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What do you do in your day-to-day life to conserve energy and protect the environment?

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Don't buy Japanese snacks, too many chopsticks.

Try to eat the dish by hand. Esp. Curry rice since Japanese like it so much.

Take shower during the day if you can but most Japanese do in the evening which i prefer as well. Atleast night shift workers can able to save the energy on this.
-3 ( +1 / -4 )

Nothing short of returning to the stone age is going to "protect" the environment.

Live it up while you can is what I say.

-5 ( +2 / -7 )

Refuse chopsticks when I buy ready-to-eat food in a store, carry my own bag for shopping (instead of paying 5 yen), drive a hybrid, buy products that don’t come heavily wrapped in plastic (had to give up eating my favorite cookies because they started wrapping the individual cookie), walk to work when I can, walk to stores, and don’t vote for climate deniers (or flat-earthers). Also, don’t hide my head in the sand when it comes to climate change.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

I conserve energy to reduce my bills, I ride a bicycle because its more convenient. If this is also good for the environment then great but thats not why I do it.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Re-use and recycle wherever possible (especially packaging), limiting food waste - I eat what I buy and buy only what I will eat rather than stocking my fridge like a mini supermarket, buying organic produce and growing food to supplement that, vegan, no car, working at home, electric blanket, individual electric radiators, base layer and 80s legwarmers to reduce energy use, keeping internal room doors closed to trap heat in winter, replacing tech and clothes when they wear out, fixing stuff where possible, trading in used goods, donating unwanted stuff to charity, composting peelings, no takeaways.

Just basic stuff that anyone can do.

Net zero is fake. We will all use stuff and create waste every day, but we can all do our bit to reduce it. If we all did, crowd-sourcing savings rather than 'outsourcing' the problem to inept governments, we could make a genuine difference.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

I'd love to do more, but the cup dispensers in my combini's coffee machines only accept disposable cups with plastic lids and won't accept my reusable metal thermos. The stir sticks are plastic and are each individually wrapped in plastic. There is no water station: instead, I am forced to acquire a new and unwanted pet bottle every time I want a drink of water outside of home.

My combini is just one of a hundred examples. It's not up to us regular folks -- it's up to corporations. But they are refusing to cooperate. In the meantime, I cycle, cycle, cycle.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

I don’t have children. Right there, I have created a much smaller carbon footprint than someone who does have children.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Cycle. Recycle. Compost kitchen waste, grow a lot of our veggies.

Vegetarian.

Always have at least one eco bag with me in case of impromptu shopping. Wash and reuse plastic bags etc., as far as is practical.

Dress for the weather, keep aircon and heating to a minimum.

Reuse bathwater for the laundry, save rainwater for watering plants.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Nothing short of returning to the stone age is going to "protect" the environment.

Haha, what nonsense.

We live at 800m above sea level in a house built at 2007. It gets sub-zero here for three months and we have to heat a lot then, but for this time of year, sub 5C every day, we don't heat the house at all. The sun warms it up enough for us several times a week. This tells me that pretty much everyone in Tokyo, Osaka etc. could get away with very little heating all winter if their homes were built properly. You do not need anything like an expensive Passivhaus-level build to do this, just Low-E double glazing and 70mm of spray foam in the walls. In an apartment with only two or three external walls, it should be very easy.

I read that most people in the UK turn on the heating when its 13C outside. For Scots it was 12C. This means that houses there must be very leaky and badly insulated too.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

research

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@Zichi

Exactly—there's the ultimate solution.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I always quickly switch off TV when I see all those crazy climate panicking people. That alone saves the environment much more than their wild intensive useless meetings and talking, flying to global summits and other only even more energy consuming actions completely free of logic and sense.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

Interestingly, with all the teeth nashing going on with COP26 now, Zichi really is one person of us all that has (had) changed his life in a way that given scale would actually make a difference.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Use tote bags for grocery shopping. Shop for clothes and stuff at thrift stores. Unplug all unnecessary electronic devices before leaving the house. Pack lunch to work everyday using reusable Tupperware.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I always try to reduce the amount of water use. When I wash my face, I never keep the water running. It is helpful for reducing not only consumption fee of water use, but also the amount of gas usage to warm water in the boiler. Moreover, the amount of CO2 emission will decrease.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Cycle/ walk to as many places as I can. When I can't, I don't drive, but use public transport instead.

Always use my own bags, so never buy/accept plastic bags from stores.

Refuse chopsticks/spoons from konbinis.

I don't eat red meat. I am mostly vegetarian/pescaterian. Could do better with this, but Japan is still a very challenging place for vegans/vegetarians.

My clothes are 90% second hand or quality items that last for years. Even if I buy some high street stuff (like Uniqlo), I consider what I buy, and wear those for years as well. ( pay attention to the materials people, when buying new things! E.g., never buy acrylic sweaters, always check the seams etc.)

Wear layers and wool socks when it starts to get cold, in order to avoid using the heater until it's an absolute must.

Wash only full loads of clothes.

Recycle and donate. Never just throw away stuff that could be mended or used by someone else.

(Also, no kids or pets here.)

1 ( +2 / -1 )

@JeffLee

I'd love to do more, but the cup dispensers in my combini's coffee machines only accept disposable cups with plastic lids and won't accept my reusable metal thermos. The stir sticks are plastic and are each individually wrapped in plastic. There is no water station: instead, I am forced to acquire a new and unwanted pet bottle every time I want a drink of water outside of home.

