20
Personally I use a wire rack over a cookie sheet to drain fried or greasy foods. The oil drips to the pan below and I can pour the oil into a container or dispose of it however I need to.
11
My toothpaste is made from natural materials (mainly clay, small quantities of herb extracts and essential oils) and comes in a (recyclable) aluminium tube. The cap is from recyclable plastic (but of course for plastics, "recycling" means downcycling).
I find this toothpaste marvellous and pretty sustainable (except for the plastic cap). The clay part ...
11
Ironically, the better you are at reducing your waste, the less likely you are to succeed at replacing plastic bags for the irreducible portion. My mother throws out actual garbage twice a year - one small plastic bag such as the ones you get from grocery stores, every 6 months. While she always has a reusable shopping bag in her purse, she finds that ...
8
To add to Terry and Darren's suggestions, I wanted to insist on the fact that modern bidet attachments are available and easily installable on a sitting water toilet without major modification.
This one I found at a "culturally aware" place in Brisbane, Australia (sorry about the bad quality of the photo):
This kind of compact electronic attachment might ...
6
You will always put more energy into generating this gas mixture than you will get back by burning it. The second law of thermodynamics (which for this context can simply be thought of as saying that nothing can be 100% efficient) guarantees that. So rather than using energy to split water to produce gas for burning, you would be better off using that same ...
6
I like to use wire cooling racks, brown paper bags, and cloth dishtowels dedicated to this endeavor would work for draining. Paper towels you do use might be compostable.
6
The Romans of antiquity used a sponge on a stick. The sponge can be washed in a bucket with water and soap or eco friendly detergent.
6
I am surprised no-one has mentioned bidets yet, which in Japan is your high-tech toilet. (Though, it sounds like in India it is a shower!)
The "eco sums" will get quite complicated, as you are trading some electricity and water to save a few sheets of paper. If you reduce from say 8 sheets of 1-ply down to 2 sheets, I imagine that is an overall saving: ...
6
So far the best alternative that I've found is to use a refillable marker. I bought one of these a week ago with a bottle of ink. The marker is not made of plastic (I would say it is made of aluminium) except from the cap, so I have reduced a lot the quantity of plastics used. Also, the ink bottle provides around 10 complete refills making it even cheaper ...
6
The Natural Resources Defense Council commissioned a study in late 2015 to understand the energy consumption from 4K TVs, titled The Big Picture: Ultra High-Definition Televisions Could Add $1 Billion to Viewers' Annual Electric Bills. While this doesn't exactly answer your question as regards the resolution of You-Tube videos, it gives some solid clues.
...
5
Females can certainly reduce their TP use by using cut up cloth to wipe after #1. Using the cut off tops of old cotton socks works really well too. They have a good amount of thickness for absorption. Small cotton cloths & sock tops take up hardly any space in a load of laundry and can be reused over and over. Reduce your use of precious tree fibres, and ...
5
I have not found much of an alternative to paper towels, but you could at least try the following:
Drain food that has been deep fried on a wire rack. Only after this use paper towel to soak up excess oil.
I keep paper towel that is soaked in cooking oil and use it as a fire-lighter later on. Of course, that only works if you have a wood-fired stored.
To ...
5
Is there a shaving razor that is an alternative to, say, Gillette Mach 3, and does not use plastic ?
I'm an energy consultant - I'm also aware of the environmental impacts of plastic - however; I still have to ask, what is the issue with plastic?
The only thing more sustainable than plastic is SOME wood IF it is carefully cared for.
The carbon embedded in the production of plastic is VERY low compared to say aluminium, stainless etc... Plastic is a great ...
5
You should look at the corporate responsibility of the companies who make toothpaste.
Some will be better than others and you can be sure that many will be incentive by both government tax schemes and public opinion to reduce the negative footprint of their products. You can also be sure that the bigger companies are almost always better equipped financially ...
