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How to Calm the Need for Stuff When Going Zero Waste

by yofhoefownra Posted on November 5, 2018

The modern American culture in no way encourages minimalism, patience and restraint. Rather, we’ve been conditioned to use wealth and access to get more, more, more, wherever it’s made and whatever the cost to the planet and our health.

This addiction to consumption has led us to a place in which we require garages, attics and storage units to keep our things, are practically drowning in plastics, and have very little understanding of how our shopping habits affect the rest of the globe.

People who’ve committed to going zero waste have to force themselves to break these patterns, practicing self control in an effort to reduce the hold that “stuff” has on our lives. For many of us, this involves shopping locally and in season to help limit excessive?consumption, and committing to only purchasing products that will not end up in the landfill at the end of their lives.

These two actions alone help a great deal. It’s pretty hard to shop online when you won’t let plastic bags into your house. And setting strict criteria for what you purchase and why (for example, a bamboo toothbrush over a plastic one) means you’re a lot less likely to grab up products willy nilly.

But what about shopping for fun? How do you confront that addiction to “stuff” that we talked about earlier? It’s not easy. But it’s worth it. Here are a few ways to soften the blow.

Take a real break from shopping

Set a clear intention to do no unnecessary shopping for an entire month. This means anything beyond necessities like groceries or a much-needed winter coat are off limits.

Whenever you get the urge to go shopping for the fun of it, take a breath and examine your intentions. Why do you want this right now? Is it because you like the “high” that comes with something new and shiny? Is it because you’re struggling with envy or comparison? Start here.

Purge the clutter around you

Once you have established a clear head around shopping and its role in our lives, you might want to take the time to declutter a bit. Random additions to your stash will look silly and stand out if your home is clean and clutter free.

Start with the places you haven’t touched in ages. I’m talking about the craft closet, that one corner in your garage, boxes under the bed. Think about what you see. Have you used this item in the past couple of months? The past year? If not, decide whether it’s a true keepsake or something you’re holding onto for convenience’s sake.

Identify something meaningful to shop for

Still feel like you need a refresh? There’s no harm in adding a new jacket or piece of art to your space, as long as it’s done intentionally and with care. Select something that you’ve wanted for a while, then commit to purchasing nothing until you find the exact perfect thing.

Maybe it’s a new armchair for the living room. Maybe it’s a dutch oven. Maybe it’s a gardening tool or a computer or a painting for your office. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something you’ll use or enjoy for a long time. Then, save up and make it happen.

Fill up with experiences, not things

I might sound like a broken record, but this is so true: memories are so much more precious than things. Rather than filling your heart and space with stuff, look for cool experiences that are worth your money instead.

Sign up for a rock climbing class, book space in a recording studio, take a friend to a concert, save up for that big vacation you’ve wanted to take for years. You’ll feel so much better after a long weekend in the mountains than you would after a spree at Target.

Related Stories:

How to Lead a Nearly Zero Waste Life
How to Keep a Zero Waste Pet
How Going Zero Waste Made Me a Better Person

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How to Calm the Need for Stuff When Going Zero Waste

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How to Limit Eye Fatigue from Working at a Computer All Day

by Joel88A21082641 Posted on February 8, 2018

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that after staring at my computer for 6 hours, my vision can feel horribly blurred and sluggish. As someone who doesn?t need corrective eyewear, I sometimes get the feeling that my daily computer work is shortening my lens-free years one day at a time.

But we live in a technological world and many of us?have to work with technology day after day.?How can we keep our eyes healthy in such an unnatural environment??If you?re concerned about the damage, stress and eye fatigue you experience from working on a computer all day, try these 5 tips to help keep your eyesight healthy…

Incorporate eye exercises.

Looking at a screen encourages us not to blink?while?aggressively holding one focus for long periods of time. To an eye, that is exhausting. To prevent eyestrain, look at something that is at least 20 feet away (not a screen) for at least 20 seconds every 20 minutes. Yes, every 20 minutes. Set a timer on your phone and use that time to take a few deep breaths and recenter yourself. Once an hour, take a bonus break. Get up, stretch your legs and walk around for a few minutes. Not only will you feel better and more peppy, but you’ll be saving your eyes in the long run.

Limit unnecessary technology time.

