Savour

 If you have access to some 10 or 20 or 30 years old group photos (school, college, wedding, party), please take a look at them; compare and contrast them to some recent ones. If you don't have access to such photos, try to think of a group of people that you know -- friends, co-workers and extended family members. Age group doesn’t matter. I request you to pause here to find some pictures before reading further. It is a crucial step in this exercise.

Now, it is very likely that you would agree that over-weight/obesity is on the rise. We don’t need to know the exact numbers to acknowledge that. But, if you are a person interested in numbers, all you need to do is to go to any public space or a social event and check it out for yourself. I did exactly that. I stood at some busy cross-roads in Chennai, clocked myself and observed the people on bicycles and motorbikes. I counted the number of people who were NOT visibly overweight (Group-A). My friend counted the number of people who were visibly overweight(Group-B). 

If the number of people in Group-A was 'n',

the number of people in Group-B was at least four times 'n'(4n).

Some caveats here:

- Obviously, we are likely to have missed some people due to the nature of the traffic at that time. Thus, #(Group-A) + #(Group-B) was not equal to the total number of people on bicycles and motorbikes. So, we can’t do a percentage calculation here. 

- We couldn’t count people in cars and three-wheel autos.

- Data collected from pockets of Chennai doesn’t *accurately* represent all of Chennai, or other other cities or rural areas.

Having said that, this data still shows us the *trends*. I am deeply pained by this trend. Being over-weight or obese significantly puts one at risk for various diseases. I have been observing various contributing factors at play here, for more than 20 years. This post is an earnest attempt to present my observations and understanding that ensued from those.

                    *

I have chosen to omit exceptions for brevity and have focused on the patterns that are quite common.

A baby is born. The new parents are excited and figuring out ways to feed the baby (breastfeed, bottle-feed). As they are going through this challenging phase they get advice from doctors, books, family and friends. Most of them develop this understanding that the baby would cry when he is hungry. They also get to know that once the baby is nursed, he stopped crying. They begin to understand other hunger cues. Now, as the baby grows into a toddler the parental anxiety around food grows too. The caregiver distracts this mobile little person in a million ways just so food can be shoved into his mouth. 

Sure enough, the distractions work, at least in the short-term. Once a set of options expire, the caregivers quickly come up with new ones. The technology used can be different (from pointing at the moon or a nearby animal to using a mobile phone), but the theme is the same -- distraction.

What do distractions do? My thoughts are:

1. They *disconnect* the baby from her *self*.

The beautiful process of feeling hungry and smelling, touching the food and taking that one’s own mouth:

- activates the digestive system

- helps the baby understand the connection between her hunger, hands, mouth and the good feeling that results when the food reaches her tummy. 

- develops a good tactile sense.

- empowers the baby (although the baby wouldn’t know that)

- integrates the baby into the meal routines and rituals.

2. Distractions are basically manipulations to get what we want to happen. Once the baby starts seeing through this (which is likely to happen eventually), they start losing trust on the care giver. 

3. Food is for survival. All living beings are interested in surviving. Children simply can’t starve themselves to death. That goes against Evolution. Left alone to their devices little children, who have a healthy relationship with food, will seek food only when they are hungry. In my limited experience I have seen that, if this healthy relationship is allowed to exist, the chances of developing eating disorders (anxiety around food, over-eating, binge eating, anorexia) -- is quite small. Distractions don't let a healthy relationship develop between the baby and her food.

The baby is now a toddler and he is sent to a day-care, pre-school or kindergarten. There is a routine enforced by the place that he is going to. He is asked to eat when it is time to eat, whether or not he is hungry. The disconnect between his self and what he does starts here (if not earlier). He is also asked by adults and care-givers to “finish” what is on his plate, even if his body is not for it.

Occasionally the toddler falls sick and rejects food. This is body's natural response to sickness. In simple terms, the body tries to heal itself when we get sick; digestion is too cumbersome during sickness. But the adults around her are worried and anxious for her. They insist that she should eat or drink. The toddler eventually yields to parental pressure, thus widening the disconnect.

