Ethical Living

Since I finished university (in February 2007), I've felt a bit as if I'm growing into the person I will be. And one of the things I discovered is that I'm more 'alternative' than I expected - I mean, I've always cared about the environment, the future and treating people (and the planet) fairly, but I always I thought I'd be too lazy to make any bigger commitments. But then, on a whim, I bought The Rough Guide to Ethical Living - and started to actively implement some of the things it suggested about living in a more ethical way.

Here's what I do

• Shop responsibly. Find a balance that feels right to me between fair trade, bio and local products as much as I can afford to. This goes especially for meat - I had no idea how much resources go into producing 1kg of beef, for example.
• Live environmentally-friendly. Saving energy, saving water, making up for the carbon I use in my everyday life isn't all that hard.
• Treat your body well. Buying 'good' food has made me more aware of how I feed myself. I've also started to exercise regularly - usually I manage 5 days a week, between 25 and 50 minutes.

In this last category you can also put my decision to ditch disposable pads and tampons - a big change at first, but really, it's just a matter of getting into a new routine, similar to changing your shopping, eating or exercising habits.

Cloth pads and menstrual cups
I stumbled across a mention of alternatives to tampons in the 'Rough Guide to Ethical Living' - something called a MoonCup. A bit of research revealed that there are different models available, all working by the principle of inserting a bowl-like 'cup' which then catches the blood. After several hours of use the cup is removed, cleaned and re-inserted. Simple as that, as long as you're not squeamish about fiddling around 'down there' - which, really, you don't have any reason to.

While reading about this, I also stumbled across reviews on how easy cloth pads are to use. I bought a couple of samples, mostly pantiliners/mini pads because I only need them as back-up and for in between periods, and quickly discovered that it's really not that much of a hassle to wash them by hand after usage. And since they're made from cotton or similar skin-friendly fabrics, I'm free of the 'plastic-y' smell and feel disposable pads and pantiliners gave me. Because money's a bit tight right now, I've even started making my own - they're not artworks (unlike a lot of the cloth pads you can buy online), but they do the trick. I'm definitely not going back!

Links
There are a ton of great sites out there - much more than I expected when I started looking for information. These are just some of the sites I use the most.

Green Living

• Playgreen (wiki on green living)
• Carbon Footprint (carbon use calculator and information)
• TheCarbonNeutralCompany (information and ways to offset the carbon you use)
• MyClimate (Swiss carbon-neutral site)
• Business & Human Rights Resource Center (vast resource on the business practices of companies)
• Gooshing UK (British guide to ethical online shopping)
• Responsible Shopper (Co-op America site with mostly US-centered information)
• WWF Schweiz: Tipps für den Alltag (Swiss WWF site with tips for saving energy and shopping well)

Female hygiene

• Menstrual Cup Support (community-based site, answers to all your cup-related questions)
• Menstrual cup insertion methods (part of the menstrual_cups LJ community)
• Clothpads.org (all you need to know about cloth pads - also has information on menstrual cups)
• Cloth_pads (LJ community, links and information for all your cloth pad-needs)
• DivaCup Tampon (Swiss seller of the DivaCup - my brand)
• EcoFamily (Swiss sellers of the MoonCup and -sadly boring white- cloth pads)
• Procraftination (Swedish cloth pad maker)
• HagRag (I'm using their diamond-shaped sample pad -free shipping!- during the night)