Build a solar oven. [4] Learn the best time and direction for accessing the sun's heat. Then, put asparagus, cauliflower or okra--without water--in the oven's black pot at noon for 30 minutes. Go directly to heaven with the vegetable's true taste.
Install laundry lines. Neighbors can catch up on their lives when they hang linens.
Build a free lending library.
Teach counterbalances to technology. I vote that kindergarteners through to university students learn how to build nutrient-dense soil, grow vegetables and keep compost.
Delay children's use of electronics until reading, writing and math are mastered on paper. With COVID, I considered this is impossible. Then I learned that to protect students' eyesight and prevent them from Internet and gaming addiction, China just banned mobile phones in schools. [5] In 2018, after more than 40% of Shandong, China's children developed myopia, educators allowed no more than 15 minutes per screen-time session, and no more than one hour per day. [6]
At fix-it clinics, retirees can teach youth how to repair and repurpose clothes, electronics, appliances and cars. [7]
At community centers, we could all learn self-help care to restore and maintain health through food, herbal remedies and movement. Grandparents, parents and students could share questions and experience. We could encourage each other to pace ourselves and rest, regularly. (If I kept one day each week free of electronics, would I feel better?)
Include the end-of-life in our awareness: besides making compost, get a biodigester. Use kitchen scraps to make methane (to power appliances) and fertilizer. [8]
Quit acquiring junk. Give away unused stuff.
Annually, review your health-care directive, pre-need obituary and burial plan. Cremation takes lots of energy and emits greenhouse gases and toxins. How/could we make arranging a burial with minimal impacts easier and affordable?
Question every product's cradle-to-cradle impacts
Besides strengthening our relationship to the Earth from our cradles-to-graves, continue developing awareness of technology's impacts. Wait at least four years before upgrading to a new computer or device, then let the questions roll: Is this product or service within our ecological means? When people are food or housing-insecure, how/can we counterbalance purchasing new telecom products and services? What'll become of this device when I no longer use it? What are the ecological impacts of manufacturing, operating, discarding this product--and its infrastructure?
Track the international supply chain of one substance in a device you already own or want to own.
Challenge ourselves
Name five daily activities that depend on electronics, then figure out how to do these activities with minimal or no electronics. I'm not suggesting use of "renewable" power here. If you include the manufacturing of a solar photovoltaic system (for example), then charging your phone with it will still use significant power and extraction and emit significant greenhouse gases and toxins. [9] I'm suggesting activities like reading library books, aware that that could mean driving to the library, and that the book engage the global super-factory supplying paper and ink for its production.
Nothing about this situation is simple. Recently, at the grocery store, I discovered I'd left my credit card at home. Using a credit card is energy-intensive. But paying cash meant that the cashier tossed and replaced a pair of rubber gloves to limit COVID's spread.
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