Please let’s not get political in either direction in this thread or it will be closed. There is a lot of manipulation going on and I’m not sure what is true anymore. That said, I do the best I can to use as little as possible for many reasons, including keeping my own costs down. I can’t worry about what any of you are or aren’t doing. It takes enough energy to take care of myself, my dogs and my family. We have enough thrown at us every day that we don’t need to find ways to disagree on this forum where we should all be supporting each other, whether we agree or not. I ventured out to an all breed dogs board and immediately ran into an anti GSD post because well, you know, our dogs are all so aggressive.

 

The big irony of single-use plastic water bottles is that the water in them is almost always contaminated with microplastics and pthlates from the bottles themselves. The single-use plastic is soft and warm (deflated and not formed), when water is injected into them on the bottling line. Gross.

Water out of hotel taps can taste yuckie, but I've learned that nearly every hotel gym has a big water cooler or water filtration machine. I travel with big metal Thermoflask tankards from Costco. I refill them in the gym. Dog and I get good-tasting filtered water this way when we travel, without having to buy bottled water.

I had our home tap water at home tested by an independent lab, not long after Flynt happened, in order to find out whether the old pipes in our city were impacting the water coming out of the tap. (A company called "Tap Score" is fantastic for that -- the lab is affiliated with UC Berkeley, sends you a collection kit, and then offers unbiased filter recommendations matched to your water, without any commissions or referral fees). Our water at home turned out to not be bad, so a carbon filter to remove the chlorine taste is good enough--that saved me from buying an unnecessary more expensive filtration system. "Test don't guess" is good advice for water. (The only thing I didn't test for is PFOAs, as the test wasn't yet available --that's on my list to do this year.)

 

You can get water pitchers that filer water. I got one for my allergic dog, tried it and found that I preferred the taste to tap water because of all the chemicals. Our tap water has a distinctive taste that water should not have.

 

The water discussion is very interesting. I too cannot stand the smell or taste of chlorinated city water and find it disgusting. I use a Brita filter which I’m not sure how much it actually does filtration-wise but it definitely makes it taste better (the dogs also get this water). My parents are on a well and it is very tasty. I currently rent but hope one day to purchase a home that is on a well.

 

My dogs drink my well's water. I drink bottled spring water. Maybe gross, maybe not. If I have to drink water at all, that is what I do, the least of the evils I suppose.

 

There are alternatives. At some point, the water used to manufacture the single use water bottles was more than the water that they held. I'm old enough to remember canteens. We filled them with our home water and took them with us. About 15 or so years ago, I invested in stainless steel water bottles. They are still fine except for the ones that I inadvertently left some place.
My well water is good enough for me and my dogs. It tastes fine.

And some states have deposits on beverage bottles to encourage recycling. (OR, CA, WA + others)

But what I struggle with is trying to grab something at the grocery store that isn't wrapped in plastic. For snacks on the road home or a quick bite, the packaging determines my purchase maybe more than the contents.... On groceries, given that a larger container uses less product to make, I buy the large size of something that I will use while it is still good. I suppose I should really suggest the grocery go to other packaging and take on some of the manufacturers, too.

 

My grocery store started packaging some vegetables in cardboard which gets soggy and the food rots inside of it because you can’t see it. There must be a better way that can satisfy everyone and keeps food from spoiling or getting stale, like cereal or bread.

 

Dunno if anyone on here watches Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, but he did a piece last year about single-use plastics and how companies have put the onus on the consumer to recycle plastics, so that WE feel bad when we don't (or in my case, being in rural Montana, CAN'T) recycle...when really the companies need to take responsibility and start using alternatives to plastic packaging. I HATE how prolific it is. I am trying as much as possible to grow my own food and stop relying on plastic-wrapped stuff, but it's still nearly impossible to come home from a grocery trip without plastic.

Luckily here in western MT the tap water tastes pretty good. I'm on the city system. I'm wary of wells because of all the agricultural runoff, all those pesticides gotta go somewhere...but I used to live in Fort Stockton, TX, and the city water was absolutely disgusting. As in, completely undrinkable. I had 3 Nalgene bottles that I would bring with me to my office every day, where we had a Culligan machine, and I filled 'em up and brought 'em home, lol.