Computers emit blue light.?Blue light is the shortest visible wavelength and is more challenging on the eyes than long hues like red. If you have to do all of your work, day in and out, on a screen, you need to?consider ditching the screens when you get off work. I know, Netflix is calling your name, but try to make Netflix nights a treat more than a habit. Instead, listen to music/podcasts, read a book or magazine, play a game with your family or do some journaling. Nighttime screentime is damaging to sleep cycles anyways, so you are better off ridding yourself of the habit in the name of healthier eyes and deeper sleep.

Adjust your display.

You don’t need your display on full brightness. Dim it down to a level where you can feel your eyes relax. Try using plugins like f.lux or the “night shift” function on macs to reduce the amount of blue light that is pummeling your pupils at all hours of the day. Also make sure you’ve customized your text size preferences so that you aren’t squinting and struggling to read important documents on your screen.

Go outside often.

When you are zombie-ing in front of a screen, it is hugely important to make sure you get outside into some daylight at least once throughout the day. Maybe take your lunch break on a park bench outside. Maybe take a walking meeting. Whatever it is, find more ways to expose your eyes to the natural, wide spectrum of light outside.

If you work under?fluorescent lights, try switching your area to full-spectrum?fluorescents to better mimic outside light. However, when using a computer for long stretches, turn overhead lights down or off and close the shades to minimize computer glare. You want to keep the surrounding area soft and about half as bright as your screen.?

Eat your veggies.

You know how your mom told you to eat your carrots so you would have strong eyes? The antioxidants in certain vegetables may have the power to counteract the negative effects of technological eye fatigue. Lutein and zeaxanthin specifically are potent antioxidants generally found in the retina. In fact, lutein has been shown to reduce macular degeneration.

Not only do these yellow-hued antioxidants prevent damage, but they absorb the blue light before it enters the retina, reducing overall stress. You can find these antioxidants in?egg yolks, yellow corn, orange peppers, squash and in smaller quantities in leafy greens. What about carrots, you ask? Carrots are high in vitamin A, which is an essential nutrient for healthy vision, but it seems like the carrot claim may be more fiction than fact.

What do you do to reduce eyestrain when you are on a computer all day? Do you find that you just try to charge through it? Or do you thrive with regular breaks? Share your habits and advice with the community below!??

Related on Care2:

How to Actually Stick with Your Goals
5 Ways Your Diet Affects Your Mood
Are You Sleeping at the Right Temperature?

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How to Limit Eye Fatigue from Working at a Computer All Day

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A Quick Look at Manufacturing Jobs

by JustinSilver Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

Donald Trump is bragging today that “Manufacturing openings, hires rise to highest levels of the recovery.” Well of course they have. As long the economy keeps expanding, openings will set a new record every month, more or less. Like so:

If you want to know how manufacturing is really doing, you want to look at it as a percentage of all job openings. Here you go:

Meh. Manufacturing job openings have been declining since 2012, but have shown a small uptick since the start of 2016. Nothing to get excited about, though.

I know, I know: who cares? Well, what can I tell you? I’m just trying to take my mind off the whole, incredible Comey thing. It’s mind boggling. Maybe today is a good day to start sniffing glue.

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A Quick Look at Manufacturing Jobs

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How to Pass a Thousand-Year Tax Cut

by VilmaCorkill Posted on May 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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Republicans would like to pass a permanent tax cut. Sadly for them, Senate procedures prevent that. The only way to avoid a Democratic filibuster is to pass their tax plan via reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate and can’t be filibustered. But thanks to the Byrd Rule, any reconciliation bill that increases the deficit beyond a 10-year window is once again subject to a filibuster, and that would doom any tax measure. This limits Republicans to tax plans that sunset in 2028.

But wait. Maybe there’s an alternative. The Wall Street Journal explains:

President Donald Trump has said he wants to cut taxes, big-league, and Republicans are having trouble squeezing his ambitions into congressional rules forbidding bigger deficits after a 10-year budget scoring window.

Some lawmakers are exploring a way around that problem: Make the window bigger. Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) suggested last week a “longer horizon” to overcome obstacles posed by the process known as reconciliation….A 15-year, 20-year or 30-year budget window could let Republicans pass a temporary tax cut that is long enough to give companies confidence to invest but short enough so its fiscal effects peter out by the 2030s or 2040s.