To understand this disconnect deeply and assist with healing, we need to start looking at our own relationship with food. 

-- Hema

The Third Curve: The End Of Growth As We Know It

I found this book to be one of THE most important reads because of its relevance to ALL of us living in this modern era, irrespective of who/where/what we are. It walks the readers through the process of how our Modern Industrial World has come about; it throws light on the math behind the fast-depleting resource -- petroleum; it analyses all the existing alternative energy options and concludes with a paradigm shifting note on rebuilding a post peak oil world. 

The Third Curve is written by Mansoor Khan. He lives on his organic farm called Acres Wild, in South India. Khan says that this book "examines the stark and unbridgeable disparity between the compulsions of exponential, economic growth and the energy limits imposed on us by the laws of geology, thermodynamics and the finiteness of the Earth". He says "this book is not about morality, justice, equality and environmental consciousness. It is about what is possible and what is not". All the graphs on this post are from Khan's website.

Khan says "The Modern World is obsessed with growth. We worship growth. Growth is our religion". He clarifies what "growth" means in this context. It is "NOT any old kind of biological growth, nor it is the kind of qualitative growth that makes us love our family and friends; growth in this context is reduced to a quantitative state".

Before we get to the Third Curve, we need to understand what the first two curves are. The First Curve, concept curve, is used to illustrate the growth of a given quantity. In Financial System, the concept curve shows the growth of money. Our financial system is based on ideas like:
- money is a TRUE representation of the value of goods and services
- money must grow with time by a factor of P%
- growth of money must compound
- compounding growth must be perpetual

This is where he introduces the term "Perpetual Exponential Quantitative Growth". "PEQG is a monster, overruling all other laws. This monster is the founding principle of Modern Economics".

The Second Curve is Bell Curve. The extraction of all natural resources obeys the Bell Curve. "The reality of the Modern Industrial World is energy and 60% of it comes from fossil fuels (Coal, Natural Gas and Oil). So fossil fuels are the most important component of our natural capital, and among them Oil in particular." Thus he focuses on "Oil" whenever he refers to the energy usage and production. As the Economy of a nation or the World grows, so does its energy usage. Being a natural resource, Oil obeys natural laws, especially the ones of Geology.

In the real world, our concept is "Money Growth" and the reality that makes it possible is Oil Production. "Oil is the defining factor for Industrial Growth and therefore Money Growth". Khan uses the global money supply graph to illustrate how the Industrial growth is occurring. This is an exponential growth. And this growth is based on the "Reality" of Oil Production, which being a resource the graph is bell shaped. When these two curves are juxtaposed, we can see how impractical it is to sustain the current Industrial world in the current fashion. The juxtaposition of the curves, yields three distinct phases of our economy. 

Phase 1 (Paradise Times: 1900 - 1960's): 

Here the Money and Oil curves are running fairly parallel to each other.We were able to draw Oil from the Earth at an exponential rate; this part of the Bell curve does go up more or less exponentially. This made us believe that the sky was the limit.

Phase 2 (1970's - mid 2000): 

The curves start moving away from each other. Money keeps going up, whereas Oil, being a natural resource, starts slowing down. "This was the beginning of the Eco-Collapse. This breakdown was manifested in the first signs of species getting extinct, forests disappearing, fisheries declining, rivers drying, aquifers depleting etc." We were clearly "exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth's ecosystems". Our financial system was being propped up, because there was a growing hollowness under its surface. This was a time to rethink Growth. But it didn't happen. Instead "every effort was made to deny reality and to perpetuate growth".

Phase 3 (mid 2000 - present): 

According to the undeniable Bell Curve graph, "the future path in Phase 3 seems steeply downhill with the current economic paradigm". This is where he introduces "Peak Oil".

