There is a large, very active network of natural and holistic-oriented families here in San Diego, and one of the things that many of us do together is buy stuff cooperatively. Whether it is organic cotton kids clothes, non-toxic shampoos and deodorants, or a half-side of grass-fed beef, we moms group up to order anything that can be had more cheaply by buying it together. You can too.

Between rising food and oil prices and a depressed economy, organic, pasture-raised, and healthy, natural products are more expensive than ever. But you can make them substantially cheaper by throwing in with your friends and family to buy in bulk quantities. If you have a large enough group to meet the minimum order price on a relatively regular basis, you can set up a wholesale account with a lot of different natural product and organic food vendors, both local and out-of-state. This can save you hundreds—or even thousands of dollars a year!

Some of the benefits of buying clubs include:

Starting with just five or six families, the buying clubs here in San Diego eventually grew large enough to need tools like Google Groups to communicate and Google Docs spreadsheets to place and keep track of orders among dozens of families. Paypal became invaluable for ensuring that members pay for their orders in a timely fashion.

Eventually, we needed some administrative leadership and some formal rules to keep everything organized and accountable. Whether the leadership is formal or informal, static or rotating, paid or voluntary depends on what works for your group.

Ultimately we have grown to need a food scale and a few used, deep-chest freezers (bought off of Craigslist) to hold orders in someone’s garage until they can be picked up by members. Never buy a new freezer: There are simply too many used ones in perfect working condition to keep out of the landfill!

While I don’t think we want our buying clubs to grow so large that we need a storefront to hold all the products, if you wanted to go in that direction, know that most co-op grocery stores got their start as little garage and kitchen table operations like ours.

I’m proud to say that between gardening, buying clubs and farmer’s markets, we barely need the grocery store anymore—and we certainly never pay retail “Whole Paycheck” prices for expensive things like non-toxic sunscreen, organic almond flour or pasture-raised poultry.

And as an added benefit, we have the satisfaction of knowing that most of the money we spend on food, housewares and personal care is going to great small businesses and nearby family farms and ranches, instead of huge, unaccountable, corporate chains.

Once you get your buying club together, you’ll be amazed at the deals you can negotiate simply by having a group large and organized enough to regularly buy in bulk.

Here are some of the great national and regional vendors where our buying clubs have set up wholesale accounts:

• Azure Standard – From organic cereals, pasta, and yogurt, to bulk nuts and produce, if it’s a packaged food you’ve seen at a health food store, Azure probably has it. Only available in certain parts of the country.
• Frontier – Frontier is a national co-op that provides buying clubs with teas, coffees, spices, bulk food items, personal care items, household items, culinary accessories, vitamins, and supplements. They have thousands of Fair Trade items and carry all the major, natural brands like Frontier, Simply Organic, Aura Cacia, Ecover, Seventh Generation, Dr Bronner, and more.
• Benefit Your Life – Natural and gluten-free foods, including bulk, unpasteurized, organic almond flower at the best 25-pound price I’ve seen anywhere.
• Mountain Rose Herbs – An outstanding source for any and every type of herb, spice, tea, essential oil or traditional fat you might need for cooking or natural medicine. Their vast selection can’t be beat anywhere on the net, and their prices are great, even at retail. Working with a co-op to order wholesale is even better!
• Green Pastures Fermented Cod Liver Oil – Your grandmother was right: Cod liver oil is one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can add to your diet to ensure good health. If you ferment it in the old, Norwegian tradition the way Green Pastures does it, then it is even better.
• Wilderness Family Naturals – Sustainably harvested and produced coconut oils, coconut milk and cream, chocolate spreads and nut butters, sprouted nuts and seeds, soy- and canola-free mayonnaise and salad dressings, REAL wild rice, and more. One of my favorite traditional food stores!
• Ancient Organics Ghee – Yummy ghee. Mmmmmm.
• Green Virgin Products – Bulk soap nuts and mineral salt deodorant stones.
• Conscious Cookery – Organic beans, lentils, grains, soup blends and teas.
• Shelton’s Poultry – Pasture-raised, antibiotic and hormone free chicken and turkey. West Coast only.
• J&J Grassland Beef - A grassfed beef CSA with yummy steaks and really nice ranchers. Southern California only.
• Glacier Grown – Free-range bison by the half and whole animal (though butchered for easy sharing), raw honey. Southern California only.

