Taking reuse too far?

We all know the 3 R’s of eco-friendly living: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s a handy rule of thumb to help us make decisions about buying new items and disposing of old ones.

And I’m always in awe of the people who really get into the Reuse part of it. I’ve done pretty well at switching from disposable items to reusable ones (water bottles and shopping bags are my favourite examples), but I’m not very imaginative beyond that. Meanwhile, some people are masters at giving a new life to objects most people would just throw out:

• Tricia at Little Eco Footprints always wows me with her sewing skills – she turns reclaimed sheets, curtains and other fabrics into cute clothes and bags for herself and her daughter.
• Eilleen over at Consumption Rebellion furnished her house for less than $1000 using secondhand bargains, so impressive!
• And Gavin at The Greening of Gavin built his lovely vegie garden and chicken run out of reclaimed timber and bits and pieces.

It’s possible to take it too far, though. One of my regular reads is the Recycle This website from the UK. It’s got lots of ideas for reusing and recycling ordinary household items, but some of them really make me scratch my head.

I’ve found their posts on reducing energy while cooking and recycling at Christmas really useful, and their new Repair This section is great. But then we get to articles like how to recycle or reuse teabag wrappers, handcream tubes, or burned matchsticks. Or how to find a use for old unused mouthwash (not the bottles, the actual product) or toothpicks.

I want to tell them that it’s ok to let go of things sometimes! I can only imagine what their cupboards are like, overflowing with stuff they can’t work out a solution for. Over at Re-Nest, they’ve got a few really useful tips on finding the balance between saving and letting go. I’ve got a spot in my kitchen cupboard for jars, and a spot in my laundry cupboard for fabrics. The rest gets composted or goes in the recycling.

But then I realised that one of the reasons I don’t reuse or recycle much stuff is because I pay attention to the first R of the mantra: Reduce. If you don’t bring so much packaging and stuff into your house to begin with, you don’t have to work so hard to find a way to get rid of it.

I’m probably just a lazier environmentalist than some But if you’re like me and struggle to find ways to dispose of your rubbish thoughtfully, I’ve got a few tips to make the job easier.

• Buy food and laundry items in bulk, so you’ve got less packaging to dispose of
• If you can’t buy in bulk, choose the item with the least packaging, or the one that’s easiest to recycle
• Eat less meat so you don’t have to bring home so many plastic bags and styrofoam trays
• Save up your money for a small number of high-quality items so you don’t have to deal with broken appliances, old clothes, or broken toys so often.

Over-consumption is at the bottom of a lot of our green dilemmas. Simply bringing home less stuff makes living sustainably easier for me. How about you?

Keeping your drying rack out of the way

We all know we should be only using clothes dryers in ‘emergencies’, right? I have a drying rack for when it’s too hot or too wet to use our backyard clothes line.

But finding a place to keep it has been a hassle. It takes up a lot of room, and doesn’t really fit in our laundry. Well, not if we want to actually use the laundry sink or get to the toilet.

So the rack has ended up in our dining area pretty often. It’s part of an open-plan kitchen/dining/lounge area, which has meant that whenever we have guests I make a mad dash to remove our laundry from view. I don’t think my guests need to see our soggy clothes when they come to see us! And I can’t say that I really enjoy looking at them all that much either.

But a few weeks ago I was noodling around online and came across the D-Rack drying rack. It hangs from a wall or a door, curves out like the letter D to hang clothes, then folds up flat when you’re not using it. It’s an Aussie invention (just like the Hills Hoist!) made by a guy who was inspired after watching the New Inventors on the ABC

So I ordered one, and have got it set up in our laundry now. I found that having the middle racks spaced further apart and the top/bottom ones close together worked best for me. Please excuse the bucket in the picture – it’s there to catch the water that was leaking from the ceiling after a storm!

I’m pretty happy with the D-Rack, it works exactly as promised and was easy to order online through eBay. Our old dryer rack will be listed on Yoink for someone else to use (if you’re in Perth and want it, keep an eye out for my listing).

I like being eco-friendly, but I like having a clear floor space in our dining area too! If you’ve struggled to give up your clothes dryer because drying racks haven’t worked for you in the past, it might be worth having a look at the D-Rack to see if it’ll suit you.

Fresh green links

Not many links this week: did I miss something interesting going on in the world of green? If so, leave a comment and let me know!

The Story of Bottled Water – Annie Leonard releases another one of her informative videos, this time about bottled water. Give it a look if you’re still buying the bottled stuff.

The Plastiki sets sail – a boat made of discarded plastic, travelling from California to Sydney to show the damage plastic does to our oceans.

Prime Carbon convicted of greenwash in carbon credits – and LG greenwashing their fridges too. At least they got caught. If you suspect a company is not telling the truth about their green credentials, make sure you report them for it.

Warmer waters bleaching the Lord Howe island reef – one of the southern-most reefs in the world, and yet it’s still too hot.