Personally, I haven't had a single-use plastic water bottle in years. Maybe over a decade. I use my Nalgenes, which, granted, are plastic, but they last a good long time.

I still remember the days when cereal didn't come inside a plastic bag inside the box. It was just in the box. With a toy inside.

 

Inside the cereal box, the liner looks more like waxed paper but is actually a plastic. Not every municipality recycles it.

That's one of the problems in our very comprehensive recycling programs. One day they take virtually all plastic, then they don't take black colored. One month they take styrofoam including what comes under your wrapped fresh meat, then they don't. Any paper with a speck of food attached ruins the batch.

Then there's the recycled electronics that end up in Asia stripped down and leaching back into rivers or the millions of pounds of plastic that ends up being burned overseas....

An apartment building camera caught a contracted recycling company throwing recycling in with the garbage and sent a camera crew to investigate at the company. They tried to say they were separating it later

 

I use Nalgenes too. Great for hiking, hold more water, are sturdy but not too heavy (though sometimes for packpacking I use the soft sided ruffwear water bottles if I’m trying to gram weenie). But I use nalgenes around home too

 

Had to google gram weenie… I was not disappointed! Lol

 

Since we live and travel in our motorhome, I keep a Berkey filter in my kitchen. We only buy individual bottles if we are desperately thirsty and I didn't bring our own Yeti bottles. I even reuse plastic juice bottles as dog toys. Granted it doesn't really reduce plastics.

 

I've had cloth bags die on me, especially the insulated ones. But I'm talking about the heavy plastic bags I was forced to buy last summer. Some of those bags had dings and holes in them after the first trip home from the store. They were dirty after two or three trips.
I have no issues, with cloth

 

“What solutions have you found to reduce the environmental impact of your dog?”

Feeding raw to help reduce the amount poop bags we have to use because stools are lot as voluminous (less waste).
On hikes I’ve switched to carrying a Stasher container for Josie’s treats, instead of using a plastic sandwich bag. When I do have to use a plastic sandwich bag I keep it until there are holes in it.
I use a soft flask for trail running, so that’s what we use to carry water when we’re hiking. The amount of plastic water bottles we pick up on the trails can be astounding at times.
We use a Berkey to filter water from the tap, so we have not needed to buy bottled water for some time.
When it comes to gear, I try to buy quality products that will hold up for years, so less have to go in the landfill. Any gear or toys I want to upgrade but still have life in them, I donate to the local humane society.

I use “Earth Rated” dog poop bags, but now I’m considering switching to these:

Amazon.com: GreenPolly Pet Waste and Dog Poop Bags, 250 Count, Made with 100% Renewed Material, Durable, Purple, Fits in Standard Park Dispensers : Pet Supplies

Buy GreenPolly Pet Waste and Dog Poop Bags, 250 Count, Made with 100% Renewed Material, Durable, Purple, Fits in Standard Park Dispensers on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

www.amazon.com

Are there dog wipes made from recycled material?

 

I think feeding raw has a much larger actual environmental impact than kibble. Unless of course you are rearing and butchering your own pasture or home-fed animals.

Main thing is there are too many people although nobody really wants to think about it. We went from under 2 billion when my grandmother was born to 8 billion now and that's not without impact to the planet. For the vast majority (all but the last 200 years or so) there are about 1 billion humans on this earth. Mind boggling when you think about what a billion is.

We are living in a golden age of luxury right now- at least us in the first world. Ease, comfort, long lives, time to devote to hobbies like dogs. People complain about being anxious but life is soo easy if you think about what it was like just 200 years ago! Much less 1,000 years past. I don't know when the age of ease will end but Earth does have a carrying capacity and the ways it reaches that are not pretty or fun for the organism that is past its carrying capacity.

 

Pemi hit the nail on the head. There are just too many people for the available resources and the problem keeps growing with the population.

 

I came across this in my computer files: Changes folks, it's going to happen, whether we want it to or not.

As someone who's always loved horses, I've often wished things hadn't changed.

