Blogging on smart living?

Ah, the joy of blogging. Honestly, I haven’t really tried it before and I am not really a blog follower either, so I have no idea what the expectations are. But ever since we started the Smart Living Project, people have been asking us “do you have a blog”? Now the answer is definitely yes, but what kind of content were our members and followers really expecting? For me, at least, this blog will serve as a series of anecdotes on the journey to sustainability, trying to weave in some tips, ideas and advise for what it’s worth along the way. This time of year, all I can think about is gardening. In fact, it will completely consume me if I let it. I find tremendous happiness from growing things, whether it be food or flowers, even grass. It’s true; a couple of weeks ago I started growing grass indoors. Maybe just to have something to grow and something green around the house, but the purpose, I told everyone, was to grow “oats for cats” for my friends’ cats. Turned out they didn’t like it so much, but it was a fun project that satisfied my gardening craze for a while. About the same time, I bought my first sprouter. Funny you think, someone who has been gardening as much as I have never made sprouts? The fact is I didn’t think I liked them. But if you make them yourself, they taste a whole lot better. So in a round-about way, that’s what I wanted to come to. Growing things yourself. It’s very sustainable. Why? First of all, it’s tremendously local. Even if you buy seeds and supplies over the Internet, there is still a lot less transportation involved. And that’s one of the core things that I like to look for when I judge if something is sustainable. How far did this item have to be shipped? The bigger and heavier it is, the more gas was used, too. The second thing I look for, and this is my personal choice really, is the input of chemicals, especially when it comes to food. This is for health reasons of course, why eat unnatural materials when you don’t have to? But it’s also fundamentally unsustainable to produce, transport and release toxic chemicals into the environment. Even if they are deemed safe for human consumption, or their manufacturer proudly proclaims that they biodegrade within five days, they are by definition poisons. That’s what they were designed to do. So why do it if you don’t need to? It’s been proven over and over again that organic agriculture is equally or more productive per acre than conventional agriculture. Most recently, a study at the University of Minnesota came to this conclusion, but there are others. This brings me back to the third item I look for. Anything that is unnecessary. I have never really heard this argument in a sustainability conversation, but think about it. For example, when I buy paper towels I refuse to buy the printed ones. Not only do I think they are pretty dumb, but why waste the ink, the energy that goes into the machine and the extra packaging that states “cute motifs” when you don’t need it? That’s an extra burden on the environment that makes no sense to me. Maybe this is something that stuck with me when I studied lifecycle assessment in college, but for some reason I like to look at products and compare them based on which is simpler. Fewer ingredients, fewer hard-to-pronounce ingredients, and less industrial input in general are things to me that make a product sustainable. I loosely base my decisions on what I know about lifecycle assessment, industrial ecology, and eco-labeling principles. So far it works well for me. Later!