We also bulk order a lot from small businesses, farms and ranches in our county:

• organic produce
• citrus, tropical fruit and avocados
• raw vegan ice cream
• raw honey
• raw milk and cheese
• olives and olive oil
• pasture-raised pork
• grass-fed beef
• pasture-raised chickens and eggs
• duck eggs
• fish and seafood
• stainless steel food tiffins
• diapers (both cloth and “eco-friendlier” disposables)

As a group, we also regularly go in together on online orders for clothing, housewares and more, whenever a member has a good coupon or free shipping. Clothing and toy swaps are relatively common too. We keep a member business list so that we can hire each other for services before we open the Yellow Pages to hire a stranger. But the best part for me, as a full-time mom and caregiver, is that order pick-up days are often lively social occasions and multi-family playdates.

It’s amazing how social, sustainable, frugal, and fulfilled you can be when you start working together and sharing resources with your friends and neighbors.

Starting or joining a natural food buying club this year just makes good economic and environmental sense. It can also help connect you with the farmers and food produced locally in your region, and build a strong sense of community and connection in your neighborhood, social group and family. What do you have to lose?

Here are some additional resources to get you started:

• Food Co-ops vs. Buying Clubs – Sustainable Table
• A Cooperative Food-Buying Club Primer
• Join or Start Your Own Buying Club – Organic Consumer’s Association

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Coconut milk is often a staple for people with food allergies, as well as an outstanding dairy replacement and healthy fat source for those who are adhere to a raw, GAPS or Paleo diet. Fortunately it is very easy and cheap to make at home.

Nutrition
Coconut is incredibly nutritious. Rich in trace minerals including manganese, copper, and selenium, it also contains modest amounts of calcium, iron, potassium, Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, thiamin and folate. Coconut is unusually high in healthy, medium-chain fatty acids like lauric acid (found otherwise only in human breast milk) and caprylic acid (a potent natural antiviral and antifungal). Oil from coconuts is shelf-stable at room temperature, making it resistant to rancidity and perfect for high-temperature cooking, baking or frying. Coconut oil is known to help reduce both your cholesterol ratio and your waistline, and if that weren’t enough, the water in a coconut has the same mineral and electrolyte profile as human blood plasma!

Selection
Most people use canned coconut milk in their recipes. However, canned coconut milk—like almost all canned foods—contains toxic BPA in the lining of the can which can leach into your food. Native Forest® coconut milk is currently the only brand that does not use BPA in their coconut milk cans, but they do add a bit of natural guar gum as a thickener.

Another option is to get coconut milk in Tetra paks or cartons. So Delicious® is a very good brand, but you should know their products contain natural guar gum, carageenan, and fortified vitamins and minerals, if that presents an allergy or digestive problem for you. You can also find coconut milk flash-frozen or in Tetra paks at any good Asian grocery store.

But, for fresher, more nutritious results—not to mention saving a lot of money—it’s easy to make your own coconut milk using dry, shredded coconut. Fresh, homemade coconut milk is far richer in vitamins, food enzymes and nutrients than coconut milk from a can or box. In fact, fresh coconut milk contains three times as much vitamin C as canned coconut milk and is richer in thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate and panthothenic acid, too. And, if you ferment your coconut milk into yogurt, you’ll get even more protein and nutrition, as well as a lot of probiotics for your digestive health.

Homemade Coconut Milk

• Vitamix or good blender
• Nut milk strainer bag, paint strainer bag or fine cheesecloth
• 2 cups unsweetened, shredded coconut
• 4 cups hot (not boiling), pure water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
• 6 drops stevia (optional)

1. Place shredded coconut in a bowl of hot (not boiling), pure water. Let soak for 1-2 hours. Do NOT discard the water.
2. In the Vitamix or blender, combine coconut, soaking water, and vanilla and stevia, if using. Blend on the highest speed for about a minute.
3. Strain liquid through a nut milk bag, paint strainer bag or very, very fine cheesecloth, pressing out all the liquid you can.
4. Discard solids or save them for adding to baked treats.
5. Use immediately or store in the fridge. Good for 3-4 days. Since there are no preservatives or fillers, the fat in the coconut milk may separate on the top if stored in the fridge. Just shake or stir before using.

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Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, Americans throw away a million extra tons of garbage each week, including holiday wrapping and packaging, according to Robert Lilienfeld. Lilienfield is co-author of the book Use Less Stuff: Environmental Solutions for Who We Really Are. Here are eight ways to reduce your environmental footprint this holiday season. 

1. Make Your Own Wrapping Paper or Go Without
Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in landfills. Instead, here’s a great chance to get creative! Wrap presents with old maps, the comics section of a newspaper, or children’s artwork. Or use a scarf, attractive dish towel, bandana, or some other useful cloth item. Lilienfield, who has published a newsletter on reducing waste since 1996, notes that if every family reused just 2 feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet.

