Julia Lissau's Story

I am greatly concerned about the global warming crisis and try to do what I can to minimize my footprint on the planet in hopes that there will be some quality to the future of those generations who will follow. We owe our earth for the gift of being able to live here and should act accordingly to protect it – and that means being assertive about climate change. A few personal examples…

I cycle as much as possible for shopping, visiting and meetings – even in winter (as long as roads are not icy and the temperatures are not less than -1 Celsius). I never idle if I do have to drive, and ask vehicle idlers to turn engines off and tell them why. At home, water use is around 4.5 cubic meters every 3 months for 2 of us, except for 3 - 4 summer food garden months. It is not hard to do. All shower and dish water is saved and used to flush the toilet. Except in the heat of summer we follow the “if it’s yellow let it mellow; if it’s brown flush it down” rule as it seems so gluttonous to waste high quality drinking water to flush a toilet. Vernon’s grey water is only re-used once but in Europe they can re-use treated water at least 8 times before returning clean water to the river it came from. We, here, have a lot of rethinking to do on resource waste. An ice cream pail under each tap saves hand washing and veggie washing water for re-use as well. We do only one full laundry load a week using a water efficient machine and use a laundry line for drying all year round. We conserve much of our roof rain water for garden use and when the dry months hit, have a trickle system and heavy mulching to minimize water use for our large, organic, high yield food garden. I scrounge all over town for 60+ bags of clean leaves each year for the mulch. We live minimally, purchasing second hand as much as possible, or not buying if it is a ‘want’ and not a ‘need’. We recycle so much that I could put out garbage once a month and still not fill a shopping bag! Home is small so there’s no need to furnish extra rooms (what a money saver!) and there’s not a lot of time needed for cleaning! (I’d rather read a book!) Having lived and worked in a third world country, I know how little a person can live with and still be happy and healthy.