Back to being more eco minded

our beautiful planet of blue

Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash

Why eco? Why "again"? 

I've always been into doing my bit for the environment. And why not? It is, after all, so easy to do. Years ago, a friend who was way better at doing this than me, said that if we all each took responsibility for our own "mess", then the world would be a better place. This really affected me, as it is just so true. So I take responsibility for my mess. You know, the stuff that we use, the bits and pieces that go into our rubbish collections.

My weekly rubbish is really minute. Deliberately so. 

Of course, I live on my own, so this is easy to do.

For quite a long time in the past, I had flatmates, on and off. I often would be amazed at the weekly bins being filled to almost overflowing, especially if there was just two of us in the house. It truly was beyond my comprehension. Where on earth was it all coming from?

It was years before I'd buy tinned food. Now I do buy a little bit. But not much. It seems that tins are not so bad as other rubbish, so "phew". I also wash tins, milk containers and so forth before popping them in the bin. I don't actually know if this is the thing that we need to do, but I do it anyway.

Tinfoil and plastic wrap: I'm still using the ones that I bought three years ago. I prefer to just pop a saucer on top of food in the fridge, than use bits of plastic. However, I do have sandwich bags, one box lasts me at least a year. I wash them out after, and reuse, unless they have had uncooked chicken in them.

Why bother with all of this?

Why not? It is easy to do. 

It's been my habit to do it, so it's just automatic. Sometimes, though, I do need to throw out food. Like when I had food languishing in my fridge whilst I had an operation. Or when there was a big power outage during a recent cyclone, and the food in my small freezer, defrosted. 

Truthfully, that cyclone and all of the devastation and flooding, were, for me anyway, a big wakeup call regarding Mother Earth. 

And, again, why else would I bother? It's for the younger generations that I care. Do we want them to grow up in a mire of stinky rubbish? In a world of decay? Not me. 

My generation is often accused of trashing the world. Largely as a group, we didn't. We grew up with very little, and were taught not to waste our food, look after our (meagre) belongings, and clean up after ourselves. We didn't have plastic wrap, plastic boxes, and tons of wrapping around everything. 

To reduce wrapping, I've decided to again use fruit and vegetable shops, and local fish or butcher shops. 

Eco cleaning

As I've previously mentioned, I'm using detergent (eco friendly) and hot water, for most of my cleaning. Basically, I want to stop buying plastic containers and have very little  "cleaning junk" hanging around cluttering up my wee home. I can refill both my detergent and eco washing machine wash liquid, at a supermarket. They are all that I need, along with a dash of white vinegar here and there. I should have been doing this anyway, as it's more in keeping with my values.

I really got lost along the way, with all of this eco mentality. Trying so hard to accommodate flatmates, and also being seriously unwell for quite a few years, I found it hard to maintain most things. Although I have always mostly used eco friendly products, I am quite serious about reducing my eco footprints even more. 

It's making me really happy, this decision. 

I'd love to hear any tips, hints.....

Link to my talks and meditations on Earth Elders: here.  Click "join" if you haven't already, then click the search icon there, and enter "Ratnamurti Saraswati". 

Link to Global Unity Festivals on you tube, here. I'm in the Wave 1, Asia/Pacific episodes.

Link to a post explaining Global Unity Festivals, here 

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Link here for a post about ecology

Link here for a post about economies and affluence