Comments zegg has made

  • more suggestions

    Here are some of the money- and CO2-saving things I've started doing this year:

    • stopped using the tumble-dryer - it just adds 15 mins to my laundry time to hang everything to dry on racks in the bathroom (I'm a working mom of 2, so I do laundry at night, hence can't hang outside). Only doing full loads of laundry and on a cold wash also helps.
    • replaced bottled fizzy water with a home-soda maker - just add tapwater and press to carbonate.
    • use the a/c as little as possible (keeping curtains closed during the day helps, as do screens in the skylights)
    • did an electrical audit, and switched off those things that drain power when on standby (the baby monitor was the biggest surprise!)
    • stopped visiting the mall to shop at lunchtime (a 5 mile roundtrip)

    Now if only I could persuade the rest of my family that we don't need to eat meat every day! And I do need to do something about improving the insulation in my house before the winter hits.
    On Umbra on small steps with big impacts posted 1 year, 2 months ago 18 Responses

  • I could support GMO if...

    1. GMO were thoroughly tested for environmental side-effects before release
    2. the introduced genes came from closely related species (that is the real difference between traditional breeding techniques and GM - GMO contain genes from completely different types of organisms)
    3. the GMO was open-source, so that it was developed to benefit farmers or consumers (i.e. to have drough-tolerance, extra vitamins etc) rather than benefiting the round-up producers as at present
    4. following from 3, the GMO seeds could be propagated from one generation to the next, so that the farmers would not be perpetually in debt to the seed-producers.

    If GMO manufacturers had wanted to get the public on their side and improve the world, they would have done all of the above. But they just wanted to make money, hence I don't support current generation GMO. On The GMO industry has been scraping by on bad science posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

  • living without toilet paper

    I spent some time in Sri Lanka and few people there use toilet paper - washing with water is greatly preferred; the rich use a bidet, everyone else uses a small bucket of water. The idea of toilet paper is considered repulsive - after all you can't be clean if you don't wash (i.e. use water). On Wall*E and Kleenex posted 1 year, 3 months ago 7 Responses

  • try making your soda at home

    I've found a more environment-friendly way of having fizzy drinks - worried about my husband's expensive fizzy water habit, I bought a home carbonator - you fill a (reusable PET) bottle with tap water, screw it into the table-top machine and a few presses of the button later, have fizzy water. The CO2 canister is sent back to be refilled when it's emptied (which will only be about 1X a year for us). The company also sells sachets of flavorings, which you mix into the carbonated water to get the soda of your choice. It's already saved me a ton of money, not to mention kept a lot of plastic bottles out of the recycling bin. And hopefully reduced my carbon footprint too.On Umbra on diet soda posted 1 year, 3 months ago 13 Responses