A "Less But Better" Birthday

What a lovely time of year it is for a birthday! Mine was on the 21st, this past Tuesday. For this birthday, in light of my personal project, I made a strange request of my family and friends. At the start of the month, I sent an email with suggestions for sustainable gifts. Here's the gist of my message:

My friends and family, being the lovely folks that they are, were wholeheartedly supportive of this idea. Gifts for the day included an e-subscription to one of my favorite magazines, some cookies from Baked, a few albums I've had my eye on, a Runcible Spoon gift certificate, some creative recycled mail, a trip to Story, Indiana, a homemade dinner, and a beautifully curated collection of NPR podcast episodes. Most importantly, though, I was fortunate enough to hear from parents, aunts, grandmas, cousins, classmates, and old friends on Tuesday. It was the messages, calls, comments, and cards (see this beautiful electronic one below) that REALLY made the day special.

What's interesting about birthdays and other holidays when gifts are exchanged, is that not giving something can feel wrong. Certainly, the spirit of most any holiday is giving, but thinking outside the box and gifting a warm meal, an experience, or a donation to a bigger cause can be even more meaningful. Based upon this realization, I've got one "Less But Better" rule to add this week:

If you want less, you may have to ASK for it

It may seem counter-intuitive, but when the norm is more stuff, you may have to actively ask for less. Whether this means explaining your crazy class project to your grandma or telling the organization tabling on campus that you really don't want the free frisbees they are peddling, it might feel uncomfortable at first. We might not know how to explain that the free promotional t-shirt is more of a burden than a benefit. Some people who explain this phenomenon recommend that "refuse" be placed at the top of the three (or four, or five?) Rs of waste reduction. Sometimes, we have to refuse to take things just because they are free. Now, asking for a shift in gifting habits might be a little easier, especially if your family and friends are as wonderfully supportive as mine. I hope these same people feel comfortable asking me for what they really want for their birthdays. There's nothing better than being able to give a gift that you KNOW the recipient will love.

One last note, a few weeks ago I found a little slip of paper that I must have put in my wallet years ago! It was a quote I really enjoyed and wanted to remember. It looks like I've actually been thinking about "Less But Better" for a while now:

Have a great week, everyone! :)

Green Freight

And my obsession with stuff continues...even when I've been assigned to blog about Roseland's chapter on "Transportation Planning and Traffic Management." Instead of focusing on reducing single occupancy vehicle trips as a sustainability imperative (which it undeniably is), I want to further investigate the feasibility of developing sustainable freight management and shrinking the share of transportation emissions that come from moving our stuff all around the country.

"Although freight vehicles only represent 10 to 20 percent of total vehicle mileage, their heavy weight and slow acceleration can produce large impacts on road networks and the surrounding community in the form of air and noise pollution. By improving freight transport efficiency and shifting reliance to alternative modes, communities can reduce traffic congestion and fuel consumption, save on road maintenance costs, reduce air and noise pollution and improve community livability."

TIL that the movement of freight in the United States results in 500 million tons of GHG emitted per year. Wohhhh...so what can we do?? Strategies suggested later in Roseland's text mirror those I found on the EDF-Business website. The Environmental Defense Fund has compiled a plethora of resources for transportation managers of large companies. For a laugh (and a nice introduction to the idea of green freight), you should watch their cheesy, superhero-themed YouTube video posted to their homepage.

Their handbook (a bit less cheesy) proposes opportunities that follow five principles for green freight:

1. Get the most out of every move - Apparently, 15-25% of truck miles driven are EMPTY and even the non-empty trips are an average of 36% underutilized. Packing every truck full of as many goods as possible to minimize freight trips could mean...
• Loading strategically like a game of Tetris: Walmart started loading palates sideways and fit four more in each truck
• Redesigning packaging: HP laptops have 97% less packaging than the average laptop
• Concentrating products: Method reduced water weight in its soaps, so now each bottle is smaller but does an equivalent amount of cleaning
2. Choose the most carbon-efficient mode - For intercontinental shipping, planes emit 47x more than container ships. For national movement of goods, trucks emit 6x more than trains. Shipping by train also has the potential to cut automobile congestion on interstates and reduce traffic accidents. For businesses, the biggest savings in both dollars and emissions could be garnered from avoiding rushed cross-ocean trips.
3. Collaborate with other shippers - A case study: Ocean Spray was shipping cranberry juice from NJ to FL then sending empty containers back north. Tropicana was shipping from FL to NJ then sending empty containers back south. ...You get the picture. 
4. Redesign your logistics network - This one's a bit too technical for me, but basically, it sounds like optimizing warehouse locations, shipping routes, and connections based on where most of your consumers are. This could also include minimizing the transportation of inputs to the manufacturing process. Cluster development, the geographic grouping of interrelated firms that can buy and sell from the each other, has become a prevalent strategy for both sustainability and economic development.
5. Demand cleaner equipment and practices - This could include insisting on high efficiency vehicles, building state-of-the-art sustainable warehouses, closely monitoring employee actions for bad practices, or even cleaning up communities negatively impacted by freight emissions.

