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What Solarpunk changes have you made in your daily life? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net
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I feel like I always think of solar punk as a macro thing where a lot has to change but there are still smaller wins we can implement, what have you been doing?

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[–] 17 points 3 months ago (10 children)

I was thinking I haven't made much progress but writing it down, I have a few going right now.

  • Purchased a used eletric car (With a new baby we couldn't get by without one, but we are considering an e-cargo bike)
  • Continue gardening and urban foraging skills
  • Planted a large native garden in my front yard (Over 400 sq ft.)
  • Continuing my herbalism practice for my own healthy and family (my lotions and salves are working great)
  • Continue to purchase the majority of my child clothes used or second hand. Getting lots of things free
  • Continue my practice to try to give things away instead of throwing them away
  • Volunteer with a native lead oprganization doing prairie restoration. (I went to one of their interesting hands on demo on three sisters gardens and learned tons about drying food).

So I am making some progress but plently to go. I want to try to reduce my food waste but I haven't gotten in the practice of saving or drying things when getting low.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    If you've got a young'n:

    • Go cloth diapers over disposable most the time. We went woth a diaper servce to start, then bought our own once we had it figured out.
    • For the ebike: we waited until kiddo was old enough for a bike seat (10 mo in our case, but ~12 mo) for the ebike. This let us get a longtail that is cheaper, mechanically simpler, and we can store inside instead of a bucket style bike
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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    It takes something like 500 years for a store bought disposable diaper to decompose in a landfill, and we use billions of them every year.

    If one can use cloth, I say one should.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Our daughter is 10 months so we're just starting looking for bikes. I was thinking about getting a long tail because that's what people around us seem to be using.

    I know cloth diapers are better for the environment I just can't.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Cloth diapers can definitely be hard if you dont have on-site laundry. We were lucky enough to live somewhere with a diaper service when we didn't have laundry.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Do you have any resources for the herbalism practice? That sounds extremely cool

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Of course. I have done most of my learning via books and trial and error. The first book I got was The Healing Garden which is written by an herbalists who does an online classes which I haven't done except the free ones. The book is beautiful and totally worth owning and will go over everything from organic herbal hardening, wildcrafting best practices, creating medicines and species highlights. Most books have the same categories as well.

    I also recommend anything and everything by Rosemary Gladstar. She is a giant in the field and has lots of small densely packed books. I have her Medicinal Herbs and Herbal Healing for me both of which are great. Her herbal healing for men is the only men specific herbalism book I've seen.

    If you need to buy herbs see if you have a local shop. They are usually listed as metaphysical stores which contains Tarot decks, crystals etc. some are good for herbs and some are bad. You will have to check them out yourself. Online Mountain Rose Herbs is amazing. Be careful elsewhere because some online shops are sketchy and are not giving you good herbs or worst of all something completely different. The best is growing it yourself or buying high quality culinary herbs. (A lot of culinary herbs have medicinal qualities usually at higher doses but can still be part of a dish).

    All the books have more resources and there's tons of ways to go. All the books are modern Western herbalists which combine multiple historical traditions which is typical. But you can deep dive into specific traditions as well (Chinese medicine, ayurvedic, traditional European herbs, indigenous etc.). Follow the references.

    The only watch out I will give you is this. A herbalist should never use only essential oils for treatments. That is a scam and usually a MLM. Full plants are preferred and essential oils are usually just used for smells. Second, they should be a supplement to standard Western medicine and not a replacement. It covers gaps within that system (chronic issues, preventative medicine, quality of life, etc.) and should still be used. Most herbalists think of that as hero medicine for the big things while herbs do the rest.

    Have fun!!!!

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