Saving the planet

So I could worry about the handful of plastic waste my old strings will produce. In reality I worry about all the ukes I've owned that were imported from the far east or the states. Many of these made with timber imported to the factories in the first place. I own a koa uke but, believe me, Gloucester isn't exactly next door to Hawaii. Worrying about your strings, whilst important, distracts from the big picture. Mass global production is not exactly climate friendly. Take what individual action you can (I pay extra for electricity because I'm on a zero carbon plan but it's money well spent) but if you're worried you gotta put your vote where it counts every time you can.
 
I think about how NOT to buy first of all. I compost, recycle, grow tomatoes, haul stuff in my own bags, drive my cars for at least ten years; my clothes are old, etc. Makes no big scheme difference I know, except to me. I don't change uke strings often, and when I do, I regret it for weeks but only because they stretch. Ha! I have the thought though, if you are feeling remorse...you could take all your old uke strings and your old car, house, storage keys or other bits and make wind chimes! Recently I did a 30 day no plastic bottle challenge. That was difficult. I messed up a couple of times by accident or frustration. It is hard to find laundry detergent in cardboard boxes now. That seems wrong. I have enough ukes. One new uke, the balance is second-handers. One more, a custom and I am done and will sell off some. Just keep trying to help the planet as best YOU can, THINK before consuming, and don't always take the easy way out when disposing of items. Cheers!
 
Besides gut strings (which are perfectly biodegradable, but the requires a rather bloody manufacturing phase), Aquila actually has environmentally safer strings based on sugar and castor oil (called Sugar and Bio-nylon, resp.). I'm not sure if the end products are more biodegradable, could very well be, but the manufacturing process is much healthier for our planet.
 
D'Addario has a string recycling program, albeit I haven't taken them up on it.

I tend to change strings frequently: often weekly if I'm practicing hard or recording. Even fluorocarbon strings wear considerably from banging against frets and, worst, are scratched and rough where I pluck them. After a couple weeks of serious playing they lose sweetness, sustain and play out of tune up the neck.
 
My car is 19 years, my previous was 25. I change strings only when they break, which is very rare. I use my own shopping bags, never use straws, trash service is mandated to sort and recycle garbage, save take out boxes for my leftovers. I ride an electric standup scooter for short errands, all in all feel good about my efforts.


This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly West near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 5 acoustic bass ukes, 11 solid body bass ukes, 9 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 34)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
 
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Love it Mike, good way to live! Had to say goodbye to my 15 year old car last week after the head gasket failed. Had to also say goodbye to my new guitar fund to buy a replacement. Still, I have an exceedingly beaten up old guitar in the meantime and the best instrument is the one in your hands!
 
What most of us should think is about are carbon footprint. It is really high in countries like most of us belong.

Ukulele strings are just nothing, if I had a burning stove they were burned in like in maybe 10 seconds.

I do usually go to a store with my used plastic case, instead buy another one every time. Maritime pollution is just one, what is important is our carbon footprint, really!
 
I don't pay mind to any of it beyond making sure my plastic go in the recycling bin rather than the trash.
 
I wish I were more noble in many aspects of my life, but I'm not. I don't even think twice about throwing my old strings in the bin to be carried off the to land fill. I used to save them, but just in case I needed some old strings. I got past that though. I've never put an old string back on. At least I don't throw them in the creek that runs behind my house. Don't laugh, it is surprising and interesting what comes down the creek. I'm always down there picking up garbage that comes down. But I'm going to be honest and admit that I pick it up because I don't want garbage in my back yard, not because I'm trying to save the world. So I'm better than those dorks up stream from me. Do they not have garbage cans? I sound like a politician now, I'm not very good, but I'm better than those upstream guys. :)
 
I can't imagine many things worse than throwing fishing line into the water, OMG. Thank the gods my grandparents taught us better.
Just being on the planet incurs huge amounts of pollution. Our job, as I see it, is to make our carbon footprint as small as possible. I'm an environmentalist (Formerly a professional one) and I could go on all night about this, but this possibly isn't the right forum for that. I am very passionate about caring for Mother Earth, which is a living, breathing organism. Heaven knows I've done my fair share of polluting, and I'm not proud of it.
I change my ukes strings when they sound dull, or thuddy, or if I break one. I've learned over the past few years to make my strings last as long as possible by washing my hands before I play. I used to wear out a set in 5 months, but now I have 2 ukes and a banjouke to play, so of course, they last way longer.
I read somewhere that Aquilas are the least earth harming strings to make...but the only ones I like are the reds.
 