Now, these are all strategies aimed at the companies who move all this stuff around, but here's what I think individuals may be able to do to help: 1) Buy less, 2) Buy local, 3) Buy with less packaging, 4) Buy concentrated, and 5) NEVER buy bottled water. It's the worst, for a variety of reasons (see my favorite source, below)

Takeaways from the Movie "Tiny" (Outside Experience #1)

Since I started my "Less But Better" Project, I've heard many other people buzzing about downsizing and simplifying. Friends clearing out their stuff, family moving into smaller spaces, even an acquaintance who's renovating an old bus to become her new home! Sometime through all this, I heard about the movie "Tiny: A Story About Living Small." The movie challenges the traditional concept of home. It's about a man with a dream to build a cabin in the woods, who over time, clarifies his dream and sets out to build a 124 square foot house on wheels.

I don't think there is any technical definition, but tiny houses generally seem to be homes of 300 square feet or less. Compare this to average house sizes over past decades. In 2013, the average American house was 2,589 square feet, though in 1973, it was only 1,525 square feet. Average house size has almost doubled over the past 40 years even though average family size has gone down! Tiny house dwellers are rebelling against suburban sprawl, McMansions, and this trend of growth for the sake of growth. The good news (for our land and resources, especially) is that more and more people are joining the tiny house movement every day!

"Tiny" follows Chris and Merete through the dreaming and building process. The movie also features in-home interviews with other tiny-home owners. What viewers learn is that in tiny houses, every square inch is utilized, most furniture pulls double duty, the true essentials are shrunk down, and non-essentials are minimized. The general design trend seems to be: open living/eating/working space with high ceiling on one end, small kitchen with sleeping area lofted above on the other end. Here's how Chris's place ends up:

What I gathered by the end is that those who opt into the tiny house lifestyle recognize advantages that include mobility, significant cost savings (average tiny house price = $23,000), conservation of resources, decreased maintenance, simplicity of life, sense of community, and more. Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company proclaims, "the primary asset that comes with a tiny house is freedom...the world gets a lot bigger when you're living small."

In my eyes, the idea of a tiny house sparkles with the promise of minimal-impact living. Smaller houses mean less lumber and other building materials, smaller and fewer appliances, less space to heat and cool, average of 36% lifecycle emissions reduction, reduced electricity and use, and connectivity advantages of high-density development potential. Plus this lifestyle would do wonders to discourage excess purchasing..."Less But Better" would be an absolute requirement!

I enjoyed the film greatly. (It's on Netflix if you want to watch it!) "Tiny" reaffirmed that there are other people who don't think I'm crazy for wanting to live small. Granted, I'm just delving into all of this, and I'm not even sure if I could live in a tiny house! However, the idea this movie fosters is that living small = living deliberately. I can think of another someone who wished to live deliberately...

Sounds pretty nice, huh? :)

Great tiny house infographic: http://homestead-honey.com/2014/09/01/less-tiny-house-movement/

My favorite tiny house TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47JaOMDH4c

"Less But Better" Home Goods

Short but sweet post coming up here...I've been sick most of the weekend, and I'm still not feeling 100% unfortunately. This week, I've been reconsidering some of my past purchases all over the house from furniture and kitchen gadgets to keepsakes and knick-knacks.

Starting with knick-knacks and keepsakes...I'm realizing this week that these are two very different things. Poking around my room, I'm thinking, "Which of these dust collectors are actually bringing me joy?" Overwhelmingly, the things that bring me joy are things inherited from parents and grandparents and/or collected while traveling. The stuff I can live without was purchased at a big box store or ordered online. Simple as that! Imagine the distinction this way: It's the difference between telling a visitor that the thing they are admiring on your shelf has been in the family for five generations or that it came from Costa Rica as opposed to responding, "Thanks! It's from Walmart!" From here on out, my rule is: If it's decorative, it had better have a good story.

My second shopping rule generated this week is: New furniture breeds new junk. When I moved into my current house, I kept this bookshelf just in case I needed more space to put things. At first, I didn't have anything to fill it, but you had better bet that within a few months, the shelves filled up with stuff! I've gotten rid of enough things that I can now get rid of the shelves, too.

