📝 In This Week’s Nut Hole
This Week’s Focus: What Will Make The Most Climate Impact For The Least $$
Ginger makes her nitrogen deposit (Ginger is one of my cats) curated help
Where The Roots Meet The Soil: 5 Most Impactful Household Changes That Benefit The Environment (but go easy on your wallet)
Inspirational Stories, there is still good happening in the world!
I've got a packed newsletter full of insights, stuff you should think of doing or getting, upcoming events, and inspiring stories.
🐱 Ginger’s Nitrogen Deposit (Curated Links To Fertilize Your Growth)
Ready to get a full suite of tools to help you make a greater impact on the environment and your health? grow.foodrevolution.org
GrowVeg App, that helps you plan what to grow, plant spacing and when to harvest. The have templates, account for your climate and more!
Auk, Makes growing indoors super simple! Includes a complete Auk, packets of seed, coco fiber, and nutrients. Easy-win, weather-safe gardening!
🐝 This Might Suit Your Fancy
Ergo Next Insurance, trusted by business owners of all types! Easy to access, low cost and covers all the insurance to keep your business healthy!
Create your living trust using AI! Download instructions from Constance Carter!
Like coffee. Just smarter. (And funnier.)
Think of this as a mental power-up.
Morning Brew is the free daily newsletter that helps you make sense of how business news impacts your career, without putting you to sleep. Join over 4 million readers who come for the sharp writing, unexpected humor, and yes, the games… and leave feeling a little smarter about the world they live in.
Overall—Morning Brew gives your business brain the jolt it needs to stay curious, confident, and in the know.
Not convinced? It takes just 15 seconds to sign up, and you can always unsubscribe if you decide you prefer long, dull, dry business takes.
🎙️Where The Roots Meet The Soil
5 Most Impactful (but Low Cost) Household Changes You Can Make
With budgets being crunched by rising food prices, energy costs and housing, it’s easy to ditch efforts to live more climate-friendly. So you’ll be pleasantly surprised to know that the top 5 are reasonably priced, can actually help you save money and you may already be doing some of them.
While there are alternatives and caveats to #3 that are coming to light, metaphorically and literally, I think #1 is underrated but not for the reason you might think (BTW, I’m not a vegetarian). But what made me breath a sigh of relief, was that owning an electric car is not as close to the top as you may think.
Impact #1: The Food You Put On Your Table
It’s not specifically the food you eat though, when you dig into the data the problem is around cooking it, where the food comes from and what it took to get it to your table. Let’s take a quick look at each of these and then get to solutions.
Unless you are cooking on a wood burning stove, we’re talking fossil fuels used to produce electricity (yes it’s a thing and more common than you might think), an unlit natural gas burner or leaving the flame so that it doesn’t burn efficiently. The biggest issue is the problem with pipeline leaks just to get it to your house.
Where you food comes from makes a huge difference, if your bananas come from Guatemala (top supplier for the US). They have likely traveled by a large boat burning bunker fuel, were processed through a port and onto a truck to a distribution center where they might finally be transported to your local grocery store.
Solution: Start small, but start, growing your own vegetables and herbs at home. This cuts out the guessing and the impact, plus it will bring you healthier food and reduce your grocery bill. Get free seeds from local seed libraries, look for local master gardeners and classes if you need help getting started. Or you can download my start your garden in a weekend guide at the end of this newsletter.
Impact #2: Reducing Food Waste
The problem with food waste is A) you are throwing dollars into your garbage can and B) it goes to the landfill and decomposes releasing methane. Why is methane a problem? Shorter lifespan than carbon dioxide, but over 80 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Fixing this has a number of inexpensive solutions, like not buying food that will just become the next science experiment in your fridge. Try to buy what you can eat before it goes bad.
I don’t know about you but there’s always one leftover banana going bad on the counter at my house. But I found a good use for them. I’m a failed composter, in the traditional compost pile kind of way. When I stumbled into vermicomposting, it was too easy and it turns out they like bananas.
Not a fan of wormies? Okay, there are counter composting machines and even composting services that will pick up your food waste. Or you can continue to work on reducing your food waste as much as possible.
Impact #3: Roof or Balcony Solar, Take Your Pick
This picks up where I left off with electricity using diesel generators in #1, the alternative being solar. There are other energy alternatives but they aren’t as wide spread yet, although I think the wind energy industry is finally upping their game.
The truth is, you don’t have to fully replace your electricity dependence. And electricity companies don’t really release you from paying anything because of all the infrastructure improvements they are making. The other side note is that panels aren’t very efficient and don’t work at night, having batteries to store extra electricity produced helps.
You are probably wondering what the difference is between roof and balcony solar. Well, it seems our German friends have been trying to make sure everyone can use solar, even if they don’t own the place they live in.
This means two things: smaller, portable systems that can be built out and have the ability to “Plug N’ Play.” Meaning you can plug into a regular outlet to feed the electricity your panels are generating directly into your house for immediate usage. It takes an appropriately sized micro inverter but it doesn’t mean hiring an electrician.
Or you can run through the same effort of quantifying how much electricity your household uses and get some quotes for a roof solar system. My point being there are options that might make the shift affordable for you.
Impact #4 Heating & Cooling Your Home
Taking measures to seal up leaky doors and windows can be a less expensive option to replacement. Adding weather stripping is fairly simple and doesn’t need to be applied everywhere to see a difference.
Another option is using insulating curtains during times of the year when hotter or cooler temperatures are more normal. There’s also a film that can be applied with a hair dryer to help seal your windows if you would still like light to come through.
I had to replace my air conditioner in 2024 and couldn’t understand why my electricity bill hadn’t gone down the following year despite using less energy. It turned out I was using less but paying more so the savings were somewhat offset. Now that I know, I might have gone with mini-split units instead.
In an ongoing saga, my water heater will need to be replaced in the next year or so because it’s showing signs it’s going. When I looked into a tankless system, they cost around the same as a tank system. Except for needing an electrician to install more 30 amp breakers and run the wiring to where my water heater is located.
The other downside was the large spike in electricity usage when a tankless system is in use, making it difficult to support with solar / backup battery options.
My recommendation is work on the lower cost options, then do your research and buy a more efficient system when it’s time to replace a heating or cooling system.
Impact #5 LED Lighting
You are likely already using LED lighting because if I’m not mistaken, older-style light bulbs aren’t being sold anymore. If for some reason you still have the tube fluorescent bulbs, there are kits to retro fit those fixtures but I would just look for the energy efficient bulbs.
Hopefully this was helpful and you were able to find 2 or 3 solutions to implement. If there was something I missed or you have some suggestions please let me know so I can share it and help make a difference for all of us.
Ready to Start A Garden This Weekend? Grab your free guide here.
“What you do makes a difference — and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
🦋 Stay Inspired
Ways That People Around The World Are Staging Eco-Interventions
How Trees Bring Water: Andrew Millison (YouTube)
Regreening The Desert: Mariah M (YouTube)
Peatlands, Can We Bring Nature Back?: Planet Wild (YouTube)
Till next time,
Elisa Navarette
P.S. Was this useful? Have ideas on what I should publish next? Tap the poll or reply to this email. I read every response.
How would you rate this newsletter?
/ads