Regard the Rs

The Rs, yes those famous Rs. Reading, (w)Riting and (a)Rithmatic. Vital to the well-being of any society. The bane of elementary school children. A total headache for the parents of said children. A necessary evil. Not the actual doing of, but the necessity to impart the knowledge to unwilling little holtzene keppes, dumkopfs - our beloved children.

But this is tangential. I'm not concerned at this point in my grandmotherly life with those three Rs. It's those other Rs, acutely relating to our personal responsibilities in the relatively newly-emerged world-wide recognition of climate change and global warming.

Therefore, the three Rs of which I now give thought (although needless to say, like most people my 'thoughts' are just now catching up to my previous actions) are Recycle, Re-use and Reduce. Re-think could be added to that as in re-think priorities. Responsibility could also be tossed in for good measure.

We all do what we can, don't we? In our household, for example, there are no (perhaps one or two overlooked ones) incandescent bulbs being used; only those twisted odd-looking energy-savers. We helped our daughter in her switch-over as well. Good on us. Light switches are always turned to the off position when we vacate a room. But good heavens, we've been doing that since forever.

Far more gets dumped into our compost pail sitting under the kitchen counter than what makes its meagre way into the garbage pail. And what ends up in the garbage pail is mostly made up of packaging. We could use a lot less packaging in the commercial/retail level. Years ago when shopping in Tokyo I used to marvel at the waste of resources used in packaging; we've caught up.

The garbage we actually place beside the curb on collection day is minimal. We place beside the garbage on appropriate days all the newsprint, paper products, cardboard and other allied recyclables in our black boxes. And on alternate weeks we place all the recyclable plastics and glass containers in the blue boxes, then skip along in self-congratulation.

Well, that's not all. We don't ordinarily and haven't for years, purchased our clothing at the usual retail outlets. Sometimes footwear can be added to that, and outdoor gear. The same holds true for books, they're all purchased second-hand. As long as I'm able to throw a garment into the washing machine, as long as it's been gently worn, as long as it has been well made of decent fabrics, I'll give it a once-over.

I'm still working on using our (low-energy) dishwasher less than I do. We are wedded to our modern conveniences. I'll accept using the clothes-dryer to the point where really hard-to-dry towels come out damp, and I'll hang them about the house to finish drying. Cold-wash cycles aren't embraced because it's hot water that zaps those germs out of contention.

We eat meat no more than twice a week, shop locally, purchase few processed or pre-prepared foods. We drive a fuel-efficient vehicle (Honda Civic). We turn the thermostat down, way down at night. And during the day it's up somewhat, but low enough to necessitate the wearing of three layers of clothing indoors lest we turn into blocks of ice.

We use a small counter-top oven for baking, and use it also for meal preparation when applicable, ensuring we don't use more energy by using the oven of the full-size stove. Although if we do use the large oven we can leave the door open afterward, to let the heat from it flood the kitchen.

Our large windows facing west at the back of the house invite plenty of sunlight on bright days, which warms up the house considerably, until sundown. Many of those windows are now also covered with stained glass, which heats up even more than ordinary glass, further warming up the house.

We can afford to buy 'new', choose not to. Rally to the cause, folks.