Green Living
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Is your DH/SO "green"?
Is your DH or SO as green as you?
DH will recycle, compost, use my green cleaners, use glass/stainless over plastic.
But he won't use natural body products, he eats much more junk (and won't take his vitamins, but that's a whole other issue!), reuses stuff less (like he threw some unused paper in the recycling bin the other day).
Stuff like aluminum deodorants and SLS freak me out, I wish he was as concerned.
Re: Is your DH/SO "green"?
Nope. He doesn't have a dishwasher, so he buys paper plates to put on top of his normal plates. I'm sure he uses paper towels to dry the plates off after he washes them too.
He drinks more pop a day than is even remotely healthy. Not sure if he recycles the cans or not. I've been begging him to get a SodaStream, but he's afraid it'll taste weird.
He says he supports me in doing what I need to do, but isn't willing to do it himself. He lives all the way across the country. Its hard for me to have any real influence on him changing his not so Earth friendly habits.
He is as 'green' as I am. He is conscious about recycling, water, gas and electricity usage, eating organic and local, etc. He is also very conscious about his health (takes vitamins, neither of us drinks soda, doesn't eat too much junk food, and works out on a regular basis). We've had some fairly dramatic health scares in my family (not us individually, but from our parents) and so we've definitely changed our habits.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
this is mostly us too.....DH will never give up his Head & Shoulders! (or his deodorant)..... he has switched alot of things due to my nagging, so in time that may change too!
He's mostly on board with things. Jeff's pretty laid back in general, so when I say something like "I want to get rid of paper towels." He'll be like "Umm . . . ok . . ." and then come home with a huge pack of microfiber cloths the next day as a surprise. : )
He's also an engineer and can be a nerd, so he's the one who maths things out for me to figure out if it really is a big deal to insulate all of the outlets in our house, or how much it really costs to leave our electric toothbrush plugged in 24/7 instead of just whenever we need to charge the toothbrush.
Some things take more convincing. He really hates worms, so when we start worm composting that will be my job. Overall, though, if I have a good reason for wanting to change something and tell him why he's OK with it.
Yes and no. He rolls his eyes when I say "Tomatoes are farmed by slaves!" and he's not afraid of milk, but he buys organic b/c I like happy cows, he buys cage free-cruelty free eggs b/c he knows it's important to me..and we eat a lot of organic and natural foods. He's down with natural clothing detergent, but thinks vinegar in the laundry doesn't do anything (and he looked up what it did and honestly we really haven't found "proof" that it softens your clothes). He doesn't care about SLS, uses whatever shampoo he wants--and we both are skeptical about the true dangers of BPA (gasp! Yes, we don't believe the media!)
He also is getting his mechanical engineering degree and wants to work in wind tech...pretty green if you ask me.
Depening on your perspective my DH is either "cheap" or "thrifty". So generally if I can convince him that it's less expensive to do x,y,z (recycle paper, reuse cloth towels instead of buying paper towels, earth friendly detergents requires less to do the same job) he's on board. He'll generally humor me in terms of things we eat if I can get a good/comparable price and he's enjoyed the taste of the locally grown meats we've gotten, so he's willing to spend a little more on those--all as long as I work it into our grocery budget. When I go over, he starts to have "issues."
And I doubt I'll ever get him to change from his Old Spice deoderant, but he just uses whatever shampoo I use, so that's good for me!!
This is so irrelevant, but Matkinson, why does him having a beard mean you'll never get rid of the Head and Shoulders? I'm stuck on that!!
I'm single, so no DH/SO to answer for (or cleanup after hahahaha), but its definitely something important to mean when evaluating potentials! I'm flexible on how green someone is, but they need to be supportive that its important to me and do a minimal amount.
Also Yes and No. He happily goes along with all the green changes I spearheaded, like recycling, no paper towels, and green cleaning products. He doesn't actually "care" about those things though. Like I don't use paper towels because I can't bear the thought of a tree being cut down, DH doesn't use them because he doesn't want me to be upset about the loss of said tree. He doesn't actually care about the tree. Plus PT are like $2 a roll, he likes saving that money. I started the green personal products crusade for him, because we figured out he's allergic to SLS. It was making his hair fall out at 23 and his mouth sore!
He also rolls his eyes about some of what he calls my "nitpicky" things like "tomatoes are grown by slaves!" and "Palm oil kills orangutans!" He says "you can't be a perfect green person" so he doesn't stress about the environmental and human impact of individual products that we already buy organic. Organic is enough for him. He's grossed out by milk, which I LOVE. He says it's unnatural for any animal to drink the milk of another animal, so he makes his own almond milk.
He does care about eating locally, he feels as I do that the industrial food system is broken and could collapse at any time. We've both on the same page about wanting to provide for our family ourselves, not rely on some corporation to do it for us. So he got our compost pile going, and he works really hard with me on the veggie garden, especially if he has more free time that I do. It was also his idea to get a chest freezer and canning equipment so we could eat locally year round.
He started the road to vegetarianism, which we both are now. He's veg for ethical reasons, me for environmental reasons. He gets very passionate about the way animals for consumption are treated, and he doesn't see why we eat pigs and love dogs, when pigs are much smarter and can bond with a person just like dogs. So I'm very happy that his vegetarianism has a less environmental impact too.
I get that I can't do it all, but once I know stuff like that, I just can't enjoy it.
