Laudato Si Sunday Reflection: Mercy and graciousness

This Sunday's reflection is brought to you by
Psalm 103.

You,
O God,
are mercy and graciousness itself.

I bless you,
and count myself blessed.

You forgive,
heal,
redeem,
and crown me
with your love and mercy,
even
and especially
when I don't deserve it.

You don't wag a finger in blame
but simply remove my sins
to the ends of the universe.

Your compassion is endless.

Unfortunately,
some of my sins
are coming home to roost.

My planet's ability to cope
with the waste and overuse of her resources
means our entire population
is touched
by the effects of pollution
and climate change
whether we realize it
or not.

O God,
help me to see our planet
as you see it.

Help me to balance my needs
with the needs of all creatures,
to put less stress
on my comfort and convenience
and more emphasis
on what creation needs.

Are orcas less important than pipelines
in your grand scheme?

Help me to choose what is right.

Bring me
and all of creation
into harmony
with your mercy and grace.

+Amen.

* * * * * * *

This Sunday's piece of Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home (paragraphs 22-26 -- you can access the entire document by clicking here) looks briefly at the way many of the world's industrial systems (that create things to satisfy our needs and wants) are linear rather than circular, going straight to the trash. For example, the Royal Statistical Society in the UK chose 90.5 percent as it's stat of the year for 2018. That 90.5 percent refers to the amount of plastic in the world that is NOT being recycled. And there are many other resources that end up in our landfills, making it clear that we still have a long way to go to counteract our throwaway culture just because we are suckers for cheapness and convenience. How many of the following have a place in your life? Consider the alternative:

paper towels -- replace with rags (raggedy towels/cotton t-shirts)
plastic straws -- skip them altogether, or use reusable
single use coffee cups -- travel mugs
disposable water bottles -- reusable water bottles
plastic bags -- cloth bags
disposable plates, cups and cutlery -- bring along the real thing from home (makes people think...)
coffee filters -- old fashioned methods of brewing coffee like percolators, or reusable filter systems, anything but Keurig!!
gift wrap -- reusable cloth, tea towels or pre-used gift bags (we always seem to have a few around), or give a gift without wrap at all!

Since I became a Master Composter/Recycler in 2007, we've managed to cut many of these things out of our lives through simple awareness. Wasteless living requires more thought and effort than buying the quick and easy solutions that marketers make available to consumers, but half the battle is just choosing options that aren't disposable! (And remembering to choose them consistently.)

And these small things are just the tip of the iceberg. Pope Francis points to the much bigger adjustments we need to make when he notes that "climate is a common good... a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life." His encyclical calls us to "recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat... the human causes" which aggravate climate change (paragraph 23).

Laudato Si may have signalled the start of Catholicism becoming more aware of what its members need to do to mitigate climate change, to circumvent the "vicious circle which aggravates the situation even more, affecting the availability of essential resources like drinking water, energy and agricultural production in warmer regions, and leading the the extinction of part of the planet's biodiversity" (paragraph 24). The Pope's concern for these things, and for migrants who must flee their homes because of environmental changes is really important -- and almost too gentle. We need more Greta Thunbergs to call us to act NOW...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmmUIEsN9A

She calls a spade a spade, refusing to simply give a pep talk, insisting that there is no hope without action.

So this week, let's act. Let's see how many times we can cut back on our creation of greenhouse gases by using alternate transportation (feet, bicycles, transit, carpool) and using less energy, period. Let's find ways to reuse things rather than waste them. Our sister, Mother Earth, and all her children (not just the human ones) are depending on us to change, to be signs of God's mercy and graciousness within creation.

Simple Suggestion #278... Offer constructive input

How much trash do you set out for collectors each week?

I suspect that's a question that a lot of people can't really answer, simply because we have fairly efficient waste management systems in North America. We throw something out, and it goes away, so we generally don't have to deal with a buildup of trash. But how would life change if we had to take more personal responsibility to get rid of our own garbage?

I ask these questions because Edmonton is currently reassessing how to handle its recycling and waste. China is no longer a market for our plastics, the Edmonton Waste Management composting facility is in need of roof repairs, and plans to divert 90% of Edmontonians' waste from the landfill have never quite reached the mark. All of these issues seemed to converge in the past year, bringing attention to the fact we can do better in dealing with our trash.

So the City is offering Edmontonians an opportunity to think outside the box and offer input on how our garbage is handled. Those already in the know reduce their waste by recycling, grasscycling, composting, shopping in ways that reduce packaging waste... and the list goes on. But what should we do about the waste that we can't seem to reduce, reuse or recycle?