"Peak means half gone". Our Modern Industrial Society is heavily dependent on this limited non-renewable resource that we have reached the peak of. From this point on, there is a more or less steep decline in the resource curve. Now the future is highly dependent on the choices we make.  Unless we make new choices a collapse is inevitable. 

What IS Oil and why is it THIS precious? 

"150 million years of the Sun's energy, half gone in 150 years. This is equivalent to spending a million times your salary every month". That clearly can't work! "The world will not disappear because of Peak Oil but we will find ourselves in a considerably different world with a new set of economic rules, in fact, an inversion of the rules of Economics, Shrinkage instead of Growth".

Our current world is built with oil, runs on oil and is maintained by oil. Let us take our food system to illustrate this. Today's mono-cropping systems use oil at each of the following step: ploughing, spraying pesticides, fertilizers, cropping, thrashing, cleaning, packing, storing, transporting, (in some cases)
refrigerating. "Remove oil from this network and the complete food system will collapse". Personally we have seen this in our village.The tragedy is multi-fold in an agrarian place like this -- the culture around food has collapsed too. Each stage of food growing called for a certain expertise and all of it was locally found. Now with the advent of industrial ways local expertise is fast disappearing and oil dependency is increasing. Professor Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado at Boulder rightly said: "Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food". There is an extremely complex web of oil inter-dependencies. All the alternative energy options are themselves built using oil energy. Such is the uniqueness of oil.

Hubbert's Role:

Marion King Hubbert was a geoscientist working at the Shell research lab in Texas, in the early 1950s. He predicted that the rate of oil production resembled the Bell Curve. He did statistical analysis on data regarding Discoveries (of oil wells) Vs. Production of Oil, within the US. Based on his theory, he predicted that the US petroleum production would peak between the late 1960s and early 1970s. "Hubbert was met with scathing criticism at first. He was mocked and ridiculed". And indeed, US oil production did peak around 1971.

"This marked a new era in the US history that prompted a scramble for cheap oil outside its borders to keep the growth going". Now, let us look at the global data. We were at the peak of oil production around 2005. "The future shape is projected from past experiences, but the rate of decline obviously depends on our consumption patterns". The Oil Drum (http://theoildrum.com/node/5576) showed that 40 of the 54 oil producing nations had reached Peak Oil production. "The era of cheap oil is definitively over".

Okay, what do we do now? 

"Peak Oil is a predicament and not a problem. Problems have solutions but predicaments are a nature of reality and we have to cope with them. They do not have solutions. People have mistaken the finiteness of our planet and its resources as a problem." This is the crux of the matter.

In the next section of the book, Khan evaluates all the alternatives using five rules viz. Net Energy, Oil Dependency, Energy Density, Scalability and Oil Byproducts. He applies these rules to the entire gamut of energy options:

- Liquid fuel alternatives (bio fuel-Ethanol, tar sands, shale oil)

- Other fossil fuels (coal and natural gas)

- Electricity alternatives (solar, wind, hydro etc.)

He then presents the data to back up his case -- "alternatives can do nothing to save our paradigm of perpetual exponential economic growth".

Thus there is a pressing need to move beyond the two curves -- exponential and bell. Here he introduces the third curve which is a behavioural curve of the universe, the one that is "embedded in nature". This curve follows the rhythms of our primary energy provider, the sun. "Reliably it rises, peaks and ebbs only to rise again".  Growth in nature "was always meant to oscillate in gentle waves of highs and lows, following the sun's energy. The smaller oscillations of day and night were superimposed on larger oscillations of seasons and the even larger oscillations of solar cycles".

"Ever changing, yet ever remaining, in a narrow band of values. Nothing going to the sky and nothing going to zero".

"Return to the Third Curve is inevitable. Because that is the steady-state – the eternal rhythm of the universe. We have 2 paths to the Third Curve – denial or acceptance of peak oil". 

"The path through denial can certainly extend our moment at the top of the peak only to exacerbate our predicament leading to an eventual steep, and short chaotic collapse. Each attempt at flattening the curve to maintain status quo will result in a sudden sharp drop of collapse giving the descent a staircase shape". This is shown in the graph above in red.

