Household Life: sharing a greener approach to saving resources

Banner image: Photo by Pexels.com/Sarah Chai

By Eric Conroy

Having commented in the past on the outside world, I am going to write about life in my household. I am constantly surprised at the amount of resources we all use in our daily lives – energy, water, food, etc.  Given climate change and the biodiversity crises, we need to do all we can to help the planet.

At the height of the water charges crisis in Ireland, I was opining that I would like Uisce Éireann to install one of those water meters at my house, that were being blocked by residents in North Dublin. We use excessive water in our homes and we should pay for it, to bring down usage significantly. The average person in Ireland uses approximately 133 litres of water per day, which equates to over 48,000 litres per year. This sounds like a lot of the clear stuff to me. Given increased drought conditions arising from climate change, we need to conserve this precious resource. The plan to bring water to the Dublin region from the River Shannon should not be implemented. We must reduce the leaks in the current system and reduce usage per head with meaningful water charges.

In my house, I operated a grey water system by using my shower water to flush the loo. I had a sign on the WC – “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down". As I had an old WC, I put an empty wine bottle in the cistern to reduce water capacity. However, my visitors have still commented on the long flush when needed. Therefore I have changed my toilet to a modern low-flow one, which uses much less water. I have a water butt that catches rain water on my extension, for use in the garden and to replenish the bird bath, to help our feathered friends!

As a small household, I wash dishes by hand and don’t have a dishwasher. As a result, I assumed I’m saving water and energy but that’s not the case I’m told! You can look at an interesting discussion on ZeroWaste Reddit about the dishwashers through this link. However, I definitely saved water by filling a container with cold water before hot water comes out of the tap, to use in the loo as above. With the modern WC, this water can now be diverted to the garden.

In the garden, I only use manual machines to save energy and to help keep me fit! I replaced my electric lawn-mower with a manual one. In addition, I cut less grass to have some wildness on my lawn. I find that many private and institutional gardeners use noisy mechanical devices like strimmers and leaf blowers. This leads to air and noise pollution along with carbon emissions. I wonder about the use of these machines when Green Flag awards are announced by An Taisce.  I find a hedge cut with shears has a more pleasing natural look!

I use excess hot water from a cup of tea to wash some dishes or have a shave. Like most people, I love a cup of tea. However, I was getting worried about plastic in teabags. On research with my local supermarket, I found that their discount own-brand was not free from plastic and no plans to change. Teabags free of plastic were much more expensive. My solution was to use each teabag twice and then put the teabag out to dry! One can then dispose of the teabag after the tealeaves fall out for composting. However, the best tea is loose-leaf brewed in a tea pot, with no plastic involved!

I bring my own plastic bags to the supermarket to bag bread, fruit and vegetables. I have regular interactions with the management who covered all the baked bread in plastic. However, more bread is now displayed with no wrapping in the morning, maybe because of my inputs! No flimsy plastic bags should be provided to encourage shoppers to bring their own (like what happened with An Taisce-inspired free plastic shopping bags policy).

Regarding waste disposal, I rarely put out a black bin. Almost everything discarded goes in the brown and green bins. I collect food scraps for composting and use in my garden. I try and separate plastic from paper for the green bin, as we need to keep these lines separate for ease of recycling.

With clothes, I now buy all my needs in charity shops, get great value and support good causes in the process. I darn my socks and replace buttons on shirts to prolong the life of my clothes. The environmental damage of the clothes industry is very high and rising. We buy many more clothes these days than we need, and much comes from plastic-based fibres. I’ve brought good and beyond repair garments that I want to replace, to outlets for re-use and recycling. Unfortunately, I’m told that a good deal of discarded clothing goes to the incinerator or sent overseas to end up on garbage heaps in developing countries in Africa and Asia.You can read more about the 'Let's Fix Fashion' programme through this link. Let’s Fix Fashion is a Green-Schools Ireland education-focused campaign empowering young people to tackle the impacts of fast fashion.

After all this, you may think I would be impossible to live with! We all need to do what we can to help solve our environment problems, and this is my way. However, I’m open to advice on how to manage my footprint. Any comments welcome. 

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Some useful An Taisce links for more information:

 

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