Its kind of ironic that he rolls his eyes at those things, but then is the one who started the veg thing for ethical reasons!
That's so cool that you have a partner so passionate about those things!
I've been the impetus, but Mr.P has willingly come along for the ride, and is every bit the convert. Food is our biggest issue; he will give suggestions to friends and even recorded Michael Pollan on Oprah all on his own. When we get to doing something, he's a fan of doing it all the way, so he's been a big part of our backyard garden project. He's also an engineer and handles the technical stuff well.
The area he's least "green" in are body products and - this is kind of hard to put in a word, but I'll just say I think he'd be happy to have a big new air-conditioned suburban house with a huge plush green lawn and wouldn't immediately think of the environmental consequences.
He's always been really good about recycling, using less electricity, bringing bags to the store, and all of that (better about it than I am, actually).
I am the one who originally got into organic and local food, and it took some coaxing at first because of the higher price, but now for the most part, he sees how important it is. There are a couple foods he is totally unwilling to give up though, like bananas. I wonder sometimes though, if I wasn't around, if he would continue to eat as organic as we do now. I'm sure he'd at least eat much better than we used too before we went green.
He's also not quite as concerned about body products, but since I'm usually in charge of all the shopping, he uses whatever I get him.
Being green is his profession.
Here's a few of his FB status updates last week:
Nuclear energy, "clean coal" and off shore drilling are not renewable, sustainable or clean and should not be part of a renewable energy or climate change mitigation policy. (202) 456-1414
The above is the number to the White House - here's another
called his congresswoman (Barbara Lee) and asked her to help stop the destructive practice of mountain top removal for coal mining, and to ask her to find a legislative recourse to the Supreme Court's ruling that allows corporations unhindered finance of political campaigns.
So yeah, he's pretty green and I'm pretty happy about that:)
ETA: He's not as militant as me about boycotting products from China however. He thinks its a futile effort, but I disagree.
:::Nods::: Ironically enough my husband seems to be more on board with the palm oil situation than tomatoes--I think it's because I worked at the Zoo--so we saw the orangutans everyday (and our zoo took a very public stance on palm oil)..so it wasn't just me. Also, really, we don't get slave tomatoes (we get the ones from Mexico), and in the summer we get them from our garden...I think that's why he rolls his eyes ;D He likes to see my passion.
Mostly yes. He's always been pretty hardcore about recycling. God help you if you throw anything in our trash can that could be recycled. He's also big time anti-littering. One time we were behind a car of teenage girls at the stop light and one of them threw a McDonald's bag out the window. DH pulled over, picked up the bag and at the next stop light he got out, walked over to their car and said to the girl, "Excuse me, I think you dropped this" and handed the trash back to her. I cringed at the time but in hindsight I'm proud of his commitment.
When it came to how our eating & personal care habits affect the environment he was luke warm. Once I started filling him in on everything I was reading about the food industry, all the crap in our cleaning products, hygiene products he started to warm more and more to going green in those areas.
After we saw Food Inc he bought in 100%. DH was a hardcore meat and potatoes guy but after Food Inc when I suggested we try to cut back to meat twice a week (versus practically every meal), he was completely on board. We eat vegetarian 4x week now. I haven't used chemical cleaning products in almost 2 years. We haven't eaten any processed foods in over 4 months now.
I made all the changes, but he has embraced them enough to what to build our new home green.
I'm the same way. Now that I know about palm oil, I can't enjoy it anymore. I am going to finish my current jar of palm oil PB though, it's just wasteful to throw it out.
Regarding your irony statement, there's a bit more background there that I left out. I have a tendency to get really worked up about things I care about, especially the environment. I had a meltdown, crying and all, about two weeks ago after a ton of horrible environmental news came out at once. Lke the news about Monsanto pushing GMO alfalfa which I think will be the death of organic food, all the research (and hence new knowlegde) about the North Pacific Trash Gyre after a post here about it, Palm oil, tomatoes, etc.... I was really depressed about it all and had a meltdown. So my DH's sort of dismissivness about what he calls "the nickpicky things" also probably comes from him trying to comfort me, in his own weird way. He doesn't want me to worry about everything little thing. Plus our food shopping is getting pretty restrictive, and I've put my foot down hard about not eating any GMO food, even if it's something as small as the soybean oil in the crackers he bought last week.
I agree my DH is awesome. Why isn't there an unbroken heart emoticon? I'm thankful for him every day, he's just such an awesome person. Caring, understanding, helpful, sweet, smart, and sexy. He constantly sends me environmental articles he finds, and it's so great to have an adult, informed discussion about them, usually over dinner. I appreciate that he makes room for our large food budget every month (he handles the money, I SUCK at that). He's always very appreciative of my food planning and shopping, and compliments my cooking to no end.
He has gradually picked up many of my green habits. His father was an environmentalist, so he already grew up with many good habits.
I do have to pull some things out of the trash and remind him that they can be recycled, and try to discourage him from his habit of buying serving-sized beverages. However, I've gotten him into the habit of at least buying organic milk, though he won't switch to non-cow's milk (I don't have dairy at all, because I can't anyway).
He eats more 'green' when he is at home, especially since I do 90% of the cooking and I'm vegetarian. This has also gotten him into the habit eating less meat and better foods in general.
He won't necessarily look for 'green' brands, but often picks up what he is used to seeing around the house from what I have bought.