Talking about making a difference

As we watch on the fire maps, a country is gripped in a heat wave and fires rage through. Mother Nature is thrashing and complaining again. She does that a lot these days. Like a toddler, she throws tantrum after tantrum.  Wherever you are in the world, you will have seen some of these disasters.  It's normal to have a tantrum sometimes, but when they are so frequent and so violent, something is wrong, something needs to be changed or the tantrums will only get worse.

Bushfires blazing about 200km from here, but close to some of my family.
Image from here

When we're given these natural disasters, our first instinct is to fight. Again, the toddler analogy works - as parents our first instinct with a naughty child is to yell at them and fight back. But all of you who have survived toddlers know that, in fact, the best option is to to be more gentle, to hunt for the triggers and to try to make life less stressful for your little one. And so with Mother Nature, her tantrums are telling us that life on earth is too stressful for her, she needs a break! And as the guardians of Earth, it's up to us to give her that break.

But how? The job feels too huge for our family or yours. But maybe it isn't. Every little thing we do to strive to help the Earth helps. If you turn off an appliance at the switch today, you've helped. If you buy less rubbish or reuse an item, you've helped. If you do a string of little things, you've helped quite a bit and if you can manage big things like going solar for your power or not driving your car, you've made an even bigger difference.

But the best way to make a difference is something I've learnt by accident over the last couple of months, and it struck home yesterday. You see I'd started to comment on the Grass Roots magazine Facebook page. Interesting conversations come up and I jump in to talk about things like cloth pads/menstrual cups, wee wipes, green Christmas ideas etc. And then I found out that all of my other Facebook friends can see these comments (oh the lack of privacy on Facebook is just scary!). I was pretty embarrassed. It is one thing to write on this blog or tell GR magazine about my use of these things, but I was mortified that all my work friends, school mates, belly dance colleagues, family and other friends now could know too! But then something amazing happened - a friend who had seen one of my comments asked to know more. We had a long and detailed (and not at all embarrassed) conversation about menstrual cups and now she is planning to get one for her and one for her daughter!  So now my changes to greener choices have not only reduced the amount of waste I produce, but have multiplied to much greater amounts than I alone could do. I've also noticed my family is starting to make a few changes after seeing our changes; people ask me about our solar hot water or our waterless toilet; people tell me that they think of me when they go to buy a disposable item, and you, my dear handful if readers, tell me that you are trying some of the things I talk about here.

So what is the best thing we can do to help our poor planet? We can talk about ways to help it!  We make little changes, then tell our friends and family about them and how easy they are and help them to make little changes too.  Then, maybe they'll tell someone, who will tell someone else,etc etc. A butterfly effect might just happen and together, our tiny efforts will become something huge.

So today, I'm not only encouraging you to talk to anyone who'll listen about little things we can do to ease the pressure we've collectively put on the earth, but I'm going to give you another little idea :-). It's just a tiny one, perhaps you already do it.

* if you cook bread, pastry, or roll out biscuits, chances are your recipe calls for you to cover your dough with plastic cling wrap. Don't! A damp cloth (a napkin or tea towel) will work just as well, that's what people did before they had rolls of plastic wrap! We don't use plastic wrap at all anymore, in fact. Items to be microwaved are covered with a lid or plate, items for the fridge are covered the same way and lunches use reusable boxes or bags. Maybe you could start eliminating plastic wrap too!

So that's my tip for today, perhaps it'll have a butterfly effect. If you're new to my blog, look around and you'll find more of the ideas that we do.

The blogs I read each day inspire me constantly - thank you to the bloggers who share the things they do to live greener, more sustainable lives. Here are a few great places to get inspired.

• Little Eco Footprints
• Slow Living Essentials
• The Witches Kitchen
• Urban Homestead South Africa
• Down To Earth
• Grass Roots on Facebook (or in fact, the magazine!)

(BTW, I read many more wonderful blogs, these are just the ones where I get the most "green tips")

Do you have a tip, just something small, that we can spread the word on? Comment below! Or, if you write a blog, pop a link below and link back here on your blog. If you know another blog that, like those listed above, is full of ideas, let me know that too so I can add if to this list (and my personal reading list). Lets talk folks, and work together to make a big difference.