Disposable culture

mindshare · Joined: 24 Jul 2004 Posts: 120

LolitaContrer, apartment-dwellers can still compost! I was worried about this when we moved into the city, but vermicomposting (composting with worms) is perfectly suited for apartments. Red wiggler worms live in a container which you can put anywhere and they eat your garbage (no dairy or meat though, as in a normal compost)! They eat very fast and multiply pretty quickly too -- it's not too long before you've doubled your... um... herd, and can give some away to a friend (happy birthday!). And of course, the worm castings make nice compost for plants. I'm not sure about online resources but there is a good book called "Worms Eat my Garbage" on the subject, and as far as getting worms, we found someone through our otherwise regressive City Hall, which teaches composting courses. A health food store might be able to give you the name of someone who has the worms, too.

I don't think it's been mentioned yet but another thing that I do (and I'm sure many of you do too) is use reusable menstrual pads.

atomic · Joined: 19 Jun 2004 Posts: 74 Location: los angeles

xuli · Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004 2:47 pm Post subject:

Guest · Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004 3:21 pm Post subject:

I agree with Xuli actually.
Awareness of the source of the food we eat is very much a part of being a conscientious consumer. I check where my clothes are made, I buy fair trade sugar/coffee/bananas etc. I don't eat meat, but my family only buys locally reared and killed meat.

Plus, if you are going to keep chickens at some point they will stop laying and whilst it's nice to think you could just keep them until they go to the great coop in the sky, for many people economically this isn't viable. If you can butcher a chicken (and I couldn't which is why I don't eat meat), that you kept for several years and then use it for soup/stock or even pet food, then it is well...recycling I suppose.

honeybee · Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 285 Location: appalachia

i like the point you brought up, xuli. i hope to sometime have the strength to partake in the cycle of catching, killing, and preparing the small amounts of meat i eat, because i feel i am copping out by eating fish but being too squeamish to kill them myself. it's no accident that the way a lot of supermarket meat is marketed uses packaging, marinades, and processing to make us forget that it came from a living creature. if there was a photo of a beautiful, big brown-eyed cow staring back at you on the package, wouldn't it be a little harder to buy and eat that burger?

now, with the prospect of chickens in my near future, i'm learning that part of the process of keeping laying hens is that we should occasionally slaughter them as they age (though i'm holding out for another option to have my eggs and not have to kill the hens...). and it's so daunting, because i can barely deal with cooking chicken, much less killing and cleaning them. i'd rather not eat chicken at all (which i rarely do now).
_________________
*honeybee.etsy*

atomic · Joined: 19 Jun 2004 Posts: 74 Location: los angeles

amelia · Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004 5:49 pm Post subject:

Atomic, I think it's wonderful that you're a strict vegetarian, but most people in the West aren't. You can argue till you're blue in the face that we should be vegetarian (and I'd agree with you) but that doesn't change the fact that most people eat meat and will continue to do so. Long before there was "disposable culture" people killed and ate animals, and I don't see this trend stopping any time soon.

I see it as far better to raise and humanely kill your own chickens than buy them processed at KFC, where they'll be abused, kept in horrible conditions, then inhumanely slaughtered (and then watch video of it on the nightly news). Not to mention if you raise them yourself, you can control the antibiotics and such they consume.

Guest · Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004 9:51 pm Post subject:

Actually Atomic, I am a vegan but also a realist. I would never keep chickens for any purpose. I can understand why people would though. When you say you are a strict vegtetarian, do you mean vegan ?

If people are going to keep chickens in order to have eggs from them, then in terms of economics it doesn't make sense to keep a chicken which is no longer laying.
Nice though the idea of a bunch of chickens running aound a yard maybe, if a chicken does live 15 years (and from what I have read life expectancy for most egg laying breeds is about 8 years) feeding them if you rely on their eggs (and a chicken at it's peak lays about 250 eggs a year) and they no longer produce just isn't an option If people are aiming to be self sufficeint then they cannot keep chickens which no longer fulfill their purpose. As an animal rights advocate of many years I would rather see a chicken have a free range lifestyle for 3 years or so, than a debeaked battery chicken living for a year. Although I would love to see the world go vegan, it's not going to happen soon, if ever, thus I would rather people have their own chickens or buy from free range sources, and slaughter will be a part of that.

