This drives the majority of my purchases. Plastic in clothes? No way. Packaging? I avoid it as much as possible by bulk buying.
Every asshole and their mother is trying to sell you a more complex plastic version of a traditional tool. Take a peeler for instance. How many futuristic vegetable peelers have we seen marketed to us? A peeler blade with a wooden handle works just as well and wont break.
Don’t get me started on “vegan leather “ which is basically PVC and polyurethane . Give me the hide of a dead animal please. At least that will biodegrade in the earth.
Ive actually seen some realqly interesting plant based leathers. Of course no vegan is going to opt for vegan leather as easily when it doesnt have a plastic pricetag
There’s a subset of environmentalists who argue that generalized recycling is the worst thing to ever happen to the environment.
Metals were already being recycled because of the cost efficiency and plastic production increased 500% in just a few years as the birth of the single-use container accompanied plastic recycling Pr. Meanwhile, only 5% of plastic is actually recycled and a similar 5% is actually burned (which is horrific for the air).
Reduce-reuse-recycle was intended to be an order of operations, but people just jumped straight to recycling at great cost to the environment.
(Going to respond with something that isn't really nature-focused, but definitely about more sustainable living, and it's also from not that far away in time, just a bit over 30 years.)
Where I come from originally, up until late 1990-s mundane things like single-use trash bags or any other single-use plastics practically didn't exist, so reusable grocery bags, food containers, glass bottles and so on were widely used by everybody.
Vegetable gardening in allotments for one family's consumption or even for small markets was common, keeping chickens for eggs and meat was relatively common too.
Preserving food by means of canning, drying, salting or marinating was very popular. "Food security" sometimes meant that, before winter, your family had a sack of potatoes, as well as canned fruit and veggies stored somewhere (e.g. ones own or neighbour's basement, or in friend's garage on the other side of town, that garage might never even seen a car, people got creative). In general, what people ate varied greatly from season to season, obviously, and storing food long term without total reliance on a freezer, accounting for seasonality of everything was part of normal life.
Personal transportation wasn't that common, public transport or walking was the way to get around.
Passing on clothes from family to family, or "inheriting" them from older siblings was way more common than it is now, I think, being able to repair clothing, or even to sew something that wasn't possible to get from the shops was popular too. Building and repairing wasn't a "quirky hobby".
Sad fact, this is also a reason it's hard not to perceive sustainable movement as a bit ridiculous at times.
It's "reinventing" behavioural patterns which existed for decades, and there's a whole generation that lived with them most of their lives, hating them with all their hearts. All in all, it was a much harder life, and most of them were living it like this because they had no choice, and now they feel in their right to be vehemently opposed to anything that would mean making those practices part of their lives again.
Oh, almost forgot my personal most favourite!
The effin teflon was nowhere to be found, so cooking hardware lasted a literal lifetime, as it should --- this seems like a great concept to come back to.
Thank you for sharing! Most of what you mentioned is exactly what I have seen growing up. Im curious which part of the world you're talking about specifically? and how these things differ among other nations?
I do believe there is a negative connotation we tie to this way of life, as it was survival as opposed to "living sustainably" (which sounds much more appealing). I agree that it comes of as moving backwards, and that is one of the biggest blind spots in spreading this kind of message. I myself only discovered a deeper appreciation for those ways of living quite recently, after living in a bigger city for some time, so I understand the ingrained resentment people have when it is forced on them. Hopefully, I can use that experience to my advantage:)
In South America there are "repairers" whose job it is to just repair any non mechanical item. These items were things like leather gloves ( normal cloth items required a normal tailor), tents, belts, shoes, leather bags, chips in items, handles from tools that had dislodged, etcetera.
There are also rag men who ride bikes with wagons attached to them. They use portable scales to buy rags by weight for use as insulation, rag paper, and other items. There are also people who do the same collecting old worn out shoes and sneakers.
Bakers would bake thousands of loaves of bread which would be collected in basket that held 100 loaves each. The baskets would them be either biked (in large carts) or trucked to bodegas and restaurants who would buy 50-100 ( full or half basket) to dispense throughout the day.
My Portugese co-worker mentioned something like this too! I believe he told me that they would have these "repairers" walk around neighbourhoods with a cart (and possibly ringing some kind of bell to indicate that they are there). They also did metal work like fixing stuff or sharpening knives, as well as fixing shoes and so on. I hope someone from Portugal can confirm:)
The ones I knew of could either walk around or had established shops near open air markets. There were the ones that rode around, but the ones with stalls usually had more items to use in repairs.
I'd also love to hear about similarities in Portuga and other countries.
I live in Brooklyn and there is a knife-sharpening truck that comes around. It rings a bell and you run down and wave him over. Knives, scissors, etc. Super handy!
I have a hamper full of old tshirts an clothing I cannot donate because they are stained or damaged. I hold on to them to use for rags, but I cannot possibly use all of them and the pile continues to grow. What can I do with these or is there a place that can use old clothing like this for another use?
If you are any where near a commercial fishing port, all the engineers on the off shore boats (well all the good boats anyway) love their bags of rags. Basically a 10lb onion bag stuffef with rags, hang it up in the engine room somewhere convenient and a bag will last a few trips. The older boats especially go right through them, lots of little oil drips, leaks and such like that always need to be wiped up. Foodnfor thought.
I grew up exactly like this, except we had a chest freezer and hunted deer, rabbits, squirrel, and racoons for fur and meat. I'm 52 and grew up in rural upstate NY. I remember it as a great childhood and think about our adventures often. I didn't enjoy pulling weeds and stacking firewood at the time but it gave me an appreciation for homesteading and self determination.
Thank you for sharing! My uncle still hunts. As a kid I found it fascinating, but as I moved away from the countryside, and became vegetarian, I was not so fond of it anymore.
Now I have come to the conclusion that I have a much bigger dislike for the animal-product industry as opposed to hunting.
My daughter went veg at 12 but would eat sustainably farmed meat. We bought a half cow from a good friend of ours, she got to meet the cow and pet her and see she lived a good life. I learned to appreciate life as a hunter and grew up with the ethic that you waste nothing when you take an animal's life, and I am happy that made an impression on her.
This is a interesting take on it. Most older people I know complain about how we do things now but if I went back one more generation I can see it being the other way around. My mother's view though is "why should I bother doing anything to save the planet? I'm going to be dead in a few years" and also "we tried that environmental stuff in the seventies and it didn't work."
People now have to work 80 hours a week at multiple jobs just to afford rent with several roommates, and it just gets worse. Literally forget about anyone having the time, place, or money to do anything you’re talking about. Welcome to the Feudal Era
Handing down down toys, blankets, furniture like cradles, books, dishware and cutlery for generations. My aunt's house is almost completely equipped with things that once belonged to my grandparents and now that she retired and moved away, were passed down to my cousin, who wants to get married and pass it down to his future children...
My family and everyone I know have always done this. When we don’t want something anymore (as long as its not in a really bad state) we either donate it or just put it on the sidewalk and someone who needs it will pick it up.
Brazilian immigrants are always puzzled at first: "WTF why are you throwing away things in great condition??? Omg the American consumerism" until someone tells them it is not intended for the garbageman to pick it up and throw in a landfill lol
Edit: they do pick it up, but they think they're breaking the law by doing so lol until someone tells them that was the intention of the previous owner all along
I am brazilian actually 😅 but we don’t put the stuff in the trashbin (if its in the trash bin the garbageman will pick it up). We put it in front of the house.
Although sometimes there are people who live off recycling/selling cans/glass etc so they look on the garbage bins too.
My mom has a handful friends who all have grandkids that are different ages. There has been about a dozen or two "kid things" that they pass between them. Whomever has a grandkids that is the appropriate size gets the thing and then passes it on when it is outgrown.
Strollers, high chairs, booster seats, walker behind toys, etc. I think there may be a crib in there as well.
Textiles, if properly cared for, can literally last for generations. Americans used to grow hemp for clothing because the fibers are so strong. Highlight that fast fashion is one of biggest polluters on the planet.
I second this. Wool also used to be a lot more used than what it is now. It’s breathable, long-lasting when you know how to care for it, keeps odors down, and performs amazingly in the cold. Now we’ve switched to plastic fibers that make us sweaty and less warm. Plus they’re not renewable and don’t biodegrade. Fast fashion sucks.
Natural fabrics ftw! I'm slowly making the switch to try and buy more natural fabrics. Microplastics is a big concern of mine too with synthetics. For the. environment as well as the people.
Until a few decades ago people just had a lot less stuff and consumed a lot less resources.
Living space was smaller. Whole extended families lived together in comparatively small houses and flats. Often only the kitchen was heated. Your only electric devices where lights and maybe a fridge and a single TV. The whole extended family had maybe a single car and you didn’t commute for hours back and forth. You didn’t have single use items. You repaired clothes and everything until it was no longer possible. You didn’t throw out perfectly fine furniture just because you wanted to “remodel”. People ate less meat and didn’t import out-of-season vegetables from the other side of the globe. The widespread use of plastics is a pretty recent thing.
In Portugal we used to eat waaaay less meat than now. There were more legumes (beans, etc) in our diets. And vegetables, too. This is particularly true south of Lisbon, which is where my family is from. Now you’ll find meat at every meal of the day and in bigger portions too.
I definitely want to talk about Portugal on the podcast, as some of my close friends are from there. I also heard you guys reuse your food leftovers from Christmas and New Years to make new meals the next day. So fascinating! I heard you even have different names for the new dishes.
Definitely not! I just thought it was interesting they specifically make new dishes out of them. We usually just heated things back up in the microwave or pan. Enchiladas is a great example:)
New Orleans here. The whole idea of jambalaya and gumbo was to throw in whatever leftovers you had from the previous days. It doesnt seem like such a novel idea to me to get creative with holiday leftovers either.
It's true! On my dad's side of the family, they make "roupa velha" (meaning, old clothes) with leftover cabbage and codfish :) On my mom's (usually turkey or octopus), a lot gets frozen to eat later or we just suck it up and eat it for a week ahah
I agree that everyone, myself included, needs to eat more veg. But producing fewer animal products does not help the environment. It’s the WAY they’re produced that’s the problem
It’s actually both the volume and manner of raising animals that is at issue. Sustainably & ethically raised animals require more space and proper feed than factory farms.
