Sunday 2 January 2011

Resolutions

Happy New Year!
Now is the time when many of us decide to have a look at our lives and make a few promises about how we are going to change them for the better. For many these promises will involve
a) Food - less of the eating of
b) Exercise - more of the taking of
c) Personal skill - a new one, the developing of.
All of these things are very worthy and I have all of them on my list, but this year I also want to make a promise to the planet and I hope you might join me.
If you look to your right - no, not in your room, on the page, silly, you will see I have acquired a new button. I have adopted Baglady. Underneath you will find a link to her site and the pledge she is asking us to make. It would be great if you could join in. Tell her who you are and that you are willing to offer her a virtual bed for the night and we can see how far she manages to travel over the year. I was introduced to her by Karen at The Rubbish Diet and thoroughly recommend her blog too for more inspiration
If you look back at my post near the beginning of December, "Suggestions please" you will see the problem I have had in coming up with a suitable pledge. Unfortunately my dodgy back precludes serious gardening, or heaving buckets of water out of the sink which knocks some of the suggestions on the head but one thing that was suggested and which I am going to look into and will report on in due course is solar battery chargers.
It seems to me that it can be very difficult sometimes weighing up the extra miles I drive in order to get to a shop that sells unpackaged or more eco-friendly goods. One person suggested freecycle but we did use that when we moved and had some problems with people, plus the fact that what I mean when I say we save things to take to the dump is things like old batteries, and those flippin' low energy light bulbs (and can anyone give me the definitive answer about whether the low energy use really outweighs the poisons used in their manufacture?) By the way, the other problem with the light bulbs is that we found we have to have more burning to give us any decent light in the evening so that's another impossible calculation. So I am going to have to research all that as well. Now I know I am sounding negative and I didn't mean to, but I can't help feeling it isn't all as simple as it seems.
So my rather vague pledges were to start looking properly at where foods come from and to go local or East Anglian first, English second, UK third and Europe fourth and to replace bulbs as and when with low energy (subject to still being able to see my way round the house and read) Read my earlier post HERE More thoughts and suggestions welcome!

3 comments:

  1. The local food pledge is a great one and is a reminder that I should do some more work on The Suffolk Diet blog (when I find the time of course lol).

    I know what you mean about the low energy lightbulbs. There is a free section on the Which website that highlights some of the issues.

    Good luck with the pledge and it's great to see Baglady getting a fabulous welcome in Suffolk :0) x

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  2. Looking forward to reading how you get on with your pledge. I often find that there's conflicting priorities with food - locally produced and/or organic is often wrapped in lots of plastic, so I spend ages wondering if it's better to buy local or to buy unnecessary packaging, or organic. E.g. our organic mushrooms are always in plastic boxes...

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