simple | sustainable | lifestyle
Hannah’s House, a local faith-based recovery program had their Freedom Walk yesterday to help raise money for their very effective program.
You can visit their website to learn more about the work they do, but I just wanted to post how I’m personally glad they also care about our environment. The walk ended with food and snacks and as you can see by the enclosed photo, they separated compost, trash and recyclables. Kudos to Hannah’s House for caring for people and for our world.
My wife, Brenda, was looking through a magazine and came across an article on back to school stuff. Now, just a reminder, our kids are adults and out on their own; that’s why we’re wanting to downsize our house.
But this article intrigued her. It talked about a software program called EcoFont that saves 25% on the ink needed to print text. Some time ago, I talked about going paperless as much as possible. But sometimes, you do have to print. And when you do, this may be a great option. EcoFont leaves small voids in the text that don’t get filled with ink. This, in turn, saves the amount of ink you use (greener, because you’re consuming less and that saves all along the way from manufacture to product to disposal) and it saves you money.
You can download a basic font for free at their site. I did and printed out various sizes of text, from 10pt to 64pt just to see how it looked. And it looked fine for your basic text sizes (10pt and 12pt). At 14pt, you can start to see the holes and, as you can see from my picture with this post, at 64pt, it becomes a decorative font.
But most of our printing is text, and most is usually around 12pt font and this is where it shines. Based in the Netherlands, the software doesn’t appear to yet be available in the US. And it currently is only for Windows based computers running MS Office. So being a Mac guy, I’m a little disappointed. But they SAY, they’re working on other versions.
So, EcoFont, I’m waiting with anticipation! I just printed a sustainability report for a client and it was 20 copies with 24 pages, so it would have been nice to be able to print in a more responsible manner.
A couple of weeks ago, Mutual of Omaha came through Eugene. Someone from their organization had wandered across our website and contacted me about recording my “aha moment”. I thought, “why not?”
So, on a warm, sunny August day, in an Airstream trailer in downtown Eugene, I spent a few minutes chatting with Jessica Henry and recording a snippet of what started stirring in me in late 2008. It was that “stirring” that led to the beginning of thesimpleHOUSE and our whole concept. You can watch my aha moment at
Let me know what you think. I’m usually fairly calm in front of people, but found myself a bit nervous with lights, camera and microphone. It was still a great experience, though and I’m glad I did it. It’s always good to tell your story and fremind yourself just what it was that brought you to the point you’re at.
Gardening Eden, by Michael Abbaté is a book about creation care that, as the tag line says “will change your faith, your life, and our world.”
I was first introduced to Mike’s book by my son-in-law, who had climbed Mt. Hood with him. He told me a friend of his had this book coming out that he thought I’d enjoy. As one who has had a long-standing desire to care for creation, and one who has also had a long-standing faith, I was intrigued. I have read several books that combine the viewpoints of faith and environmentalism. Some have been kind of thick and academic, some spiritually “glossy” with little how-to substance.
What I appreciate about Mike’s book is it is written in a very conversational way. I’ve tried to keep this website written that way, because you are much more likely to actually read it if it’s not dry. I want you to read my posts and not doze off half way through. And Mike’s book does just that. It is an easy read, but not without substance. He arranges the book into two sections: “The Garden State”, where he sets the ground-work of where we’re at and kind of how we got here and “Becoming a Gardener”, where he gives some clear, distinct ways we can better care for this creation we have been entrusted with.
My favorite part of The Garden State can be summed up in two quotes from the book. “Gardening Eden was not Adam’s punishment; it was his purpose.” And, “God gives us this universe freely, wanting us to discover the joys of responsible stewardship, of moderation, and the freedom that comes with self-discipline and caring for a flock, of not squandering resources. And by doing these things, God tells us, we’ll better understand and appreciate Him.”
In Becoming a Gardener, Mike gives us 50 Gardening Tips on how we can better tend this garden we’ve been entrusted with. Food, Energy, Transportation, Home and General categories cover the 50 tips, many of which are very easy for us to do, we just often haven’t yet developed that habit. Mike gets us to stop and think a moment and in that, maybe shift our habits just a bit, and in doing so, we become a better gardener.
Through all this, and after I had read the book, I have had the opportunity to meet Mike and his wife Vicki. And I can tell you, they live these principles out. They truly practice what they preach. That’s refreshing. Thanks, Mike, for a good read.
I was talking to a friend a while back who was visiting his grandchildren in England. They asked him why he left the water running while he was brushing his teeth. This gave him pause to think about that. And this caused me to think about the times we leave the water running when we don’t really need to.
Our lot is 60 x 150 feet. The 150 foot side has a fairly new sidewalk, but the 60 foot side on Lawrence Street, I think may have the original sidewalk from 1940. It’s worn, broken, heaving and needs to be replaced.
Now, we could chop it up, haul it to the dump and contribute to the roughly one third of the local waste stream that comes from construction debris or (and here’s where it gets good), we could reuse those chunks as part of our landscape plan.
It’s called “urbanite” and a good description can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yk4rmzr. So we’re working with our landscape architect on this and as Rex, from DLA’s office said “I built a patio at a previous house that way and really liked it. Saves disposal and hauling energy of the old plus new material extraction and hauling energy!”
I know this post will be a little different than many of my previous posts, but I felt I needed to get some balance back into what we do. Halving things is good, but some things simply shouldn’t be minimized. There were a number of factors leading up to this that I need to explain, so stay with me, OK? This might be a bit of a circuitous journey today.
Another area we are looking at to save water is our toilets and clothes washer. These two appliances probably use the most water inside the home as any other. And they are easy “targets” for rainwater use. That’s because they don’t need to use drinking water to be effective. Our thought is to also plumb our home to use some of the rainwater we collect to flush toilets and wash our clothes. 
Our primary us for rainwater will be for landscape irrigation. We’re designing our landscape first to need less water to start with. That’s the way it is with good design in anything, reduce is the first “r”.