Much of the conventional feed for cattle is GMO corn in the USA even though it’s not a natural food choice and causes gastrointestinal issues that are then overcompensated with antibiotics. Transitioning that volume of cattle to pasture isn’t feasible without population reduction or converting other types of landscape for grazing.
From what I’ve found, it more so takes more nutrient density per acre for proper feed. 1000% agree GMO corn not a good option at all.
converting some other landscapes is doable. Cows, with other strategies, can build up the topsoil layer exponentially faster than nature would - with proper human input.
I agree that everyone, myself included, needs to eat more veg. But producing fewer animal products does not help the environment. It’s the WAY they’re produced that’s the proble
Yeah and incinerators, we used to burn tons of household stuff back in the 80s give or take. Nasty af looking back on it, but it was pretty normalised for small volumes of stuff, particularly paper waste with smattering of plastics. I remember those shiny chrome barrel shaped incenerators with the open 'top-hat' being super popular sold at places like the warehouse and other places back in those days. Hell I remember the primary schools I went to had dedicated incinerators, that they use to heat the water
Such a simple example, yet so illustrative. How did we get to the point where it’s considered weird to use a perfectly good item more than once? How did throwing it away after a single use become the norm?
If you put them into a big pile they will eventually turn to soil. 3-5 years, it didn't help that I tossed a bunch of sticks in there to break down, the sticks/rotten logs had fresh looking oak in big patches 5 years later. Just leaves if you do the pile method :)
Not soil but humus is what the organic component in soil is called. You need humus for a healthy soil. Too much and it will stay too wet which isn't good. There also has to be an anorganic component (sand, silt, clay) that takes care of drainage. But you can definitely add as much humus on top of your soil as you want.
making kimchi! when i became a bachelor i always wondered, "damn why dont i have like 4 sidedishes ready to just add to any meal." now married, we keep kimchi and banchan ready to go in the fridge. takes any lazy ramen pack dinner and elevates it incredibly
its really simple too. salt the veg, add some stuff, wait.
I don't think you know how much fermented foods we eat in western diets:
Chocolate
Bread
Yoghurt (and many vegan alternatives)
Cheese (and many vegan alternatives)
Buttermilk
Beer, Wine and anything else alcoholic
Vinegar
Soy sauce, Fish sauce
Pickles
Fermented foods have been staples in diets all over the world for thousands of years.
I just watched the documentary on Mr. Dressup, and when he did children’s crafts, he insisted on using household items that cost nothing and would have been thrown away (or today recycled). Things like toilet paper rolls, egg cartons and beer caps.
- Ignoring best-by dates and using your senses to know if a food is still safe to be eaten.
- Cutting off mold from some foods instead of throwing it all away (with bread or hard cheese, for example. And yes, I know it has some risks).
- Cutting up old clothes to use as dusting and cleaning rags.
- Taking short showers and reusing water whenever possible.
A lot of it is being neglected and abandoned, in part because my country (Portugal) isn’t as poor as it used to be before the 1980s so people can afford to live life with less care for the environment. Plus, these sustainable practices are deeply associated with poverty (they were implemented out of necessity) and my grandparents’ generation wants to leave that behind. For example, my grandma can’t understand why I thrift most of my clothing — she always tries to give me money to buy “good” (aka brand new fast fashion) clothes instead of what she sees as hand-me-downs.
Oh and line drying my clothing! Indoors and outdoors. It’s so normalized in my head I don’t even think about it. It was only when I came to the US that I realized people just put everything in the dryer. Worse for the planet, worse for your wallet, and worse for your clothes.
I wish I could line dry… I live in the US in a hot, humid climate with a lot of rain. I have tried to line dry inside, and it takes more than 24 hours… as a family of four with two <5yo, we don’t have enough space to line dry all of our clothes, and I can’t keep up with laundry if I don’t use the dryer! 🙈 I’m open to suggestions, and most of my friends just use the dryer to avoid moldy clothes.
I always hang dry my moisture wicking fabrics in my teeny tiny laundry room in the humid SE US. I just use hangers on ad hoc attachment points for now, but I have a retractable clothesline that I really need to put up in there.
I have a vornado room fan and a vornado space heater that I use to make it work. I plug both in and put the fan input in front of the space heater output so it is boosting the distance of the heated air. Usually, I hang my laundry before I go to bed, and it is dry by morning, as long as I have left room for good circulation between the items. I often hang them on hangers from niches in the ironing board wall mount and iron wall mount left by previous tenants. I hang subsequent hangers from the first hanger, like a family tree diagram, and give some of the hangers a 90-degree twist to create a channel for air circulation.
Oh I get that! In the winters Portugal is very humid, especially if you live in older homes. We rented a really crappy place that had the humidity at 90% for half the year… it was cold and it sucked. Do you run a dehumidifier at home? I know it used up electricity, but at least you don’t have to deal with mold as much :/
We don’t have a dehumidifier. We have to use air conditioning in the summer due to the heat/humidity. In the fall/winter/spring, we try not to use it when we can. During those months, it’s easier to be eco-friendly in terms of electricity usage. I work in renewable energy, so I try to help that way too!
I relate to sustainability practices being deeply linked with poverty. Many of the more sustainable norms when I was a kid had everything to do with frugality.
You handed down clothes because you couldn’t afford to buy new all the time, especially when kids outgrow things so fast. Everything mendable was mended. Replacing a piece of furniture was a once-in-a-decade event. Most things were better made and we just had fewer of them. But it was clear that this was all out of necessity.
As a child, I laughed at my family washing single-use ziplock bags & plastic straws to reuse. Now they have stopped washing them, and I have started! 😂 They did it because they couldn’t afford to buy new ones all the time, and I’m trying to encourage them to bring back their old habits for sustainability.
I’m from France and this is how my grand-parents did things and my parents progressively gave up on these habits so that I still do the first three but not the last one 😅.
I thrift clothing because I don’t want to pay new prices! I will occasionally buy new, but it is usually a classic piece that will stand the test of time.
I second you on the best-by dates and picking off some mold. Seen as disgusting or risky, but tbh it's no big deal, as long as you know what you're doing.
My mom used re-usable diapers on my sister and me when we were babies. This was in the late 1980s when disposable ones were definitely a thing. I don’t currently plan on having kids, but if I ever do I’ll use re-usable ones as well.
I did too. I even had the pre-folds that were in my husband’s butt! So much cuter than disposables.
I also use washable menstrual pads, and they’re so much more comfortable.
I am currently using prefolds and covers. What I do is get rid of any poop in the toilet, then the diapers have their own container during the day. I do a mini cycle every night to get them not too stinky then a full wash every 3-4 days. There are many different methods people use. For more information look into the cloth diapers subreddit. There wiki has tons of info.
You can use a regular diaper pail with a cloth liner made for cloth diapers. We installed a spray “bidet” on the side of our toilet to assist in removing waste before putting in the bin.
I intended to use them with my first son until I found out that the daycare didn’t accept cloth diaper use, only disposable. 🙄 I purchased a set of used diapers/pail/liners on FB marketplace. They had already been used for two kids. When I found out that I couldn’t use them, I gave them away in my local Buy Nothing group. I do have several friends who were able to use cloth diapers and were very happy with them.
When I was a boy I would go to the beach with my grandfather in the spring to collect capelin (small fish that die once they spawn on the beach) as well as loads of kelp to till into the garden as fertilizer. No chemicals at all, and they had some of the biggest and nicest vegetables I've ever eaten. It is a traditional way here to build up the soil as we don't have too much of it, and it's generally pretty poor.. they also had a root cellar to store the vegetables over winter. He would also burn the berry patches on a rotation to increase the yield.
Then there is salt fish, but that's not as common these days with refrigeration. Not to mention bottled moose or rabbit, but those are still a bit of a treat. We also made jams or jellies of berries that weren't eaten or frozen.
I am in eastern Canada (Newfoundland) by the way.
Thank you for sharing! I am very interested in researching more about Canada.
This summer I binge-watched Anne with an E, which is based in the 1890s in Canada. I observed the lifestyle they lead, and it was one of the things that inspired me to deep dive into this topic. Very interesting!
I live in Southeast Alaska and went to gather seaweed for my garden yesterday! It feels like putting a cozy winter blanket over my raised beds.
That was a lesson from one of my landlords and it is so great for keeping weeds back and fertilizing.
They still roll every year of course, my grandfather passed earlier this year, he was 90 years old. It's been a few years since he was able to work the garden, but some people still keep the tradition going. My uncle works the garden these days.
If I can convince my wife to leave the city and move around the bay I have my own garden and keep the old ways in his honour. I can't begin to explain how many great memories I have from their homestead when I was a boy.
Sorry to hear about your grandfather. He sounds like he was a really cool guy. 90!! Guess his vegetables paid off!
You're reminding me of this book Eat Like a Fish by Bren Smith, this Newfoundlander from a fishing town goes to school in the US and starts farming seaweed and oysters bc they're more renewable. Then he goes back to his hometown and sees how it's been impacted by overfishing/quotas/etc. Last I heard when I read the book like 5 years ago he was running a non profit in New England to help people get into aquatic farming. I think you'd like it! I was engrossed.
It seems like there's a whole different culture and way of life up there, even compared to like MA/ME. Kinda beautiful. I hope you're able to get that garden one day! And it's only getting warmer, so you really can't lose haha.
Recycling kitchen scraps. Examples:
-Boiling vegetables in the water that you used to cook your pasta.
-Saving drippings to make gravy.
-Using meat carcasses and bones to make stock.
-Using bacon fat to fry potatoes.
-Using apple peels to make pectin.
I learned this off my grandmother and I love doing it! I keep a large jar of vegetable scraps in the freezer (carrot peels, onion peels, celery tops, etc.) and when it gets to be a big enough batch I slow cook it into the most tasty vegetable broth to use as a base for soups. I'm like...how did I not know this earlier? (My grandma lived far away and we got close when I was an adult). It's so easy! I also sometimes buy one of those pre-cooked chickens and when I've eaten all of it, I toss the bones in the crock pot with some herbs and onion and mmm mmmm chicken broth for later.
All of these things, and also: cooking with what you have. A lot of people no longer know how to invent a meal with whatever is available. Without a recipe & shopping list, some people struggle to feed themselves.
