Catholics helping to save the world!

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Take climate change seriously, Pope urges
reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL059854420070905

As a Catholic, (and citizen of the world) what changes have you made to your life (big or small, you don’t have to list them all) which help the environment?

I’m thinking this thread might be a good place to list up some useful tips and experiences.

NB: THIS THREAD IS NOT A THREAD FOR A DISCUSSION ON WHETHER CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH IS VALID/INVALID. That has been done to death on other threads.
 
How about raising children that want to be scientists and teaching them to reuse/recycle/conserve…
I think that is one of the biggest gifts a parent can give the world. To teach children that in this material world that material things aren’t of importance… that alone will save generations worth of waste.
 
Making it cost-effective and simple to recycle would help. I’m rural and not rich; of the two trash companies that pick up way out here, the cheapest doesn’t recycle. The other will recycle for an additional bunch of money per month. (They are also trying to put the first company out of business and become a monopoly, as they have done in other places - but that’s another issue.)

My other choice is to find a place to store recyclables until there’s enough to recycle (adding to our current problems with rodents and flies), then load them up into the gas-guzzling truck and find the city’s recycling center, and unload them myself. So that would cost us about $4-6 in gas, plus additional rodent-deterrents and fly traps, plus our labor… not cost-effective.

My sister in Ann Arbor’s company supplies her with recycling containers, on wheels. All she has to do is wheel them to the end of her driveway once a week. I could do that! I don’t know if it costs extra; I think Ann Arbor mandates recycling.

Otherwise, I try to buy in bulk to reduce packaging, and to do several errands in one trip to town. I’d try to have a garden, but the darn rabbits and ground squirrels would eat it all. Even with poultry netting, the little (expletive)s! I speak from experience. So I try to shop the Farmer’s Market for my veggies.

Ruthie
 
I reckon you are doing a lot compared to the average person Ruthie!

I definitely think cutting down on driving is a good one. When I moved abroad to work, I lived for about a year without a car. At first it was a real pain to have to ride my bike everywhere.

But after a while it just became “normal” to ride or walk everywhere. I must have saved a fortune when I think about it. Now I have a car again, I am quiet ashamed at some of the short trips I take (just to save 5 mins 😦 )
 
BlestOne said:
To teach children that in this material world that material things aren’t of importance… that alone will save generations worth of waste.
Click to expand...
That is so true. the amount of JUNK one ends up buying, all the energy that goes into producing & transporting on for it to be thrown away.

One thing i do now is that I *only * buy quality goods. I.e. a good brand that will last. If I can’t justify buying quality I usually find that I really don’t need it.

Where I work we all get these stupid Christmas presents every year. A little pocket radio (that breaks after a couple of months), a back pack (with stupid company logo), a beach towl (stupid logo) etc… all these things that people already have at home, and don’t want/need more of, but they still give them to us.

A few people have suggested either giving us a voucher for a restuarant, or just giving the money to charity.
 
If everyone would buy with the quality & repair-ability of the product in mind, instead of the dispose & replace mentality, and if everyone would insist on “Made in USA” with USA raw materials from smaller businesses, we would go along way to solving two birds with one stone - reduced trash and bringing jobs back to America. Unfortunately the stock markets and big corporations are selling us out due to the “bottom line”. Not a moral judgement, not an indictment, just an unfortunate circumstance of our free enterprise society. The future I believe is in smaller companies making quality products with repair-ability in mind. Consumers may have to pay more now, but will pay much less in the long run minimizing the trash by-product.
 
WHen my boys got to the ages where they went through sneakers I complained to my mom… she said to spend 3x the money and buy the good brands or buy 3 of the cheap brands… she was right!
 
I recycle a lot. It helps that we have on campus recycling. Clothes-if they’re items I use every day (small ones), I don’t do a whole load just for them. I wash them by hand. I don’t have a dishwasher, so I wash dishes by hand. I sew and repair my clothes so I don’t have to constantly buy more. I use my notebooks until they’re completely filled and I buy ones made out of recycled paper. I wear organic make up (which is better for my skin anyway).

We have a bumper sticker in our chaplains’ offices that says, “If you love the Creator, protect the created.” 😃
 
I think that teaching children to clean up after themselves and to live frugally should about cover it.
 
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