuting to work by car every day, but that's hardly a good counter-argument in this thread, is it...?

I would love to be able to switch to a fully-electric vehicle, but can't afford to: not only is the initial price tag high, but we currently (ha ha) have nowhere convenient to charge it: we would have to run a permanent power-line extension from our house, alongside/under the communal footpath, past all our neighbours' houses, to reach the far side of the communal parking area out front. A hybrid might be a compromise-option, but I don't know how reliable a second-hander would be (nor whether it would actually give me significantly better gas-mileage/lower maintenance-costs than I'm already getting).

Our biggest sin regarding (avoidable) greenhouse emissions, though, is probably flying. My wife is also a former scuba-instructor, and she insists on having an annual 2-week beach/diving-holiday (and I admit, I don't strenuously object to that idea). Most years since we 'retired', we've flown back to Egypt (4-5 hours flight time); a couple of years back we splashed out and took ourselves over to Thailand (16 hours each way). A vacation in the Maldives has also been on both our bucket-lists for years now — preferably while the islands are still above sea-level...

So although I/we may do more than some people, it's probably still less than I/we could, if we were more willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

I think if you're going to eat seafood, farmed seafood is the best way to go.

Unfortunately, this may not be true. Large (food-)fish mostly eat smaller fish, so the feedstocks that fish-farms depend on (whitebait-species like herring, sardines, sprat, etc.), are themselves frequently sourced directly from the marine environment — with all the conservation-problems that entails.

Other consideration(s) are e.g. all the disease-agents and pollution that intensive open-water farms can transmit to the local environment. Even inshore-farms may not be much better, because the pond-water is frequently both sourced from, and the effluent dumped back into, 'wild' water-sources, sometimes without much in the way of treatment (depends also on the degree of regulatory enforcement).

The most environmentally-friendly way to eat fish — if at all — is still to catch it yourself, ideally using a method that allows you to choose your target-species reasonably accurately (spearfishing being the 'best' option, a target-specific angling technique being second-best).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I did not realize they fed farm-raised fish with wild-caught food pellets. That really sucks.

I was aware of the environmental degradation that farmed fish entails due to the concentration of their waste products but that's still a lot better overall than bottom-trawling fishing. That particular practice is horrible. I used to eat fake crab meat sticks as it's really lean protein but then I read up on it and it's mainly made out of fish that are caught via bottom-trawling and I stopped.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I try to hold my breath as much as I can to limit my personal CO2 contribution.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I tend to be a light-eating, car-less, bicycle-riding carnivore. I also don't have AC units in my apartment, instead relying, sporadically, on more efficient means of climate control (fans when it's hot, thermal convector in the bedroom when it's cold). My relationship with recycling is rather casual, however.

I like to think I'm less harmful to the environment than many other humans.

 

[Zkribbler]

...So although I/we may do more than some people, it's probably still less than I/we could, if we were more willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

This is the feeling I'm getting from the other folks here.
Me, for example, I'd love to get rid of our SUV, but I need it so much.

 

[Azem.Ocram]

Living in abject poverty (less wealth and income than the poverty line) makes one decide what is really necessary. Do I need to eat meat every day? What meat is cheapest? Can I walk there? Is a taxi really needed? Do I really need to upgrade my electronics? Just by being poor, combined with the habits of recycling, minimizing water usage, and avoiding empty calories, I make a very small impact on the environment.

 

[Estebonrober]

hey @hobbsyoyo what was that Facebook app that let me message all my reps at once?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's not a facebook app, it's a text-based service called ResistBot.
https://resist.bot/

 

[Estebonrober]

It's not a facebook app, it's a text-based service called ResistBot.
https://resist.bot/

Thanks Hobbs. Americans unite. We deserve better than the Bidens and Trumps of the world. Tell your reps.

 

[Lexicus]

Thanks Hobbs. Americans unite. We deserve better than the Bidens and Trumps of the world. Tell your reps.

I have no reps but I endorse this message

 

[Estebonrober]

It's not a facebook app, it's a text-based service called ResistBot.
https://resist.bot/

Lol its overwhelmed at the moment. Signing up anyways.