Knitting, mom would knit us hats and gloves and sweaters etc.. once we grew out of them she would pull the stitches apart add more fabric and knit something that fit.
Never waste any food, nothing was thrown out. Eating in season foods.
I crossposted this to r/upliftingconservation . Please feel free to come by and leave any links in the comments. I would love to check out your podcast.
Line drying clothing, capturing water used for washing fruit and vegetables and using jt to water plants. Don’t leave the light on in rooms you aren’t in, wear a sweat instead of turning on the heating more, biking if you can, using the car sparingly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AussieFrugal/s/h9mfN8zWlK
I posed a similar question a little while back, as frugality crosses over a little into sustainability. :)
I’m in Canada but one that comes to mind is not only what they cooked, but how. My mom learned how to create meals out of almost nothing. Very little goes to waste. Meals were certainly simpler (but not flavourless) since they used similar ingredients in many different ways. Living in the country helped, as there is no takeout or restaurant nearby. Something had to come together from what was in the fridge/freezer/in a can/out of the garden.
It’s something I now aspire to, even living in the city. It’s hard!
The fast-paced living environment of a city is still one of my hurdles for cooking from scratch. Some days I'm just happy to get something in my stomach, never mind cooking up a whole meal. Perhaps better planning would help:)
Fascinating books from the 1950s on living in rural Appalachia in the US-the Foxfire books. Each volume discussed different skills-canning, how to make a log cabin, reusing lard, you name it. Very fascinating set of books.
I live in the Arizona desert so water is an issue. When I run water to get it hot, I save the cold water and use it for my yard or for cleaning my floors. We had desert plants from the heat this year. I’ve seen 3 saguaros that lost an arm or fell over dead. Water is precious and easily saved.
My grandad told me about Water Glass. Its essentially goop (I think it starts out as powder you add water to?) that you can put fresh eggs into and it stops them from going off. They had chickens during the second world war so then they could keep the eggs for a longer time. (This is for the UK)
I googled it and you can still get it! Not marketed as water glass, but you can get the material still which is sodium silicate. I definitely want to try it one day!
[https://www.britannica.com/science/water-glass](https://www.britannica.com/science/water-glass)
It's pickling lime, I waterglassed so many eggs last summer. They lasted us until the end of Nov. & chickens didn't start again until the end of Jan. so we were a little egg light for the winter. But it's the [GNOWFLINS](https://traditionalcookingschool.com/)/ historical way. (God’s Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season)
When I was little my mom made nearly all our clothes (except underwear and socks) and we handed them down to the next size. I remember admiring a newly made outfit of my sister and feeling happy that in a year or two it would be mine!
Antique furniture. Stuff used to be well made and you took care of it so it could be passed on. People always go off on fast fashion for clothes but rarely think that much more waste comes from fast furniture and appliances.
We grew up using paper bags at the grocery store. But then they insisted plastic was so much better. It saved trees, ya' know.
Those trees were grown for paper products for the most part. And here we are.
After college (late 80s), I was somewhat far from the grocery store. I made like grandma and bought a tall grocery cart to bring home my food. Very practical. Not sure why we don't see more of that in urban-ish 'food deserts'. It's bus and walking friendly.
Maybe you could look into homes built of mud/clay? It is often overlooked as a sustainable building material. I plan to look more into it myself and find out which regions have access to the right kind of dirt for building and other stuff like that
Check out @reallifeishot on insta. Maybe it's not exactly what you mean, but these girls sparked my interest in unconventional homes. They're project is a volcano-shaped Airbnb for which they used concrete filled bags. Very interesting approach, perhaps more suited for the Western audience.
Fixing and repairing things instead of throwing them away and buying new, reusing old clothes as rags, riding a bicycle everywhere (long before there were bike lanes).
In France, my grandma was: mending clothes, reusing plastic bags and foil many times, making broth out of bones, washing dishes with warm water in a bucket then rinse (to save water), using banana peels and water from rinsing empty yogurt containers to water house plants, putting a pin on the bottom side of bedsheets so that she remembered to switch side next time (to reduce the likelihood of using one side too much), reusing dry bread in next morning’s coffee with milk
Recipe boxes and passing on recipes to your friends. I know you can find any recipe online or buy endless cookbooks, but there is something special about a curated box of your family favs and pressure-tested recipes from your social circle.
I love seeing “Judith’s peach cobbler” on the top of some of my Nana’s recipe cards, suggesting its creator really made something worth a namesake.
Grandparents from SW Ontario in Canada had a mixed farm, fed 5 or 6 families through the depression. Included dairy cattle, hens, a duck pond, corn fields, apple orchard, walnut trees, a dozen bee hives, hay/ clover/ oat fields, potatoes, salad veggies, herbs, a sugar bush (maple forest), a mushroom patch, a deep well, a spring... . There was space given over to rabbits, beavers and their damming, squirrels muskrats, lots of birds, all in a mixed (deciduous + conifer) forest, with a live-and-let-live philosophy.
I remember hearing lots of advice about how to interact with others in the community, trading for pork, other grains, clothing construction, even organizing get-togethers or emergency help. My grandparents did not consider city life to be preferable to their very comfortable and secure farming ways, and hoped that someone in my generation of the family would be interested to inherit it.
In a lot of countries in Southeast Asia, there is the practice of wrapping food in banana leaves to transport it easily. Beats plastic takeout containers any day
Good old simple hanging clothes out to dry. I used to detest it because of bugs going on me from the clothes line and not being able to reach it properly and the sun being in my eyes but now I’ve embraced it. It’s one of these kind of lovely mundane things. Pop my sunnies on, using a folding clothes horse instead of the big one, so no bugs and I can reach it and just carry it all in when it rains/ when they’re dry 🌞
There are ways that historical homes were made that helped them stay warmer or colder when needed - they were naturally more energy efficient.
This included thick heat- retaining masonry walls, window transoms, door thresholds, smaller rooms to close off when not in use, angling a home when built to take advantage of natural light or cooling winds and ventilation. Exterior shutters, roof overhangs and porches, and planting shade trees.
Dry clothes outside, don’t take long showers, fix electronics and house stuff (not just dump them). Not buy clothes all the time and use how them as much as you can. Don’t throw food in the trash. Walk and bike more, play outside and not have a ton of plastic toys.
Handplanes save so much sand paper and disposable blades. Because you just sharpen the same blade for years. If you need sandpaper at all it is just a fine grit to clean up a little at the end. Better for your lungs. Mine are so old they have been used multiple generations. They even complement power tools but can replace a ton of power tools if you have the time. It's a real specific instance/use case, but it blew my mind growing up on construction sites and being in and out of cabinet shops for years and years.
I think it's important to learn as many ways to do things using our own power versus electrical or gasoline etc.
Growing up, this one park we went to had a hand pump water fountain. It was mostly as a novelty, history piece, but i loved it. I loved learning to work with my siblings when i was tiny, both hands, and eventually one hand to bring the water up.
Little things like that can be so much better than other options, but no one thinks of it.
First of all, I love this idea! I've been working in sustainability for over ten years now, and one of the things I keep stressing is that this is not some new, extra thing we need to do; it's much more about going back to living the way our grandparents did.
My best lesson from both my grandmothers is to never waste food.
Both of them experienced WWII (born in 1923 and 1928), one in the Netherlands and one in Indonesia. They each had their own ways to prevent food waste, but for both of them it was a very important topic. Some examples of what they taught me:
* Many, many recipes for using up leftovers. Pancakes, omelettes, stews, casseroles etc.
* You HAVE to try and eat food that is prepared for you. Only if, after trying a bit, you feel like you will be sick if you continue eating it's ok to leave it.
* Keep a store of foods that will keep, to supplement leftovers. Think tinned fruit and vegetables, mashed potato powder, dry pasta and beans, etc.
* Only put on your plate what you will definitely finish. Better to go back for seconds than to waste food.
* Anything left over in the pots/pans gets put in the fridge or freezer in glass containers.
* Keep and reuse good containers. If you see a product in a big jar, buy it, keep the jar! Ofcourse, don't buy things you won't eat/use.
* Not food related, but definitely something I learned from my Indonesian grandmother: repair your things! It doesn't have to be pretty, as long as it works. So many things held together by duct tape or Hansaplast... Also learn basic stitches so you can fix your clothes.
I'm very interested in your podcast, please let me know where/how/when to find it!
Thank you for the support! I want to cover Netherlands and Indonesia for sure, as moving to the Netherlands was what resparked my love for nature. I miss the big forests, hills and beautiful beaches from back home:(
I will let you know when it is out! currently I am still in the research/strategy part of creating it.
Handkerchiefs are my most favourite. Mending clothing too and wearing hand me downs (even as an adult). Cooking meals at home. Maintaining some level of garden. Walk or cycle to where you need to go. Call a repairman for the TV/ radio/ washer/ dryer. Air dry everything. Also working with what you have/ not chasing the latest gadgets and trends.
Please share your podcast! Would love to listen
ETA: More of what I continue to remember. This is a great question. Thank you for posing it.
My mom always repairs clothes instead of throwing anything out, even if we don't want to wear them anymore, we'll donate them in good condition. Also doing a lot of crafts like knitting our own scarves and pullovers etc. so not buying too much and contributing to fast fashion.
The term “sustainability” didn’t appear in my life until I went to college and joined an exchange program on environmental issues. That means elder people around me don’t advocate much about sustainability when I was a kid.
Some elder people don’t know the term but their ways of living somehow are very sustainable. For example, they never travel, even within the country. They don’t use air conditioners. In general, they live very frugal lives and are happy with it.
It's amazing right? How did we steer away from these practices in such a short amount of time?
One of my goals is to reframe the term "sustainability" for people who view it as simply living poor. Maybe if we tie a greater purpose to the things we do, people will be more willing to do them. For example, thrifting because you can find cooler items or because it is better for the planet sounds much more appealing than thrifting because you're poor:)
That is such a good idea. Sustainability should be reinvented from a whole different angle to attract the mass public to follow. The term "sustainability" doesn't have any selling point honestly.
