KEARNEY SUSTAINABILITY SNIPPETS

Encourage. Develop. Lead. KSM Volume 1, Issue 6

What is the Kearney Sustainability Movement?

We are a group of individuals who all have a passion for using the limited resources available to us in a wise manner. The goal of the group is to help spread the word about sustainable activities, influence sustainable change in our community, and to continue to grow our knowledge about sustainable practices. We meet monthly, on the third Thursday of the month, at the Kearney Public Library and discuss ways we can help influence and create sustainable practices in the community.

What have we done so far?

We still believe that the spreading of knowledge and information is a key priority for the Kearney Sustainability Movement. With our newsletter continuously coming out each month, we are also looking into other ways to share our knowledge with our community. Right now we are focusing on projects our group can help with in the community.

TinkerHollow will be hosting a Moms Night Out on Tuesday, June 27th. They are also proud to announce that you can arrange private parties with them. You can easily get a hold of them to set up a private party via message, text, or e-mail. https://www.facebook.com/tinkerhollow.ne

Sustainability Tidbit for the Month:

This week we will be looking into a few sustainable tidbits for laundry. Doing our laundry is one of the necessities we do on a regular basis, and we make some simple switches to improve a sustainable culture.

A beginner tidbit: Let’s talk about laundry detergent. There can be a couple of ways laundry detergent is unsustainable. The first one people recognize is the harsh chemicals in the product. If the wastewater is not properly treated, these chemicals can easily find their way into the environment and wreak havoc on wildlife. Another unsustainable aspect of laundry detergent is we tend to use too much per load. Detergents are highly concentrated, and the overuse of them can leave your clothes with an unwanted residue. Even when the detergent is less concentrated, the transportation from the manufacturer to the store is a big factor in unsustainability. We can’t forget the plastic bottle that it comes in. Luckily for us, there are other alternatives out there. The company Dropps is a certified B Corporation, that provides products in plastic free packaging, plant and mineral based cleaning, carbon neutral shipping, and sources their material in an ethical manner.

An intermediate tidbit: We all like the convenience of being able to throw our freshly washed laundry into a dryer to be fully dried in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, the dryer uses a lot of energy to dry your clothes. The more sustainable choice is to hang dry your clothes instead. Doing this does take more time and space and seems like a daunting task, but you don’t have to hang all your clothes. By only focusing on hanging your shirts and still throwing the other clothes in the dryer will decrease the amount of time your dryer will be running, thus conserving energy usage. You may ask, how can I hang dry my clothes if I don’t have a clothesline in my yard? Although a clothesline does provide the natural drying power of the sun, you can easily hang clothes inside instead. It can be as simple as utilizing your shower curtain rod and hangers, a drying rack, or finding a unique option that fits your household.

An advanced tidbit: One aspect we easily overlook is the water waste from your washers. Most of us have clothes made from synthetic materials. When we wash them, plastic fibers, or microplastics, detach from the clothes and will go down the drain and into the environment. The good news is we can easily stop this from happening. There are filters available that will capture these fibers. Products like the Microfiber Filter from Girlfriend are an excellent choice to help prevent more microplastics from polluting our world.

Our mission is to encourage the spread of knowledge, the development of practices, and to lead our community towards a sustainable and prosperous future.