Trash Audit - A.K.A. Does this Trash Make My Bin Look Big?

Happy New Year!

We audited our trash last week, to check in to see how we were doing, in our quest to make less trash.  We hosted many people for both Christmas and New Years, and I am happy to report, that even with the present opening, we still have room in our trash can!  (We forgot to put it our between Christmas and New Years.)  Here is what it looked like:

Trash:
8 plastic bags of assorted food packaging (crackers, bread, cheese, ham)
Three plastic tubs (cottage cheese, dip and spread)
12 candy wrappers.  Mostly paper and foil.
 One kitchen trash bag of paper (from a purge of old paperwork.  This all arrives paperless now, but we still had it from the past.)
Christmas Packaging - fit in one 10" x 10" by 8" box.  This was the rigid plastic around a toy each of my kids got.  There was also tissue paper that was beyond reuse, and had already served us well several times!  Santa wrapped his gifts - so there was a small amount of gift wrap  We were pleased that Santa used eco-friendly printed paper.  
One grocery sized bag of assorted tissues, floss, misc.  bathroom trash - collected from all the bathrooms.
Two paper soda cups that came home from eating out - no lids or straws.
Three pieces of fruit that went bad.
A decent handful of junk mail and envelopes from Christmas cards we received.
12 glass bottles of various types.  Did you know that glass can be recycled forever?  It never goes down in quality like other products. 
13 cans of cat food.   Our elderly cats can't eat dry food very well any more.  
4 soup cans.
Cat waste.

Diverted:
8 cans from soda.  They are being diverted to make soda can art, like this 
4 wine bottles.  Diverted to make these centerpieces.
Loads of gift bags and tissue.  We refold and put these back away for another year.  
Compostable plates from New Year's Eve.  They will go into the worm bin.
5 plastic cups - that were washed out and will be used again.
5 cardboard boxes that will be used for art at reCREATE.
Eco -Packing peanuts - which can be used for to make fun art sculptures, like this.


Not Among Our Trash:
Wasted Food from Christmas Eve.  We carefully calculated how much food was appropriate for our guests.  We replenished food as needed.  Result - virtually no wasted food after hosting 11 people.
Excess Packaging:  Among the adults - almost all gifts were either handmade or "experience" gifts.  I'm thrilled that we will be getting together with other family members to see theater performances, and attending some lovely fundraisers together.  Not only are we helping causes, we now have some dates that we know we will be having fun together.  My sister and her husband are taking our kids to see a show and keeping them overnight.  They can't wait!
Disposable Plates & Cutlery - We did bring out some paper plates for New Year's Eve- but we will compost them.  We used all real plates and cutlery for the rest of the time, and just cleaned up afterwards. 
Shopping Bags - We bring our own when we shop - so we don't have a drawer exploding with one use plastic shopping bags.  
Christmas Decor - I heard a story about a local family that put their Christmas Tree out for the scouts to pick up.  It still had on the lights and ornaments.  I can't imagine that!  Each year as we pull out our ornaments, we revisit memories of Christmas Past.    The result is that we reuse them every year.  We did buy a tree this year... but I know it will be mulched and made into compost. 
Much of the food we bought was placed in our glass containers, significantly reducing the amount of waste we generated.  

We are still learning, but are quite proud of our low waste holidays!  How did you do?

 

Overconsumption...I'm not buying it

For years now, my family has been in search of a "better balance" for Christmas.

One year we all ONLY made gifts.... for everyone.  That year was memorable, in that it almost put all of us over the edge, rushing to complete all of our projects.  We learned how to etch glass, make liquor, collage, make gum-ball machines and more.   

Then the kids came along, and we decided to skip the adult gifts and focus on the kids.  Result:  Overwhelmed kids who were over gifted.

Last year we scratched the rules, and everyone did what they wanted.  I think it was a better balance.
I bought a beer making class for the guys, made some ornaments, and scheduled a spa trip for the girls.  We asked everyone not to go overboard for the kids. It seemed to work.

This year, we didn't shop on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday at our house.  In my opinion, the stores lure people in with irresistible offers, only to have very limited numbers of said sale items.  The thought of leaving Thanksgiving to go camp out somewhere for a flat screen TV doesn't appeal to me.   The race to spend as much money as you can, on stuff you really don't need completely negates spending a day together as a family being thankful for what we have.  

Some people may say my thinking doesn't support our local economy.  But I disagree.  Buying imported stuff from big box stores does little to promote our local economy.  I would much rather seek out interesting experiences, or handcraft something that I can give to my family.  My daughter will be getting horseback riding lessons, and my son will be set up for archery class.  Neither gift came across the seas in a box that will need to be recycled.   Both gifts will support local businesses. 