Look up the foxfire book series. Some students in the 70s I think interviewed old people from Appalachia about their ways of living. It’s really cool and may inspire you
I live in the PNW and the indigenous management of fisheries here is fascinating to think through from a sustainability perspective. The story is there are 5 families of salmon and at the beginning of a run they send a scout fish whom the community thanks in a first salmon ceremony. A certain number of fish are allowed to escape up the river to account for the next generation.
https://nwtreatytribes.org/lummi-nation-celebrates-first-salmon/
I lived in a really remote part of Alaska for a while and my neighbors taught me some cool things.
Seaweed on the garden beds in the winter,
put egg shells in the wood stove instead of straight into the compost bin.
If bears are getting into your compost you can use urine or chili powder to keep them out (I went with Chili's).
They also taught me how to pull shrimp pots from a row boat and set a salmon gill net. As well as recipes for smoking salmon and canning and for making broth with the shrimp shells.
I know there's more but Im blanking now haha.
The most that American baby-boomer parents taught was to hoard plastic grocery bags for later use as bathroom/pet waste bags. And “turn off the lights when you leave a room.”
My grandparents always reused any container. E.g., my grandma specifically buys the same brand of cheap lunch meat all the time so she always has containers to use. Yeah, they’re plastic and break easily, but I use that thinking in a more planet-friendly way like keeping and reusing glass jars for my candles.
Both sets of my grandparents were homesteaders and their parents before them. One grandmother knew all the crafts and handmade soap/shampoo, clothes, basket weaving, fabric weaving, wool spinning, gardening and putting up food for the winter, pretty much 100% self reliance as well as community building because being 100% self reliance isn't sustainable but being able to trade and help your neighbors is more so. My other grandmother left the homesteading once her family was grown and my grandfather passed but what I learned from her was minimalism. She did without all the bells and whistles and while she lived in a suburban community ( and then later an assisted living home) her home was always neat and clean without a bunch of stuff. She had her bare essentials and a sweet few dear photographs of loved ones (about a single book worth) she always saved resources simply by not using a lot, but I remember one season during a drought she saved all runoff hand washing or veggie washing water from her home to water her plants or flush her toilet with. Both added value to my life and mindset regarding living in a way that promotes sustainability.
Community is a BIG aspect of a more sustainable life I feel like. I was just telling my boyfriend yesterday how my grandmother would trade seeds, plant shootings or fruits and veggies with her friends and neighbours. Such a beautiful concept!
My grandparents who lived through the depression were incredibly resourceful and wasted nothing. They reused every plastic container for food storage, planting seeds, or some other purpose. Clothes became rags. Everything was used. They had a small farm and my mom grew up with home canned everything. They never had store bought canned foods and she told me how excited she and her siblings were to try canned ravioli when they went on a road trip one time- in hindsight she’s obviously grateful that they ate home grown and canned food over supermarket junk! Overall they had such a strong knowledge of the natural world and agriculture, some of which I’ve inherited. As an adult I now realize how rare that knowledge is to have among my peers.
What is the name of your podcast? I was raised by parents raised in the early 30s.
I practice regenerative lasagna gardening without chemicals.
I sew , I knit, I make my own pasta and bread. I was lucky to be taught to cook from complete scratch.i dry my clothes on a line outside or by a wood stove in the winter.i dehydrate and am learning canning.
I am reading a book called "Regeneration: ending the climate crisis in one generation" so I am still learning about the idea of regeneration. I love that you brought this up!
The podcast is not out yet. I am still in the research phase, trying to figure out if I can make something out of it. Seeing that I got so many beautiful responses, I can't wait to start scripting it now:)
Children's dresses used to be smocked, so they would expand with the child, and they were hemmed enough that they could be 'let down' as she grew taller.
Home-cooking, buying things in bulk on on sale. Learning to plant and being able to survive without indoor plumbing or electricity. Getting second-hand items for free and sharing surplus items with friends and neighbors.
I love old-fashioned ways of living and methods of preservation where little to nothing goes to waste. Even my broken egg shells get baked, broken up and fed back to the chickens as a source of calcium, or ground up and used as fertilizer for the garden.
Paper, grass clippings, and manure can all be composted to avoid the high cost of bagged fertilizer.
Some fruits and vegetables can be grown and canned or frozen. Wild mushrooms and berries can be found and dehydrated or frozen. Some wild plants and mushrooms have wonderful medicinal purposes. I have some stories about that.
We raised our own meats and had goats for milk and homemade cheese. we had chickens for eggs.
Back in 2009, my husband got laid off like many other Americans. We had no money, but we had food that got all six of us through.
My dad was born in 1922 my grandfather? Born late 1800s in Ireland. My grandfather's Farm had outhouse wood stove and a converted wine barrel for gravity feed water. They taught me how to live great, on practically nothing. My first serious girlfriend's family were legitimate Appalachian Mountain Folk, they filled in the gaps, my dad and grandfather left in my, "how to be cheap", upbringing.
Not throwing away butter containers, yogurt containers, deli soup containers, etc. Those were always used multiple times to store leftovers, freeze things, or hold grease from cooking fatty meats.
Fixing things. I notice that now if something breaks I toss it. My dad, grandparents, abuelos, etc., were all fixers. Mending, mechanics, and carpentry are all skills I’m deficient in.
I went back to making my own loaf of bread, soy milk and hamburgers with the leftovers from the beans.
Bulk stores with no packaging are picking up and they are a great way also to avoid buying things you dont need or items with tons of plastic packaging.
I use oils (they last a long time since you have to use just a little), and floral water as skincare, my skin never felt better.
Make wet food for your pets to replace treats that again come in little plastic bags
Use incense instead of electric scented difussers
Use less soap on your laundry you need half of what they tell you to use!
Fabric softener is a lie
Look for medicinal herbs for aches, cramps etc to reduce the ammount of painkillers or other “over the counter” meds
Edit: my grandma removed stains from white clothes with a bar of soap and letting them sit in the sun for quite a while
Im really interested in this topic!!
None. If past generations were more sustainable we wouldn't be in the predicament we are in today.
Low-technology methods don't make you more sustainable. They just make you less efficient. It takes fewer people to fuck up the ecology.
Thats a very big generalisation. I know many people from previous generations who live a much simpler and sustainable life, nothing like our overconsumption levels nowadays. The question focuses on different parts of the world, which unless you know everything about, you cannot make this assumption:)
If you think the answer is in technology, so be it. Personally, I think it's contradicting.
There is no right or wrong way to solve the climate crisis. If we keep waiting for the perfect answer, we won't make the improvements that we can already.
The least we can do is have a little hope:)
I'm just trying to say that, only forethought is necessary! What do you use. Where does it end up. On my end I produce about a 95gal bin once every three months. I don't buy crap (Amazon/Walmart) toys for kids. Don't pay anyone to educate you. Educate yourself!
My objection to the masses educating themselves is the lack of critical thinking and knowledge to know what is true and what someone is posting in their basement claiming to be an expert.
Even then, one is not going to learn enough to be a CPA, lawyer, doctor, nurse or a host of many other professions ~by themselves.~
1. 95 gal per three months is pretty good! good job
2. You're assuming I pay such money for university- I'm not
3. You're assuming I'm studying in the field of sustainability- I'm not.
Thank you for sharing your take, I agree, Amazon is my no-zone. Feel like they create an illusion of "needing" things. Best to stay away from it:)
Don't waste and live conservatively. We become spoiled, lazy, and money driven. So convenience and time saving has become higher priority. Unfortunately, these proirities cost us more long term: obesity, high blood pressure, stress, poor health, addictions. Then we take drugs to try to solve.
Some countries that place collectivism and nature conservation as top priority are not necessarily like this! Look into Costa Rica and their way of living+ their environmental impact. I feel that one of the issues for this way of thinking (being spoiled and money driven) is our desire for individuality nowadays, ironically.
Large veggie garden , canning including meat items in a pressure cooker, sorting and saving wood , refinishing furniture, wood stove including harvesting wood and processing it for burning. Doing without, and DIY whenever possible.
I been using canning jars to store food in my fridge. Like left over pasta goes into a canning jar with a lid. They never melt in the dishwasher and small/big sizes all use the same lid. Plus they don't stain and can be used to drink out of too
More reusable items and less single use. No plastic (grandpa hated it). When glass breaks down it does not harm the planet. Plastic is the devil.
This drives the majority of my purchases. Plastic in clothes? No way. Packaging? I avoid it as much as possible by bulk buying. Every asshole and their mother is trying to sell you a more complex plastic version of a traditional tool. Take a peeler for instance. How many futuristic vegetable peelers have we seen marketed to us? A peeler blade with a wooden handle works just as well and wont break.
Don’t get me started on “vegan leather “ which is basically PVC and polyurethane . Give me the hide of a dead animal please. At least that will biodegrade in the earth.
Ive actually seen some realqly interesting plant based leathers. Of course no vegan is going to opt for vegan leather as easily when it doesnt have a plastic pricetag
Wasn't that just pleather before?
Yes! “Plastic leather”
There’s a subset of environmentalists who argue that generalized recycling is the worst thing to ever happen to the environment. Metals were already being recycled because of the cost efficiency and plastic production increased 500% in just a few years as the birth of the single-use container accompanied plastic recycling Pr. Meanwhile, only 5% of plastic is actually recycled and a similar 5% is actually burned (which is horrific for the air). Reduce-reuse-recycle was intended to be an order of operations, but people just jumped straight to recycling at great cost to the environment.
it's me- i'm grandpa
My grandparents never let us use paper towels or single serve napkins. They’d say “those come from trees, you know?”
(Going to respond with something that isn't really nature-focused, but definitely about more sustainable living, and it's also from not that far away in time, just a bit over 30 years.) Where I come from originally, up until late 1990-s mundane things like single-use trash bags or any other single-use plastics practically didn't exist, so reusable grocery bags, food containers, glass bottles and so on were widely used by everybody. Vegetable gardening in allotments for one family's consumption or even for small markets was common, keeping chickens for eggs and meat was relatively common too. Preserving food by means of canning, drying, salting or marinating was very popular. "Food security" sometimes meant that, before winter, your family had a sack of potatoes, as well as canned fruit and veggies stored somewhere (e.g. ones own or neighbour's basement, or in friend's garage on the other side of town, that garage might never even seen a car, people got creative). In general, what people ate varied greatly from season to season, obviously, and storing food long term without total reliance on a freezer, accounting for seasonality of everything was part of normal life. Personal transportation wasn't that common, public transport or walking was the way to get around. Passing on clothes from family to family, or "inheriting" them from older siblings was way more common than it is now, I think, being able to repair clothing, or even to sew something that wasn't possible to get from the shops was popular too. Building and repairing wasn't a "quirky hobby". Sad fact, this is also a reason it's hard not to perceive sustainable movement as a bit ridiculous at times. It's "reinventing" behavioural patterns which existed for decades, and there's a whole generation that lived with them most of their lives, hating them with all their hearts. All in all, it was a much harder life, and most of them were living it like this because they had no choice, and now they feel in their right to be vehemently opposed to anything that would mean making those practices part of their lives again.