The above poster noted that laying chickens could be used for soup, but would probably be too tough for dishes calling for chicken.
That goes for all laying chickens, as opposed to broiler chickens. However, ignoring the ethics of actually consuming meat, it makes more sense to use everypart of a chicken in all ways possible, than to simply have it laying then disposing of the carcass.

soapandwater · Joined: 13 Apr 2004 Posts: 945

Personally, I like my chickens to be nononsense, tough things, whose feathers don't get easily ruffled.

Okay, okay, no joke. I like how this thread became about chickens.

Isn't there a way to somehow marinate the chickens so that they might be a little more appetizing? Because I'd feel a little bad about killing one of my chickens that gave me eggs for three years and then not eating it. Personally, if I had to kill my own chickens, I'm pretty sure I'd be vegetarian in a heartbeat.

Actually, the only thing really truly stopping me from being vegetarian is my love for fish. However, the good news is we finally have a market that sells the wild and free sort of salmon, the kind that's not raised on salmon farms.
_________________
When you got a hundred voices singin',
who can hear a lousy whistle blow?

brightcorner · Joined: 04 Jul 2004 Posts: 65 Location: SF bay area

Wow!! I mentioned our chickens, then left on vacation for a week...I think it's just great that so many folks are interested in poultry!

Speaking as a vegetarian, I have to say we will definitely not kill and eat our chickens when they stop laying. In fact, even if I ate meat I don't think I would: it seems like they deserve to be "put out to pasture" after all those years of labor (so to speak). Also, they are definitely more pets than livestock (yes, they've got names). I must admit that my friend who has a farm and is sort of my chicken mentor thinks I am a ridiculous sappy fool for making pets of my chickens, though.

honeybee · Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 285 Location: appalachia

ah! putting the chickens out to pasture sounds fair. and since i plan on feeding them compost (and letting them roam around and eat bugs and grubs in season), then it could be economically viable to let them die of natural causes, right? plus, there are coyotes where i'm moving, and i imagine they would prey on any older chickens left out of the coop at night, therefore eliminating anything going to waste.
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*honeybee.etsy*

za-za · Joined: 26 Apr 2004 Posts: 17

This is such a great thread. I had been kind of depressed after the "consumerism in america" thread going on over at supernaturale and this thread just perked me up.

I too try to have as few disposable items in my life as possible. One challenge is my husband who is an oil painter and insists on using paper towels. But he makes up for it in other ways like re-using his t-shirts as rags and stuff.

For drying plastic bags, here is a picture of one to follow if you are going to try to make one for yourself: http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product.asp?product
%5Fid=06%2D0007

And I loved the chicken discussion. I saw this great pbs show years ago where they were advocating keeping chickens to weed your garden. Ever since that, I have wanted to get chickens...but first I need to get a house!

The biggest way we have cut down on trash is cooking our meals from scratch as much as possible. It is amazing how much garbage comes from packaged foods. We usually have one bag of trash a week, sometimes less. I'm going to look into the worm composter - hadn't thought of that for our condo.

bratgirl · Joined: 06 Jul 2004 Posts: 57 Location: Chicago

za-za, I was going to mention the gaiam plastic bag dryer!!

Gaiam also has countertop or floor composters and activators and filters.

http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product.asp?catalog%
5Fname=gai&product%5Fid=09%2D1051

and

http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product.asp?product%
5Fid=09%2D0069+MSTR

Non-toxic cleaning stuff

http://www.gaiam.com/retail/category.asp?catalog
%5Fname=gai&category%5Fname=l2%5FHouseholdToolsCleaning

Can you tell that I like Gaiam.com?!?!

My confession is that I use too many paper towels BUT I do recycle them. :-)

As for cloth napkins, my friend's mom always made a bunch out of quilting squares (and I did too) - just shirt tail hem the edges. They are perfect for casual meals and the prints hide any stains. Not to mention you can get a variety of patterns that all match color wise.

m.

atomic · Joined: 19 Jun 2004 Posts: 74 Location: los angeles