More sustainable living
May 30, 2018
I’m loving Angela’s recent sustainability tips and Cassie’s posts on deciphering those recycling symbols, buying cleaning products in bulk (though I would have to find the US equivalent), low waste food shopping. Also Miser Mom’s gift to her church that keeps giving.
PiC and I aren’t zero-wasters but we make an effort to be as low waste as possible. Here are some of the things we’re doing now:
1. Reusable shopping bags and produce bags
I didn’t get on this bandwagon until plastic bags were banned here in Northern CA because we always reused our plastic bags for the garbage, but we had a good stash of reusable bags from Comic Con to use when that ban went into effect. We’ve also added mesh produce bags to our shopping trips to reduce the number of small veggie bags that we use, and may soon switch over to using free newspaper to line our tiny trash bins to reduce our use of plastic even more.
2. Recycle!
Everything that can be, is!
- Food is kept separate from paper and plastic recycling to avoid contamination.
- We have small appliance and household waste recycling through the city,
- and film plastics recycling at Sprouts,
- and electronic waste recycling through work.
- I’ve even found textiles recycling for shoes and clothing that are simply too thrashed to be handed down or donated.
3. Reuse and rehome
Before recycling, we try to find a new use for anything that would normally be chucked into the trash. I always consider what we can do with something that’s emptied out or used up, and sell things we don’t need anymore.
- Set aside partially used paper for JB to do crafts with or send it to composting when ze has crafted it all to bits,
- Every piece of junk mail with a blank side gets put into the recycle printer tray – I use those sheets for printing shipping labels, boarding passes, and other throwaway things. Our scratch paper pile got a huge boost when I finally went through every single sheet of paper from three mortgage transactions!
- JB gets our empty shampoo and conditioner bottles to play with in the bath instead of new bath toys.
- We list anything from old clothes in good shape to small pieces of furniture that don’t have a place in our small home, for sale, and do our best to sell without generating too much extra waste.
It’s better than going to landfill!
4. Make do and do without
We’re working hard not to generate waste in the first place by using what we have and doing without until it’s clear we truly need the item.
For example, we have a plethora of free water bottles but I’ve been in need of a non-leaking bottle with a good washable straw so that I can drink water all day long without hurting my hands too much. Lifting a full water bottle several times a day with angry joints is a recipe for several hours of being crippled and I do my best to avoid that! It’s been 4 years since my trusty $10 Target bottle started leaking. I’ve made do with sub par replacements but haven’t hit on any good replacements so I’m finally caving and buying. We don’t usually hold out quite that long but this wasn’t something I needed to rush into buying.
- My small space heater is saving us $30-40 a month, this $20 Holmes jobbie’s been around since 2008. It craps out occasionally, but turning it off and back on again actually works so I just keep doing that.
- Same with my 20-year-old $3 yard sale hair dryer. The low function doesn’t work anymore but the high function works fine and short hair only needs a few minutes of heat anyway.
- I use a wash cloth instead of disposable cotton pads for facial cleansing.
- We haven’t replaced my extra snuggly blanket JB appropriated even though I really want to.
- We wear our clothes to pieces, literally.
- It’s too damp here to air-dry all our laundry but we air-dry anything that we can and use wool balls for things that go in the dryer.
5. Bartering compost
We don’t have time or room to get educated and set up for compost right now but we have friends who are getting into it and we’re arranging a trade. I’ll take apart their fabrics, and they’ll take our compostable stuffs. Especially the weeds I need to tear out of our garden! Once they have it figured out, we should be nearly ready to start gardening, so we can learn a bit from them and set ourselves up too.
6. Buying in bulk
We started buying spices, nuts, and flours in bulk though the system there is imperfect because they still primarily cater to plastic bags. Maybe we can save up for a full set of spice jars, and maybe they’ll let us fill those instead, bringing an extra to get the tare weight.
7. Satisficing
When the choice is between “making the best choice with the information I have at hand” and “being paralyzed by all the choices and reverting to just using the same old wasteful products”, I’m working on taking the first option. It might not be the Best Choice out there but better than crappy is still improvement.
What else / more can we do?
Am I missing more stuff that could be recycled or reused?
One thing on my mind is dishwashing sponges! We were buying the Scotch Brite sponges in bulk to reduce the film plastic packaging waste but the sponges only last so long and we have to toss them. Also the science keeps going back and forth on how to make them less gross. What alternatives do you use for scrubbing everything from dishes to sinks to veggies?