5
Since you don't indicate in which country you're thinking of implementing this plan, I'm going to write from my perspective in the US, considering chain hotels (Marriot, Holiday Inn, Hilton,, etc) that make up the majority of hotels here.
I can think of several ways in which a building constructed as a hotel would have greater environmental costs than a ...
4
When my daughter was in diapers, we used cloth wipes for her. I bought them online, but pretty much any small piece of cloth will do. I would wet it with a spray bottle of water or a wipes solution to keep her skin clean and free of any rashes. The only thing I didn't like about it was having to using a diaper sprayer/bidet to rinse solid waste before ...
4
The alternative of toothpaste and toothbrush, that people still use in country parts in India.
Branches of following trees Prosopis juliflora tree and Azadirachta indica tree.
See Wikipedia Azadirachta indica other uses
4
As a retired dentist with 30+ years of practice experience I have some input here. This will be a very controversial statement:
Toothpaste is NOT essential to good oral hygiene!!!
Just routine (thorough and expert) brushing and flossing without any dentifrice is sufficient for plaque removal!
Toothpastes are useful for some reasons:
1 They make B&F ...
4
You must open circuit the panels you're not using, do not short circuit them. Open circuit is fine, the panel just sits there and no current flows. You'll see quite a high voltage on the terminals (it'll be listed on the panel data sheet as "maximum open circuit voltage". If you short the panels you'll get up to "maximum short circuit current" which risks ...
4
Long before plastic bags became ubiquitous, stores provided customers with paper bags. It was also a time when people used to read hard copy newspapers as their main source of news. To utilize the stack of newspapers that was accumulating daily they wrapped their kitchen scraps and other domestic garbage in several layers of newspapers before disposing of ...
4
Flushing down the toilet is a lot better than have it end up in a city dump where it will remain as long as the bag that contains it lasts.
You can purchase dedicated pet waste composting units or make your own. I have a bucket with lots of holes drilled in the bottom and have it half buried in the ground on the verge so that I can open it up, and drop the ...
3
Here's an instructional video on making toothpaste with the primary ingredient being diatomaceous earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRnjmDIRmqM
The recipe, as identified in the video, is as follows:
1/2 c. food grade diatomaceous earth
1/2 c. water
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. Stevia (I presume they mean stevia leaf extract)
12 drops peppermint oil
2 drops tea ...
3
It is appealing to use wind or PV whenever they are available, and to have heating when it is required - and something is required to help those align in time.
Using the energy to synthesise storable fuels is one way to do it.
However, you need special burners to make the most of burning a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. You need special equipment to store the ...
3
OK, writing on a used piece of paper is hard to beat. Because you own the laptop already and the paper is from the waste I would say the remaining factors are the pencil vs. the energy and the computers wear.
Then it starts: How is your energy produced? What kind of pencil? What's the livespan of your computer?
Since I'm quite sure there is no definite ...
3
I know that tea tree oil is poisonous when ingested, just like you said, but it is also toxic for animals upon contact. It must go into the blood stream by penetrating the skin. Because it exists in the composition of insect-repellents and plant fungicids, I presume that it is toxic to insects too.
There are discussions at the European Union parliament as ...
3
I live in Korea and we have a bidet toilet seat. I was wary at first, but now I'm a complete convert. Paper just cannot clean as well. There are a few varieties of bidet toilet attachments, but they basically fall into the categories of mechanical and electrical. The mechanical ones are of course the most environmentally friendly, and I personally don't like ...
3
In more outhouse oriented times, folk would use old corn cobs. Giving us the expression 'corn-hole'
3
Ayurveda, an ancient science of life, food, medicine & healing and sister science to Yoga, provides these suggestions:
Datun / Datoon can made from plant stems
Dant Manjan / Herbal Tooth Powder also from herbal preparations. (PS. The word 'Dant' (think Dental) is Sanskrit/Hindi for Tooth/Teeth. So, ever wonder where your modern dental techniques came ...
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