There are a few different ways to offer constructive input regarding this issue. The City will be hosting a series of drop-in public engagement sessions where Edmontonians can discuss options. Click here for a list of opportunities to participate. There's also an online survey for those who can't make it to the sessions. And there's a waste calculator to help Edmontonians give some thought to the waste we do create, and how much energy and human effort it takes to get rid of it. I'm hoping that this whole exercise will bring some awareness to ways that we can reduce our waste and the impact that it is having on our neighbourhoods and our world.

This is just one issue where we can offer practical and constructive input from our personal experience. There are many more. We need to speak up about things that matter to us, whatever they may be, and take every opportunity to make our world a better place.

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Simple Suggestion #272... Keep on recycling

Two weeks ago, at conference for members of a charitable organization I volunteer with, I was stunned to hear a facilitator announce, "The City of Edmonton is no longer recycling." As if the end of recycling was a done deal.

WHAT?

As a Master Composter Recycler, I quickly jumped in to try to set the record straight. Yes, the City of Edmonton's Waste Management Branch is facing some challenges, but recycling continues! (I don't think the facilitator read the entire newspaper article on which she was basing her statement.)

The Waste Management Branch, the City's utility committee, and City Council are working to come up with improvements in the way our waste is handled. One idea is to get residents to do more sorting of their own waste -- by providing them with different bins for separating organics from plastics, metals, glass, and paper, so that different items aren't contaminated by being squished together in the trucks that haul them to the recycling facility. Another idea is to refuse to pick up yard waste like grass clippings (because it's actually much smarter to leave them on the lawn rather than spend fossil fuels trucking them around). And I'm sure there are many other options being discussed.

The City of Edmonton's Waste Management has been in the news lately because it hasn't lived up to its very ambitious plan to divert 90% of residential waste from our landfill, but we can't let that stop us from recycling all that we can. And along with recycling, we can also do our best to reduce waste at the source by buying items with less packaging, by taking simple steps to reduce single-use items in our lives (for example, by using travel mugs, cloth shopping bags, mesh produce bags, and I hope you can name a dozen other possibilities), and by learning to compost our kitchen scraps and yard waste.

Even if you don't live in the Edmonton area, we have to keep on reducing our impact on this planet, and the best way is simply to use fewer resources in the first place, opt out of consumerism wherever possible, share our resources, and recycle what's left over from our daily lives however possible.

It's a huge challenge, and it's a bandwagon that we all need to jump on and stay on. Don't let anyone tell you to give up on recycling. Do your own research on methods if need be, and keep on recycling!

A critical time for reducing waste

Waste reduction week 2017 (October 16-22) was just a few weeks ago, and since then, city managers have discovered that part of our  Edmonton Waste Management Centre of Excellence is having some structural problems. The snowfall on the aging roof of the Composting Facility's 18-year-old aeration hall, a building large enough to hold 2.3 CFL-sized football fields, has rendered the building unsafe.

This means that all of the city's waste, including our organic compostable kitchen scraps, now must be trucked 85 km down the road to the landfill at Ryley, AB, until a solution can be found. In the meantime, Edmontonians need to do everything we can to reduce our waste. Recyclable materials will still be recycled -- it's the things that can't be recycled that we should give more consideration.

Do you know where your garbage goes? How many fossil fuel emissions are involved in getting it to its destination? If you've never given the idea of composting a thought, now's the time to do it. If there's a corner of your yard where you can put a compost bin that you can fill with organic kitchen waste (plant matter, vegetable peelings, fruit cores, coffee grounds, tea leaves, etc.) over the winter, now's the time to do it. If you'd rather start composting in the spring, compostable waste can be frozen in an outdoor plastic garbage can until things warm up. The Compost' S cool website has different ideas to help homeowners reduce the compostable part of their garbage, and our libraries have many resources about composting and recycling ideas.

As for the non-compostable stuff, in Edmonton we need to make sure that we're making full use of our blue bags for recycling, Eco-Stations for electronics, chemical waste and large items, the Reuse Directory -- which lists charity organizations that accept reusable items -- and Edmonton's own ReUse Centre. Other cities and towns have their own ways of reducing the tonnage that goes to landfill -- for many Canadians it's just a matter of doing a little research and jumping on board with the good planning that's already in place.

But probably the most important thing we can do is question ourselves every time we are about to dispose of something. We need to ask ourselves: Is this really garbage? Is it still usable in any way? Can it be repaired? Would someone else be able to use it? Should I throw it away or find a different way to get rid of it?

And we need to question ourselves every time we go shopping, whether it be for groceries or other household needs. Again we can ask ourselves: Do I really need this right now? Can I wait a little longer for it? Is there a way to buy it without so much packaging? and other questions, depending on the item...