My father was a young man during this part of the 20th century. He drove a horse and cart to High School, and when he got his first car, it had to be put up on blocks during the winter, as it couldn't deal with snowy winter roads!

My father's first car, a 1929 Model A Ford:

 

Ok but the real question is………
Who the heck is naming their horse Dobbin?!
🤣

great pic of your dad and his car!

 

Wow. There are 260million+ autos in the US alone. Now the horse, that is an amazing critter to be sure, takes about an acre of land to support. And that does not count the fields of hay that must be harvested to get the beasts through the winter. But whatever. Can you imagine if all those 260million+ auto owners needed an extra acre to support their horse? It's a lot of land. And all those critters displaced for all those horses. Talk about a massive eco-change. And most of us couldn't make it to work on a horse, because a horse can't go 100 miles+ day in and day out. So we would have to have trains and places to store our horses while we are using the fuels to get to work by bus or train. And buggies need tires too. Buggies aren't cheap I hear. Be that as it may be. I love horses and often think I would like to live in a more agrarian time. But I live now. I actually live in the sticks and have an acre. But a horse won't get me to work every day. I used to ride my bike sometimes, when work was only 18 miles away, but I can't even do that now. And someone would be complaining about the road apples, and the methane produced when the animals break wind. Do you know there are folks out there putting plastic bags on their cows butts? How crazy is that? Herbivors make the best fertilizer where carnivor droppings tend to kill anything green. Sigh. We hear that there are too many bodies on this planet, and yet places like Germany were importing migrant workers because their population growth cannot support manufacturing.

I guess the good news is that so many folks are in a place where they can stop spending all their resources on surviving day to day, and can spend their energy worrying about how many folks are on the planet and how they are ruining it. It's too bad that most of the options they come up with to battle that, hurt the folks that are in that first group struggling to make ends meet and provide for their families.

 

In Dobbin's defense I have read that you used to have to buy fuel in metal cans at the pharmacy... that could not have been cheap.

 

I don't know about the pharmacy, but the metal gas cans I do remember. They lasted. We used them over and over and over and over. They worked. Now we have these horrible plastic gas containers that have awful contraptions to pour with and I always spill the crap all over me and everywhere but in the mower. I wish we could go back to the old fashioned gas can.

 

there is a Long Horned Cattle round up going on this weekend. Lots of locals come out to help. Many remember when they still did the work on horseback instead of 4 wheelers.

 

Back to what we can do - try to be mindful. Watch our own actions.

I'm ancient. My first environmental awareness was reading Racheal Carson's The Silent Spring as part of a special high school enhancement weekend workshop. That was long ago. (but still in my life-time ) Then there was the 70s and increased awareness - ZPG promotion, Diet for a Small Planet etc. Back in the 90s Al Gore's An inconvenient Truth. And here we are....

 

Back to what we can do - try to be mindful. Watch our own actions.

I'm ancient. My first environmental awareness was reading Racheal Carson's The Silent Spring as part of a special high school enhancement weekend workshop. That was long ago. (but still in my life-time ) Then there was the 70s and increased awareness - ZPG promotion, Diet for a Small Planet etc. Back in the 90s Al Gore's An inconvenient Truth. And here we are....

When I was in the fourth grade, 1976 I think, when I was 8, our social studies books showed a family in gas masks walking through some garbage dump like area.

I don't know how old I was when I saw Soilent Green and Logan's Run.

None of it worked. I am just not worried about population growth or humans causing the world's end through pollution. I remember the nuclear war crap too. Not worried about that either. Not saying it can't happen. Just not losing sleep over it.

 

Silent Spring was required reading in university but I also recall reading it in High School. It was a very important book, and I think it was instrumental in getting DDT and a lot of other very harmful pesticides banned. Without the ban, the bald eagle would most likely be extinct now, as well as ospreys and other birds that eat a lot of fish and insects. It would thin their shells to the point the eggs would be crushed when the parents tried to incubate them.

 

Not sure if anyone read My Side of the Mountain series, it was also geared toward creating awareness about exposure of DDT impacting the eggs of raptors.