And not all gifts need wrapping. “Think back to your three favorite holiday memories,” Lilienfeld said. “I’m willing to bet that they all involve time you spent with your family and friends.”

By giving gifts that can be experienced, like tickets to a baseball game, a trip somewhere interesting, or a homemade dinner, you can minimize wrapping and shopping, and still win points with the receiver. “People like these gifts just as much, if not more,” he said. (Indeed, I do!)

And even if you do buy physical gifts for the holidays, you don’t necessarily have to wrap them either. A Small Footprint Family fan recently told me that at her house, she hides all the unwrapped presents around the house, and holds a scavenger hunt for the kids to find them. What a fun, clever, low-waste idea!

2. Buy Energy-Saving Holiday Lights
Thanks to technology, you can now decorate your house with LED lights that use 90 percent less energy than conventional holiday lights, and can save your family up to $50 on your energy bills during the holiday season! As an added bonus, LEDs release little heat, and they last about 200,000 hours. In the unlikely event that one does burn out, the rest of the lights keep on glowing. Whew!

According to one U.S. Department of Energy study, if everyone replaced their conventional holiday light strings with LEDs, at least two billion kilowatt-hours of electricity could be saved in a month. The savings would be enough to power 200,000 homes for a year! LED lights are available at many major retailers.

3. Add Organic and Local Foods to Your Holiday Feast
Support local family farmers who grow sustainable meat and produce. Not only does local, organic food taste better, but you’ll also be doing your part for your community and the planet too. Find an organic turkey or humane ham and local vegetables for holiday dinner.

4. Get a Pesticide-Free Tree
Demand is on the rise for Christmas trees that are not covered in chemicals; some growers use 40 different pesticides, as well as chemical colorants. The good news is that there are now a number of tree-farms that sell pesticide-free trees, so ask your local Christmas tree seller, or search for an organic tree farm near you.

5. Recycle Your Christmas Tree
Each year, 10 million Christmas trees end up in the landfill. While your tree won’t fit in the recycling bin with your newspapers and bottles, you can recycle your tree: many cities offer programs to turn your tree to mulch or wood chips. Some cities even use your old trees to do important environmental projects like streambank stabilization. Call (800) CLEANUP or visit www.earth911.org to find the tree-recycling program near you.

6. Recycle Your Old Cellphone
Getting a new cell phone for Christmas? Not sure what to do with the old one? Now, you can drop off that old phone at any Staples store, as part of the Sierra Club cell phone recycling program. Each year, 130 million cell phones are thrown out, weighing approximately 65,000 tons. Recycling your old phone prevents hazardous elements like mercury, cadmium and lead from ending up in our landfills. Find out more.

7. Offset Your Travel
If you or your loved ones are traveling more than 100 miles this holiday season, try to reduce air travel whenever possible, and consider offsetting the fossil fuel pollution generated by your trip, no matter how you travel. These companies can help you get trees planted to reduce your impact.

• Terrapass – Provides carbon offsets for flying, driving, etc.
• CarbonFund – Provides a variety of carbon offset projects to choose from.
• Carbonify.com – Tree planting for offsetting carbon emissions

8. Donate Your Time or Money to an Environmental Group
Get into the holiday spirit by volunteering! There are countless ways to help improve your community—and the planet—from cleaning up a local river to helping inner city kids experience the outdoors for the first time.

How are you being green this holiday season?

We Wish You a Peaceful Holiday and an Abundant New Year!

—The Small Footprint Family

_{This post is part of  The Mommy Club, Healthy 2Day Wednesdays, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, Simple Lives Thursdays, and Fight Back Fridays.}

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These days, everyone is looking for ways to save some money. Fortunately for your wallet and the planet, the easiest way to save money in the laundry room is to make your own laundry detergent. If you are chemically sensitive or on the GAPS diet like we are, making your own laundry detergent will not only save you money, but will naturally avoid the toxic chemicals and noxious scents found in store-bought brands.

Laundry detergent ingredients pose a variety of health risks to humans, ranging from relatively minor—like skin irritation and allergies—to the severe—cancer, poisoning and neurological problems. These products can affect not only personal health, but also public and environmental health. The chemicals can go into the air, down the drain and into bodies of water, too.

I often wondered why my neighbor’s “April Fresh” aroma would give me migraines until a 2008 University of Washington study of top-selling laundry products found that the products emitted nearly 100 different volatile organic compounds. Results of the study showed 58 different volatile organic compounds above a high concentration of 300 micrograms per cubic meter. Of these, seven are regulated as toxic or hazardous under federal laws. All the products tested in the study gave off at least one chemical regulated as toxic or hazardous, but none of those chemicals was listed on the product labels.

