life, love & laundry
On Frugality and the Environment: guess which one wins?
This is the time of year when we are recovering from holiday spending, planning for Tax Day and basically don’t have much extra to throw out what suddenly seems like a million items that need to be replaced. Right now we need two new TVs, two new livingroom sets, two new dressers and a matching desk, three replacement dining room chairs and one DVD player. And then of course there are the things we WANT but do not need. Like new dishes, new sheets for the kids beds, my new camera and an embroidery machine. Oh and the TVs, they are probably in the WANT category, really, right? Ooops.
Needless to say, those purchases will have to be stretched over the next many months, just in time probably to start over again next post-Christmas season. Meanwhile, I’m scouring Craigslist and other online sources for used (read: cheap) stuff instead.
Do I need to say cheap in parethesis? Don’t you know that’s what I mean? Why else would I be looking for USED stuff instead of just buying exactly what I want? Because it sure isn’t my eco-friendly nature coming to a head.
Well here in Houston I’m an anomoly because they don’t do Used like the midwest does Used. No, here they list couches with no upholestry left for $350 and tell you to just throw on a slipcover or have it reupholstered. They list desks with broken drawers for $150. Old desks with stains and scratches and broken drawers sell for even more because they are called “antique” (you know – 1980′s era!). It just blows my mind how crazy much money people sell used crap for here. In Michigan often we had to fill the landfill because we couldn’t even Freecycle some much better stuff!
But alas, I would be a hypocrit if I complained too much since I made several hundred dollars selling just a few larger toys right before the holidays. Each and every toy was sold for more than I bought it for (new!) even though they were all used, some had missing parts. People will buy ANYTHING here if you list it long enough. It is so weird. But not me. I might join the greedy sellers but I’m not going to be an idiotic buyer.
At least not on Craistlist.
I’ve been thinking about the whole Green movement lately. Generally speaking I like to think I’m environmentally conscious although I have a few bad habits (like using paper plates way too often). Last year at this time everyone in the blogosphere was on some huge “2008: The Year of the Green New Me” kick. Well, not EVERYONE because not ME. But lots of people. New blogs specifically about living simpler, living greener, cleaner and more environmentally conscious sprung up. Books came out. It was all the rage. It seems like a lot of that fluff has died away from the blogosphere which I’m glad for. I just think nothing much good comes from internet fads, even if….or especially when…the “fad” involves the environment.
So along those lines I was driving today and thinking about some things we did “for the Earth” last year. One of those things was to buy reusable cat litter. Or wait. I said that wrong. Reusable cat litter CONTAINERS which you refilled at PetCo. No plastic in the landfills, you save a few bucks too. Win, win! It also helped alleviate my guilt over not using my own grocery bags. Do you use your own grocery bags? Because I keep considering it, given the sheer number of times I have to hit the store in a given month. But I would literally have to buy like 20 and drag them all in and out of the store and frankly I think they’d use up too much real estate in my cart while I shop! So I fill the land. And I digress.
What I was saying was that the refillable cat litter containers seemed like an easy way to help the earth. Or so I thought at the time. Recently we ditched the whole refill idea entirely. First of all, the closest PetCo is further than TWO different Petsmarts (no refillable litter there) which means we always had to drive out of our way to go. Second of all we have three cats who go through TONS of litter and even with FOUR refillable containers, I was resenting the frequent trips just to fill up on cat litter. But the final blow came when I was at our local grocer (which is one block from our house) and saw that they had several brands of cat litter that were SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than the PetCo refill stuff (which is just litter – nothing special about it). So here I was for several months of 2008 thinking Iwas helping to lighten my footprint here on Earth but really I was just burning fuel (into the environmnet!) to go out of my way to drive to somewhere inconvenient and paying more for the “honor”. And turns out? Our litter containers are recyclable. Man, what a chump I am!
So tell me….is it more environmentally conscious to stop using paper plates? Or would it probably cancel each other out after you consider the cost of running at least twice as many loads of dishes a day (in our dishwasher because I sure as hell am not giving THAT up)? Because paper – we recycle, it erodes quickly and burns easily. Oh but wait….those trees it comes from. Hrm. Damn. I guess Paper Plates are out in 2009.
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I have a very deep dark secret that I will only confess here, in the complete privacy of your blog comments…..
I USE PLASTIC GROCERY STORE BAGS….
I DON’T TAKE MY OWN WITH ME….
gahhhhhhh……
FORGIVE ME OH GREAT GREEN ONE
I am a dork, I know…
I too, like to think of myself as a greenie, but seriously, I am not even green-ish… unless you count our geothermal heating and cooling, that has to count for soemthing, right?