So my challenge to you, is before you buy another pair of crazy socks (or tie, or plastic toy, or scarf) the recipient will likely never wear, ask yourself do we really need this stuff?  Maybe you can sit down and make something for them, or write them a heart-felt letter, poem or celebrate a memory. 

People have been talking about overconsumption for years.  And while I don't agree with all of the points in the video, I suggest you go check out The Story of Stuff. 

What works for your family?  I'd love to hear your ideas!

Lessons Learned in our Grocery Shopping

A quick update on our last post.  Yesterday, we went grocery shopping.  We loaded up 9 containers to hold our bulk, meat and cheese purchases.  We could have used more.  Next time we will bring between 12 and 14.  Stopping by Whole Foods customer service to get our containers weighed was a breeze.  Everyone was super friendly about us using our own containers.  At check-out the bagger thanked us!  

The only plastic in our bag was the pre-wrapped cheese, since we ran out of containers, and one bag of spinach. 
I noticed was that putting things away at home went much faster with our own containers, no refilling already existing bins.  

We made peanut butter chocolate chips for our sweet lunch snack this week.  Yum!  This took about 35 minutes total, between whipping up the cookies and baking them.  One container went into the freezer.  

We will be inventorying our garbage this week to have a baseline of trash generated for our year of morphing in to a zero-waste (we hope!) family.  We still have plenty of food in our cabinets from our old way of shopping, so I think it may take a month to see a huge difference in our waste output. 

One another note, we have been diligently using our worm bin to compost our food waste.  They are HAPPY little worms.  Curious how worms can help you cut down your waste?  We will be talking worms in a future blog post!

We "Re-Do" Our Grocery Shopping Habits

A couple of years ago, after I started reCREATE, I would get frustrated every time I went grocery shopping. With our program, I’d go into classes of elementary kids, and teach them that plastic bags take and estimated 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill.  Then I’d go to the grocery store to shop, and it seemed like every single thing was wrapped in plastic.   If I had trouble getting away from plastic, how could I expect the little ones to do any better?  I looked and looked for easy dinners that weren’t packaged in a way that made me cringe.  For the most part, my searches were fruitless.  Shopping for minimal packaging is like going to the gym… if you want to make a difference, you have to be diligent and really make an effort.   

Below are the few things we are re-working in our family to minimize our waste:

Do:  My kiddos love burritos.  We were flying through boxes of Amy’s Organic burritos.  But every single burrito is wrapped in plastic. 

Re-Do:   Buy a big container of tortillas (still in plastic – but I’m not ready to hand-make all the tortillas yet.) and make a big batch of burrito fillings in the slow cooker.   There are gazillions of recipes to try!

Do:  We try hard not to buy individually wrapped snacks… but every now and then we do cave and buy something like Clif Kids Fruit Ropes. 

Photo ©2012 Just a Taste, LLC.

Re-Do:   Spend an afternoon making lunch snacks for the week.  We’ll whip up some muffins (Which can double as a breakfast on the go), and create our own version of trail mix from the bulk area at the grocery store.  We'll bring our own jar to put it in.  While I didn’t find a version of a fruit rope, I did find these tasty treat – fruit roll-ups.   I adjusted the recipe to have sucanat instead of sugar.   Sucanat is a less refined version of sugar – it is evaporated sugar cane juice.  They were delicious!

Do:  Buy cheese and meat from the deli and meat counter wrapped in paper.

Re-Do:   Take our glass containers to the deli counters to buy our meat and cheese.

Other hints I found for shopping and less waste:

I keep my reusable shopping bags in my trunk.  When I was just starting to use them, I would leave one bag on my passenger seat to help me remember to take it in the store.  Also, to be sure your bags stay clean, you can toss them in the wash to make sure they are not becoming vehicles for scary germs.

Invest in a reusable water bottle.  Get one that you REALLY love.  This is mine.   I take it everywhere.   Stop buying bottled water.   For one, the "disposable" bottles take 700 years to decompose if they end up in the landfill.  I live in a place where our garbage is sorted and the recyclables are pulled out from our One Big Bin. Here’s the deal though… like anything the system isn’t perfect, so a small percentage still end up going to the landfill.    Plus, think about all of the resources it takes just to get that water bottle to market.   We are lucky to live in a place with good water coming through our tap – so drink up!

I have come to learn that buying from the Bulk Shopping bins is much less expensive than the same food in a package on the shelf.  Bring reusable bags and jars to get the stuff home and stored.   

Do you have a trick for shopping with less waste?  I'd love for you to leave a comment!