My combini is just one of a hundred examples. It's not up to us regular folks -- it's up to corporations. But they are refusing to cooperate. In the meantime, I cycle, cycle, cycle.

Why don't you make your own coffee at home, and fill the thermos to bring with you? Drink whenever you feel like it. Same goes for the water. You could just fill your own bottle? The mymizu app tells you locations where you can fill your water bottle for free. Also, have you brought up these issues with the konbini in question?

0 ( +2 / -2 )

If everyone followed you, the day would come when climate change no longer mattered, because there are no more people.

This temporary planetary infestation of humans will end as all of the other 99.9% of species on Earth have - humans will be extinct.

Humans are relentlessly selfish and human activity has been responsible for the extinction of hundreds of species. We are in the middle of the 6th mass extinction event of Earth.

The Universe is about 13.7 billion years old. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Some form of humans have been around for 200,000 years at the most.

The Sun will continue to burn brighter and boil all of the water off Earth in less that 3.5 billion years.

Global warming and climate change? We won't be around as a species to witness the immense climate changing power of the Sun.

Have a beer, have some laughs and don't worry about disposable chopsticks. In the grand scheme of existence, it's insignificant. Humans will be lucky to make it to the next millennium. The biggest danger to humans (beside human stupidity) is an astrological event - an asteroid that will reset the climate and reset the types of life surviving.

For you who understand statistics, the odds of this happening is 100%. It's happened many times before. It's not if, it's when.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

And if you add up the total "conservation and protection" you have listed here for 10 years, there is some small company just down the road that has offset and reversed it in about 30 minutes elapsed time.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Cook from scratch and I don’t buy stuff I don’t need.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

refuse chopsticks and bags from convenience stores

bring your own water bottle/ tumbler and use it when buying drinks

turn off lights when nobody's using it

unplug and shut off all electric devices when not in use

bike or walk to destinations that can be walked and cycled to

bring your own lunch

collect and purify rainwater

not cranking the heater/ air condition all the way and just use blankets when cold and an electric fan when it's hot

cook food in big batches so you don't have to cook every now and then

repurpose things instead of throwing them out

there's a lot of ideas to be honest, I can make an entire list. just ask any old timer who went through hard times, they're a treasure trove of knowledge.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Choose a conbini chain that uses paper cups, not plastic. And real people drink black coffee.

Interesting program on TV last night about a Japanese bloke who spent years living in Nepal, then came back to live alone in the mountains of Shikoku. Subsistence farming, and the converted barn costs him 20,000 yen a year in rent. All his dried foods he keeps in glass jars. Really neat and tidy Been there for 30 years. He eats with his fingers. Grows his own stuff, and makes his own fertilizer. His electricity bill for the radio and one light bulb is 330 yen a month. He draws and paints as a hobby. His shining smile was slightly unearthly, but infectious.

Hard to beat that, I thought.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

If bamboo chopsticks appear in a restaurant I will usually take them home for further use as a) chopsticks, or b) useful material for my hobbies.

PS I forgot to mention that the Shikoku mountain man, having no mains gas or water draws all his water from a mountain stream (as we did in the hills above Kyoto when we were first married) and chops all his own firewood for cooking and heating.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

David Brent is right - not having kids has the biggest impact of anything you do, because you are not then co-responsible for your descendants' carbon footprints. But it shows how there are limits to what we can do. If we don't reproduce, we die out as a species.

We will have to find compromises that we can be comfortable with. Puritanical bans will certainly backfire rather like prohibition. Activism helps, but solutions need to work for and be acceptable to the majority.

I have never had more than one holiday a year, sometimes one every two years. If the last two years has taught us anything, it is that locking us up in our homes is not a solution.

For those of you having trouble with drinks on the move, there are bags with pouches specifically for a water bottle or a thermos flask. I usually buy a small bottle of mineral water on the N'Ex (as the heating is usually on full). It can then be refilled from the tap for the rest of my trip.

If you find yourself wasting hot drinks through being busy, there are some good insulated mugs which really do work. They are also good for older people who drink slower and find that their drink goes cold before they finish it.

To avoid wasting food, use common sense on best before dates. I'm drinking tea, stashed away from lockdown, with a BBD of 2020. I've also had soya milk 3 months past its BBD.

Re: chopsticks. Carry your own pair. Or a small spoon. There are lots of good solutions out there for most things, that will allow you to do things in slightly greener way. Climate change is too serious a threat to be left up to politicians. We shouldn't be lazy about this. We have to do stuff ourselves.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

I use canvas bags for shopping rather than plastic. We have specific wheelie bins for recycling... that's probably it. Not married, no kids, one car :)

I'm not a greenie, I hate being told what to do by frowning kids and elderly TV wildlife presenters.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

I took Peter Neil’s advise and told the tax man that in 3 billion years we’ll all be dead so why is he extracting money from me? I mean, what’s the point? Also, I don’t want to leave anything for my kids or their kids; just burn the planet down now because the sun will in 14 odd billion years. Here’s to a joyous strong saké in celebration!

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Remind my partner the water does not ALWAYS need to be running while washing the dishes, and turn it off. Recycle, and separate recyclables. Remind my partner a heated toilet seat is not necessary... and definitely not necessary 24/7 when we're not home for most of that time. Remind my partner not every single light in the house needs to be on, and switch the lights off in rooms we are not occupying. Use a hot water bottle instead of air-conditioning in our room in winter, save for an hour or so to heat the room up, and on timer for the morning. Try not to waste food.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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