 

Now we have to watch raptors due from rodentcides. The mice and rats have to be controlled. The most effective way also kills those that eat them. We need more good ratters, less poison.

 

One person who did his best to protect the environment and live lightly on the land was Pete Seeger. He had a 1988 electric Ford Ranger. It had a range of 10 to 20 miles, but that was good enough for his needs. He used it all the time. He would often use it to power the PA system at music events at his home, as well as to power an electric chainsaw he used to cut wood to heat his home. The batteries, regular lead-acid batteries, were kept charged by solar panels he installed on the roof of his barn.

https://renewablereality.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Pete-Seeger-Picks-Solar.pdf

It just shows you what can be done if you are determined to do what you can to help the environment, and don't listen to the naysayers, who will do their best to convince you that renewable energy is totally impractical. (Windmill cancer, anyone?? Remember that? 🤣 )

Of course 10 to 20 miles wouldn't work for everyone, but when I think about it, it would work for most of my trips. I live in a small town that only has a variety store, a post office and a restaurant. But the nearest large town with just about all the things I need is only 12 minutes away by car. And of course, electric vehicles and the batteries that power them have improved a LOT since 1988!

I used to own a hybrid Toyota Highlander. The one thing I didn't like about it was the electric power only worked at very low speeds. At anything over 30 mph, I would be burning gas. I'd like to see the automotive industry improve hybrids, so you could switch from electric to gas once you electric battery runs low. This makes so much sense to me: why aren't they making an effort to do it??

When my hybrid died after 10 years of service, I couldn't afford to replace it with a new one - they were too darn expensive, and used ones were impossible to find... 😥

If there is a human race still here in a hundred years, I think
it will be hundreds of millions of little things that will have saved us. Imagine a big seesaw: one end is on the ground with a basket half-full of rocks on it. The other end is up in the air with a basket one-quarter-full of sand on it. Some of us have teaspoons and are trying to put more sand in the basket. Most people are scoffing at us: “Don’t you see the sand is leaking out as fast as you put it in?” We say, “That’s true, but we’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time.” One of these days, you’ll see that basket so full that the whole seesaw will go zoo-oop in the opposite direction, and people will say, “Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?” Us and all our little teaspoons.

Pete Seeger

 

What you're talking about is a PHEV and they've been around for quite awhile now and end the range anxiety that's been so prevalent in electric only cars.

Explaining Electric & Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles | US EPA

An introduction to the emissions, charging and driving range of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

www.epa.gov

.

My grandmother was born in 1899 (a very cool year to have been born).
I remember speaking to her about the very first car she saw (loud, smelly, amazing), her first time seeing and then being on a plane knowing how impossible it was for somethign so large to fly, the first time they got electricity (what a transformation!), a telephone and talking to a relative she knew was 20 miles away, the first time she saw a TV. Of course she saw the moon landing. What an amazing life.

Yes we now have the internet and cell phones and microwaves (she saw all those too, died at 93) but the only thing I think could compare one day is the ability to physically transport to another location.

 

WNGD, thank you! I wonder why I'm not hearing more about these! Honestly, until just now, I thought the only options were an all electric vehicle, or the sort of hybrid I had with my Highlander, which used gas even with short trips and city driving!

Here's a full list of what's available - arrgh, vehicles are SO expensive now! 😥 And of course, they hybrids are more expensive than gas, though the Canadian government will give you a $2,500 rebate for buying one!

Edit: my current vehicle is a Rav 4. The rebate for a Rav4 Prime is $5,000! Oh, to have deeper pockets...

10 Cheapest Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHEV) in Canada for 2025

Thinking about trading your gas-guzzler in? Here are the 10 cheapest, rebate-eligible plug-in hybrid vehicles that are available in Canada.

www.canadadrives.ca

 

Happy reading
\Top 10 Affordable Plug-In Hybrid Cars (PHEVs) in Canada for 2022

 

@Sunsilver our wagon is the one way I feel we are most exposed environmentally - but leaving aside money, our building's garage doesn't have electric charging, so if we want a car, it's got to be gas.