"The path through acceptance can immediately start a smoother, longer and managed energy descent, which involves re-alignment of our economic paradigm, cultural beliefs, making sacrifices and bearing some degree of pain. This path will be gentler, less steep and give us time to adapt. It also entails a simultaneous understanding and movement towards the new world that is inevitable with a lower energy budget. We stand a much better chance of bypassing collapse and consciously shaping an unfamiliar but desirable future". This is shown in the graph above in green.

The last bit of the book dives in to the Transition -- "a structured and conscious way of moving safely from our present high energy-consumption state based on fossil fuels, towards a low energy-consumption state".   Tran­sition is based on principles such as rebuilding the soil, rebuilding the community and its resilience, growing local food, developing alternative and earth-friendly agriculture and encouraging local initiatives. Cuba's peak oil story at the end of the book shows that it is indeed entirely possible to make a meaningful journey, collectively as a community, to Transition down to the Third Curve.

"If Cuba could do it, so can any part of the world, provided we first recog­nize the new reality of shrinking energy and money and then adopt the principles of the Transition method".

 For further reading:

- "Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush" by John Michael Greer

- Charles Eisenstein's "Sacred Economics"

 

Raju Titus interview Part 1

To my knowledge no one in India -- perhaps even in the world -- has pursued Masanobu Fukuoka's vision of Natural Farming (NF) with such single minded devotion and for so long as Raju Titus. Raju-ji and his wife Shalini-ji started on their NF journey about 27 years ago on their 13 acre farm in Hoshangabad, MP. Over the years they have allowed Nature to tell them what to do with their land -- and indeed to influence all aspects of their lives. But that is getting ahead of the story that we want Raju-ji to tell us instead.

Recently we spent two days at their farm. We talked NF, made seed-balls, prepared a small patch of land for seeding and not least, ate delicious rotis made from their naturally grown wheat. We also got a taste of Raju-ji's enthusiasm for connecting with local farmers for no other gain than to spread a good idea. Raju-ji took us on two excursions to nearby villages where he shared his NF experience with local farmers (see pictures).

After we got back, we met people curious about Raju-ji and NF, and also had a growing list of our own questions. This gave birth to the idea of doing an offline interview with him for wider circulation and Raju-ji readily complied to our request for one. Part 1 of the interview is posted below in the translated version. Here Raju-ji talks a bit about the history of his farm, a little about what to do in NF, and more importantly, in keeping with the spirit of Fukuoka's Do-Nothing philosophy, what not to do. 

The original Hindi version is a separate post. 

Raju-ji, Shalini-ji with granddaughter

 


Q: Before you came to Natural Farming 27 years ago, what kind of farming were you engaged in? What were you growing?

RT: Before starting on NF, I was doing the "Green Revolution" style of farming with deep tilling, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, hybrid seeds, heavy irrigation and leveling of fields. I was growing soya and wheat. I did this for 15 years. Before that I was engaged in local, indigenous style of farming but then got caught in the cycle of wanting more.

Q: In our conversations you had said you were on the brink of giving up farming altogether. What were the reasons for that? What specific difficulties were you facing?

RT : During the "Green Revolution" years, I got my fields leveled, hired people to get rid of "Kans" grass [a difficult weed], got a well dug for irrigation purposes -- electric pump and all -- and made use of rented tractors. Essentially, whatever the Agricultural Scientists advised, I did. For the first year of doing all this I got good results but never after that. I kept at it for 15 years, and during this time my fields were turning into deserts and I was heading towards bankruptcy. My land was filling up with Kans grass, indicating desertification of the soil.  With this grass in the soil, the expenses increase but yields go down.

Mounting financial difficulties forced me to resolve to giving up farming altogether. I had a job at that time to lean on, otherwise I would have ended up like many farmers of today. My parents had 4 plots of lands in the city -- even these were sacrificed towards the farm.