We put out roughly one 10 gallon bag of trash once every three weeks. The biggest things that have helped us have been CSA deliveries (minimal food packaging) and composting.
I use a compostable sponge made of cellulose and stuff. It’s fine. Not as good as the Scotch Brite honestly but good enough. I’ve never been a stickler about sponge sanitation, most because we only scrub our cookware which are mostly inhospitable silicon or metal and will hit high temps anyway. And the sponges have never gotten weird, so… *shrugs*?
That’s really good! We are 50-75% filling a 20 gallon bin weekly but that should go down when we get started composting.
We are super lazy composters– we have a compost pile in a corner of the backyard that just kind of sits there and degrades. In terms of Northern CA, your soil is super acidic (or something like that, don’t quote me on PH levels), so you can just bury your waste and it will turn into dirt on its own quicker than it would in most of the rest of the country.
It doesn’t get gross and smelly and attract insects or pests?
We buy the majority of our clothes at the thrift store. Okay okay it’s mostly for the super cheap prices, but manufacturing new clothes is extremely environmentally costly. So buying used creates effectively zero fabric waste since you are just extending the life of something that already existed! And then I can take it a step further by repurposing thrifted items (including our old clothes & household linens) for my sewing projects instead of always buying new material. I have bathmats made from two old towels and a sheet, 6 reusable grocery bags from a tablecloth, a rug crocheted from T-shirts, dolly clothes from baby clothes, a leather skirt into a leatherwork kid craft project, and more!
PS Thrift stores sometimes have snuggly blankets too. Just saying. 😉
Thrift stores sound like a win win to me 🙂 We repurpose whatever we have already, but I’m no great shakes at sewing and I have to be careful of my hand pain, so that’s more limited. If you have any suggestions for easy on the hands projects though, I’d love to hear them!
With cranky hands, fabric glue or fabric tape will probably be your best friend to avoid repetitive stitching. Some fabric tape doesn’t even need to be ironed, although it might not hold as strongly.
My projects vary depending on whether I’m working From a material/item I want to use up, or Towards a particular project I want to make. So I might Google “ideas upcycle Tshirt free sewing pattern” or “free sewing pattern for tote bag” respectively.
By the way, T-shirt tote bags are gratifyingly simple to make and there are tons of online tutorials. There are also lots of tutorials for various sizes of drawstring bags; a big one can store sheets, a little one can carry JB’s treasures, and one made with pretty material could be used as a gift bag. Handkerchiefs are even easier: just cut soft old T-shirts into pieces half the size of a Kleenex and stuff a handful into an old tissue box. My kids like using them as dolly blankets & kitten capes too! Ooo speaking of capes there are many variations on turning T-shirts into superhero capes; I chose Velcro tabs to fasten in front rather than havng a solid neck because I felt it was safer in case it snagged during takeoff. A small towel becomes an apron for JB if you cut the top corners off (you should remove two triangles) and then use wide double-fold bias tape to make one waist tie, slide it over one side’s cut edge & glue or tape it in place up to the top edge (the neck), let the tape loop up so it can fit over JB’s head, then glue or tape it down the other cut edge, and make the second waist tie.
Good luck!
It sounds like you’re doing great! For the spice jars I just refill the ones I have as I run out of them. It’s not as pretty as a full set, but it’s way cheaper!
For dishes we have a dish brush (IKEA, imperfect but long lasting and inexpensive), lots of dish cloths, and a brass scrubby for more aggressive scrubbing on steel and cast iron (Chore Boy, two pack was about $4. Online prices can be insane).
Thanks for the link love 🙂
Could you please share more info about “textiles recycling for shoes and clothing that are simply too thrashed to be handed down or donated”? I know it can be recycled and have been collecting it for a while, I just have no idea where or how!?!?!?
The Goodwill stores in my town accept donations for textile recycling, though they do have to meet certain guidelines like not having mold.
Hmm sounds like you’re doing awesome! What about reusable wraps? We use wayy too much foil and gladwrap but I did buy a beeswax cloth which I mostly use to cover stuff in the fridge vs wrapping stuff.
That’s a great start!
Instead of sponges, we use a dish brush made of bamboo and the bristles are vegetable based. From what I know, it’s pretty eco-friendly.
We do everything that you do and more.
– We use a reusable hydroflask water bottle, never plastic
– We bring mason jars to the bulk section and fill them up at the store… then store the dry food goods in said mason jars inside our famous pantry.
– We refuse plastic straws.