Now is a critical time for reducing waste in our city, but really every day should be. It's simply good practice to keep waste reduction in mind at all times because all of the "leftovers" in our lives will have to go somewhere else eventually, even once this problem with the Compost Facility is fixed. It's always better if our things can be passed on, composted, or recycled rather than ending up in a landfill 85 km away!

Are you waste wise?

What do you do with empty pizza boxes? Shredded paper? Old VHS video tapes? Left over school supplies? The ugly, non-working lamp that Aunt Calliope left you in her will in the futile hope that you would love and repair it?

As a proud City of Edmonton Master Composter/Recycler, I'm pleased to tell you that there's an app for that... Waste Wise is the City's new phone and computer application that allows you to easily look up an item that you're not sure how to properly dispose of.  Click on the link above and scroll down to the search box. It will tell you that the pizza box can go in your blue bag for recycling, shredded paper goes into a garbage bag so it can be composted in the Waste Management Branch's huge composting facility, and VHS tapes are best taken to an Ecostation so that black magnetic tape from their sure-to-be-broken-in-the-garbage-compactor cassettes don't tie up recycling or composting equipment and cause system shut downs. And it's amazing the number of ordinary things like leftover school supplies that can be recycled or reused through Edmonton's Reuse Centre.

The app will even tell you when your garbage collection day is and send reminders to your phone (I hate it when I forget, but I don't have a phone, so I live with it). And the Waste Wise page also has an interesting garbage sorting game for kids (or adults -- I'll admit to enjoying building my very own vitual playground).

Unfortunately, the app still doesn't know what to do with ex-boyfriends or Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton... I keep hoping the Waste Wise webmaster will come up with some smart comebacks for those "items," like SIRI does when you say, "I love you."  I won't hold my breath on that one, as I'm sure the Waste Wise folks already have their hands full.

As for Aunt Calliope's ugly lamp... well, if it's fixable, it might be worth something at the Antiques Road Show. Or not. And don't forget that one person's trash is another's treasure. Sometimes if you set it out where your trash is collected, someone can anonymously claim it for their own. Or not. You just never know about these things!

Simple Suggestion #254... Have waste-less dinner parties

One of the things that drives me crazy about large family gatherings is the tendency to pull out the paper plates, plastic utensils and disposable cups. Garbage bags full of them end up in the landfill every year, and though it's convenient, it's just not necessary -- besides, that kind of waste of resources in single-use items is not good for our planet.

SuperSu to the rescue! She's one of my Simplicity Sisters (@redworm_mama for you tweeters) and she's brilliant. She came up with the Party Box -- well, two of them, actually, and she lent them to me for our Canada Day party tomorrow.

Here's what you get when you borrow Supersu's party box:

Everything in the box was either purchased at a thrift store/garage sale, or made/donated by Su herself. Much of it may have ended up in the trash, but she rescued it from ignominy and now it's keeping all those other single-use party items from even being purchased and used only once before the long drive to the landfill. And it's a very festive looking collection, as you can see by the pictures below.

The cloth napkins (mostly made by Su) say "Use Su's", and don't you love the host/hostess' apron? There's a cute little apron for a child host/hostess, too. The utensils are sturdy plastic or good old-fashioned metal silverware/flatware of different kinds, and you'd be hard pressed to set a matching table for more than six people... but the variety makes for a very festive looking gathering, don't you agree? (The reusable cups are mine -- it would be hard to fit them into the boxes.) This is only fourteen place settings -- you could easily feed fifty or more with the dishes/utensils in these two boxes.

As a Master Composter/Recycler, Sue is into reducing, reusing and recycling in a big way, and she's a strong supporter of the sharing economy. Her party boxes are available for loan if you live in the Edmonton area and can pick up/return them on your own steam. She can be reached at supersu @shaw.ca. And if you don't live nearby, maybe you'd consider starting a party box for the sharing economy where you are. 

Wasteless parties are the new black, so there!

July 2nd, the morning after the party...

A good time was had by all at our Canada Day party. 23 people came, we sang our anthem in both official languages, the food was delish, and there was no big black garbage bag of single-use so-called disposable items going out the back door at the end of the night. Not even one paper napkin! I told everyone about the party boxes during our "Fun Facts" icebreaker, and one of my friends said that "Supersu deserves an award."

But knowing my humble friend, she's feeling the love just by knowing that she's making a difference and planting the seeds for future wasteless parties. Some of my friends are now planning to dig out those plastic dishes and unmatching utensils and make party boxes to be shared around their clans for larger family gatherings, too.