Findings in a new 2011 study by the same researcher show that air vented from machines using the top-selling scented liquid laundry detergent and scented dryer sheet contains more than 25 volatile organic compounds, including seven hazardous air pollutants. Of those, two chemicals—acetaldehyde and benzene—are classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as known carcinogens, for which the agency has established no safe exposure level. 

No wonder laundry products make an estimated 10% of the population feel so ill.

The researchers estimate that in the Seattle area, where the study was conducted, acetaldehyde emissions from the top five laundry detergent brands would constitute about 6 percent of automobiles’ acetaldehyde emissions. In the U.S. we regulate automobile emissions, but completely ignore the toxic pollution coming from our dryer vents—at our own peril.

And if the toxic fragrances weren’t enough, conventional laundry detergents also contain phosphates, sulfates, ammonia, naphthalene, phenol, optical brighteners, EDTA, and more. These chemicals can cause rashes, itches, allergies, sinus problems, endocrine disruption, and have long term toxic effects on the environment. Lastly, the embedded energy, natural resources and waste involved in mass-producing and transporting billions of gallons of plastic-packaged, toxic laundry detergents is just too significant for small footprint families to ignore.

Believe it or not, in the U.S., manufacturers are not required to list the ingredients used in laundry products, air fresheners and other household cleaning products. Personal-care products often contain similar fragrance chemicals too, and although cosmetics are required by the Food and Drug Administration to list ingredients, no law requires products of any kind to list the chemicals used in fragrances and perfumes. Even “green” or “eco-friendly” cleaning products are not required to disclose their ingredients, and may contain toxic fragrances or petroleum-derived ingredients.

The safest bet for your family and the planet is to make your own less toxic laundry detergent. Costing just pennies a load, you can get all the ingredients in bulk quantities online (links below), at Costco, or in your grocer’s laundry aisle.

(Note: Many do-it-yourself laundry detergent recipes call for Fels Naptha, Octagon or Zote bar soap, but all of them contain highly toxic ingredients like napthalene that you really don’t want near your skin or in your environment.)

Both the powder and liquid versions of this recipe work well in cold water and are safe for septic tanks, and both HE and front-loading washing machines. I’ve found no difference in washing quality between the homemade detergent and store-bought brands, and this recipe tends to work much better than most eco-friendly brands.

For extra softness, don’t forget to add a cup of white vinegar to your rinse cycle to soften your clothes, and you’ll never go back to conventional, toxic detergents or fabric softeners again!

Homemade Laundry Detergent Powder
Makes enough for about 300 loads

Ingredients

• 4 cups Borax
• 4 cups Washing soda
• 2 cups Baking soda
• 4 cups grated bar soap (2-4 bars) (Choose a non-toxic, real bar soap—not a “beauty bar” like Dove or a clear glycerine soap. We use both Kirk’s Castile and Grandma’s Lye soaps for laundry.)
• Essential oil (Optional for scent. Tea Tree oil is especially nice if you use this detergent for washing cloth diapers.)

Directions

1. Cut the bar soap into large chunks with a knife.
2. Grate the soap chunks with a fine cheese grater or throw the chunks into the food processor and blend into as fine of a powder as you can make. Let dust settle before opening processor, so as not to inhale it.
3. In a large plastic tub or bucket, mix the Borax, washing soda, and baking soda together. Wear a dusk mask or bandana to avoid breathing in the powder while you mix. You will need to let the dust settle a few times before continuing to stir. If you can seal the container, you can shake it vigorously to mix with no dust.
4. Stir in the grated/powdered bar soap.
5. Stir in 10-20 drops of essential oil, if tolerated. Tea tree oil is great for diapers as it has antiseptic qualities.
6. Store in a covered, airtight container.
7. If your powder has trouble completely dissolving, try mixing it in a little hot water before adding to the laundry.
8. Use 1-2 Tablespoons per load. (Adjust for your machine.)

Homemade Laundry Detergent Liquid
Makes enough for about 80 loads

Ingredients

• Hot water
• Clean 5-gallon bucket with lid
• 1 cup Borax
• 1 cup Washing soda
• 1/2 cup Baking soda
• 1 cup grated bar soap (1-2 bars) (Choose a non-toxic, real bar soap. Do not use a “beauty bar” like Dove or a clear glycerine soap! We use both Kirk’s Castile and Grandma’s Lye soaps for laundry.)
• Essential oil (Optional for scent. Tea Tree oil is especially nice if you use this detergent for washing cloth diapers.)