Q: How did you learn about NF? After discovering NF what kind of changes did you make in your farm?

RT : My decision to quit farming had particularly saddened my parents.  Right around that time they came in contact with the Gandhian Quakers, Marjorie Sykes and Partap Aggarwal. They had just brought out the first Indian edition of One Straw Revolution and handed a copy to my mother. I read the book at my mother's behest, and I was converted.

I adopted NF right away. Now, this had the effect of causing great alarm to my parents, Marjorie-behan and Partap-ji because they were concerned that any failures would bring bad name to NF. What followed was without any pre-meditated design. My factory job came in useful: while I had wanted to quit it, it was instrumental in keeping my mind off matters of making an income.

In the beginning, all I knew was that in NF tilling, fertilizer and chemicals were unnecessary. But I did not know how to go about it. One time, during the rainy season, I spread some soya-bean seeds on the ground and covered them with straw. A few days later I saw little soya-bean plants peeking out of the straw
and not one weed. I was overjoyed and started to farm in this manner. Instead of the straw, I would cover the seeds with Kans grass cuttings. This not only  gave me a yield, it also started defeating this most difficult weed. Incidentally this experiment also impressed Fukuoka-ji during his January 1988 visit to my farm -- he declared it to be the best NF experiment in the world.

Q: From our talks, I know that Shalini-ji has been your great collaborator. For one, I greatly enjoyed listening to her description of how she would go manually broadcasting seeds over several acres, and they would fall evenly. Tell us about her role.

RJ : Without my wife's support nothing would have been possible. She has been my real partner in farming. In NF there comes a time when your wife is your only support. In NF, there are many tasks -- getting the fields readied, broadcasting seeds, irrigation, harvesting and threshing -- and she is a key contributor in each of these. We consult together whenever there is a new experiment to be carried out. Because of NF, our family has been able to be happy despite facing many difficulties. This kind farming does not just provide us with food and water, but also brings the family closer.

Raju-ji explains NF to farmers near Hoshangabad

Later, Raju-ji surveys a chemically farmed field for changing over to NF

Q: Today, a lot of farm lands in India have become wasted -- not a blade of grass seems to grow on these. Starting NF in this kind of fields is difficult and people that try it soon give up and turn to tilling. What has been your experience?


RT: My land had become lifeless due to my own mistakes. When Fukuoka-ji saw me farming with Kans grass, he was delighted. He had just returned from his America trip and had said that this kind of grass had become rampant in the US and where it had spread, farming had been stopped. He said that they (the American farmers) don't know how to deal with this and here you are doing NF in the presence of this very grass.

In this region, on Rishi Panchami [a local festival] day, people still perform pooja of Kans grass and consume natural food grains. If this grass appears in the fields, farmers are advised to stop plowing the land. In the indigenous method of farming, people would follow this practice and then the grass would naturally disappear and the fields would return to fertility.

No-till NF is a method to restore fertility to the fields. In Nature there is no land where absolutely nothing grows. Something or the other grows even in water, in sand, and on stones; all we have to do is to help Nature along.

Q: So how does one "help Nature along" on a barren piece of land?

RT : When I had started on NF, I had no idea what to do. Basically I understood what not to do, like tilling, preparing compost, using chemicals and grazing etc. So first I got rid of the animals, then paid attention to the fencing. I completely stopped any kind of harm caused by outsiders or insiders. By merely these actions, my fields were filled with green cover at the end of a single rainy season. I felt as if Mother Nature, who had lost all vigor through sickness, had come back to life. Lush-green grass, countless trees and shrubs, animals, insects, butterflies and bees started to come back. Then people started to come to see this transformation. All this gave me deep satisfaction. Because my inputs were now minimal, financial losses also stopped. Over time, native Babool (Acacia nilotica), Subabool (Leucaena leucocephala) and other trees started flourishing there. And then I started throwing seeds following Nature's example.