– We don’t buy toilet paper. We have a bidet and washable organic cloths to pat our bottoms dry. We do have some toilet paper for guests who are not comfortable with a bidet. So when we buy toilet paper, we get it from Who Gives A Crap, which is a sustainable company where no trees were killed to make the toilet paper and all profits go to building toilets for needy populations plus there are no dyes, chlorine bleach, or chemicals in the paper so better for health.)
– We make our own cleaning products. Dilute vinegar with a touch of castile soap does the trick for most surfaces. For other surfaces, dilute isopropyl alcohol works. Baking soda with the dilute vinegar works wonders too.
– We don’t shower every day
– We use make our own toothpaste from coconut oil, baking soda, xylitol, and a touch of peppermint essential oil
– We generally make our own soap out of castile soap bought in bulk
– Baby wears cloth diapers
– I drive an electric car
A few things to consider 🙂
I love that our little city accepts food waste and composts it. I was an active backyard composter in Chicago, but could never compost food items like meat scraps and bones due to pest concerns. Here we just chuck all of it in our Brown bin with the yard waste and the city takes care of the rest. I make sure to put things like soiled paper towels and facial tissues in the bin, too, to minimize what goes to the landfill.
I’d also like to know what you do for textile and shoe recycling. I once read that Goodwill had a way to recycle those so I’ve taken stuff that was worn to their donation center, but I worry that the information wasn’t up to date and all that stuff will end up in landfill.
For scrubbing stuff, brushes are good, but since most brushes are made from plastics I’m not sure how sustainable it is.
Great job in being a good steward of the Earth. We try our best too. We do most of the things that you do and a few other things. For example we don’t really use toilet paper anymore. Using a bidet is revolutionary. We just pat dry with organic cloth now.
We make our own cleaning products with dilute vinegar and a touch of castile soap. And we don’t use paper towels. Just washable cloth towels.
We do a lot of things that would be considered crunchy / granola / hippie. LOL
Go to you bet your garden’s website and use their a-z to look up composting and worm composting aka vermiculite. If all you compost is yard waste plus coffee grinds, you won’t have a problem with varmints. Mike recommends worms for composting food waste, and I haven’t done it yet but it is on my list! As of now, everything that the chickens can eat, they get, and I harvest compost from their run twice a year using the deep litter method. That’s probably a lot more than you want to know!
We have so many reusable bags at home now that it’s literally overflowed. We started collecting them since Northern CA started charging bags at stores and it has gradually grown over the years. It’s great to have around and not worry about paying extra for bags.
We still take our recycled water bottles the recycling center. We get many of them from our work and take it home to build them up. We get around $10-$15 for every trip to the recycling center.
NYC has all these rule sand regulations on how to recycle this and that, and has a gov’t worker whose job it is to walk around opening people’s trash bags and inspecting them for recyclables… And then fining them if they find something… So we try to separate everything (and our landlord further separates with their pro hands).
I’m SUCH a hoarder (I’m trying to get better) that I can’t throw ANYTHING away, so I’ve been doing hauls to nonprofits that have charity shops in NYC, like the one to benefit LGBTQA homeless teenagers in NYC with AIDS. Otherwise, I am trying to be very mindful of what I bring in to the house, and can’t imagine what I would do if we also have plastic bag bans… Those are necessities for my lunch bag/food bag/trash bag…. XD
I think it’s basically one wrapping at a time… When all of us do it, it’ll get better, little by little! 🙂
The are great tips. On the re-use side, do you have any repurposed furniture projects you took on that you are proud of?
I like getting creative with furniture to give it new life. For example, when I need to upgrade my drawers, i turned my old dresser into a bar. Helps me save $, and reduces my waste. Also makes for nice conversation pieces.
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Thanks for the ping! It’s so nice to find a kindred spirit.
In response to your suggestions, I have two suggestions, one specific and one wholistic. The specific is about minimizing sponge use: I use a chain mail scrubber (“the ringer”), and really have loved how I can use it on cast iron, on pyrex, on the sink, and even on cleaning tough veggies (carrots and potatoes yes, mushrooms not so much). Every once in a while I still use a scrubby sponge, but I use it a LOT less now.
The other is just to pay attention to what actually goes in your trash can. It’s probably not full of sponges, for example. Just being aware of your own garbage patterns might help you reduce trash in ways that no stranger could have suggested. True example: I looked and looked and looked for ways to freeze veggies/meat without buying ziploc bags. But then I realized one of the constants in our trash can these days is cereal bags (my son and husband are huge cereal eaters, much to my chagrin). Well, dang. If I’ve got food-quality storage bags already in the house, why not save those for freezing food?