Directions

1. Cut the bar soap into large chunks with a knife.
2. Grate the soap chunks with a fine cheese grater or throw the chunks into the food processor and blend into as fine of a powder as you can make. Let dust settle before opening processor, so as not to inhale it.
3. Place grated bar soap in a pot. Cover with water and simmer over medium heat until all soap is melted, stirring occasionally.
4. Pour melted soap mixture into a clean 5-gallon bucket. Add washing soda, baking soda, and borax. Stir.
5. Add enough hot water to almost fill the bucket. Mix very well until all ingredients are dissolved. (I use a long ruler for this.)
6. If using essential oil, AFTER the mix has cooled down completely, mix in 10-20 drops, to taste.
7. Let sit overnight to gel. The gel will be loose and very gloppy—like egg-drop soup.
8. Use a funnel to pour the gel into clean, recycled detergent containers or leave in the bucket. Cover with an airtight lid if leaving in the bucket to protect children and pets.
9. Stir or shake well before using. Use 1/2 – 1 cup per load. (Adjust for your machine.)

_{This post is part of Seasonal Celebrations Sunday, Monday Mania, The Mommy Club, Real Food Wednesdays, Healthy 2Day Wednesdays, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, Simple Lives Thursdays, Creative Juice Thursdays, and Fight Back Fridays.}

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Did you know that conventional, store-bought fingerpaints can contain toxic chemicals like toluene, ethylene glycol, petroleum-based waxes, polymers, and artificial colors that can be easily absorbed through your child’s skin? Even the brands labeled “non-toxic” can contain these dangerous ingredients! (How this is legal is anyone’s guess.) And if that weren’t enough, genetically engineered soy, corn and wheat byproducts are also common ingredients too, which can be an unexpected disaster for the allergic child.

Like an increasing number of children, Babyzilla is allergic and sensitive to these ingredients, so we simply can’t use the off-the-shelf brands of these common craft items. My friend Michelle, whose daughter also has many food sensitivities, came up with the following recipe for non-toxic, non-allergenic fingerpaints, and it is just great for hours of toddler fun!

Michelle used millet flour and I used coconut flour for the paint, so you should be able to use almost any type of fine flour that isn’t too heavy. (Though coconut flour is pretty gloppy!) The paint colors are made with India Tree Natural Decorating Colors, which are made from vegetables, though you could easily make your own colors from turmeric, beet juice and more. You do need to use more natural coloring than you would with regular, chemical food dyes, and the colors are not exact when you mix them, but they are completely non-toxic and non-allergenic. I find their earthy pastel shades rustic and charming.

Here is a bit more information about what is in India Tree colors:

Blue: Deionized water, glycerin, red cabbage
Red: Beet juice, citric acid
Yellow: Deionized water, glycerin, curcumin

On to the fun of making the finger paint…

Allergen-Free Non-Toxic Fingerpaint

• 1/2 to 1 cup of flour (Your choice; coconut flour gets pretty gloppy.)
• 2 cups pure water
• India Tree Natural Decorating Colors Set (or you could experiment with using beet juice, turmeric, red cabbage and other strongly colored foods)
• Small sauce pan
• Spatula
• Cups to put paint in. I like these No-Spill Paint Cups
• Scoop or ladle

1. Mix 1/2 cup flour with a bit of water to get out lumps.
2. Add the rest of the water.
3. Cook/stir over medium heat just until thick & shiny. It only takes a few minutes. See in the picture how the mixture is sticking to the sides of the pan? That’s what you want.
4. Stir in additional flour, if needed, until you reach the desired paint consistency.
5. While cooking flour/water, set up your cups and dyes.
6. Use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to scoop out the paint and put it into each cup.

7.  Grab your dyes.


8.  Now get creative! Put at least 6 drops of color into your paints to make sure they are vibrant and bright. I used about 10-15 drops in my paints.

9.  Now stir and see what you get.

10. PAINT AND HAVE FUN!

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I guess I thought that using a reusable bottle was as common as recycling at this point, but as I watched dozens of people roll out of Target with discounted cases of bottled water this past weekend, I discovered that perhaps the message has clearly not reached everyone.

Did you know that approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil are used annually to produce plastic water bottles in the U.S. alone—enough to fuel about 100,000 cars for a year. What an incredible waste of resources and a foolish threat to national security—all for a single-use bottle!

Like all plastic, these bottles will be with us forever since plastic does not biodegrade. Rather, it breaks down into smaller and smaller toxic bits that contaminate our soil and waterways and ultimately end up in the ever-growing Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Anything we can do to phase out their usage quickly would be good thing.