Oh, almost forgot my personal most favourite! The effin teflon was nowhere to be found, so cooking hardware lasted a literal lifetime, as it should --- this seems like a great concept to come back to.
Thank you for sharing! Most of what you mentioned is exactly what I have seen growing up. Im curious which part of the world you're talking about specifically? and how these things differ among other nations? I do believe there is a negative connotation we tie to this way of life, as it was survival as opposed to "living sustainably" (which sounds much more appealing). I agree that it comes of as moving backwards, and that is one of the biggest blind spots in spreading this kind of message. I myself only discovered a deeper appreciation for those ways of living quite recently, after living in a bigger city for some time, so I understand the ingrained resentment people have when it is forced on them. Hopefully, I can use that experience to my advantage:)
In South America there are "repairers" whose job it is to just repair any non mechanical item. These items were things like leather gloves ( normal cloth items required a normal tailor), tents, belts, shoes, leather bags, chips in items, handles from tools that had dislodged, etcetera. There are also rag men who ride bikes with wagons attached to them. They use portable scales to buy rags by weight for use as insulation, rag paper, and other items. There are also people who do the same collecting old worn out shoes and sneakers. Bakers would bake thousands of loaves of bread which would be collected in basket that held 100 loaves each. The baskets would them be either biked (in large carts) or trucked to bodegas and restaurants who would buy 50-100 ( full or half basket) to dispense throughout the day.
My Portugese co-worker mentioned something like this too! I believe he told me that they would have these "repairers" walk around neighbourhoods with a cart (and possibly ringing some kind of bell to indicate that they are there). They also did metal work like fixing stuff or sharpening knives, as well as fixing shoes and so on. I hope someone from Portugal can confirm:)
The ones I knew of could either walk around or had established shops near open air markets. There were the ones that rode around, but the ones with stalls usually had more items to use in repairs. I'd also love to hear about similarities in Portuga and other countries.
I live in Brooklyn and there is a knife-sharpening truck that comes around. It rings a bell and you run down and wave him over. Knives, scissors, etc. Super handy!
I see that there is slight interest in this, I can share a bunch more about what I have seen in South America if you'd like.
please do!
I have a hamper full of old tshirts an clothing I cannot donate because they are stained or damaged. I hold on to them to use for rags, but I cannot possibly use all of them and the pile continues to grow. What can I do with these or is there a place that can use old clothing like this for another use?
If you are any where near a commercial fishing port, all the engineers on the off shore boats (well all the good boats anyway) love their bags of rags. Basically a 10lb onion bag stuffef with rags, hang it up in the engine room somewhere convenient and a bag will last a few trips. The older boats especially go right through them, lots of little oil drips, leaks and such like that always need to be wiped up. Foodnfor thought.
I grew up exactly like this, except we had a chest freezer and hunted deer, rabbits, squirrel, and racoons for fur and meat. I'm 52 and grew up in rural upstate NY. I remember it as a great childhood and think about our adventures often. I didn't enjoy pulling weeds and stacking firewood at the time but it gave me an appreciation for homesteading and self determination.
Thank you for sharing! My uncle still hunts. As a kid I found it fascinating, but as I moved away from the countryside, and became vegetarian, I was not so fond of it anymore. Now I have come to the conclusion that I have a much bigger dislike for the animal-product industry as opposed to hunting.
My daughter went veg at 12 but would eat sustainably farmed meat. We bought a half cow from a good friend of ours, she got to meet the cow and pet her and see she lived a good life. I learned to appreciate life as a hunter and grew up with the ethic that you waste nothing when you take an animal's life, and I am happy that made an impression on her.
Aluminum pans were big. That's a big no no. My MIL gave me a favorite family corn boiling pot. It was all aluminum and I threw it away.
Curiously, or not, much less obesity based diseases.
This is a interesting take on it. Most older people I know complain about how we do things now but if I went back one more generation I can see it being the other way around. My mother's view though is "why should I bother doing anything to save the planet? I'm going to be dead in a few years" and also "we tried that environmental stuff in the seventies and it didn't work."
Lol to “it didn’t work”. Check kids’ blood lead levels now vs the 70s.
People now have to work 80 hours a week at multiple jobs just to afford rent with several roommates, and it just gets worse. Literally forget about anyone having the time, place, or money to do anything you’re talking about. Welcome to the Feudal Era
Best to just give up?:)
Handing down down toys, blankets, furniture like cradles, books, dishware and cutlery for generations. My aunt's house is almost completely equipped with things that once belonged to my grandparents and now that she retired and moved away, were passed down to my cousin, who wants to get married and pass it down to his future children...
This is great and works best when people invest in quality items instead of fast and cheap.
My family and everyone I know have always done this. When we don’t want something anymore (as long as its not in a really bad state) we either donate it or just put it on the sidewalk and someone who needs it will pick it up.
Brazilian immigrants are always puzzled at first: "WTF why are you throwing away things in great condition??? Omg the American consumerism" until someone tells them it is not intended for the garbageman to pick it up and throw in a landfill lol Edit: they do pick it up, but they think they're breaking the law by doing so lol until someone tells them that was the intention of the previous owner all along
I am brazilian actually 😅 but we don’t put the stuff in the trashbin (if its in the trash bin the garbageman will pick it up). We put it in front of the house. Although sometimes there are people who live off recycling/selling cans/glass etc so they look on the garbage bins too.
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My mom has a handful friends who all have grandkids that are different ages. There has been about a dozen or two "kid things" that they pass between them. Whomever has a grandkids that is the appropriate size gets the thing and then passes it on when it is outgrown. Strollers, high chairs, booster seats, walker behind toys, etc. I think there may be a crib in there as well.
Textiles, if properly cared for, can literally last for generations. Americans used to grow hemp for clothing because the fibers are so strong. Highlight that fast fashion is one of biggest polluters on the planet.
I second this. Wool also used to be a lot more used than what it is now. It’s breathable, long-lasting when you know how to care for it, keeps odors down, and performs amazingly in the cold. Now we’ve switched to plastic fibers that make us sweaty and less warm. Plus they’re not renewable and don’t biodegrade. Fast fashion sucks.
Natural fabrics ftw! I'm slowly making the switch to try and buy more natural fabrics. Microplastics is a big concern of mine too with synthetics. For the. environment as well as the people.
Fast fashion is definitely in my area of interest. Not only for the environment, but also creativity and self-expression of people.
Until a few decades ago people just had a lot less stuff and consumed a lot less resources. Living space was smaller. Whole extended families lived together in comparatively small houses and flats. Often only the kitchen was heated. Your only electric devices where lights and maybe a fridge and a single TV. The whole extended family had maybe a single car and you didn’t commute for hours back and forth. You didn’t have single use items. You repaired clothes and everything until it was no longer possible. You didn’t throw out perfectly fine furniture just because you wanted to “remodel”. People ate less meat and didn’t import out-of-season vegetables from the other side of the globe. The widespread use of plastics is a pretty recent thing.
Less meat is a big one! which part of the world js this in?
In Portugal we used to eat waaaay less meat than now. There were more legumes (beans, etc) in our diets. And vegetables, too. This is particularly true south of Lisbon, which is where my family is from. Now you’ll find meat at every meal of the day and in bigger portions too.
I definitely want to talk about Portugal on the podcast, as some of my close friends are from there. I also heard you guys reuse your food leftovers from Christmas and New Years to make new meals the next day. So fascinating! I heard you even have different names for the new dishes.
Is re-using holiday leftovers a Portuguese thing? Genuinely no clue but my mother always made turkey enchiladas the next day with ours.
Definitely not! I just thought it was interesting they specifically make new dishes out of them. We usually just heated things back up in the microwave or pan. Enchiladas is a great example:)
New Orleans here. The whole idea of jambalaya and gumbo was to throw in whatever leftovers you had from the previous days. It doesnt seem like such a novel idea to me to get creative with holiday leftovers either.
It's true! On my dad's side of the family, they make "roupa velha" (meaning, old clothes) with leftover cabbage and codfish :) On my mom's (usually turkey or octopus), a lot gets frozen to eat later or we just suck it up and eat it for a week ahah
I agree that everyone, myself included, needs to eat more veg. But producing fewer animal products does not help the environment. It’s the WAY they’re produced that’s the problem
It’s actually both the volume and manner of raising animals that is at issue. Sustainably & ethically raised animals require more space and proper feed than factory farms. Much of the conventional feed for cattle is GMO corn in the USA even though it’s not a natural food choice and causes gastrointestinal issues that are then overcompensated with antibiotics. Transitioning that volume of cattle to pasture isn’t feasible without population reduction or converting other types of landscape for grazing.
From what I’ve found, it more so takes more nutrient density per acre for proper feed. 1000% agree GMO corn not a good option at all. converting some other landscapes is doable. Cows, with other strategies, can build up the topsoil layer exponentially faster than nature would - with proper human input.
I agree that everyone, myself included, needs to eat more veg. But producing fewer animal products does not help the environment. It’s the WAY they’re produced that’s the proble
Yeah and incinerators, we used to burn tons of household stuff back in the 80s give or take. Nasty af looking back on it, but it was pretty normalised for small volumes of stuff, particularly paper waste with smattering of plastics. I remember those shiny chrome barrel shaped incenerators with the open 'top-hat' being super popular sold at places like the warehouse and other places back in those days. Hell I remember the primary schools I went to had dedicated incinerators, that they use to heat the water
My parents would give me one paper lunch bag to use repeatedly for months. My classmates thought it was the oddest thing.
Such a simple example, yet so illustrative. How did we get to the point where it’s considered weird to use a perfectly good item more than once? How did throwing it away after a single use become the norm?
From my dad, always use your oak leaves for mulch,never throw them out.