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Simple Suggestion #243... Give gifts of the heart

Every year when Black Friday sales roll around, I try to remind people that we need to appreciate what we have without cramming more stuff into our lives. If you follow these moodlings you'll know all about "Buy Nothing Day", which is anti-consumerism's response to the big sales frenzies developed by marketers to kick off the Christmas shopping season the day after American Thanksgiving.

By all means, boycott shopping on Buy Nothing Day. But I'd also invite us to be mindful of our shopping habits the other 364 days per year, and consider where all our stuff will end up when we're gone. I'd also like to share 10 somewhat-tongue-in-cheek rules of Christmas gift giving that we all need to grow out of here on our limited planet:



And there are probably more...

The thing is, it's just too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we have to buy something for everyone on our Christmas list -- and even for others who are not. But not all gifts need to be store bought. Here's a list of alternative gifts, what I would call gifts of the heart:

1. The gift of presence -- just being with someone.
2. The gift of a shared experience -- like going for a walk, a game of cards, star gazing, maybe a book we've enjoyed.
3. The gift of a random act of kindness -- clearing a neighbour's walk, some fresh baking, sweeping the snow off a car...
4. The gift of a heartfelt letter.
5. The gift of a funny story.
6. The gift of a long forgotten memory or photograph.
7. The gift of music.
8. The gift of something treasured being handed on to someone else to love.
9. The gift of an actual voice-to voice phone call.
10. The gift of a coffee/tea/wine/other beverage date, or maybe lunch.
11. The gift of a home cooked meal...

And perhaps you've thought of a dozen others as I've been naming these.The thing is, most of the big ticket gifts sold at Black Friday sales require space, maintenance, cleaning, and eventually, disposal. But the gifts I've named above leave a warm place in our hearts and memories without cluttering our lives. Every thing we give as a gift or own ourselves will have to go somewhere when we are gone, but the gifts of the heart always go with us...

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.
Or click here for more simple Christmas ideas.

Simple Suggestion #241... Reduce and reuse those single-use items

I've been thinking a lot about plastic bags lately, mainly because I'm down to my last three recycled bread bags since so much food has been processed or baked and put into the freezer or fridge lately. After watching The Clean Bin Project a few months ago, I find myself looking carefully at every bag, determining whether it's reusable or too holey, and feeling regretful any time I have to throw one out because it's come to the end of its usefulness.

And I'm the same way about a lot of other single-use things. Disposable cups, forks, knives, spoons, napkins (my friend, Supersu, gifts people with these great little portable sets complete with cloth napkin that can go anywhere with her and her friends). Then there are cottage cheese containers, excellent for storing left-overs. Plastic vegetable trays (I'll never buy a full one from Costco again when it's possible to refill it myself!) Ball point pens (why don't they all come with refills?) and markers. Heck, I even use my insulin needles and blood testing lancets more than a few times, much to the horror of some healthcare professionals (but hey, I'm the only one using mine)! And I refuse to buy a coffee unless I have my travel mug along because there's not much worse than seeing single use Tim Horton's and Starbucks garbage blowing down the street. It's the same with getting groceries -- no reusable bags? Take only what I can can carry without the store-offered plastic ones. Their average lifespan is maybe twenty single-use minutes (or less)!

We've become such a disposable society that refusing to use disposables is odd, unusual, strange and counter-cultural. If I was any good at Photoshop, I'd come up with a line of "Rebel with a Cause" posters featuring James Dean with a travel mug on his motorbike. Or maybe Madonna, the original "Material Girl" with a rag bag. I'm sure if I put my thinking cap on, there'd be dozens of other possibilities. How about a "Keep Calm and Reuse (and reuse, and reuse...)" Poster?

Anyway, today's challenge is to look around life and actually see the single-use items that our parents or grandparents never took for granted, but washed and used again, and washed and used again -- and do the same. And in the same vein, not to allow too many of those things into our lives in the first place.

I really ought to get back to baking my own bread, come to think of it...

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Laudato Si: Sunday Reflection #6... The elephants in the room

Life magazine's celebration of the "Throwaway Life"
August 1, 1955

A "throwaway culture," climate change, and the common good -- all in four paragraphs. Pope Francis and his encyclical writer friends certainly know how to pack their punches. Laudato Si, the latest encyclical, is designed to name the elephants in our earth's rooms (that is, environmental issues that we'd rather ignore) and get us thinking about what we need to do to save our planet and as many of its species as we can. The extinction of species in particular has been on my mind since I heard some frightening stats this week about how many creatures are disappearing daily because of the activities of one particular species -- ours.