Along with plastic bags, plastic bottles are one of the most prevalent sources of pollution found on our beaches. Each year, over 500 billion disposable bottles and cups end up littering our soil, rivers, lakes and oceans, killing countless fish and animals.

There is also overwhelming evidence of adverse health effects tied to Bisphenol A, or BPA, a widely-used chemical in the manufacturing of food and beverage containers, including baby bottles, water bottles and aluminum cans. A reusable bottle is the only way to hydrate on the go while protecting yourself and the environment from this dangerous chemical. While nearly all major brands are free of the toxin now, make sure any bottle you buy is marked “BPA-free.”

There are many types of reusable bottles to choose from, and many different designs and colors to suit anyone’s taste. The most eco-friendly ones are made from stainless steel or aluminum. Some are thermal, allowing you to keep hot beverages hot and cold ones cold.

Choose one you like, and carry it with you so you always have it on hand at home, work, the gym, or on the town!

I just got back from visiting my hometown of Washington, D.C., which recently passed a bag tax wherein retailers citywide charge $.05 for each plastic or paper shopping bag you require. More and more cities are passing similar legislation against disposable shopping bags, particularly because it is increasingly common for U.S. seashores and riverbanks to look like the one above—especially after a storm.

Laws against throw-away shopping bags make good sense if you consider that every year in the U.S., we consume over 380 billion plastic bags, of which over 4 billion end up littering our land, rivers, lakes and oceans, killing hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, seals, seabirds and other marine mammals that mistake these discarded bags for food. Plastic bags also require 12 million barrels of oil to produce each year, take hundreds of years to decompose in a landfill—or worse—add to the ever-growing Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Anything we can do to phase out their usage quickly would be good thing.

One of thousands albatrosses who die every year with bellies full of our plastic trash. © Chris Jordan

In many ways, paper bags are even worse than plastic bags. Paper sacks generate 70 percent more air pollution and 50 times more water pollution than plastic bags. And paper bags don’t decompose any faster than plastic bags, once they end up in a landfill.

The answer to the question, “Paper or plastic?” is: “Neither, thank you, I brought my own!” Let’s face it, all those grocery bags you’ve saved under the sink will only last so long. A shopping bag you enjoy using and reusing is your most sustainable option.

While any tote bag will do, my favorite reusable bag is the Envirosax bag. Lightweight polyester, portable and waterproof, these unique bags hold the equivalent of 2 supermarket plastic bags, yet they fold down small enough to stow into a glove compartment, pocket or handbag. They fold down so small, in fact, that I always have few on hand for when I’m at the drugstore, the mall, or even making a spontaneous stop at the convenience store. (Do you remember to bring your bags to these places, too?)

Sexy and sustainable!

I also like Envirosax because they are the only reusable bag I’ve found where the bag handles fit over my shoulder, which is important when carrying the groceries and the toddler into the house. My favorite part though, is that they come in dozens of distinctive, stylish patterns—or solid colors to suit a man’s tastes. (Though my male friends say they like Chico bags better.)

Reusable bags can make shopping a little more fun and lot more eco-friendly. What more could you want?

Shop for Reusable Bags >>

“People are so worried about what they consume between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they consume between the New Year and Christmas.”

—Unknown

I like New Year’s resolutions. They provide a great opportunity to reflect upon the successes and shortcomings of the past year, and set goals and intentions for the new one. I don’t believe in making the kind of resolutions in January that ensure I will be self-flagellating in February, but I do think it is important to set progress benchmarks for doing things I care about over time.

Really, a resolution is nothing more than a firm decision to do or not do something. This year, I’ve made four firm decisions for the Small Footprint Family. We will…

#1 Do something physical in the sun with my family as often as possible.
The older I get, the more it seems that the aches, pains and dis-ease of modern life are really the result of deficiencies in sunlight, regular physical activity and nutrient dense, whole foods. These are three essential things we were evolutionarily designed to require in large, daily quantities. And they are also three things American consumer culture has almost completely designed out of our lives over the past 50 years.

I have always been happiest and healthiest when I have been doing regular outdoor work, whether that be tree care, greenroofing, farming, or at least puttering outside daily in our food garden. Since leaving my greenroofing business to have Babyzilla, I have gotten away from fulfilling this biological need, and I am really feeling the effects physically and mentally. (Not to mention the fact that my Vitamin D levels could use improvement.) So, this year, I resolve to complement our already very healthy diet with daily sunshine and enough outdoor physical activity to get our heart rate up. Babyzilla is very excited about this—as you can imagine any toddler would be!

