Mitigation for Oopsies?

Well, it wasn't exactly an oopsie. Water fits into our exempt list. It's a consumable rsource. But there we were, Hillary and Me, carrying brand new, sealed water bottles into the Gorge Ampitheater. Neither of us even considered it until we were inside and our bottles were empty and we were talking about refilling them. Why didn't we just bring our regular old nalgene water bottles, empty, into the venue and then refill them. Not sure.For me, it was a combination of being a water snob and ignorance. Just like that. I can bring a sealed new one in, so why bring mine in to refill.

This conversation led us to consider a required mitigation for those kind of scenerios. Situations when you could have re-used, but didn't think of it (ignorance is no excuse). A water bottle, a coffee-cup, a left-over container from a restaurant. We could move through this year using up all those resources, taking the brand new cup, bottle or styrofoam container. These things aren't technically in our contract. But....I am thinking, that it isn't alright to do those things. This has to be more challenging, more meaningful than not buying new, styley shoes for a year. So, what if, each time we spaced our mug, or tupperware, we have to mitigate?

How would we mitigate? Plant a tree? Volunteer for an hour somewhere? Pick up trash on the road? Any thoughts on this??

The Original Inspiration

So though Maddi and I had an almost identical conversation about starting a commitment like this 3 years ago, trying to attempt it as a lifelong lifestyle change was so daunting that we lasted about 2 minutes. A few weeks ago, I found out about this, a year long endeavor to wear the same, homemade brown dress for a whole year. Part performance art, part political statement on consumer culture, especially around women and clothing. I like that she calls both the Little Brown Dress project, and her current project, Intentional Wardrobe projects. I think ours could be an Intentional Spending project.

First Success and First Challenge

Successes:

My garden is a beautiful living breathing example of reuse/salvage/recycle. Sure I had to buy some things: compost and soil for one. Unfortunately the perfect sunny spot in our yard is also right near some creosote logs that hold my neighbors fence up. That and the fact that our soil absolutely sucks (is full of rocks and clay) led us to build raised beds and buy soil to put in them.

Okay. The beautiful and fun stuff I did is:

1. Went to land just cleared for a horse farm by some folks I know and was able to get a bunch of cedar side cuts they
were about to chip. We used them to make 3 of our beds, the frame around our berries and our cold frame.


2. Took down a retaining wall in our yard that we didn't like and reused the concrete blocks to make 3 more beds.

3. Used the old ugly curtains that were in our house when we moved in for:

Making groundclothes between the grass and the soil in our beds

Making bed covers that protected the seedlings when they were newly placed in the beds and to keep the soil from drying out before the compost mulch was added

Stakes for securing the deer fencing into the ground.


It was awesome tearing up the curtains that seriously no one in their right mind would have bought from GoodWill to reuse. But even more satisfying was sitting with my needle-nose plyers and bending all the little metal z shaped peices of the curtain set into stake shapes (as shown in picture).

Challenge:
With the successes comes the challenges. So, one of my coworkers gave me a brand new Kombucha mushroom. I am very excited and am vowing not to mess this one up. However, I need a gallon sized glass jar with a wide mouth. Don't have one and don't live in Seattle anymore where I can easily go to some thrift stores and find some of these. Made the tea yesterday and had the day to find a jar while the tea cooled. Figured out that grocery stores get their olives and pickles that they use at salad bars in these jars. They took my name and number and should have two for me by mid week. Shit! Can't wait that long for this batch. So I found one of those big glass jars with a spicket for making sun tea. Bought it with my tail between my legs knowing that I was breaking my contract. Decided I'd return it when these other used jars come through in a few days. Then came home and Pete wants to keep the thing for making sun tea. He'll buy it so its not on my conscience. Is this okay? Well, after a few mintues of considering I decided its not okay. That could snowball, I decided, into.."hey babe, can you buy those awesome new Danskos for me cuz I can't buy them myself". So, I know it still breaches the contract, but I have the $5.99 jar of tea (which kills me for a zillion reasons, biggest one being that bars and restaurants and delis around the country dispose of these everyday and I have to go spend 6 bucks on one with sunflowers painted on it for sun tea cuz all the used ones are disposed of). Not okay. Anyway, I am rambling here, but the bottom line is I am bringing the jar back as soon as they call me with a ready to use old olive jar. Conscience slightly relieved.

The Challenge

For one year, starting May 10th 2007, we have agreed to limit our spending on new durable goods. This entails buying used as much as possible, but does include an exempt list for goods we believe are important to us and cannot usually be bought used. We have also composed a tribunal, made up of the three of us and one objective outside party. Purchases that fall outside the jurisdiction of the contract can be taken to the tribunal, which will vote to decide if the purchase should be made. See our first post for a copy of our contract.