Are you registered to vote at your current address? How about your friends and family? There’s a bill in front of parliament that will cut off voter registration within 6 hours of an election being called. This is discriminatory against young people, renters, and people who have difficulty understanding electoral forms, and is designed to restrict the number of Australian citizens who participate in our democratic system. GetUp has a campaign against it if you’d like to sign up.

More green iPhone ideas

Walkscore website

On Monday I posted about the iPhone applications I use that help me live in an eco-friendly way. There’s lots out there, but it seems that the best ones are specific to America and so aren’t much help here. I’d love to see some app developers make some Aussie equivalents…

One of the apps I already use is Shop Ethical, an iPhone version of a successful shopping guide. I think more non-profit groups should be getting in on the act – there are lots of developers out there who could help them out.

I’d happily pay a few bucks for iPhone versions of the AMCS seafood guide, Greenpeace’s True Food guide, or a Fair Trade directory. I’d be able to show my support for them and get a useful list of info as well. The Green Pages directory would be handy to have in my pocket too.

Then you’ve got all the potential for transport related apps using the iPhone’s GPS feature: a set of maps for cycling or for walkable neighbourhoods, for example. I’ve tried a few pedometer style apps as well, to track how much I’m walking, but haven’t been happy enough with the quality to keep using them for longer than a few days. So there’s room in the market there for someone to make improvements.

I believe there are a few fuel diary apps out there too, although (not being a driver) I haven’t looked into whether they use Aussie measurements and terms, or if they have an eco-focus. I reckon something that gave tips on how to be fuel efficient, with a few eco tips to reduce driving, would be really popular in these days of rising petrol prices.

What I’d love most of all would be a seasonal food listing for Australia – it could list foods by regional availability, as is done in similar American, UK and Canadian applications. If it could also list your nearest farmer’s market, that’d be just fantastic. I’d love to know when I’m shopping what the chances are that I’m looking at ‘fresh’ food that’s actually been kept in cold storage for months on end. I sort of know this stuff already, but it’s easy to forget the details when you’re in the middle of a noisy shop or market.

There’s so much potential for handy guides, and even people who don’t consider themselve green would still find them useful. I believe in making sustainable living the easy option, so that people find it better to go green than to continue with business as usual. I think apps and websites like these can really make a difference – I’d love to see more in the future!

Green iPhone apps

Photo credit: Yoink

Not everyone has an iPhone or an iTouch, but if you do, you might not have realised that it can be quite helpful with your eco-friendly activities. At the moment, I’ve got 5 applications I use and enjoy that are better than the standard “get a green tip everyday” fluff. The bonus is that none of them rely on the iPhone – they have websites free for everyone to use if you like.

1. Yoink is an alternative to Freecycle, where you can give away things you don’t need and get free stuff too.  You can list anything that you want to give away, and if people want it they’ll contact you and arrange to pick it up. I came across Yoink because it’s made by some local Perth guys, although now it’s famous enough to have been mentioned on Treehugger.com and CNN in the USA. I’ve seen some good garden supplies on there, kids’ gear, and apparently someone is gave away an old car last week!

2. Shop Ethical is an Aussie guide to help you with your grocery shopping. It sorts items by the type of product (e.g. drinks, frozen food, snacks, etc) and then lets you know the environmental and social record of the company that makes it. It’s based on the excellent Ethical Consumer Guide, and I find it much handier to use my phone to look this stuff up than to keep a printed guide in my handbag.

3. Project Noah is a worldwide (although currently very American) project for people to record sightings of native plants and animals. You can use the website without owning an iPhone, but having it on your phone is very handy for quickly recording sightings with a photo. Or if you see an animal and aren’t sure what it is, you can check their Field Guide to see if anyone else has identified it already. The data can then be used by researchers helping to preserve biodiversity in the wild. I’m planning on a visit to Kings Park and other national parks to see if I can build up the Perth listings.

4. I also rely on iTT Perth, a handy listing of bus and train times from the Transperth database. It’s great for knowing if I’ve got time to dilly-dally on my way to the train station or if I should hurry up. I’m not sure if other capital cities have similar apps, if you do please let me know in the comments. Anything that makes public transport easier to use is a winner in my book.

5. For something a bit different, there’s the Skeptical Science app, which gives the facts on climate change from an Aussie scientist. It’s designed to help you in arguments with climate skeptics, but I’ve given that up as a hobby! I find the app is more useful for helping normal people understand what’s going on. They’re not interested in conspiracy theories, but ask me about the facts, so it’ll be handy to have good explanations to hand that they can look at.

There are a lot of dodgy iPhone apps out there, claiming to donate money to tree-planting or charging you a couple of bucks for the same lightbulb switching tips you can get anywhere. It’s good to see some people out there making really useful stuff, and even better to see some that are specifically Australian. Later in the week, I’ll tell you about the apps I’d like to see but haven’t found yet – maybe they’re out there already, or maybe someone needs to make them.