Really, Nature does not need our help; what it needs is protection. Humans and farm animals cause maximum damage and all you have to do to help Nature is to stop this damage. Even complete wastelands can be restored by this technique. Just get rid of the forces of destruction and multitudes of life forms start working on their own. There is no need for applying great human intelligence.

Daily Acts Toward A Waste-Free Life

Early last year (2011) my friend Natasha Juliana passed me an article from the Sunset magazine. The article, titled "Zero-waste family in Marin", described how this family managed to live a pretty normal life with no waste.

The article immediately made a deep impression on me. It reminded me of my childhood in South India. Growing up in the 1980s in the small city of Trichy, I never saw my family throw anything away. Our neighbors were no different -- there simply was no garbage service! "Zero-waste" was just a part of the lifestyle there, at that time. Of course things have changed there now. Back then, we always carried our own bags and baskets to the grocer. We even bought cooking oil in our own steel containers. Milk was measured in liters and delivered at our doorstep, as was butter. We bought grains (paddy and wheat) in huge jute sacks, took them to the mill and brought home the flour. Meals were always made at home. So were snacks, yogurt and sun-dried goods.

Inspired by the zero-waste family in Marin, I started looking closely at my own everyday life, putting garbage that I produce into perspective. It helped a great deal to watch the documentary “No Impact Man” that was suggested by my friend Suzette Stephens. What ensued was a series of small changes towards reducing garbage that have added up over time, with the result that we have put out our municipal trash can only twice in the last twelve months, and the recycling can only a few more times.  I will now take you on a short tour around our household, and talk about the changes we have integrated into our everyday lives.

To begin with a little background is in order. We are a family of four: my husband, a boy (8), a girl (5 ½) and me. We live in a duplex condo in Rohnert Park, California, in a pretty typical American suburb built in the early 1990s.

Grocery Shopping.   

Let's begin with the bags. We have a few bags of bags in our car trunk that we carry for grocery shopping. This includes the transparent plastic bags too. Since we always reuse our bags, we hardly have the need to use new ones provided at the store. Some stores even offer a small discount for bringing one’s own bags! It was such a pleasure to discover the bulk bins at our local stores. We buy most of the organic staples that we need -- including yeast, fig bars, vanilla extract, soba noodles and pasta -- from the bulk bins now. We found that a lot of times it is cheaper to buy organic items from the bulk section. My kids were of course delighted to see ginger cookies, sesame sticks and raspberry bars there. “Mom! Organic snacks in the bulk bins! No chemicals and no plastic! Can we buy these?” A few months into this mode of shopping, we realized that all that we needed was located in the periphery of the stores. By avoiding the center aisles we were reducing the plastic we were throwing away and also probably buying healthier at the same time.

The bulk bins brought to our notice other grains that we have now introduced into our diet. Our breakfasts now include millet, corn meal and steel-cut oats. And I shouldn’t forget to mention the fresh ground peanut butter that my kids simply love. We take our own (empty) glass jar, get it weighed initially (tare weight) and refill our jar. Some of the local stores that have a wide range of items in their bulk bins are Oliver’s in Cotati, Community Market in Santa Rosa and Whole Foods in Petaluma.

We buy our eggs directly from local farms or friends that have chicken coops or the farmers' markets. We return our empty egg cartons to the farmers. We learned about the energy-intensive recycling process involved with the plastic milk containers; we were not entirely happy about the details of it. So we switched to Strauss milk which comes in glass containers; we pay a deposit of $1.50 at the time of purchase and that is credited when we return the container. We buy cheese only if we can find a vendor (at the Farmers' market) who is willing to sell a small unwrapped wedge. This necessarily means going without cheese most of the time. Considering the energy involved in the production and sales of cheese, we have decided to include it only occasionally in our meals as a special treat. The ideal situation would be to become vegan (we have always been vegetarians), then we won’t have to worry about these details.

Kitchen. 

