Green Living
Dear Community,
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.
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.
EF Poll!
I was reading my cereal box this morning and it said something about "If you can't reduce or reuse - recycle!" I never thought about it, but I think reducing is the hardest thing for me to do. Recycling is a piece of cake, and I love doing it. But is it the most important? The way it was listed on the box was almost like it's what you should do if you can't reduce or reuse.
So, which one is the hardest for you to do? And which do you think is the most important?
Re: EF Poll!
I agree that reducing and reusing are more useful than recycling. Recycling still takes a lot of energy and raw materials, even though it is generally considerably less than the alternative.
I don't know which is hardest for me. It often feels like reducing is very hard, but then I catch a glimpse at someone else's garbage and realize that most of the reason it is so hard for me is because I already consume so little to begin with. With only a few exceptions, I detest shopping with the passion of a thousand blazing suns. Thus I often find myself doing without things I might otherwise want (even things I really need, at least by American standards) simply to save myself from the experience of shopping for it.
Recycling has typically been a pain in the butt for me, since most of my life I've lived places without curbside recycling and far from a recycling center. I still do it, but it's a pain.
I'm kind of obsessive about reusing stuff. And storing stuff to maybe find a way to reuse someday.
Hands down, reducing is key. Production takes a HUGE amount of resources, plus the shipping involved to get it where it needs to go.
For me, the hardest is reusing. I am fine with buying used, but things like repurposing a milk jug rather than throwing it away--that is tricky.
I completely agree!
Re-using. Like ziplocks. I know I could wash them but I don't. And clothes. I tried the thrift stores, but they're dank and grungy and reek of mothballs and the clothes are fugly.
I'm totally down with the other two.
It is tough, and now that I am a mom, it feels like it is even tougher, because I go for convenience a lot. For instance, I love prepackaged snacks for my LO. Like the kinds where there are tons of little snack baggies. And it's stuff like fruit gummies. If it were goldfish crackers, I could buy a big bag and put small amounts in reusable containers. Kids stuff seems to have so much packaging and stuff associated with it.
We do try to buy in bulk, but that doesn't seem to reduce packaging. I'm not sure if that really answers your question, but when I think of reducing, I think of all kinds of packaging, and it's tough.
Nest Bio ~ ~ Baby Food Blog
Ditto this. There's a reason the rhyme is "reduce, reuse, and recycle" because that's the order you should be doing things in. Production takes a HUGE amount of resources, like mining and shipping. Think of the environmental devastation that resulted from mining the heavy metals in a laptop or any electronics. Think of the shipping it took to bring that plastic toy from China to your Toys R Us.
Reducing for me was hard at first, now it's second nature. I always buy things with less packaging, like whole portabello mushrooms that I put in my produce bags rather than cremini or sliced mushrooms in a styrofoam container wrapped in plastic wrap. I buy in bulk, and never anything that's single use.
Reusing is the hardest thing for me too. I haven't bought any used clothes (ick), and I don't have any good uses for a milk jug. I do save glass jars like from pasta for growing seedlings and whatnot.
When it comes to dank and smell consignment shops are better than thrift shops. I like the HUNT!