What are you doing in 2010 to make sure you get enough sun and activity?

#2 Increase our local food consumption by 10%.
We currently get about 75% of our produce, meat and eggs from local organic farms and ranches as members of two CSAs and weekly visitors to the farmers’ market. But here in California, finding local produce year round is very easy: We grow a majority of the nation’s organic fruits and veggies after all. Nevertheless, I’d like to increase the amount of local food we eat by 10% in 2010—including finding a local source for pasture-raised pork bellies, so I can learn to make my own bacon this year!

If you’re wondering why choosing local food is so important, and how to get started with eating more locally-produced foods in the new year, please read Why We Should All Eat Locally.

How can you eat 10% more local foods in 2010?

#3 Reduce our trash output by 20%.
We eat few packaged foods, and compost most of our food waste, but somehow we still produce at least two tall kitchen bags of trash every week. The biggest single sources of trash in our house are disposable coffee cups from the corner coffee shop, spoiled leftovers that contain meat and so can’t be composted, and plastic food bags that can no longer be washed and reused. This year, we will strive to get the thermoses washed more regularly, among other waste-reducing measures.

If you’d like to learn more about composting or reducing your waste output, please read Waste Not, Want Not and Compost Happens.

What can you do to reduce your trash output by 20% in 2010?

#4 Quit extraneous spending and buy second-hand. This resolution is dear to my heart. Some would argue that consumer spending will get the economy going again, so we should all go out and do our part for the country by buying stuff. Never mind that many of us no longer have the money or the credit to keep buying things we don’t really need that were designed to be provide only short-lived satisfaction anyway.

Rather, I believe it is all the stuff we buy—as part of a consumption-driven economy dependent on limitless growth—that has brought us to the brink of the greatest economic and environmental crises humanity has ever seen. The wanton, subsidized exploitation of natural resources and fossil fuels that brings us $5 radios and ripe tomatoes in January simply cannot be sustained. We cannot maintain an economic system or a culture requiring infinite growth on a finite planet. We cannot endlessly consume from limited and vulnerable resources—and we are destroying or running out of a lot of things we’re gonna need in the future. You know, like fresh water.

It’s not enough to recycle your bottles and cans, install CFL light bulbs and bring your own bags. It’s time for a new economic paradigm: one where return on investment is not measured just in dollars, but also in how a product or service benefits regular people, communities, and the fragile land, water and air we depend on—a “triple bottom line” of economic, social and environmental sustainability.

In such an economy, many industries, products and services we take for granted today would no longer be considered profitable or ethical, and they would be replaced by new closed-loop industries, social entrepreneurship and relocalized community economies.

And yet the endless quest for Stuff is not only damaging to the Earth and threatening to our very survival, it is also spiritually debilitating too. Since when did spending money become an American pastime? For all our wealth relative to the rest of the world, Americans are not a happy people. In fact, we are becoming quite depressed, impatient, despondent, and diseased, despite—or perhaps because of—how much stuff we consume.

I believe our unhealthy and unsustainable cultural relationship to earning/spending money in order to acquire material things is supplanting what really matters at the end of the day: strong, authentic relationships with our family members, friends and neighbors; nutritious, whole food meals enjoyed with others; daily sunshine and physical activity; and ample time for recreation, contemplation, reflection and rest.

For this reason, in 2010, I want to spend my money in support of the new paradigm. We will severely curtail buying things we want but do not need, and anytime we do need to acquire something, we will try first to get it from a local, second-hand source before buying it new. Fortunately, San Diego has many, many outstanding thrift stores, and other resources like flea markets, FreeCycle, CraigsList and eBay are available too.

This spendfast means a year-long experiment in not buying any more clothes, shoes, books, DVDs, magazines, excess toiletries, stuff for the kitchen, stuff for the house, stuff for… the sake of Stuff. Should be an interesting challenge. I’ll keep you posted…

To learn more about “spend-fasting,” please read The Story of Stuff – Reducing our Consumer Footprint.

What are you doing in 2010 to trade quantity for quality in your life?

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” —Albert Einstein

When the continuous operation of a system relies on a long and complex chain of crucial suppliers and resources, all running smoothly, that’s pretty much a textbook example of an unsustainable system. Put another way, the systems we take for granted to deliver everything from plasma-screen TV sets to store-bought apple pie are more vulnerable than we may think. 

According to Keith Farnish, “We have been sold The Complexity Myth: the idea that something is only good if it is a product of a complex set of processes, in order that it (or we) can be controlled. We are kept in check by this idea and do not question it because we have forgotten how to live simply; we have been brainwashed to love the world of the complex, and as a result we are prepared to defend the thing that is causing the collapse of the natural world, and our own basic humanity.”

