And so it begins....

It's officially August so the Challenge has begun!

Mike and I will have to begin attempting to reduce our electric/gas consumption, water consumption, and waste production. We will also begin attempting to reduce the miles we put on the car and increase the percentage of organic and local foods that we purchase. ENACT has given us some spreadsheets to monitor our progress. The electric/gas and water will be easy to monitor. As for the other areas we will have to analyze our grocery bills and weigh our garbage and recycling. Luckily we only have to do this one week out of the month. In August we are picking the first week of the month. I went grocery shopping yesterday and chose the foods that I normally would have gotten except I did swap in a can of organic black beans instead of the conventional and I purchased the organic eggs. 75% of my grocery bill went towards organic or local goods. I think that's a pretty good start!

Usually I purchase the eggs labeled "cage-free" even if they aren't labeled organic. There's a lot of controversy over the labels on egg cartons these days as more people are becoming aware of the terrible conditions chickens have to endure in many factory farms across the country. The standards that farms need to meet to label their eggs "cage-free" or "free-range" are very loose. To maintain a "free-range" label, I've read that farmers only have to prove that they've given their chickens access to the outdoors, even if there are hundreds of chickens in a barn with only a small outdoor access door. A majority of the chickens probably never had access to that door but the farmers are allowed to label their eggs this way. To label eggs "cage-free" a farmer must allow their hens to walk, spread their wings and lay their eggs in nests. This sounds lovely, though according to the Humane Society of the United States the cage-free hens still live in large flocks that may consist of several thousand birds who never go outside. Most of these birds still have portions of their beaks burned off (painful mutilation) to prevent the birds from hurting each other since they live in such close quarters. I believe that purchasing organic, free-range, cage free eggs is still better than buying the conventional however I should look into local options like purchasing directly from a farmer. My parents previously raised happy chickens on their hobby farm and I used to get my eggs there but that's not an option for me anymore. I wonder if the Regent Street Condo documents would allow for a chicken coop in the back yard...or more importantly I wonder if Mike would allow it.

I marked the first day of the challenge by doing a once over on the refrigerator coils (see previous blog) and by making our new cloth napkins. Well, I guess "new" as in old and tattered cloth napkins. They are indeed nothing spectacular but we will give them a try. I used a cloth bed-sheet and cut it into about 20 napkins. There's a lot of sheet left for more napkins but I thought we'd try it out before I put too much more energy into this project. I do not know how to sew so we will see how they hold up in the washing machine as the ends are already frayed from the butcher job I did with the scissors.


I guess if I can wipe my hands with a cheap paper towel I should be able to wipe my hands with a tattered napkin made from an old bed-sheet. We don't typically carry out our domestic affairs in a regal manner so I don't think this will be a problem. I guess unless we suddenly decide we'd like to do some formal entertaining...but until we own more than 2 spoons I don't think that will be happening!