Shifting Towards Zero Waste – Right Down To The Pint
Shifting Towards Zero Waste – Right Down To The Pint
MAKING IT HAPPEN…
ZERO WASTE: The concept and goal of zero waste is simple, to shift your habits and behavior until you produce zero waste. At first this can seem like an unrealistic and daunting task. But what if you took it up as a challenge, and a path of heart? How far down can you reduce your waste? You can break down your waste into general categories like SOLID WASTE, FLUID WASTE and GASEOUS WASTE to help you get started. You can also look at the matter in terms of WASTE STREAMS meaning what goes (streams) out in terms of garbage, down your drain/toilet or into the air.
At VitalBodies.com we took the challenge. While living in Sisters, Oregon we brought our SOLID WASTE down to 1/2 pint of garbage a week each! That is like the tiny little milk container some of you might have gotten in school. OK, admittedly we do compress the garbage into the Organic Valley Heavy Cream container but still. Our neighbors next door (at that time) dumped 36 gallons of trash each week. Many trash cans say right on them what size they are. VitalBodies is no longer in Sisters but we are still active in reducing our waste.
One of the most informative ways to begin to shift to zero waste is to spread out your trash and see what you are about to throw AWAY.
As you spread this trash out, keep in mind, THERE IS NO “AWAY”.
On the round globe of the biosphere we all share, there is no away, there is only someone or something else’s air, water or living space.
Realize fully that what you throw away can only come back again even if only in a different form like air or water pollution.
Challenge yourself to examine your trash at lease 4 times or more and make note of what is adding up the fastest in all that garbage.
We found that packaging, food, recyclables and plastics were the top offenders in our trash.
COMPOST FOOD:
Since we rent, composting seemed out of the question in our situation. Then we realized that we could simply take the compost out, further, much further out. We drive the compost out into the wilderness on our way to town or while traveling. We dump the compost where it will not harm anything. If done in small batches the compost is not a big effort and we reduced our trash by a noticeable amount in both size and weight. We keep the compost in something we can freeze if it sits a bit longer than we like. Compost does not get stinky when frozen solid! If we were not renting we would use a composter or the strew method. Food is heavy and a natural resource so there is no need to mummify food scraps for the next who knows how many years or so in your trash.
RECYCLABLES:
It is kind of a no brainer to recycle what is recyclable, but in fact to do so takes a bit more effort and research to make the most of it.
The first step is to reserve a place to store and sort recyclables and to do the research right away on who takes what. Generally speaking no one recycler takes all that can be recycled. You need to call around and see who takes what, and at the end of each conversation ask them who else recycles other items. Get creative in finding out what is available. Ask at the health food store, look in the phone book and ask any environmental groups in your area. Often the city and the county knows of different options so call them both.
PACKAGING:
We have found that packaged food has a lot of unknowns in both the food and what you cook the food in and rarely dowses well if you dowse all your food.
We find if we eat a lot of packaged food we do not feel all that well and can end up in a vicious cycle of symptoms, food addictions and allergies. Plus there is all that packaging. And the you have to wonder how much factory equipment your food touched and how long the food has been touching the packaging.
In our efforts to dowse our food, and shift to zero waste we have ended up feeling better and having a whole lot less trash.
To cut down on the mountain of packaging you throw away or recycle each year, you need to make the right choices when you shop.
We make all our food from scratch using all organic vegetables, fruits, grain, nuts, seeds and the like. We do buy frozen berries that come in plastic bags however and Half and Half that comes in milk type cartons.
Only occasionally do we buy frozen meals, and even then we re-use the boxes to ship light-weight items. Imagine getting what seems to be a frozen organic enchilada in the mail and finding that the box contains organic socks?
DRINKS: For drinks we only drink purified water, coffee, frozen berry drinks or tea that is bought in bulk not in tea bags. If you are not highly selective you can end up with a mountain of packaging from drinks – even if some of the packaging is recyclable.
Be aware that recycling takes natural resources which is why we try to reduce, then reuse, then recycle in that order.
TEA: Tea is one of the worst for excess packaging by weight of product consumed. You have the plastic wrapper, box, tea bag wrapper, tea bag, sting, flag, and staple or something other bunch of junk like that. Take your tea out of the tea bag and make a hot cup of tea using only the bag, sting and staple. See if it tastes and feel like something you would really want to drink. Does it dowse well? Are you sure want to make tea this way?
Packaging is expensive. If you have ever considered marketing a product and have looked into how much packaging costs to manufacture then you know the price of packaging is really high. Don’t spend all your money buying packaging on simple products just to throw it all away or recycle it.
PLASTICS:
Other than the few plastics that one can actually find somewhere to recycle all you can do is REDUCE what you use and RE-USE what you do buy. It really comes down to shopping differently when buying plastic packaging. Just say NO to plastic packaging by buying eveything you can in bulk.
THE BASIC TECHNIQUES:
REDUCE is the first step. By cutting down on what your household takes in you have less to deal with. LESS IS MORE.
RE-USE is the second step. Re-use what you have so you will need less.
RECYCLE is the third step.
Take a reusable bag full of reusable bags and containers and buy what you need in bulk. Make your own meals instead of buying pre-made prepackaged meals. You can make extra portions each time you cook or prepare food and store or freeze the extras to eat when you normally would have relied upon highly packaged pre-made meals. The reason we took the time to write this article is to share what ideas and techniques that have worked well for us..
HAZARDOUS WASTE:
Obviously we all need to do our part to keep hazardous waste out of all the WASTE STREAMS so we have a special container to put hazardous waste in.
You all have a container just for hazardous waste, right?
Where else would you put things like spent batteries and other toxics?
A PERSONAL CHALLENGE:
See if you can get your solid waste stream down to 1 quart a week. That would be about 1 gallon a month. Then work towards 1/2 to 1 pint A WEEK. VitalBodies.com bought our trash down to 1/2 pint after some amount of effort and changes. This not only included our personal lives but our business also. It is also fun that we can toss that pint in a trash can on the way into the store to shop and not need garbage service. One pint Organic Valley Heavy Cream container stuffed with trash which is mostly plastic like blue berry wrappers is what we end up with. To get down to that level took a number of techniques. For example all toilet paper and tissue goes into the toilet where it will break down and all compost goes into the wilderness. Paper is recycled and what can not be is reused for packing materials. We make “paper pillows” out of plastic bags by filling them with unrecyclable paper (postal label backing and such) that are then used as packing materials in the form of little pillows. We even shred tags and do the same. We can also use opened blister packs for padding and keep all the old tape off the boxes we collect to reuse for shipping. All in all we need to work together to develop the techniques to make reducing our waste streams happen. For us, we wanted to start by reducing our garbage then the total amount of recyclables.
TIME:
There is no better time available than now to make changes that help the Earth. Yet at the same time this article has no time limit. Comment as many times as you like for as long as you like. We all have developed techniques we can share. Don’t forget we can also address WATER WASTE and GASEOUS WASTE.
NOTE:
In VitalBodies new location we can now recycle milk carton asceptic type containers. : )