Surprised? That’s because everyone always talks about the Byrd Rule forbidding deficit increases beyond a 10-year “budget window.” But that’s not what it says. Here’s the actual relevant language:

A provision shall be considered to be extraneous if it decreases revenues during a fiscal year after the fiscal years covered by such reconciliation bill or reconciliation resolution.

In this context, “extraneous” means it can be filibustered, and there’s nothing in there about ten years. That’s just custom. If Republicans felt like it, they could pass a bill that “covers” the next millennium and sunsets in 3018. Here is Daniel Hemel, an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago:

“I don’t think there’s anything magical about the number 10, other than 10 has been the maximum number for long enough that 11 would seem like a break from Senate norms.”

But who cares about Senate norms? Not Republicans. So there must be something more to this or they’d just go ahead and do it. One possibility is that there are still a handful of old-school deficit hawks left in the party, and they won’t vote for a longer budget window. Or there might be some arcane technical issue involved. I would be fascinated to hear from a real budget expert on this.

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How to Pass a Thousand-Year Tax Cut

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How White is “Rural America”?

by DelilahHummel Posted on April 24, 2017

Mother Jones

Over at Vox, Sean Illing writes about how we think of rural America:

The media often conflates rurality and whiteness in this country. But this is a false — and misleading — narrative.

Roughly one-fifth of rural residents in this country are people of color, and their interests and political views are as diverse as they are. When coverage of rural areas dismisses or otherwise ignores this fact, actual political consequences follow: The specific concerns of certain communities simply fall out of view.

Illing talks about this with Mara Casey Tieken, a professor at Bates College, who says this:

I think policymakers that represent white communities have disproportionately more power than policymakers representing rural communities of color….I think the problem also becomes self-perpetuating because what gets covered is rural white America, so that shapes how people think about rural America, and those are the stories that get told over and over again.

I want to offer up a guess about one reason why “rural” is so associated with whiteness. Here it is:

When the media reports on rural America, the stories are usually about Ohio or Missouri or Indiana or Pennsylvania or Nebraska. “Rural” means the Midwest and the Rust Belt. And as you can see on the map, those places really are mostly white.

As Tieken says, this becomes self-perpetuating. The Midwest and the Rust Belt are politically interesting, so rural areas there get lots of coverage. That means we largely see rural America as white, and that in turn means that news items about non-white areas usually end up getting coded as something else: In the Deep South they become “race and the lingering effects of slavery” stories, and in the Southwest they become “Hispanic immigration and the changing demographics of America” stories.

Does this happen because of implicit bias among reporters and the rest of us? Or because the Midwest and the Rust Belt really are the interesting areas when it comes to politics (big populations, loud voices, plenty of swing voters)? Maybe both.

Continued here:

How White is “Rural America”?

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Trump’s Tax Cut Plan Will… Pay… For… Itself!

by TabathaMilam Posted on April 21, 2017

Mother Jones

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Back during Steve Mnuchin’s confirmation hearings for Treasury Secretary, he said he was surprised that IRS staffing had gone down. This just reduces the number of audits they can perform, and therefore the amount of tax revenue they collect from high earners. Just think about it. If you increased hiring, it would pay for itself!

It was très adorbs. But Mnuchin is a quick learner, and he never brought that subject up again. Instead, he’s now talking about a much more acceptable kind of plan that pays for itself. The subject, of course, is tax cuts:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the economic growth that would result from the proposed tax cuts would be so extreme — close to $2 trillion over 10 years — that it would come close to recouping all of the lost revenue from the dramatic rate reductions. Some other new revenue would come from eliminating certain tax breaks, although he would not specify which ones.

“The plan will pay for itself with growth,” Mnuchin said at an event hosted by the Institute of International Finance.

The Congressional Budget Office will have a very different take on this, and their take is the only one that matters. So why does Mnuchin even bother with this tired old charade? Maybe so that Donald Trump can yell and scream about how the CBO is rigged when they say that his tax plan is a deficit buster? Maybe to give congressional Republicans an excuse to fire Keith Hall and install a new CBO director who will give them whatever numbers they want?

Who knows? Maybe it’s just reflex. While we wait to find out, however, here’s a chart showing income tax receipts following the five most recent big changes to tax rates. You can decide for yourself if tax cuts pay for themselves or if tax increases tank the economy.

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Trump’s Tax Cut Plan Will… Pay… For… Itself!

