Indicators of Going Green and Sustainability

Are there other factors which tend to run concurrent with being green, having a small carbon footprint, and sustainability? Two things I have seen in my life which usually but not always trend with a sustainable life style are frugality or saving money and a reduction of trash and waste.

There is zero waste/trash in nature without mankind. In nature everything has a use, is recycled and is reused. As much as we can emulate nature in this regard, the better. Yet I go by so many residences and see two huge trash cans overflowing with extra filled trash bags beside them on their once a week pickup day. Yes, the having  one trash can just for recyclables pickup is a great improvement if people will use them but still there is way too much non-recyclables going to the landfill or being dumped in the ocean.  Plastics are the worst culprits; they are built into products to last a couple years (planned obsolescence so we must go out and rebuy the product in a couple years) but the same plastics last in the environment for five hundred years. By comparison, even metal cans eventually rust away.

I do not have a trash pickup service but make a trip to a county trash and recyclable center three miles from our home once every month or two. Let me repeat that I take my trash once every couple months. How so? All my yard wastes and garbage and part of our paper products are turned into garden compost or mulch. Since we eat a lot of our own home garden produce, that puts a lot less metal cans, glass jars and plastic containers into our recyclable cans. What plastic containers we do have, like milk jugs etc, I smash flat by stepping on them so that I am not hauling around air. Ditto for the small amount of aluminum cans we generate. It used to be that metal cans had rims on either end and could be opened from either end. I remember my mom cutting the lids out of both ends of metal cans. Then she put the cut lids into the cans and smashed the whole thing flat. If I could do that today I would only need to take in one trash bin of metal cans a year to recycle them. Some plastic containers like butter tubs and quart yogurt containers can be stacked one inside another and so a year’s worth of tubs take up very little space. We use reusable canvas shopping grocery bags and so do not build up those ubiquitous plastic bags. What paper and cardboard that I do not either use as compost or recycle, I burn. I burn only paper, mainly mail and cereal boxes, and never any plastic. I make the fire in a hardware cloth cage so that it gets plenty of air and does not smolder. I never burn on a windy day or during a drought when vegetation is dried out. So I have very little actual trash, mostly just plastic food wrappers and styrofoam  egg cartons. I really should switch back to cardboard egg containers that are compostable; there is always room for improvement.

I think that being frugal is also usually a sign of a lighter carbon footprint. For example in the above paragraph, we have considerably monthly budget savings by not subscribing to a weekly trash pickup service. That is a win win for our pocketbook and the environment. Likewise, if we reduce our monthly natural gas and electricity bills we are saving money at the same time we are burning less fossil fuel. By driving our newer, lower gas mileage car most of the time and using our older less fuel efficient car as a backup vehicle we have saved about $20 dollars a week on gasoline; that is $80 a month that can go toward the loan on the newer vehicle, while lengthening the life of the backup vehicle and again burning less fossil fuel. If what we cook and eat from our organic garden reduces our grocery bill, it also reduces trash waste and the need for food to be shipped from distant growing areas. So in general, saving money by being frugal and creating less trash waste are indicators that we are at the same time living more sustainably.