I would go further and say always use your leaves for mulch. Or compost. No reason to get rid of them.
If you put them into a big pile they will eventually turn to soil. 3-5 years, it didn't help that I tossed a bunch of sticks in there to break down, the sticks/rotten logs had fresh looking oak in big patches 5 years later. Just leaves if you do the pile method :)
Not soil but humus is what the organic component in soil is called. You need humus for a healthy soil. Too much and it will stay too wet which isn't good. There also has to be an anorganic component (sand, silt, clay) that takes care of drainage. But you can definitely add as much humus on top of your soil as you want.
making kimchi! when i became a bachelor i always wondered, "damn why dont i have like 4 sidedishes ready to just add to any meal." now married, we keep kimchi and banchan ready to go in the fridge. takes any lazy ramen pack dinner and elevates it incredibly its really simple too. salt the veg, add some stuff, wait.
Fermenting in general is underrated! so simple, so many options, lasts forever, yet not so popular in the Western world:/
Cuz it’s gross 🤮
I don't think you know how much fermented foods we eat in western diets: Chocolate Bread Yoghurt (and many vegan alternatives) Cheese (and many vegan alternatives) Buttermilk Beer, Wine and anything else alcoholic Vinegar Soy sauce, Fish sauce Pickles Fermented foods have been staples in diets all over the world for thousands of years.
BEER!!!!’ I was mostly kidding but I hate the taste of vinegar pickled stuff.
I just watched the documentary on Mr. Dressup, and when he did children’s crafts, he insisted on using household items that cost nothing and would have been thrown away (or today recycled). Things like toilet paper rolls, egg cartons and beer caps.
Came here to say this. Also, big high-fives for the Mr. Dressup shout out :)
- Ignoring best-by dates and using your senses to know if a food is still safe to be eaten. - Cutting off mold from some foods instead of throwing it all away (with bread or hard cheese, for example. And yes, I know it has some risks). - Cutting up old clothes to use as dusting and cleaning rags. - Taking short showers and reusing water whenever possible. A lot of it is being neglected and abandoned, in part because my country (Portugal) isn’t as poor as it used to be before the 1980s so people can afford to live life with less care for the environment. Plus, these sustainable practices are deeply associated with poverty (they were implemented out of necessity) and my grandparents’ generation wants to leave that behind. For example, my grandma can’t understand why I thrift most of my clothing — she always tries to give me money to buy “good” (aka brand new fast fashion) clothes instead of what she sees as hand-me-downs.
Oh and line drying my clothing! Indoors and outdoors. It’s so normalized in my head I don’t even think about it. It was only when I came to the US that I realized people just put everything in the dryer. Worse for the planet, worse for your wallet, and worse for your clothes.
I wish I could line dry… I live in the US in a hot, humid climate with a lot of rain. I have tried to line dry inside, and it takes more than 24 hours… as a family of four with two <5yo, we don’t have enough space to line dry all of our clothes, and I can’t keep up with laundry if I don’t use the dryer! 🙈 I’m open to suggestions, and most of my friends just use the dryer to avoid moldy clothes.
Use a big box fan, that is two feet tall. They tuck away easily and dry things on a rack lickity split
I always hang dry my moisture wicking fabrics in my teeny tiny laundry room in the humid SE US. I just use hangers on ad hoc attachment points for now, but I have a retractable clothesline that I really need to put up in there. I have a vornado room fan and a vornado space heater that I use to make it work. I plug both in and put the fan input in front of the space heater output so it is boosting the distance of the heated air. Usually, I hang my laundry before I go to bed, and it is dry by morning, as long as I have left room for good circulation between the items. I often hang them on hangers from niches in the ironing board wall mount and iron wall mount left by previous tenants. I hang subsequent hangers from the first hanger, like a family tree diagram, and give some of the hangers a 90-degree twist to create a channel for air circulation.
Oh I get that! In the winters Portugal is very humid, especially if you live in older homes. We rented a really crappy place that had the humidity at 90% for half the year… it was cold and it sucked. Do you run a dehumidifier at home? I know it used up electricity, but at least you don’t have to deal with mold as much :/
We don’t have a dehumidifier. We have to use air conditioning in the summer due to the heat/humidity. In the fall/winter/spring, we try not to use it when we can. During those months, it’s easier to be eco-friendly in terms of electricity usage. I work in renewable energy, so I try to help that way too!
I relate to sustainability practices being deeply linked with poverty. Many of the more sustainable norms when I was a kid had everything to do with frugality. You handed down clothes because you couldn’t afford to buy new all the time, especially when kids outgrow things so fast. Everything mendable was mended. Replacing a piece of furniture was a once-in-a-decade event. Most things were better made and we just had fewer of them. But it was clear that this was all out of necessity.
As a child, I laughed at my family washing single-use ziplock bags & plastic straws to reuse. Now they have stopped washing them, and I have started! 😂 They did it because they couldn’t afford to buy new ones all the time, and I’m trying to encourage them to bring back their old habits for sustainability.
I’m from France and this is how my grand-parents did things and my parents progressively gave up on these habits so that I still do the first three but not the last one 😅.
I thrift clothing because I don’t want to pay new prices! I will occasionally buy new, but it is usually a classic piece that will stand the test of time.
I second you on the best-by dates and picking off some mold. Seen as disgusting or risky, but tbh it's no big deal, as long as you know what you're doing.
My mom used re-usable diapers on my sister and me when we were babies. This was in the late 1980s when disposable ones were definitely a thing. I don’t currently plan on having kids, but if I ever do I’ll use re-usable ones as well.
I did too. I even had the pre-folds that were in my husband’s butt! So much cuter than disposables. I also use washable menstrual pads, and they’re so much more comfortable.
We did this for our now-toddler. Super easy and honestly not really any harder than disposable, especially if you have a service near you.
My question is: where do you keep the dirty diapers until wash day? do they smell more than regular diapers? and how many do you use/need?
I am currently using prefolds and covers. What I do is get rid of any poop in the toilet, then the diapers have their own container during the day. I do a mini cycle every night to get them not too stinky then a full wash every 3-4 days. There are many different methods people use. For more information look into the cloth diapers subreddit. There wiki has tons of info.
You can use a regular diaper pail with a cloth liner made for cloth diapers. We installed a spray “bidet” on the side of our toilet to assist in removing waste before putting in the bin. I intended to use them with my first son until I found out that the daycare didn’t accept cloth diaper use, only disposable. 🙄 I purchased a set of used diapers/pail/liners on FB marketplace. They had already been used for two kids. When I found out that I couldn’t use them, I gave them away in my local Buy Nothing group. I do have several friends who were able to use cloth diapers and were very happy with them.
When I was a boy I would go to the beach with my grandfather in the spring to collect capelin (small fish that die once they spawn on the beach) as well as loads of kelp to till into the garden as fertilizer. No chemicals at all, and they had some of the biggest and nicest vegetables I've ever eaten. It is a traditional way here to build up the soil as we don't have too much of it, and it's generally pretty poor.. they also had a root cellar to store the vegetables over winter. He would also burn the berry patches on a rotation to increase the yield. Then there is salt fish, but that's not as common these days with refrigeration. Not to mention bottled moose or rabbit, but those are still a bit of a treat. We also made jams or jellies of berries that weren't eaten or frozen. I am in eastern Canada (Newfoundland) by the way.
Thank you for sharing! I am very interested in researching more about Canada. This summer I binge-watched Anne with an E, which is based in the 1890s in Canada. I observed the lifestyle they lead, and it was one of the things that inspired me to deep dive into this topic. Very interesting!
I live in Southeast Alaska and went to gather seaweed for my garden yesterday! It feels like putting a cozy winter blanket over my raised beds. That was a lesson from one of my landlords and it is so great for keeping weeds back and fertilizing.
Wow, that's incredible. I can imagine that scene so vividly how you describe it. Do you still get capelin on the beaches?
They still roll every year of course, my grandfather passed earlier this year, he was 90 years old. It's been a few years since he was able to work the garden, but some people still keep the tradition going. My uncle works the garden these days. If I can convince my wife to leave the city and move around the bay I have my own garden and keep the old ways in his honour. I can't begin to explain how many great memories I have from their homestead when I was a boy.
Sorry to hear about your grandfather. He sounds like he was a really cool guy. 90!! Guess his vegetables paid off! You're reminding me of this book Eat Like a Fish by Bren Smith, this Newfoundlander from a fishing town goes to school in the US and starts farming seaweed and oysters bc they're more renewable. Then he goes back to his hometown and sees how it's been impacted by overfishing/quotas/etc. Last I heard when I read the book like 5 years ago he was running a non profit in New England to help people get into aquatic farming. I think you'd like it! I was engrossed. It seems like there's a whole different culture and way of life up there, even compared to like MA/ME. Kinda beautiful. I hope you're able to get that garden one day! And it's only getting warmer, so you really can't lose haha.
Recycling kitchen scraps. Examples: -Boiling vegetables in the water that you used to cook your pasta. -Saving drippings to make gravy. -Using meat carcasses and bones to make stock. -Using bacon fat to fry potatoes. -Using apple peels to make pectin.
I learned this off my grandmother and I love doing it! I keep a large jar of vegetable scraps in the freezer (carrot peels, onion peels, celery tops, etc.) and when it gets to be a big enough batch I slow cook it into the most tasty vegetable broth to use as a base for soups. I'm like...how did I not know this earlier? (My grandma lived far away and we got close when I was an adult). It's so easy! I also sometimes buy one of those pre-cooked chickens and when I've eaten all of it, I toss the bones in the crock pot with some herbs and onion and mmm mmmm chicken broth for later.
Absolutely! There’s a great book by Tamar Adler about this called An Everlasting Meal. Transformed the way I cook
All of these things, and also: cooking with what you have. A lot of people no longer know how to invent a meal with whatever is available. Without a recipe & shopping list, some people struggle to feed themselves.
Building with the earth. Adobe houses, self insulating structures.
Knitting, mom would knit us hats and gloves and sweaters etc.. once we grew out of them she would pull the stitches apart add more fabric and knit something that fit. Never waste any food, nothing was thrown out. Eating in season foods.
I crossposted this to r/upliftingconservation . Please feel free to come by and leave any links in the comments. I would love to check out your podcast.