We have a green waste receptacle, next to the sink, where all our vegetable and fruit scraps go. There is no trash can under the sink now. Instead I have reclaimed this space for much needed storage for small appliances like the blender and the jars, the sandwich/waffle maker etc. I noticed that even after making changes to the way we grocery-shopped, our main source of plastic was the bread that came in plastic bags. One option was to switch to breads available in paper bags. Instead, I decided to take up the daunting task of baking, something I had never really done before. I decided to get help and enlisted a dear Petaluma friend, Sarah Hamner, to be my baking teacher. She walked me through a great recipe for a delicious whole wheat loaf. Every week or so, I faithfully follow her recipe make three loaves at a time. The kids love to get involved and the whole process has evolved into a greatly enjoyable culinary ritual. To maximize the use of the oven, I also make granola or baked pasta on the same day. We also make our own yogurt (just add live culture into warm milk), jams during summer and various kinds of simple dips and sauces like hummus and apple sauce.

Refrigerator/Freezer. 

We have a relatively small energy-efficient refrigerator/freezer where we store dairy, veggies, fruit and leftovers. Having just enough space to store meant that we could never over-stock and also ensured that leftovers waiting to be eaten caught our eyes and are not wasted.

Pantry. We have a bag of bags where we put back the grocery bags after transferring everything from the store into their respective containers. This bag is moved to the car once it has enough bags.

Kids' Corner. We use only one-sided paper from the mail and from my husband’s office for arts. The kids have a small basket under their table to discard used paper; when it overflows they take it to the recycling bin in the garage. They have similar baskets in their rooms for recycling paper. The kids mostly use pencils, color pencils, crayons, chalk pastels and water color for their art work. We don’t buy markers, sharpies etc.

Office/Mail. We mostly receive electronic statements and pay our bills online. We signed up at various places to stop junk mail from flooding our mailbox. There is a recycling bin under the table in our home office. We decided not to own a printer just to avoid the unnecessary printing that the convenience offered.  We use scrap paper to write down driving directions off the Internet.

Dining Area. 

At the table, we have a small pile of cloth napkins, for use during meals and also to wipe off spills that are frequent with kids around.

Clothing. 

Thanks to a friend in my town, we almost never buy new clothes or shoes for our kids. We have established a nice network to circulate these hand-me-downs and everybody that participates benefits from it. We buy under garments new and the rest is all from local thrift stores. This includes my clothes too. It took me a while to get comfortable with shopping at the thrift stores; it is looked down upon in India. Now I enjoy the benefits it offers – less expenses, supporting our local economy, reducing garbage, etc.

Cosmetics. 

I have some stick-on bindis (decorative jewels for the forehead) from India and one lipstick (which I have hardly used). I use a rechargeable electric razor. It has lasted many years. Some local stores sell shampoo, soap, detergent etc. in bulk. We take our own containers and get them refilled. I read about people using baking soda as a deodorant and liked that option.

Laundry. 

We buy laundry detergent powder that comes in cardboard boxes; recycling plastic detergent containers needs more energy. We don't use the dryer most of the year; we either sun-dry or air-dry (drying the clothes in the garage out of the sun, especially during the rains) our laundry. We plan our laundry days based on the weather forecast, during the rainy season. This keeps our gas and electricity bill in the $20's during summer and around $50 during winter.

Sanitary Needs. 

My good friend and piano teacher Jane Fosgreen surprised me when she said that she could count the number of instances she had used a commercial feminine sanitary product. She said that she had always used good quality cloth. I was guilty of the fact that after moving to the U.S., I had conveniently forgotten the norms in India and had transitioned seamlessly to the disposable-ways of living that is prevalent here. I switched back to cloth and found it to be very easy and natural. Recently I heard from a friend about the Diva cup. It certainly is an equally good, sustainable and comfortable alternative.

Parties and Gifts. 

