December 2, 2019

by drplasticpicker

This is the third post in this series. Since ocean plastic picking, I now spend a few minutes every day figuring out what other easy actions our family can take to help the environment. I like to track of these actions on the notes section as free text on my iPhone. So this is my summary for November 2019 in what I call our Secondary Environmental Net Positives.

Thank you for reading, as it keeps me accountable to you and the world – and motivates me to keep making changes. I try to order from greatest environmental impact to lowest, but it’s kind of subjective and this is for entertainment and motivational purposes. If I posted about this action before, I don’t list it again to avoid taking double credit. For example I did not list how I found $8 on the beach and transformed it into 80 meals for the local homeless population https://drplasticpicker.com/how-8-cash-found-on-the-beach-became-80-meals-and-a-daughter-mother-outing/.

List of 15 Secondary Environmental Net Positives (November 2019)

1. Two Plug-ins: I remembered to leave twice early enough and walked the extra 5 minutes from the hospital car charging station to our middle management meetings. We have 3-4 a month, 50% – not bad. Saved 2 gallons of gas. I have a Ford CMAX and my commute from the hospital to home or to my main office is about 25 miles (1 charge).
2. Avoided 40 miles of driving: My good friend Dr. Dear Friend forgot her stethoscope at the office, and was going to need to drive from her house and back which is 40 miles of driving (about 2 gallons of gas). She has a CMAX too, yes we have the same car. In fact, I bought one because she had one. She was going to be on call on the inpatient floor and wanted her trusty stethoscope. She asked me to drop it off at her house, which is actually near the Girl Scouts’ local office. I am usually not so giving of my time to run errands for others, but knowing I was saving the earth 2 gallons of gas – made me very happy and I delivered her stethoscope with a light heart. I was headed that direction anyway on my electric charge. Read here about our great trip to the AAP in New Orleans and when we tried to reduce our plastic use together https://drplasticpicker.com/drplasticpicker-goes-to-the-aap-national-conference-in-new-orleans-and-tries-to-use-less-plastic/.
3. Ohm Hour: Our local energy provider is running this Ohm hour where we voluntarily reduce electricity during peak times when the grid is on dirty energy. We reduced 2 kWh. Not sure how much this impacts but at least its’s something.
4. Shared 2 Halloween Costumes: I had scored great deals at the Goodwill with 2 Harry Potter costumes. Two friends borrowed the robes so I get credit for averting the purchase of two Halloween costumes https://drplasticpicker.com/boo-to-plastic-our-family-tries-to-reduce-this-halloween/.
5. 520 fruit peels avoided, LESS METHANE!!! I have been going on and on about fruit and fiber in the peels so much with patients and at the nurses’ station. As you know I wrote a blog about it https://drplasticpicker.com/squeasy-gear-1-tackling-the-pediatric-fiber-deficit-with-real-fruit-and-not-plastic/. One of my nursing friends feeds her son 2 pieces of fruit a day (apples, pears or persimmons) and previously threw away the peel. She now does not. This gives her son an extra 1 kilogram of fiber over 12 months, and avoided methane. I’m not sure how much. This was the best one of the month!
6. Drank 14 cups of Tea: This I improved on the most and was the hardest for me. I drink the worst type of coffee for the environment which is instant. Even in a reusable mug, instant coffee is not good. It comes mostly comes from clear cutting rainforest. I consciously drank 14 cups of mostly green tea which I already owned in lieu of coffee at home. Mostly replacing my afternoon coffee. That avoids the creamer and sugar too. Yeah. Super proud of myself.
7. Twelve Rolls of Bamboo Toilet Paper, Replaced 12 rolls of virgin toilet paper with bamboo.
8. Six Rolls of Recycled Toilet Paper. Replaced 6 rolls of virgin toilet paper with Seventh Generation 100% recycled toilet paper. More on toilet paper later https://drplasticpicker.com/who-gives-a-crp-toilet-paper-and-drplasticpicker-is-not-sure-if-i-got-the-toilet-paper-for-free/.
9. One Box of Bamboo Tissue. Gifted a friend who had a runny nose, a box of bamboo tissue. Forests are super important. Put this one here since we were on the non-virgin forest paper roll.
10. One Box of Sustainable Shrimp. Bought one box of sustainable US Farmed shrimp OPEN NATURE brand at Vons. Much more expensive and smaller shrimp than the ones from Indonesia but trying to walk the walk. Read here about how hard it is to figure out which seafood is sustainable https://drplasticpicker.com/trying-to-eat-sustainable-seafood-is-hard/
11. Nine Pieces of Fruit: Nine specific times I was going to sneak into my Dr. Dear Friend’s office and grab one of her snack bars (she has a stash), but instead ate the fruit with peel that I brought from home.
12. Six Cups of Oatmeal: I have been trying to feed kids oatmeal here and there is the morning, as its healthy, plastic-free and no-palm oil so therefore rainforest friendly. We try to buy cereals and breads and waffles that are palm-oil free but it’s super difficult to be consistent. With oatmeal from the bulk bin, we know where it comes from. Kids are surprisingly fine with this.
13. Two Electronic Sample Ballots: This one was fun! State of California Election Commission just sent postcards offering to send us the thick sample electronic ballots and voter information via email rather than paper. Not only that, but I made the request for both Mr. Plastic Picker and myself on-line and did not need to mail the postcards back. Thank you State of California!
14. One Produce Bag: I was not as good with the reusable containers and produce bags this month. I don’t think I did as much grocery shopping as we went to Costco and got the frozen green beans and Normany vegetables. Anyway, just used the reusable produce bags once.
15. Squeasy Gears: I had these grand plans to try the Squeasy Gears https://squeasygear.com/the blog received. But it just did not make any sense. They look like a great product but really for family’s with younger kids. My kids are big and will eat whole fruit. So I gifted the ones I was going to keep to one of our staff who has a new grandbaby. Look out for the next blogpost on what three families thought when they tried their Squeasy Gears!

Thank you for reading! It really helps me keep motivated to make these small moves for the environment. I love being accountable for 15 environmentally friendly changes every month to our blog readers. Let me know in the comments what changes you have made? It gives me and your fellow readers ideas and motivation.

Here is the next post in this series https://drplasticpicker.com/secondary-environmental-net-positives-december-2019/