This Sunday's piece of Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home (paragraphs 22-26 -- you can access the entire document by clicking here) looks briefly at the way many of the world's industrial systems (that create things to satisfy our needs and wants) are linear rather than circular. Unlike biologically sound ecosystem cycles, most of our human-made production methods are unable to "absorb and reuse waste and by-products," simply because recycling/reuse hasn't been built in, and a lot of us don't bother to reduce our consumption by using only what we need (and our wants are clearly too much for the planet to handle on its own).

When it comes to reducing, reusing and recycling as much as possible -- well, we have a long way to go to counteract our throwaway culture, which was first celebrated by a Life magazine article 60 years ago, picturing a family delightedly throwing disposable articles into the air because of all the convenience they offered. And we are still suckers for convenience. Paper towels, plastic bags, single use coffee cups, disposable water bottles, the list goes on...

Chuck Brodsky, a folksinger I heard at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival three weeks ago, sang a wonderful, tongue-in-cheek song, pointing out the fact that really, we can't throw anything "away":

....That old TV quit on me brother
Ten years ago so I got me another
The first one's sittin' out by the porch swing
With the stove and the 'fridge and a bunch of other things.
Take 'em out back, dump 'em in the river,
Take 'em out back, throw 'em in the woods,
Take 'em out back, chuck 'em down the hillside,
Keep the front yard looking good.... 

Of course, this approach to waste management is why Francis and friends pointed out that particular elephant when they wrote that the earth is starting to look like "an immense pile of filth." Only when our production loops become a full circle including the three Rs -- reduce, reuse, and recycle -- will we have a solution to the problems created by our throwaway culture. We probably shouldn't even be creating or using those things for which the loop can't be closed. There's no question -- wasteless living requires a huge amount of thought and effort!

Having addressed the throwaway culture elephant, Francis and friends turn their attention to the climate change elephant. Explaining that "the climate is a common good... a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life," the encyclical calls us to "recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat... the human causes" which aggravate climate change (paragraph 23).

It's been a few years since we learned that 97% of scientists agree that our climate is changing because of human use and abuse of greenhouse gases, creating a vicious cycle that is messing with our weather patterns. Our scientist pope names the issues clearly in paragraph 24 and following, explaining that it is the poor who live in areas most affected by dangerous weather, which will only worsen if we continue with our present rates of production and consumption. Environmental degradation means that people become desperate to find ways to migrate -- and this week's horrific story of our 71 brothers and sisters found dead in a truck in Austria should be reason enough to want to preserve peoples' homelands from both violence and climate disasters.

This weekend's 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is a good time to rethink our lifestyles and "develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced." We need to increase our use of renewable energies, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce energy waste, and get rid of all the elephants in the room.

Wednesday at Maligne Lake

My husband and I went camping this week (not the best use of fossil fuels, I'll admit) in Jasper National Park. I love breathing the fresh mountain air and seeing the sun on the lakes -- but neither of those things were quite right this time around. The droughts being experienced in Western North America this summer because of climate change have caused a huge forest fire in the state of Washington, almost 600 km south, and on Wednesday, we could hardly see the mountains for the smoke. Of course, that's nothing compared to what people in Washington are experiencing. What scared me was when Lee commented, "If we don't reduce climate change, our air could be like this permanently, as it is in places in China."

So this week, let's see how many times we can cut back on our creation of greenhouse gases by using alternate transportation (feet, bicycles, transit) and using less energy, period. Our sister, Mother Earth, and all her children (not just the human ones) are depending on us to change. The only species I would like to see extinct are these elephants in the room.

*******

A prayer for our earth

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.
Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united
with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle
for justice, love and peace.

+AMEN.

(A prayer for our earth and all quotations from Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home © Libreria Editrice Vaticana)

Next up: #7... What are you made of?

Simple Suggestion #233... ALWAYS shop with reusable bags

Here it is, 27 years later, my very first reusable grocery bag. Way back, when I was living and teaching in small-town Alberta, I bought this green Co-op grocery bag that announces that it's "Helping You Make RESPONSIBLE CHOICES." It has been used thousands of times since then, and gathered a collection of others along the way. It's gotten so that, if I don't have my reusable bags with me, I don't go grocery shopping, or I carry a few items out in my arms.

Plastic shopping bags are a scourge for our planet. Plastic, period, is. So anytime we can cut its use out of our lives, we should. I'm very good at remembering my reusable bags for groceries, but too often forget them when I'm shopping for other items. There's no reason why the clothes I bought my daughter last week couldn't go into our big cloth Pet Planet bag instead of a new plastic one. No reason at all!

