Kitchen Garden Forum

@richward

I'm with Nature's Babe 99% - the other 1% is wondering what ideas people have for how humans work toward achieving ecological balance and living within the planet's limits.

Surely we can do better than the usual defeatism of abdicating responsibility by simply saying that wars over resources will sort it all out, blah, blah.

This family's efforts seem to be an inspirational step in the right direction: in 2010 the amount of non-recyclable and unreusable waste they produced filled one carrier bag. If this isn't taking personal responsibility, I don't know what is (and they don't appear to be hairshirt veggies, either). Their approach both reduces initial consumption and relieves pressure on the natural world - primarily by easing demand on ever-shrinking landfill sites:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greene ... -year.html

Has anyone else tried adopting a wheelie-bin-less mindset? What are your successes/failures/biggest challenges? I've not had a wheelie bin for years and it really does help focus the mind - especially onto your compost bin. I talked about it here:

http://www.kitchengarden.co.uk/news/Org ... mental-way

However good an example the Strauss family set (and I am not decrying it), that's all it is, an example, which few others will follow I fear. It is not an answer to population growth, hunger and inequality.

Having read the details of their activities I reckon me and my wife could beat their achievement as we do not have any used felt-tip pens, broken toys or razor blades to bin. It would, of course, imply that we totally changed our already fairly responsible lifestyle, ideally going back to the Welsh poor diet of a century or so ago. That consisted of the occasional egg, animal bones for soup, leeks and turnips and potatoes, the rare piece of meat, oats served in a variety of unpleasant ways, water, tea (when affordable), buttermilk and ale from the tafarn (until the Methodists put the brakes on that!)

The point I am trying to make is that we can change our own lifestyles, we cannot make others do the same.