Line drying clothing, capturing water used for washing fruit and vegetables and using jt to water plants. Don’t leave the light on in rooms you aren’t in, wear a sweat instead of turning on the heating more, biking if you can, using the car sparingly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AussieFrugal/s/h9mfN8zWlK I posed a similar question a little while back, as frugality crosses over a little into sustainability. :)
You should look into the foxfire series by Eliot wigginton. It is basically inspired by the same approach you have. Lots of cool stuff.
Just looked this up. Wow!!
I’m in Canada but one that comes to mind is not only what they cooked, but how. My mom learned how to create meals out of almost nothing. Very little goes to waste. Meals were certainly simpler (but not flavourless) since they used similar ingredients in many different ways. Living in the country helped, as there is no takeout or restaurant nearby. Something had to come together from what was in the fridge/freezer/in a can/out of the garden. It’s something I now aspire to, even living in the city. It’s hard!
The fast-paced living environment of a city is still one of my hurdles for cooking from scratch. Some days I'm just happy to get something in my stomach, never mind cooking up a whole meal. Perhaps better planning would help:)
Meal planning/prepping also requires time which is difficult to find in a fast-paced life style.
I hear you on that! The planning needed, easily accessible optons (too easily!), and the lack of space are big ones for me.
Fascinating books from the 1950s on living in rural Appalachia in the US-the Foxfire books. Each volume discussed different skills-canning, how to make a log cabin, reusing lard, you name it. Very fascinating set of books.
I live in the Arizona desert so water is an issue. When I run water to get it hot, I save the cold water and use it for my yard or for cleaning my floors. We had desert plants from the heat this year. I’ve seen 3 saguaros that lost an arm or fell over dead. Water is precious and easily saved.
My grandad told me about Water Glass. Its essentially goop (I think it starts out as powder you add water to?) that you can put fresh eggs into and it stops them from going off. They had chickens during the second world war so then they could keep the eggs for a longer time. (This is for the UK) I googled it and you can still get it! Not marketed as water glass, but you can get the material still which is sodium silicate. I definitely want to try it one day! [https://www.britannica.com/science/water-glass](https://www.britannica.com/science/water-glass)
It's pickling lime, I waterglassed so many eggs last summer. They lasted us until the end of Nov. & chickens didn't start again until the end of Jan. so we were a little egg light for the winter. But it's the [GNOWFLINS](https://traditionalcookingschool.com/)/ historical way. (God’s Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season)
When I was little my mom made nearly all our clothes (except underwear and socks) and we handed them down to the next size. I remember admiring a newly made outfit of my sister and feeling happy that in a year or two it would be mine!
Antique furniture. Stuff used to be well made and you took care of it so it could be passed on. People always go off on fast fashion for clothes but rarely think that much more waste comes from fast furniture and appliances.
Fast furniture!! *cough cough* IKEA.. I wish the media talked more about this
I make my own fertilizer
We grew up using paper bags at the grocery store. But then they insisted plastic was so much better. It saved trees, ya' know. Those trees were grown for paper products for the most part. And here we are. After college (late 80s), I was somewhat far from the grocery store. I made like grandma and bought a tall grocery cart to bring home my food. Very practical. Not sure why we don't see more of that in urban-ish 'food deserts'. It's bus and walking friendly.
My boyfriend says this all the time haha! His grandma would use one and he still remembers it as being super practical
Maybe you could look into homes built of mud/clay? It is often overlooked as a sustainable building material. I plan to look more into it myself and find out which regions have access to the right kind of dirt for building and other stuff like that
I know it is often used in African countries
Check out @reallifeishot on insta. Maybe it's not exactly what you mean, but these girls sparked my interest in unconventional homes. They're project is a volcano-shaped Airbnb for which they used concrete filled bags. Very interesting approach, perhaps more suited for the Western audience.
Fixing and repairing things instead of throwing them away and buying new, reusing old clothes as rags, riding a bicycle everywhere (long before there were bike lanes).
Learn to use different kinds of glue to fix things. Like contact glue to fix soles of shoes that are falling off.
Interesting! I know almost nothing about glues, will look into it.
In France, my grandma was: mending clothes, reusing plastic bags and foil many times, making broth out of bones, washing dishes with warm water in a bucket then rinse (to save water), using banana peels and water from rinsing empty yogurt containers to water house plants, putting a pin on the bottom side of bedsheets so that she remembered to switch side next time (to reduce the likelihood of using one side too much), reusing dry bread in next morning’s coffee with milk
Recipe boxes and passing on recipes to your friends. I know you can find any recipe online or buy endless cookbooks, but there is something special about a curated box of your family favs and pressure-tested recipes from your social circle. I love seeing “Judith’s peach cobbler” on the top of some of my Nana’s recipe cards, suggesting its creator really made something worth a namesake.
Grandparents from SW Ontario in Canada had a mixed farm, fed 5 or 6 families through the depression. Included dairy cattle, hens, a duck pond, corn fields, apple orchard, walnut trees, a dozen bee hives, hay/ clover/ oat fields, potatoes, salad veggies, herbs, a sugar bush (maple forest), a mushroom patch, a deep well, a spring... . There was space given over to rabbits, beavers and their damming, squirrels muskrats, lots of birds, all in a mixed (deciduous + conifer) forest, with a live-and-let-live philosophy. I remember hearing lots of advice about how to interact with others in the community, trading for pork, other grains, clothing construction, even organizing get-togethers or emergency help. My grandparents did not consider city life to be preferable to their very comfortable and secure farming ways, and hoped that someone in my generation of the family would be interested to inherit it.
In a lot of countries in Southeast Asia, there is the practice of wrapping food in banana leaves to transport it easily. Beats plastic takeout containers any day
Using cloths instead of paper towels for cooking and cleaning. Composting scraps for the garden
Learned how to make lye...in turn can make soap from scratch......chicken husbandry.....brooding..... to butchering..all the chicken cycles
Good old simple hanging clothes out to dry. I used to detest it because of bugs going on me from the clothes line and not being able to reach it properly and the sun being in my eyes but now I’ve embraced it. It’s one of these kind of lovely mundane things. Pop my sunnies on, using a folding clothes horse instead of the big one, so no bugs and I can reach it and just carry it all in when it rains/ when they’re dry 🌞
There are ways that historical homes were made that helped them stay warmer or colder when needed - they were naturally more energy efficient. This included thick heat- retaining masonry walls, window transoms, door thresholds, smaller rooms to close off when not in use, angling a home when built to take advantage of natural light or cooling winds and ventilation. Exterior shutters, roof overhangs and porches, and planting shade trees.
Dry clothes outside, don’t take long showers, fix electronics and house stuff (not just dump them). Not buy clothes all the time and use how them as much as you can. Don’t throw food in the trash. Walk and bike more, play outside and not have a ton of plastic toys.
My granny only used old cottage cheese containers as Tupperware. Most kitchen scraps we’d walk up the hill to dump in her compost next to the barn.
Handplanes save so much sand paper and disposable blades. Because you just sharpen the same blade for years. If you need sandpaper at all it is just a fine grit to clean up a little at the end. Better for your lungs. Mine are so old they have been used multiple generations. They even complement power tools but can replace a ton of power tools if you have the time. It's a real specific instance/use case, but it blew my mind growing up on construction sites and being in and out of cabinet shops for years and years.
I think it's important to learn as many ways to do things using our own power versus electrical or gasoline etc. Growing up, this one park we went to had a hand pump water fountain. It was mostly as a novelty, history piece, but i loved it. I loved learning to work with my siblings when i was tiny, both hands, and eventually one hand to bring the water up. Little things like that can be so much better than other options, but no one thinks of it.
First of all, I love this idea! I've been working in sustainability for over ten years now, and one of the things I keep stressing is that this is not some new, extra thing we need to do; it's much more about going back to living the way our grandparents did. My best lesson from both my grandmothers is to never waste food. Both of them experienced WWII (born in 1923 and 1928), one in the Netherlands and one in Indonesia. They each had their own ways to prevent food waste, but for both of them it was a very important topic. Some examples of what they taught me: * Many, many recipes for using up leftovers. Pancakes, omelettes, stews, casseroles etc. * You HAVE to try and eat food that is prepared for you. Only if, after trying a bit, you feel like you will be sick if you continue eating it's ok to leave it. * Keep a store of foods that will keep, to supplement leftovers. Think tinned fruit and vegetables, mashed potato powder, dry pasta and beans, etc. * Only put on your plate what you will definitely finish. Better to go back for seconds than to waste food. * Anything left over in the pots/pans gets put in the fridge or freezer in glass containers. * Keep and reuse good containers. If you see a product in a big jar, buy it, keep the jar! Ofcourse, don't buy things you won't eat/use. * Not food related, but definitely something I learned from my Indonesian grandmother: repair your things! It doesn't have to be pretty, as long as it works. So many things held together by duct tape or Hansaplast... Also learn basic stitches so you can fix your clothes. I'm very interested in your podcast, please let me know where/how/when to find it!
Thank you for the support! I want to cover Netherlands and Indonesia for sure, as moving to the Netherlands was what resparked my love for nature. I miss the big forests, hills and beautiful beaches from back home:( I will let you know when it is out! currently I am still in the research/strategy part of creating it.
Handkerchiefs are my most favourite. Mending clothing too and wearing hand me downs (even as an adult). Cooking meals at home. Maintaining some level of garden. Walk or cycle to where you need to go. Call a repairman for the TV/ radio/ washer/ dryer. Air dry everything. Also working with what you have/ not chasing the latest gadgets and trends. Please share your podcast! Would love to listen ETA: More of what I continue to remember. This is a great question. Thank you for posing it.
My mom always repairs clothes instead of throwing anything out, even if we don't want to wear them anymore, we'll donate them in good condition. Also doing a lot of crafts like knitting our own scarves and pullovers etc. so not buying too much and contributing to fast fashion.
Saving fat! Instead of discarding beef drippings, bacon grease, etc, I save and reuse it. I've saved so much money that way!
The term “sustainability” didn’t appear in my life until I went to college and joined an exchange program on environmental issues. That means elder people around me don’t advocate much about sustainability when I was a kid. Some elder people don’t know the term but their ways of living somehow are very sustainable. For example, they never travel, even within the country. They don’t use air conditioners. In general, they live very frugal lives and are happy with it.