I have a set of about 2 dozen plastic plates and silverware just for party needs. We share this party set with local friends. We invite a small group of friends and families to the birthdays of our children. We serve homemade food and snacks or local fruit and veggies. We have inconvenienced some of our friends by asking them not to bring any gift; so we now request them to bring in any used book, toy or game that their child has outgrown. That works very well. The best birthday gift so far has been the farm-fresh eggs from my friend's backyard!! Our birthday gifts to my kids' friends have been books, homemade desserts, homemade jam, handmade crafts and gift cards to local stores.

Eating-out. 

We choose places that have reusable china and silverware. Also we have one or two of our small containers handy (in the car) just in case we have leftovers.

Car. 

We have a steel water bottle and a coffee mug in the car along with the bags of bags in the trunk.  We have a couple of spoons and forks that have come in handy many times.

Purse. 

My kids asked me if I could carry two little spoons for tasting the samples at the grocery stores. It was quite rewarding to observe that they have taken the zero-waste lifestyle seriously.

House Cleaning. 

We use a rag or sponge to clean the kitchen counter thereby easily eliminating our need for paper towels. We have laminated floor downstairs which are swept with a broom and the dirt is put back into the garden or compost. We mop the floor with a mop that uses a cloth pad. Our bedrooms are carpeted which are vacuumed once in a while. We do throw away the bags. We have separate rags to clean the bathroom floors.

Trash Cans. 

We do have a trash can in the garage and toilet for emergency reasons and also for the convenience of our guests. We discard our old toothbrushes, empty toothpaste tubes (only some brands have recyclable tubes) and vacuum cleaner bags.

Recycling. 

It was a shock for us to realize that recycling was only marginally better than dumping something into the landfill. The Internet has all the details, if you are interested. Basically, we realized that recycling is a good beginning but clearly not sustainable and does not come close to reducing waste.

Now, you may think this is a lot of hard work. Well, it actually isn't. It is a different way of perceiving and planning so we can simply reduce our impact on this beautiful Earth. I shop once a week at Oliver's. During the summer, we buy our produce from the Farmers' market, so we go to Oliver's once every 10 days to 2 weeks. I cook once a day for a maximum of 30 minutes; there are days when we eat out too.

Our family life is fun-filled.  We enjoy a wide variety of activities with the children – including gardening, cooking, vocal music, instrumental music, arts & crafts, board games. Our almost-waste-free philosophy doesn’t stop us from having fun, not one bit.

By treading gently and serving as the role models, we hope our children may take it up too. By involving the next generation we hope to preserve the nature of this only Planet we have. Also, every once in a while some of the following thoughts and questions arise in my mind and they help me stay on track:

- My mom and grandma certainly raised their kids in a more eco-friendly way than me. When I have conflicts in my mind - whether to do something in a certain way - I look up to their ways and that helps me choose the right course, which always takes the environment into consideration.

- If I spend a little bit of extra time shopping, planning and organizing, I can save Mother Earth thousands of years that she will need to decompose the waste I would have produced otherwise.

- When something seems very convenient or very cheap for an unknown reason, I stop to think “Who is actually paying the price here?” That helps me not fall into the trap.

- Years ago, I was disturbed to read a news article that said the U.S. shipped garbage to poor, developing countries. Since I am from one, it bothered me deeply. I have seen both the worlds - America that ships garbage and Indian slums that sit on mounds of garbage. America certainly "looks" clean. The garbage does go away from our houses. But where is “away”?

- Hema

Mangoes and Bananas

After living for 13 long years in the US, we recently have decided to move to India and explore the possibilities of living a simple life by practicing organic farming methods. We won't get to enjoy California grapes and strawberries anymore, but will relish locally grown mangoes and bananas.

Both my kids absolutely love mangoes and bananas. But I have always steered them away from the produce section that has those two fruits; I would read the sticker on the fruit and tell them how far that fruit had traveled and how much resource might have been used in that process. After hearing this a few times, my kids stopped asking me for mangoes and bananas. Sometimes I felt bad about depriving them of these simple pleasures, but still it was important for me to tell them about the impact of our choices.


- Hema