General

Hmmm. Oh, you’re back. It’s Wednesday, right? I’d better get the trash out. Did I tell you I’ve been working on zero waste? We’re down from four bags a fortnight to one, I call that success. Next week it’ll be even less, half a bag I hope. What’s that you’re holding? Something you found on the door mat? Oh, a flyer for a neighbourhood barbecue, well, that sounds like fun.I never stay long at these things, too shy really. The neighbours are fabulous though, great folks. Gary plays his cello and Lorna brings her electric guitar. I bake ten tonnes of cinnamon buns, maybe I’ll do the face painting again this year. I’ll talk Marsha into coming, she’s always a hoot in social situations, no off switch, no mental censorship, just wall to wall funny stories.

By Angela Abraham, @daisydescriptionari, March 19, 2015.

Found in Are you awake yet? - first draft, authored by Daisy.

General

I don't command an army, or a nation. Mostly I struggle to even command my pet dog. But I refuse to be powerless, to not even try to put my faith into action. My first task was to reduce convenience foods, all that extra transportation and packaging - plastic and heavily dyed cardboard - that's a lot of extra pollution. With a sac of flour, yeast, sugar, salt I have bread, pizza dough. Add some eggs and I have fresh pasta. Add some butter and cinnamon and I have mouth watering buns. I cheat a bit with my bread machine making the dough sometimes, but every step in the right direction is a good step. With a sack of rice and lentils, some spices, onions, I have many meals. It's more work for sure, but there's joy in that too. The kids are playing less shoot'em ups and making tagliatelle before dinner or whipping up a batch of butter-rich dough, or macaroons.

Instead of expensive entertainment we work together, jar pickles, chutneys, salsa and pasta sauces some weekends - enough to last months and it's good for a year. Our grocery bill has halved and we we eat more healthily than before - more fresh whole fruit, vegetables. Meat or fish is once a week if that, and even then we make sure it's from an ethical source. But once that was done we noticed something else - we were putting out less than half of the garbage we did before, less recycling too.

So over the next year I'm going to be working out how to get us down to as near zero waste as possible, scrutinizing purchases for their planetary impact, "voting" for the ethical products. It's about time the nice guys finished first, green-washing isn't enough. This is my faith in action, to show our Creator I care enough not to carry on in my old ways - buying plastic junk and disposable or short-lived products that will be in land-fill or in the oceans in less than a year.