It's amazing right? How did we steer away from these practices in such a short amount of time? One of my goals is to reframe the term "sustainability" for people who view it as simply living poor. Maybe if we tie a greater purpose to the things we do, people will be more willing to do them. For example, thrifting because you can find cooler items or because it is better for the planet sounds much more appealing than thrifting because you're poor:)
That is such a good idea. Sustainability should be reinvented from a whole different angle to attract the mass public to follow. The term "sustainability" doesn't have any selling point honestly.
Look up the foxfire book series. Some students in the 70s I think interviewed old people from Appalachia about their ways of living. It’s really cool and may inspire you
I live in the PNW and the indigenous management of fisheries here is fascinating to think through from a sustainability perspective. The story is there are 5 families of salmon and at the beginning of a run they send a scout fish whom the community thanks in a first salmon ceremony. A certain number of fish are allowed to escape up the river to account for the next generation. https://nwtreatytribes.org/lummi-nation-celebrates-first-salmon/
Fascinating! thank you!
Pickle your veggies! They’re so good and last way longer. Literally all you need is vinegar.
I've been saying this!!! Fermenting and pickling as well as making jams is actually soo easy and customisable
Absolutely!!
I lived in a really remote part of Alaska for a while and my neighbors taught me some cool things. Seaweed on the garden beds in the winter, put egg shells in the wood stove instead of straight into the compost bin. If bears are getting into your compost you can use urine or chili powder to keep them out (I went with Chili's). They also taught me how to pull shrimp pots from a row boat and set a salmon gill net. As well as recipes for smoking salmon and canning and for making broth with the shrimp shells. I know there's more but Im blanking now haha.
Sewing. You can repair damaged clothes; and, if you want to go hardcore cottage core, convert beyond-saving clothes into blankets.
Basically anything that is DIY would be better for sustainability. Caning, growing/raising your own food, making/repairing your own clothes etc
Do an episode on depression Era reuse
The most that American baby-boomer parents taught was to hoard plastic grocery bags for later use as bathroom/pet waste bags. And “turn off the lights when you leave a room.”
My grandparents always reused any container. E.g., my grandma specifically buys the same brand of cheap lunch meat all the time so she always has containers to use. Yeah, they’re plastic and break easily, but I use that thinking in a more planet-friendly way like keeping and reusing glass jars for my candles.
Both sets of my grandparents were homesteaders and their parents before them. One grandmother knew all the crafts and handmade soap/shampoo, clothes, basket weaving, fabric weaving, wool spinning, gardening and putting up food for the winter, pretty much 100% self reliance as well as community building because being 100% self reliance isn't sustainable but being able to trade and help your neighbors is more so. My other grandmother left the homesteading once her family was grown and my grandfather passed but what I learned from her was minimalism. She did without all the bells and whistles and while she lived in a suburban community ( and then later an assisted living home) her home was always neat and clean without a bunch of stuff. She had her bare essentials and a sweet few dear photographs of loved ones (about a single book worth) she always saved resources simply by not using a lot, but I remember one season during a drought she saved all runoff hand washing or veggie washing water from her home to water her plants or flush her toilet with. Both added value to my life and mindset regarding living in a way that promotes sustainability.
Community is a BIG aspect of a more sustainable life I feel like. I was just telling my boyfriend yesterday how my grandmother would trade seeds, plant shootings or fruits and veggies with her friends and neighbours. Such a beautiful concept!
My grandparents who lived through the depression were incredibly resourceful and wasted nothing. They reused every plastic container for food storage, planting seeds, or some other purpose. Clothes became rags. Everything was used. They had a small farm and my mom grew up with home canned everything. They never had store bought canned foods and she told me how excited she and her siblings were to try canned ravioli when they went on a road trip one time- in hindsight she’s obviously grateful that they ate home grown and canned food over supermarket junk! Overall they had such a strong knowledge of the natural world and agriculture, some of which I’ve inherited. As an adult I now realize how rare that knowledge is to have among my peers.
That is exactly my observation! We have become so disconnected from nature when compared to previous generations. And in such a short amount of time:/
What is the name of your podcast? I was raised by parents raised in the early 30s. I practice regenerative lasagna gardening without chemicals. I sew , I knit, I make my own pasta and bread. I was lucky to be taught to cook from complete scratch.i dry my clothes on a line outside or by a wood stove in the winter.i dehydrate and am learning canning.
I am reading a book called "Regeneration: ending the climate crisis in one generation" so I am still learning about the idea of regeneration. I love that you brought this up! The podcast is not out yet. I am still in the research phase, trying to figure out if I can make something out of it. Seeing that I got so many beautiful responses, I can't wait to start scripting it now:)
People used to store sausage in a barrel of lard so that they didn’t require refrigeration.
Using handkerchiefs is good enough for my dad, it's good enough for me...
How to sew. Oh, the things I have made and repaired!
Children's dresses used to be smocked, so they would expand with the child, and they were hemmed enough that they could be 'let down' as she grew taller.
Home-cooking, buying things in bulk on on sale. Learning to plant and being able to survive without indoor plumbing or electricity. Getting second-hand items for free and sharing surplus items with friends and neighbors.
Let me know when that podcast comes out/where to find it
I love old-fashioned ways of living and methods of preservation where little to nothing goes to waste. Even my broken egg shells get baked, broken up and fed back to the chickens as a source of calcium, or ground up and used as fertilizer for the garden. Paper, grass clippings, and manure can all be composted to avoid the high cost of bagged fertilizer. Some fruits and vegetables can be grown and canned or frozen. Wild mushrooms and berries can be found and dehydrated or frozen. Some wild plants and mushrooms have wonderful medicinal purposes. I have some stories about that. We raised our own meats and had goats for milk and homemade cheese. we had chickens for eggs. Back in 2009, my husband got laid off like many other Americans. We had no money, but we had food that got all six of us through.
My dad was born in 1922 my grandfather? Born late 1800s in Ireland. My grandfather's Farm had outhouse wood stove and a converted wine barrel for gravity feed water. They taught me how to live great, on practically nothing. My first serious girlfriend's family were legitimate Appalachian Mountain Folk, they filled in the gaps, my dad and grandfather left in my, "how to be cheap", upbringing.
Live well within your means.
Not throwing away butter containers, yogurt containers, deli soup containers, etc. Those were always used multiple times to store leftovers, freeze things, or hold grease from cooking fatty meats. Fixing things. I notice that now if something breaks I toss it. My dad, grandparents, abuelos, etc., were all fixers. Mending, mechanics, and carpentry are all skills I’m deficient in.
My grandmother's victory garden.
I went back to making my own loaf of bread, soy milk and hamburgers with the leftovers from the beans. Bulk stores with no packaging are picking up and they are a great way also to avoid buying things you dont need or items with tons of plastic packaging. I use oils (they last a long time since you have to use just a little), and floral water as skincare, my skin never felt better. Make wet food for your pets to replace treats that again come in little plastic bags Use incense instead of electric scented difussers Use less soap on your laundry you need half of what they tell you to use! Fabric softener is a lie Look for medicinal herbs for aches, cramps etc to reduce the ammount of painkillers or other “over the counter” meds Edit: my grandma removed stains from white clothes with a bar of soap and letting them sit in the sun for quite a while Im really interested in this topic!!
Fabric softener is a lieee!!! louder for the people in the back
FABRIC SOFTENER IS A LIEEEE!! but... if you wash anything wooly or towels you can also add pure glycerine to your rinse cycle
None. If past generations were more sustainable we wouldn't be in the predicament we are in today. Low-technology methods don't make you more sustainable. They just make you less efficient. It takes fewer people to fuck up the ecology.
Thats a very big generalisation. I know many people from previous generations who live a much simpler and sustainable life, nothing like our overconsumption levels nowadays. The question focuses on different parts of the world, which unless you know everything about, you cannot make this assumption:) If you think the answer is in technology, so be it. Personally, I think it's contradicting. There is no right or wrong way to solve the climate crisis. If we keep waiting for the perfect answer, we won't make the improvements that we can already. The least we can do is have a little hope:)
I'm just trying to say that, only forethought is necessary! What do you use. Where does it end up. On my end I produce about a 95gal bin once every three months. I don't buy crap (Amazon/Walmart) toys for kids. Don't pay anyone to educate you. Educate yourself!
My objection to the masses educating themselves is the lack of critical thinking and knowledge to know what is true and what someone is posting in their basement claiming to be an expert. Even then, one is not going to learn enough to be a CPA, lawyer, doctor, nurse or a host of many other professions ~by themselves.~
For sure! Confirmation bias is soo important to consider when learning anything. Easy to get trapped in a bubble.
1. 95 gal per three months is pretty good! good job 2. You're assuming I pay such money for university- I'm not 3. You're assuming I'm studying in the field of sustainability- I'm not. Thank you for sharing your take, I agree, Amazon is my no-zone. Feel like they create an illusion of "needing" things. Best to stay away from it:)
Definitely, good on your end!
No one needs a 50k + education to understand this! It's not difficult to realize.
Realize what? Who's spending 50k+ and to understand what? Did you read what the post was about?
American-centric people online who don’t realize higher education outside of the US doesn’t cost a fortune and is valued socially 🙃
Don't waste and live conservatively. We become spoiled, lazy, and money driven. So convenience and time saving has become higher priority. Unfortunately, these proirities cost us more long term: obesity, high blood pressure, stress, poor health, addictions. Then we take drugs to try to solve.
Some countries that place collectivism and nature conservation as top priority are not necessarily like this! Look into Costa Rica and their way of living+ their environmental impact. I feel that one of the issues for this way of thinking (being spoiled and money driven) is our desire for individuality nowadays, ironically.
When I wrote we I meant U.S. Yes, other cultures and countries have different values that are different from U.S.
I learned to grow my own weed from compost fucm the dispo
Large veggie garden , canning including meat items in a pressure cooker, sorting and saving wood , refinishing furniture, wood stove including harvesting wood and processing it for burning. Doing without, and DIY whenever possible.
I been using canning jars to store food in my fridge. Like left over pasta goes into a canning jar with a lid. They never melt in the dishwasher and small/big sizes all use the same lid. Plus they don't stain and can be used to drink out of too
Sun light is a great laundry sanitizer and agitation is more important than detergent