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After Threats, Time For Talks With North Korea?

by JulienneScarbrou Posted on April 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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VP Mike Pence is on the Korean Peninsula today:

David Frum would like to see more than just a few staged visuals::

I was vaguely planning to write a post reminding everyone that we still have only two options regarding North Korea, but the New York Times reminds me that we have three:

a military strike that could ignite a full-blown war;
pressure on China to impose tougher sanctions to persuade the North to change course, an approach that failed for his predecessors;
or a deal that could require significant concessions, with no guarantee that North Korea would fulfill its promises.

I’d forgotten all about the diplomatic option, what with Rex Tillerson insisting that the era of “strategic patience” was over and Pence warning North Korea not to test US “resolve.” But I suppose it might actually be the most likely one. A military strike designed to take out North Korea’s bomb/missile-making capacity would require a lot more than a few dozen cruise missiles. It would probably take weeks and would indeed touch off a real, live hot war that I doubt Trump has any stomach for.1 The China option is currently underway, and I suspect it has a better chance of success than in the past, simply because China is a little more fed up with Kim Jong-un than in the past. But it’s still unlikely to work.

And that leaves diplomacy. This also has close to a zero chance of working, but it might have a decent chance of providing Trump with something he can claim is the greatest treaty ever signed. Maybe that will be enough for him.

1I hope not, anyway.

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After Threats, Time For Talks With North Korea?

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A Baseball Sacred Cow Finally Starts to Fall

by HesterMcKibben7 Posted on April 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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I’m getting answers to all sorts of nagging sports questions this month. Earlier I learned that, as I’ve long suspected, intentional fouling virtually never works in the final seconds of a basketball game. Today, Jared Diamond writes about the windup used by baseball pitchers, which has always puzzled me:

This spring, Washington Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg asked a simple question that threatens to upend more than a century of baseball tradition: Why should he pitch one way with nobody on base, and another way with runners aboard? After all, he threw just as hard from the stretch as he did from the full windup, but with improved precision.

Strasburg did some research and embarked on an experiment. He ditched the windup and plans to work exclusively from the stretch this season, beginning his delivery facing third base instead of home plate. Pitchers usually deploy the stretch—a quicker, more compact delivery than the full windup—with runners on base to prevent base-stealers.

I’m not a pitcher, obviously, but I’ve never understood the weird, arms-over-the-head windup. In most sports, it’s a given that a simple, smooth motion is the best way to engage the kinetic chain, improve consistency, and throw/shoot/serve/etc. with maximum accuracy. Among quarterbacks or tennis players, for example, even small hitches in the delivery motion are mercilessly trained away by good coaches. But in baseball, an enormous hitch is not only not trained away, it’s encouraged.

I guess I always figured there must be a reason that I just didn’t understand. But maybe not. Maybe it’s just the way things have always been done. In any case, I applaud Strasburg. Pitching from the stretch should work fine, and it should improve performance with runners on base too since no delivery change is required. I wish him a great season except when he’s pitching against the Dodgers.

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A Baseball Sacred Cow Finally Starts to Fall

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“The Republican Party Is a Party Without a Purpose”

by PaulineLoughman Posted on March 25, 2017

Mother Jones

Philip Klein unloads on the GOP in the pages of the conservative Washington Examiner, calling Obamacare repeal “the biggest broken promise in political history”:

What’s so utterly disgraceful, is not just that Republicans failed so miserably, but that they barely tried, raising questions about whether they ever actually wanted to repeal Obamacare in the first place.

Republicans for years have criticized the process that produced Obamacare, and things certainly got ugly. But after having just witnessed this debacle, I think Paul Ryan owes Nancy Pelosi an apology.

One has to admire the commitment that Democrats and Obama had to delivering something they campaigned on and truly believed in. They spent 13 months getting the bill from an initial concept to final passage, and pressed on during many points when everybody was predicting doom. They had public hearings, multiple drafts of different bills, they kept negotiating, even worked into Christmas. They made significant changes at times, but also never lost sight of their key goals. They didn’t back down in the face of angry town halls and after losing their filibuster-proof majority, and many members cast votes that they knew risked their political careers. Obama himself was a leader, who consistently made it clear that he was not going to walk away. He did countless rallies, meetings, speeches — even a “summit” at the Blair House — to try to sell the bill, talking about details, responding to criticisms of the bill to the point that he was mocked by conservatives for talking so much about healthcare.