Unthinking convenience has become the be all and end all for too many of us consumers. It's time we use our heads and avoid single use items of all shapes and sizes. And mostly, that just means that we need to adjust our habits, and our mind-sets.

So here's the challenge -- to use reusable bags every time you have to buy something. And to nix shopping if you've forgotten your bags. It won't take long to develop a good habit that way!

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What a little yarn can do...

Shadow has found himself a sunbeam, and I'm doing laundry this morning, and finishing a project. For Christmas, I got my honey some 10 lb (4.5 kg) weights, second hand. They were a bit rusty and rough, so I found some yarn left over from a toque making project and covered the lumpy and bumpy ends of the barbells. They look a little like flowers or something now. I asked my man if perhaps he wanted me to find a different colour, but his comment was, "These will wake me up in the mornings!" so nothing extra was spent to renovate the weights. They won't be scratching any surfaces, at least. Now we'll see if he actually uses them...









I get a charge out of the amazing projects some people come up with using a little wool. In downtown Edmonton last winter (or was it the winter before?) Robertson Wesley United Church had a whimsical display around their building, with a few trees covered in knitting and crocheting, and a woolen sign on the fence saying, "Communknitty."

In a similar style, the tree above is crocheted, a definite double-take maker, part of a fundraiser for victims of domestic violence in Indiana, in which artists designed sweaters for 23 trees, and people voted for their favourites by donation to the fundraiser. Isn't this wild?!

Of course, trees and nature don't need embellishment, so I think I'll stick with practical projects. Have a good weekend, all!

Simple Suggestion # 225... Avoid "stuffocation"...

I wish I could take credit for inventing the term, "stuffocation," but I can't. A fellow named James Wallman seems to have come up with the term to describe the fact that the lives of many people in the developed world are so full of stuff that we're running out of room, mental health, and general well-being in our lives. He's written an excellent article about it that you can access by clicking here, and a book too.

I've been thinking about this suggestion all week, not just because of the article, but because of the outdoor Christmas ornament phenomenon. Have you noticed it? On my long walk with Shadow this morning, I passed at least a half dozen homes where the homeowners hung over-sized, metallic Christmas baubles in the trees and bushes outside their homes. Sure, it looked nice, but the problem is that all that stuff has to be stored somewhere for the 40-some weeks of the year they aren't using it, and... someday, it will probably end up in the landfill. Is it really necessary?

And, is it necessary that "nine out of ten [homes have] so many things that they [keep]household stuff in the garage" to the point that there's no room for the car?! (See article link above.) Something is definitely wrong with this picture.

There are all sorts of ways to avoid stuffocation:

1. Only buy what's needed.
2. Ignore trends.
3. Use things until they are no longer usable.
4. Collect experiences and memories, not things.
5. If there's no room in the house, closet, cupboard, dresser drawer, etc., give stuff away.
6. Don't replace stuff given away with more stuff.
7. Share things with others who can use them.
8. Have just enough, rather than multiple items.
9. Buy long-lasting quality rather than cheap and breakable when something must be bought.
10. Avoid temptation in the form of "Buy one, get one free."
11. Buy things with a mind to use/keep them forever. Think of them as a long-term commitment.
12. Reuse, reuse, reuse... and there are probably dozens more, but that's enough words.

And if all else fails, here's a little song to get stuck in your head for when the temptation toward stuff becomes too strong. I have to put it out there every so often, or it's sitting uselessly on the YouTube sidelines instead of helping to save the planet and our sanity. It always amazes me how much of a chord it strikes in first time hearers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuJn7pRvuj8

If your new year's resolution was to clear the clutter and get a new lease on the space in your life, I'm backing you all the way. Avoiding stuffocation requires some effort and maybe even a shift in consciousness, but hey, it's worth it! Now, I think I'll go empty some drawers...

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Simple Suggestion #215... Use those bread crusts

If your house is anything like my house, for some reason, the crusts of the bread are often left in the bag after the loaves are gone. Sometimes I eat them for lunch, but often they're not big enough to make a sandwich. It's tempting to throw them out, but if you're living a simple and sustainable life, wasting things is not an option. After all, waste is a justice issue -- it's simply unjust to leave our planet in worse shape than we found it, or to throw things away when they're still usable, especially when they can be reduced, reused, or recycled.

So we don't toss our bread crusts out because they can be a valuable resource. Instead, we dry them out and store them for future use. They can be easily turned into croutons or crushed into breadcrumbs, and made part of different dishes that our family likes to eat.

To me, this suggestion seems too obvious, but I guess that's a sign that it's just plain simple.

