watervole | Entries tagged with environment

Those who love 'The Good Place' as much as I do will probably recognise the quote.

'The Law of Unintended Consequences' says that it's not possible to live a perfect life in modern society. Everything we do impacts negatively on the environment or involves low-paid labour, unethical working practices, etc.

But there are some things we can do.

We can't win, but we can nibble at the edges.

Shampoo

Advertisers work hard to convince us that we need to wash our hair ever single day to keep it perfect, but our ancestors didn't have shampoo. Shampoo didn't reach the UK until the eighteenth century.

I used to suffer from regular problems with my ears. I thought it was earwax build up, until the lady syringing my ears said it was thin slivers of skin.

I wondered what was triggering it, and considered that shampoo might be a possible cause.

Taking a deep breath, I began cutting out shampoo at a week long folk festival - where so many people were camping that no one would notice if I was looking a mess.

My hair got greasy, but not as badly as I'd expected. I carried on with the experiment...

After two months of not stripping all the natural oils in my hair and scalp, my body stopped over-producing them in an effort to replace them.

Over 30 years later, I still haven't gone back to using shampoo, and my hair isn't greasy. I wash it with water, and that's all. Brushing distributes the oils evenly and keeps it silky, but not greasy.

Another member of my family who went the same way, briefly tried shampoo recently, and promptly got dandruff (which they'd never had before).

Not saying this will work for everyone, but you can save a LOT of money, and reduce your environmental impact as well. (detergent kills fish). If you do go for it, cut down gradually. Reduce the amount of shampoo you use, and reduced the frequency of washes. If you cut down gradually, then you'll avoid the greasy phase. Maybe use some sort of tiny measuring cup to measure the amount you use?

A couple of months ago I talked about carbon footprints and had some really thoughtful responses from people.

The calculator I used was rightly criticised, it wasn't a particularly good one.

I'm now using this one I went for the detailed version which asks for things like exact electricity consumption.

I came out as 1.8 planets compared to a UK average of 3 planets (you get a share of government CO2, which is fair enough, so even if you lived in a tent you couldn't get zero)

I'm pretty happy with 1.8. There's a few things I can improve - we've recently installed LED lights and that won't have shown up in the electricity consumption yet, but there are also things I can't do much about.

(The only drawback with this particular calculator is that it's tips ignore some of what you've said about yourself. )

Although the calculator does not ask about children, I feel that people who do not have children at all are clearly benefiting the world in the long term. In my personal view, having more than 2 children is incredibly selfish in an over-populated world.

If you've got time, tackle the calculator and in weeks to come I'll try and talk about ways of improving your score.

The simplest tip of all is to go for renewable electricity. The cost is about the same (in the UK at least) and the effort involved in changing supplier is minimal. My personal recommendation is Ecotricity. Their prices are good, they have excellent customer service, and they invest their profit in creating more renewable energy (which is not something guaranteed with the renewable tariff of the big energy companies). They're an ethical supplier and the same tariff for all their customers, so you don't lose out if you've been with them a long time, or if you're on a prepayment meter.

Judith Proctor's Journal

Ramblings on morris dancing, 17th century re-enactment, and gardening

Entries tagged with environment

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Carbon Footprint, etc

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