Many rules I've already set also apply here. I can avoid duplicates by paring down to a reasonable number of mugs in my kitchen cabinet, keeping only one umbrella (I'm just one person!), and keeping only one or two flower vases. I had four of them even though I rarely get flowers. When I have in the past, haven't they come with their own vase?! I can rely on dual purposes by using my cell phone as an alarm clock and monthly calendar, for example. In fact, I have a friend whose mom has a rule against single-purpose items (think of all those infomercial products that do just one ridiculously specific task). I purchased this big metal thing pictured above to hang my towel on. All that it has done for the past year is hold my towel. Something tells me I'll be just fine without it. Oh, and my coffee grinder is going too for the same reason. I wish I had never bought it, because buying pre-ground coffee is always an option! I don't need a candle just because it smells good, and a cheap target picture frame looks cheap.

Lots to think about next time I'm at the store...In general, I'm enjoying this project greatly, but I'm afraid I'm straying a little far from the sustainability message. The minimized impact of a simpler life is what is driving me further, but this is hard to measure. The best measure of my progress may be at the end of the semester when I can see how much of this stuff I can divert from the landfill. In the meantime, I'll try to think about how to calculate the future avoided impacts of buying less. Any suggestions? Have a great week, everyone!

The "Less But Better" Bathroom

Internet, you've failed me. Anyone who can find some statistics on the contents of the average American bathroom cabinet wins serious bonus points. I made the bathroom my second “Less But Better” challenge thinking that surely most of us are buying more than we need (especially women)…but alas, I can’t seem to pinpoint exactly how much more. Perhaps I’m doing something wrong.

Maybe if we think about the vast array of products available just at our grocery stores, we can start to get the picture. There are sticks to keep your armpits smelling pleasant, bottles that promise to make your hair shinier than ever, razors to keep your skin smooth, tubs that swear they’ll make wrinkles disappear, tubes that will whiten your teeth and other tubes that will lengthen your lashes, contact cases, scrubby things, lotions, pigment for eyes, lips, and nails, brushes, clippers, dryers, curlers, PLUS all kinds of remedies you need when you aren't feeling well. In addition to the grocery store, though, there are companies like Avon, Sephora, Birchbox, and more. They all specialize in selling you the latest, greatest stuff to fill your bathroom.

Wow. To me, the one of the most relevant question in evaluating all this stuff has been, "For how long did humans live without this?" For example, OPI didn't start selling nail polish until 1989, so would it make sense to say that I "need" nine different bottles of their stuff? No, certainly not. To be fair, though, cultural norms do affect the things we "need" almost every day. Like before a job interview, I had better at least try to get my hair under control using some kind of product. Maybe the difference is that in the past, people didn't have to own such a wide array of each type of product. I don't imagine my grandma ever had a palate of 17 different eye-shadows that all look basically the same anyway. Right?

After gathering together unneeded bathroom/hygiene/beauty items this week, I was actually a tad disappointed my pile wasn't bigger. Turns out, I don’t actually have a ton of unnecessary products. However, every little bit helps, and my little bathroom cabinet does seem significantly less cluttered after banishing these things for GOOD!

My rules for future bathroom purchases are as follows:

Don’t buy it just because it smells good 

Simple enough…Just don’t do it. This means I should probably plan on never walking in to Bath and Body Works again.

Avoid duplicates 

Sometimes I've got five different bottles of lotion in my bathroom at any given point. Luckily, that's not the case right now, and the only duplicate items I found were two beach towels I never use. I don’t get to the coast much, so why would I ever need three beach towels? One is plenty. This is the case for many other bathroom products as well.

Don’t get too fancy 

Sometimes when I’m at the store, I get this weird notion that I’m a girly girl (when I'm not). I imagine that I’ll actually need to put mousse or a fancy headband in my hair one day, or that I will want to paint my nails pink and wear lipstick (I never do). I've even found that I like my hair just the same with or without conditioner, so I’m getting rid of that as well!

Rely on dual purposes

These are all products whose purpose I can accomplish by some other means. My facewash should take off my make-up. My washcloth should be plenty scrubby. Healthy eating should negate the need for supplements, and small trash bags should be replaced with old grocery bags. Double duty is the way of the minimalist!

Now, getting rid of some of this stuff at the end of the semester is going to be tricky. Haphazard disposal of these products can be detrimental to water quality in particular, so I’ll try to find some donation or safe disposal options in the meantime. Next week, I’ll be taking on home goods to find out how I can reduce my furniture, decorations, and more. Thanks for reading! J