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Oooh geothermal is very cool!!!! I hate to say that so many of our eco-choices revolve around savings. :/
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I totally have that same question. Like, is it better to use disposable bibs that I throw away (I can get away with one for all day if we’re at home) or three different cloth bibs that have to be washed? I’m too stupid to figure it out, but I ponder these things while I drink late at night alone. :) I could have written the same thing about the green movement and my part. I’ve recently made a commitment to be more green if it fits in our budget and isn’t too crazy difficult. I usually bring my own bags to the grocery store, except when we need more plastic bags for dog “pook” (as Matty calls it). My big recent contribution was to stop using disposable water bottles and start refilling a reusable one each day. The whole cancer thing really gave me the kick in the a$$, but my husband was drinking five or six water bottles a day and I was drinking about four or five and I realized that’s a LOT of water bottles in the landfill AND it was expensive. Add up almost ten water bottles a day…even if they’re from Sa*m’s Club, it’s an expensive “habit.” So I’m almost totally green now. :) Oh, and I switched to green cleaning products right after Matty came home. I started to wonder if he was going to grow a second head because I was using so much 409 on his high chair tray. Clorox makes a cheap green line and I totally switched to that for all of our cleaning stuff. Wow, reading over this, I realize that I’m practically an environmentalist.
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hey, do what you want and ditch the rest (along with any guilt)! I’ve never heard of the refillable cat litter before and I consider(ed) myself pretty hip on such things ;)
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I usually take my own carrier bags to the store! Go me! I also sold my gas guzzler in 2008 and bought a tiny little 1000cc engine car. I try and recycle as much as I can, but mostly the thought of washing out those used cans of stuff just makes me feel ill so I stick it in the non recycleable dustbin.
x
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You know what? Short of living in a cave and foraging for your own food, everything we do has some environmental impact. (And even the cave probably isn’t perfect unless you plan to eat all your food raw and freeze to death in the winter – smoke from the fire, dontchaknow?) So I agree with Michelle – do what you can and ditch your guilt about what you can’t. And maybe try making baby steps on some things you’d LIKE to do but seem overwhelming. For instance, I still use disposable grocery bags for the big trips. In fact, we need the bags b/c we reuse them several times. BUT…I got some Chico bags that I use for those smaller runs both to the grocery store and to places like the pharmacy or the Hallmark store. The beauty of Chico bags is that you could fit 50 of the folded up ones probably into a single open bag. Not that you need THAT many, but it gives you an idea of how small they are.
Oh, and FWIW, economics usually win out over green for me too. It’s why I’m so grateful for Frontier – it allows me to make more eco-conscious purchases for my personal care and health products than going to the store, so I’ve been able to convert a LOT of that stuff. But when it comes down to it, I almost always choose the cheap option. However, I think the benefit of green being a “fad” (although I think/hope it’s deeper than that) is that more green products enter the market and manufacturers put a bigger emphasis on green products, and then the prices come down. Yay for that! ;)
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As Irish said, it’s impossible to live without negatively impacting the environment. However, I try. We do use some of the green bags for shopping but I still end up with a lot of plastic bags (I’m not putting chicken in a reusable bag, KWIM?). And then we use the plastic bags for stinky diaper removal and recycle the rest periodically. I do try to recycle glass, aluminum, etc which is a major feat for us. My large city does not offer curb-side recycling so we have to haul it but I am committed. Hubby, not so much. My secret guilt – I LOVE paper towels. Sponges and clothes really creep me out as far as germs so I go through some paper towels. I better get busy planting some replacement trees for all the ones I’m wiping my counters down with!
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I never heard of that kitty litter option….went and checked it out online and it says to throw it out every 10 days??? The problem for me is I scoop my kitty litter twice a day at least….sometimes more. I hate seeing anything in there. ( I have 2 cats) I have a regular plastic pan and I scoop into those little paper lunch bags you buy at the grocery store for about $1 per 100. I figure they are bio degradable. Then I totally dump out the used litter once a week and wash the plastic bin in the laundry sink, then refill with brand new clean litter. It’s not as much work as it sounds. Anyway, I have to be on top of it as I found my dog in the litter once and I caught Nolan in there playing like it was a sand box a couple times….YUCK!
You’d be surprised Nikki how many big companies waste so much. It would take a whole town of residents recycling to match them. When I started working in the casinos, they didn’t recycle at all. I did finally get Resorts to start doing it. I went to the director of food and bev. about it and eventually after a few meetings they implimented a plan. This was 15 years ago when I was a total “greenie” and had a big mouth about it. They ended up having a special bin set up in the restaurants by the dish machines. The Borgata however, just a couple years ago, still did not really enforce recycling. :-( And the food waste too….sad.
