Sure, we can make every day Earth Day, but today is also literally Earth Day. And what better way to celebrate than with a global pandemic? Well, okay, maybe celebrate is the wrong word.
Certainly gatherings and in-person events aren't happening, but if you're interested, you can find a lot going on today at earthday.org.
The pandemic has definitely forced lots of changes, at least some of which are good for the Earth. For me, one of the big things is definitely lack of travel--by car, bus, plane, or any other means besides my own feet. And oh, I did finally make the switch to cloth napkins at home, which I mentioned in an earlier post in this series! It turned out my mom had a set of cloth napkins she wasn't using, and how that we're eating 100% of our meals at home, it's been nice to be able to know we're not generating a bunch of trash just keeping our faces food free.
Have you made changes--or had changes forced upon you--during this time?
I've been turning off every single #!¢&in' light in the house that everyone keeps leaving on.
(I'm approaching Peak Dad)
That's my specialty over here.
You're pushing my buttons now. Two additional home offices with lights left on all too much.
I turned the heat way down at the church, other than in my office, but that's more to save money than to save the planet. We won't be spending much money on air conditioning, either, at least until things open up again.
On my frequent walks at the park nearby, I'm like a one-person volunteer Earth Day cleanup crew, just spread over weeks and months.
Lots of fish line and broken glass at the River. (Where I also look for agates.)
I don't pick up dog poo bags (I'd rather people just let their dogs poop without adding a plastic bag if they were just going to litter it), or cigarette butts, or anything that looks gross, slimy, etc.
The park district removed all of the garbage receptacles in the park except for two built-in ones, and there have been many people in the park including a lot of previously infrequent users, so I feel that I'm only slowing the peak rather than actually making forward progress in cleanup. And I'm only limited to what I can carry with me all the way home (I used to be able to pick up a bunch, drop it in a bin, pick up more, then repeat). EAR worries that this'll be how I get COVID.
For Earth Day on Wednesday, I wore an old backpack and filled it.
On neighborhood walks just after the snow melted, we were finding trash, but I kept forgetting to bring a collection bag along. I did bring an empty plastic water bottle back to the house to recycle. I figured if I didn't touch my face and washed my hands as soon as I got home, I wasn't taking too crazy of a risk.
We just had solar panels installed (passed the inspection yesterday). Can't wait to not only help the environment, but to also have no electrical bills for several months!
No worries about keeping the lights on in empty rooms now.
Musky seems like the first one to do it on a large scale (and it sounds like it didn't go well), but I'm waiting for a company to put out an affordable solar panel that looks like a normal roofing tile. Pair that with a good house battery (again, Musky was going in that direction), and that would seriously disrupt electrical transmission.
Very cool! Can you share a little more about what the process was like for getting the panels?
We connected with All Energy Solar at an Open Streets event last summer. They were very helpful throughout, were responsive to all questions, and helped guide us to many tax credits (federally) and rebates (locally)
Inspections were all passed, and we started generating power today.
I bought a bunch of small towels at Costco ($0.30 each) and the plan is to use them like we would paper towels. I want to get paper towel usage down to near zero, and I want enough of these towels to fill my washing machine and then some so that I minimize the additional laundry that I do.