But I try. I get TruEarth laundry strips in bulk (no plastic detergent jug), we use bar dish soap for washing dishes/have environmentally-friendly/no packaging dishwasher tabs (come in bulk in a paper bag), our toilet bowl cleaner are tabs that are made by a local company and come in a cardboard box, I use shampoo and conditioner bars, I use shaving cream bars (with a brush and everything!) for the ol' legs and armpits, we get our handsoap in refillable glass containers, instead of buying hand lotion in a container I use lotion bars. I'm vegan, so don't add to the demand for animal agriculture and it's attendant environmental impacts. Don't use products with palm oil where I can tell they have palm (which is in a shocking amount of stuff!). I try. It's not easy though, and in some ways I'm not perfect - not all my cleaning products are great environmentally (I do use bleach based ones for the bathroom, for instance), but I do my best to use them sparingly, I clean mirrors and windows with vinegar, for instance. I don't like buying secondhand (I am suspicious of possible bed bugs - that may be a uniquely Toronto paranoia amongst people I know though), and like I said, we do drive a gas car, but we do try to stretch out the products we do use to make them last, buy local where possible, minimize food waste, we don't use the car regularly, when we commute, it's either subway or biking....

 

Throughout history, scientists have been really wrong, a lot.

To stay out of modern politics, I'd say miasma theory and thalidomide come to mind as good examples.

If you look back over the last hundred years, the sky has been perpetually falling if we don't do something about our impact on the climate right now.

At some points, there were no polar ice caps, or most of the earth was frozen wasteland, or the oxygen levels were twice what they are now, or the continents were in completely different places.

There is money driving both sides of the argument.

In my home we waste as little as possible. We harvest what we can from the land. We are currently putting in a large garden at the family farm where we stay in the summer. We don't pick up dog waste there as it degrades pretty quickly. We use regular poop bags when we are out and about.

We are also building a coop for free range chickens to keep the bugs down and provide eggs, a compost rig for plant waste and a rain water collection watering system for the garden.

The math doesn't work for electric vehicles unless we can generate more electricity and we are closing electric plants while other countries are building more.

 

Throughout history, scientists have been really wrong, a lot.

To stay out of modern politics, I'd say miasma theory and thalidomide come to mind as good examples.

If you look back over the last hundred years, the sky has been perpetually falling if we don't do something about our impact on the climate right now.

At some points, there were no polar ice caps, or most of the earth was frozen wasteland, or the oxygen levels were twice what they are now, or the continents were in completely different places.

There is money driving both sides of the argument.

In my home we waste as little as possible. We harvest what we can from the land. We are currently putting in a large garden at the family farm where we stay in the summer. We don't pick up dog waste there as it degrades pretty quickly. We use regular poop bags when we are out and about.

We are also building a coop for free range chickens to keep the bugs down and provide eggs, a compost rig for plant waste and a rain water collection watering system for the garden.

The math doesn't work for electric vehicles unless we can generate more electricity and we are closing electric plants while other countries are building more.

You say it so well. Yeah, they've been saying the world was going to end by this date or that date since forever. The date comes and goes and everyone just ignores it.

I want to put in a garden because I love the idea of going outside and picking a few ears of corn and some tomatoes and having dinner off of it. But I have no idea how to can tomatoes and other vegetables, and most of it would probably go to waste, or my family would come and have some fresh veggies during the fall. Working full time, I don't have the time to learn how to do all that and do all that.

I'd like to have chickens, but I don't think I could slaughter them when the time comes. They only lay for a few years, and you have to slaughter the males or they will fight. So you make them into fryers I guess. Anyway, I guess when the layers are old enough to stop laying, then you slaughter and make soup or stew or frickasee out of them, or you can feed them to the dogs. But, I'd go and name them and I don't know if I could eat Thelma-stew. I know where meat comes from, I do. But I don't get to know it's personality before butchering. So I better leave the chickens to the chicken manufacturers and egg manufacturers. I'd love to have a cow and raise a steer for meat, on paper. But I'd name them. And even if I name the boy T-bone or Rib-eye, I don't think I could eat them. And I LOVE steak.

Sigh. If Yellowstone goes boom and the survivors are plummeted into an agrarian culture, I am not going to make it. But I am not going to lose sleep over it either.