To put it bluntly, we’ve become so utterly dependent on highly complex machinery, bureaucratic social structures and byzantine systems to provide for nearly every aspect of our living, that if a crisis happened (like extreme weather, diminishing groundwater, or running out of oil), we’d be up the proverbial Shit’s Creek.

I mean, would you be prepared if you lost electricity to your home for even a couple of weeks?

The alternative: Radical Simplification

From Culture Change:

Simplification has so many benefits that it would not be possible to list them all here in detail, but I can outline four of them which I think capture the essence of simplicity, and show up the myth that complexity is a good, indeed an acceptable thing:

1) Simplicity requires less energy: This is self-evident, for the fewer stages there are in any process, the less energy will be consumed overall. You could argue that heating a house with a load of wood and a hole in the ceiling is more energy-intensive than a combination gas boiler, bu—taking aside the difference between renewable versus non-renewable forms of energy—in order to manufacture the combination gas boiler in the first place requires a similar number of processes as to manufacture a television. If you want more efficient heating, hammering out a rocket stove from a few sheets of metal is relatively far simpler. In addition, the more stages involved in anything, the less accountability is possible, and thus the more opportunity for energy wastage.

2) Simplicity is connected: Following on from the previous point, accountability isn’t really about economics, it is about knowledge. If I were to buy a cord of wood that had originated from a forest far away, then it would have had to pass through a number of stages to get from the source to the user: the felling of the tree(s); the sawing and preparation of the timber; the movement to the port and subsequent transportation by sea and/or land to the point at which it is available to me, or at least the person who gets it to me. Through these different stages I have progressively lost connection with the origin of the wood; I have no sight of the trees, I cannot feel the soil, I cannot smell the air where the tree once stood. I do not care. That is the way of the civilized. Compare this to a person who cuts her own wood from a tree she felled, and uses it to build a shelter. [sic. Connected people do not shit where they eat.]

3) Simplicity is stable: As Thomas Homer-Dixon described so vividly in The Upside Of Down, complex societies are inherently unstable, for they rely on a multitude of different stages and processes connected by an equally complex set of linkages, any one of which can be critical to the efficient operation of the system as a whole. Bring down a major power line to a processing plant, shut down a distribution computer, or blockade a port, and the whole dependent system may break down, particularly one that is already under stress, as so many systems are in the just-in-time economy. If you grow your own food, or ideally are a member of a small growing community, then you may be vulnerable to seasonal aberrations or pests, but so long as you do it right then your food supply is safe, and not subject to the hazards of complexity.

4) Simplicity is democratic: Complexity is used to enforce the systems of control that the Culture of Empire uses to keep us subjects of that culture. One man with a sword can control perhaps half a dozen people without swords; one man with an agenda, and a military establishment under his control can control entire nations. Within a cooperative society, a simple society working on egalitarian principles, no one can wield power without challenge. You have a say, as does everyone, for there can be no ivory towers or impregnable fortresses in the simple society—you need complexity to build them.

According to Farnish, the mindset that brought us the equation “civilization = better living = mind-boggling complexity” is flawed and should be reconsidered in a 21st-century post-peak world. “Unless we are prepared to once again embrace the simple then we have no future as a species…except, perhaps those few remaining people who still live simply.”

Get Real Simple.
There is no singular correct way to simplify our complex way of living. The challenge is to add a bit of radical simplicity and self-sufficiency to your unique life every chance you get. Here are some ideas:

• Plant an organic vegetable garden, or yardshare with a neighbor and harvest more together.
• Grow fruit or nut trees.
• Raise some backyard chickens.
• Get rid of your TV, and in its place, take up something like making homemade yogurt, homebrewing beer, beekeeping, quilting, etc.
• Do any of the above with children.
• Join or start a Transition Community.
• Cloth diaper. Hang your clothes to dry outside.
• Install a composting toilet, solar system, wood stove, etc.
• Quit eating foods that come in cans, bags and boxes.
• Buy local as often as possible, especially local food.
• Commit to walking or biking everywhere you can.
• Try to buy nothing new for a year—except food, toiletries, socks and underwear. You may buy second hand, when needed.
• Join a food co-op, CSA or a credit union (or all three!).
• Contact your local and federal legislators and demand strong and swift action on climate change and renewable energy in your community.

What will you do to radically simplify your life in 2010?

Happy Thanksgiving from the Small Footprint Family to yours!

—Dawn, Ivan and Babyzilla