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Simple Suggestion #207... Celebrate Environment Week

How will you celebrate? I'm celebrating by taking extra long walks in the river valley with my dog and appreciating the fragrance of blossoming trees. Or maybe I'll plant some extra bee-friendly plants in my yard. I'm definitely going to recycle the unnecessary papers on my desk. I'll ride my bike to work tomorrow. And maybe I'll make a fresh salad from the lettuce that is almost big enough to be picked from our cold frame as part of our 50-foot diet.




Click here for info about Environment Week in Canada

If you know me, you know that none of these activities are out of the ordinary around here. So how is Environment Week any different than any other week of the year? I guess the point I'm making is that I'll continue to do the things I'm always trying to do, because EVERY WEEK should be Environment Week. Reducing our ecological impact on our planet needs to be a daily, ongoing thing in a world threatened by climate instability, pollution, over-consumption and waste. As I'm constantly reminded, the way we live is a justice issue -- we owe it to the web of life to live more lightly on the planet, or, as Desmond Tutu commented earlier this week in Fort McMurray, we'll all be "kaput."

For me, Environment Week is a good time to up the ante -- to learn more about my local environment and how to protect it. It would also be good to come up with even more hard-core activities I can implement at home to reduce my ecological footprint. Those are harder to figure out. If you have any suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them! Ah, one just came to me. A shorter shower this morning...

The thing is, we only have one environment to protect for future generations, and every choice we make as human beings impacts it in one way or another. How can we impact it positively? If we think and act on that question all the time, every week IS Environment Week, as it should be.

How will you celebrate?

P.S. If you're in the Edmonton area, why not take a tour of the city's amazing Waste Management Facilities? Tours are being offered every day at 1:30 and 5:30 pm (except Wednesday, only 5:30) and you can register/get details by calling 311. It's well worth the trip -- an awareness of where our garbage goes and how much waste our city produces has inspired many Edmontonians to find ways to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover things that might otherwise end up in the landfill, something our earth can no longer afford.

P.P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

90 Ways to 90%

http://www.90waysto90.com

The City of Edmonton has this really cool thing going on. Besides already having an amazing rate of 60% waste diversion from residential sources through recycling and composting at its state-of-the-art Waste Management facilities, it's started a new program to encourage all Edmontonians to get our residential waste diversion up to 90% through simple, personal initiatives.

It's called 90 Ways to 90% Less Waste, and there's a website with 90 possibilities that individuals can adopt in their daily lives -- sort of like some of my more environmentally aware 200+ Simple Suggestions, but even cooler, because of the snazzy website, AND there's a contest! People are invited to choose from the 90 Ways and send 30 second videos illustrating how they've incorporated those ways to reduce waste into their lives. And there are great ideas among them -- like grasscycling (11 ways), composting (14 ways), using ecostations (12 ways), reducing consumption (13 ways), reusing (24 ways), and recycling (16 ways). I'm not much of a videographer, but I couldn't resist making a little reuse video and sending it in. #9, in case you're curious.

So if you're interested in some Simple Suggestions for reducing waste where you live, take a peek at 90waysto90.com by clicking here. It's got great interactive possibilities if you're creative, and even if you're not, the 90 ways are worth reading -- and adopting. Waste is a justice issue on our planet, whether we realize it or not. Carelessly using things up, tossing them and making a mess of creation isn't good for our earth, ourselves, or the interconnected web of life within which we live. But if each of the seven billion folks on this planet tries to reduce our waste of resources as much as possible, hopefully, the ecosystem's health will improve.

I'm with Margaret Mead when she says: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Let's all be thoughtful and committed when it comes to reducing our waste. 100% less waste would be even better, but I'd take 90% quite happily! So, after reading the City's Ways, I have some work to do...

Simple Suggestion #203... Share your knowledge

Sometimes I think it would be neat if we all walked around with intangible, transparent bubbles (or something) floating around us that let others know about interesting things that we know. Sort of like this:

Since that stick person represents me, I could add more bubbles, like, mother of adolescent/adult daughters, administrative assistant for L'Arche, composer, photographer, volunteer, Voluntary Simplicity practitioner, etc. If everyone had bubbles like this it would be easy for us to find people who know things that we would like to learn, or for other people to ask us about our knowledge.

I'm moodling about this today because I spent Tuesday evening with an inspiring group of people who are most anxious to share their new area of expertise, the City of Edmonton's newest crop of Master Composter/Recyclers. They've been through an intensive course and have knowledge to share about our city's incredible waste reduction efforts as well as being able to help with questions about composting and recycling in our region. And they're most willing to help their neighbours and friends by offering what they know, encouraging others in their efforts to reduce the load that our planet bears because of human consumption.