Love it Mike, good way to live! Had to say goodbye to my 15 year old car last week after the head gasket failed. Had to also say goodbye to my new guitar fund to buy a replacement. Still, I have an exceedingly beaten up old guitar in the meantime and the best instrument is the one in your hands!

It seems to me that you’ve given a good example of seeing, or at least trying to see, the big picture - though, of course, the small things that we do matter in a cumulative type of way too.

Locally I prefer to cycle rather than drive, but you do what is both practical and possible. Perhaps more important than what we do as individuals is how we influence others to (also) adopt greener ways of living.

Looking at cars I too tend to keep them a long time and when buying the last one - second hand, of course - sought to purchase something practical to use, fuel efficient, durable and affordable. On my last long trip the car returned 55 miles per U.K. gallon, which is somewhat greener than the 30 mpg vehicles I was driving a few decades back. On that trip I was reminded of just how busy our roads are and how much pollution the working population, just by carrying out their daily lives, put into the atmosphere. I look at that life structure, including the daily commute to distant work, and wonder how we can help society restructure towards living in greener ways - splitting work between days working at home and days working in the office is perhaps an example of one step forward.

In #17 Counter said “The problem is refrigerator manufacturing creates jobs (albeit currently in China until Chinese workers also want new refrigerators and become too expensive as a workforce and manufacturing moves to Ethiopia or wherever is the next supplier of dirt cheap labour), so until we all find a way of living happily as a low consumer society we are stuck in an ever decreasing circle.”

I think that that is somewhere near correct in that we are focussed on jobs and on profitable selling without seeing a bigger picture, however I move the emphasis a little. It is important that people live well and an essential part of what makes that possible is employment and profitable trade, but the ways in which we work, the products which we make and the way in which we trade to circulate wealth need to change to support a more sustainable way of life. The more people that seek change and the more voices that ask for change the better things will become.
 
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It is a pity that stuff is thrown in the nature and that landfills are still a thing.
In Denmark I believe combustable waste like plastic is in general burned on power plants, and landfills are for like construction materials. That is, until the new recycling policies make us put the plastic in a separate bin, so It is transported to eastern Europe in diesel consuming trucks, then stored so that someone hypothetically can make new plastic from it some day. I hope we still have garbage enough for the power plants.

Anyway, as long as plastic waste is disposed of in a proper way and not thrown into the sea or nature, I dont think it is that big a problem. And ukulele stribgs are a relatively small quantity of plastic that brings a lot of Joy. I am sure that consuming ukulele strings is better that consuming electronics etc.
 
Plastic is a highly useful product with a wide range of applications. The problem is that it is being disposed of too easily. But it doesn't go away even when reformed, buried, burned or liquidated. Maybe some future mutated microbe will break the polymer bonds and radically change the way we live.
 
My county in NY does not let stores give bags with purchases. People bring their own bags, or they buy them from the store - paper, not plastic.

Is that just grocery stores or does it it include other retailers such as boutiques and hardware stores?
 
Don't forget that plastic is made from crude oil - the production of oil and plastic is one of the most polluting processes there is. Landfill is a small problem in comparison.
 
Is that just grocery stores or does it it include other retailers such as boutiques and hardware stores?

Every store in the county. A local town passed that law a few years ago. My son knows a guy who drives across a toll bridge to the neighboring county to shop there and get a free plastic bag. What a clever man! :D
 
Corporate greed is at the root cause of all pollution.

It has been this way since before The Industrial Revolution and there is no signs of the greed abating.

Just what the answer to it is beyond my old brain’s processing power.
 
Plastic is a highly useful product with a wide range of applications.

Another problem with plastic is all the different formulations. Some we can recycle, and some we can't. Imaging having seven different recycling containers in your house and having to look for the symbol on the bottom of the plastic before putting it into a container.

Recycling.jpg
 
I am trying to do little things around my shop.
I am far from perfect.

But I mow minimally. And I am on an acre and a half, so the "side yard" and "back yard" get mowed even less. My pride feels like maybe people will come by my shop and judge that I don't mow.
But the wild cornflowers, dandelions, clover flowers, etc. are so pretty, I think it is prettier unmowed.

I am hoping this fall to make some solar boxes which capture the heat of the sun and push it into the shop. I am south facing and it could be such a cool way to heat my shop during the day in the winter.

So though not exactly related, it has been something on mind as well lately and I am trying to find little ways to make my shop more eco-friendly. I even looked into wind-energy, there was a grant, but it would still be cost prohibitive for me right now. I also have a creek in the back and may look into a water mill type turbine, but again, the cost might be super night. But it is cool the different possibilities that are out there.
 
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