When we were at Disney (6 years ago though so it may have changed), they didn’t recycle either! I was in shock! Think about all those bottles and such being tossed together with everything else. It’s hard to be such an advocate for being green when you’re up against big companies not practicing it. Anyway, my 16 year old is starting to bring back the “greenie” in me. The grocery plastic bags really kills me….can you even imagine how many of them we bring home a week?
I feel a New Year’s resolution coming on.
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I was raised by two (well, actually three) of the most environmentally-conscious people you will ever meet. They were “green” long before it was a fad. The Lorax is my favorite children’s book. And I don’t use reusable grocery bags. Well, I bought two, and sometimes if I’m doing a very quick trip just for milk or whatever, I will use them. But like you my usual trip requires a huge number of bags and generally I forget to bring them along anyway. Also the bagger guy seemed completely stymied by my bags because they are bigger than the ones that Giant sells.
I do the stuff that makes sense and is practical and don’t stress about the rest. The reality is much of this faddish crap doesn’t save one iota of carbon or whatever the chemical of the week is these days.
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You know, I really wonder if not feeling the pressure to go 100% is part of the key to success? I never considered only doing PARTIAL reusable bags! Duh! And on that same note, we do buy paper towel but don’t go through it fast at all because we do cloth rags. We bought a bunch of really cheapo washcloths from Target (like the $10 for 10 ones) and we have a bin on our dryer just for rags so every time we wipe up a spill, clean the table, counters, etc we just grab a new one. When we are done with the old one, we just throw it directly into the washer and it gets washed with the next load (we wash at least a load a day here). Before that we never used rags/towels either because the germ factor totally freaked me out.
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D’oh! Paper bags! That is brilliant! We (we would be Teegan) scoop into plastic trash bags (small ones) every day, too and do the big change weekly – I’m totally changing to the paper. I’m so glad you said that!!
Wow I never really thought about the impact of big corps on such things. We are really lucky that we have an amazing recycling program here (they won’t even take regular trash if they see recyclables in it) and we totally take it for granted.
Ok…hmmm…will have to rethink the grocery bags.
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We started doing the same thing. I actually got a huge pack of microfiber towels from Costco – I think it was 30 for $15 or something ridiculous. They are SO absorbent and efficient – they are great for cleaning up massive spills and potty accidents, too. I have one bin I keep the clean ones in, and the dirty ones go in our towel hamper, which gets washed 2-3 times per week. If the towel is particularly wet, I hang it over the edge to dry a bit so no mold grows or anything. Our towel basket is this great mesh thing from Ikea that really lets the air in and out nicely. We’ve waaaaaaaaaay reduced our consumption of paper towels (which I used to be addicted to) this way, too.
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Oh, I love this idea! I started that with the boys – I keep a small stack of baby washcloths by the kitchen sink I use to clean them up since I was REALLY going through some papertowels wiping them down after dinner. Why not do it for all the kitchen cleaning?!?! DUH!
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I feel the same way with everything piling up right after the holidays!! We need a new roof over our back porch, we to attack the bathroom ceiling, Sienna is getting a new bedroom set, we just had to throw out a DVD player last night becuase it wouldn’t load anything…the list goes on and on this time of year! I HATE it!!
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Ha, I loved the Lorax too :)
I am all about baby steps and every little bit helps. I don’t do much of anything all the way. I use my Chico bags part-time too. I never throw out the plastic bags tho b/c I do scoop the litter into them. We have also cut down on paper towel use, but have no plans to eliminate them 100%.
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Hey, there is nothing wrong with saving a bit while you go green! So many eco-choices are cheaper than the alternative, and I also admit that that is a huge motivation for us. No shame:-) Alot of times they are healthier also! I make most of our household cleaners, use cut up old t-shirts for rags, buy used yardsale/thrift store stuff whenever I can, use reusable water bottles, etc…
Overall, my strategy is to do what I can and not let the guilt get to me about the rest. I use my reusable grocery bags when I do the majority of my grocery shopping (Aldi makes it way too easy not to; they charge for the disposable ones!), but if I happen to go to another grocery store, I usually don’t. I have tried a few times, and the cashier and folks behind me always seem to act really irritated like I am holding things up. Or like they have no idea what I am talking about. I do ask for no bag if I only have a couple of things though. Oh well, every little bit helps!
Oh, I don’t know what type of cat litter you use, but we recently found a great deal on the pine pellets (which are supposedly better for the environment- I don’t know, but it sure smells a lot better than the clay!) at Tractor Supply. It was marketed as horse-stall litter, but is the exact same stuff as the expensive pet store pine cat litter. Except it only costs about $5 for a 40 lb bag.
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