My MCR class of 2014 colleagues and I (class of 2007) took the course so that we can help others learn about the benefits of composting (turning kitchen scraps into black gold to enrich the earth's soil) and vermi-composting (the same thing using red wiggler worms). We can assist people to understand the benefits of grass-cycling (leaving grass clippings on your lawn as a wonderful natural fertilizer and mulch rather than creating more fossil fuel emissions when they're hauled to the dump), and we can teach them what to do with other household waste, directing them to ecostations for hazardous materials that don't belong in the landfill, or larger appliances that can be dismantled and recycled, or to the Reuse & Recycle Directory to aid charities in need of gently used housewares and furniture. And we can tell folks about the City's wonderful Reuse Centre, a place where we can take various household items for reuse, and can purchase items as well. Have any wicker baskets languishing around your place? Buttons? Bubblewrap? Bookmarks? Unused craft supplies? Take my word for it --it's a crafter's paradise!

There are now over 700 of us MCRs who have made reducing waste one of our areas of expertise. Just the other day, my friend from university days and Edmonton's King of Compost, Markster Composter (a clever combo of his first name and his work) was on Tuesday morning's Breakfast Television explaining how to "wake up" a compost pile. It was a great little clip (no longer available, sorry) and I'm so glad the Breakfast TV people are sharing Mark's expertise with their viewers, because the more compost we make, the better our soil and the less we send to the dump.

But sharing knowledge can be done a lot more simply than going to a TV studio and shooting a segment like Mark's... a five minute conversation during coffee break, a chat with a neighbour over a fence, or a question answered in the course of another activity or event. I suspect my new MCR friends will use Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other social media methods I barely know to share their knowledge! And it's all good.

So... my thanks to the Class of 2014 Master Composter/Recyclers for inspiring today's moodling, and today's challenge: Consider your areas of knowledge/expertise... And how can you share them with others?

Simple Suggestion #162... Reuse and reuse and reuse your plastic

If you've been following these moodlings for any length of time, you know that I'm concerned about the plastic buildup on our planet. Petroleum products in the form of bags, containers, coffee cup lids and islands in the ocean (ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?) create issues all over the globe. See that yucky mess over there? So this is a rather strong suggestion I'm making...

Human beings have become rather dependent upon plastic... and unfortunately, many of us treat it like it's an unlimited resource which we are entitled to use -- and toss. But that kind of thinking is gumming up a lot of natural habitat, clogging waterways, killing wildlife... and how many plastic bags have you seen flying in the trees this spring? Ugh. So we need to be more mindful of our plastic... and make sure that it isn't single use, at the very least. Rather than freeing the majestic plastic bag that you see in this four-minute documentary, why not use those cloth bags?

When I was a kid, my mom saved our bread bags so we could take our lunches in them rather than buying more trendy 'baggies' with the 'fold lock top.' Now my girls take reusable containers for their lunches, but I still reuse plastic bags wherever possible. Below are my veggie freezer bags -- some of them date back to 2008, when I started blanching and freezing our backyard vegetables. After each use, they get washed and hung up to dry in the laundry room, then put away until next blanching season. No reason to buy brand new when these work just fine, thank you very much. It's simply called being mindful of our beautiful earth.

There are plenty of other ways to reuse plastic before it goes to the dump. Fortunately, in Edmonton, we will soon have a solid waste gasification plant that will turn those plastic bits into synthetic fuel rather than landfilling them... but synthetic fuel's carbon emissions mean there's still no reason to throw out plastic if we can avoid it, whether it's gasified or not.

So, please join me in my efforts to reuse... and reuse... and reuse...

And not just plastic...

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Simple Suggestion # 123... Use rags

Here's an easy one that came to me when I was at a friend's house last week. The kids were playing in the basement, and a glass of water got spilled on the laminate. Said kids came running upstairs and grabbed a few paper towels. They came back a second time for more paper towels. The third time they took the entire roll. And I wondered how much water was in that glass. I also thought about our trees, and about this:

In our broom closet we have an old drawer from a piece of IKEA furniture that fell apart, and it has become our rag box. In it are scraps from holey old cotton t-shirts, chunks of frayed towels, bits of thin flannel sheets, and other odds and sods that work a lot better than paper towels for wiping up messes, dusting furniture or washing the car. We've banished paper towels from our house, and don't hesitate to toss out these rags if they get into "unwashable" messes. Unlike paper towels, they are usually reused many times before heading to our city's amazing Waste Management Centre, where they are composted (cotton composts well given the right conditions).

Paper towels are really an unnecessary convenience, and they use too many trees. Why not use a rag rather than consume the resources required to make paper towels, energy included? It makes a simple sort of sense.

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.