The contrast between Obama and Democrats on healthcare and what just happened is stunning. House Republicans slapped together a bill in a few weeks (months if we’re being generous) behind closed doors with barely any debate. They moved the bill through committees at blazing speed, conducted closed-door negotiations that resulted in relatively minor tweaks to the bill, and within 17 days, Trump decided that he’d had enough, and was ready to walk away if members didn’t accept the bill as is…

There was a big debate over the course of the election about how out of step Trump was with the Republican Party on many issues. But if anything, this episode shows that Trump and the GOP are perfect together — limited in attention span, all about big talk and identity politics, but uninterested in substance.

Failing to get the votes on one particular bill is one thing. But failing and then walking away on seven years of promises is a pathetic abdication of duty. The Republican Party is a party without a purpose.

Go read the whole thing.

Trump, Ryan, and McConnell’s total lack of commitment to repealing Obamcare really does stand in stark contrast to Obama, Pelosi, and Reid’s total commitment to passing it in the first place.

On the eve of the House ACA vote in 2010, Obama went to Democrats and implored them to cast a vote many knew would be political suicide.

Sometimes I think about how I got involved in politics. I didn’t think of myself as a potential politician when I get out of college. I went to work in neighborhoods, working with Catholic churches in poor neighborhoods in Chicago, trying to figure out how people could get a little bit of help. And I was skeptical about politics and politicians, just like a lot of Americans are skeptical about politics and politicians are right now. Because my working assumption was when push comes to shove, all too often folks in elected office, they’re looking for themselves and not looking out for the folks who put them there; that there are too many compromises; that the special interests have too much power; they just got too much clout; there’s too much big money washing around.

And I decided finally to get involved because I realized if I wasn’t willing to step up and be true to the things I believe in, then the system wouldn’t change. Every single one of you had that same kind of moment at the beginning of your careers. Maybe it was just listening to stories in your neighborhood about what was happening to people who’d been laid off of work. Maybe it was your own family experience, somebody got sick and didn’t have health care and you said something should change.

Something inspired you to get involved, and something inspired you to be a Democrat instead of running as a Republican. Because somewhere deep in your heart you said to yourself, I believe in an America in which we don’t just look out for ourselves, that we don’t just tell people you’re on your own, that we are proud of our individualism, we are proud of our liberty, but we also have a sense of neighborliness and a sense of community — (applause) — and we are willing to look out for one another and help people who are vulnerable and help people who are down on their luck and give them a pathway to success and give them a ladder into the middle class. That’s why you decided to run. (Applause.)

And now a lot of us have been here a while and everybody here has taken their lumps and their bruises. And it turns out people have had to make compromises, and you’ve been away from families for a long time and you’ve missed special events for your kids sometimes. And maybe there have been times where you asked yourself, why did I ever get involved in politics in the first place? And maybe things can’t change after all. And when you do something courageous, it turns out sometimes you may be attacked. And sometimes the very people you thought you were trying to help may be angry at you and shout at you. And you say to yourself, maybe that thing that I started with has been lost.

But you know what? Every once in a while, every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made in all those town meetings and all those constituency breakfasts and all that traveling through the district, all those people who you looked in the eye and you said, you know what, you’re right, the system is not working for you and I’m going to make it a little bit better.

And this is one of those moments. This is one of those times where you can honestly say to yourself, doggone it, this is exactly why I came here. This is why I got into politics. This is why I got into public service. This is why I’ve made those sacrifices. Because I believe so deeply in this country and I believe so deeply in this democracy and I’m willing to stand up even when it’s hard, even when it’s tough.

Every single one of you have made that promise not just to your constituents but to yourself. And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine. We have been debating health care for decades. It has now been debated for a year. It is in your hands. It is time to pass health care reform for America, and I am confident that you are going to do it tomorrow.

With Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, Democratic voters had representatives who were as committed to their goals as they were. Republican voters should realize today that they are not so lucky.

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“The Republican Party Is a Party Without a Purpose”

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Lunchtime Photo

by DonteNjrmn Posted on March 21, 2017

Mother Jones

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This little girl looks…worried? Dismayed? Unsure? Maybe all those things. She had just been playing with her little sister and sort of “helped” her into a nearby fountain. Dad was nearby and didn’t seem especially concerned about the whole thing, but she doesn’t know that yet as she surveys the damage. She is not yet sure what the future holds for her.

Taken from:

Lunchtime Photo

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