1. Rise a doubled square of cheesecloth, wring out, and set over colander in the sink.

2. Combine 2 cups buttermilk with a half-gallon whole milk in a stainless steel pot.  Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring continuously, until the temperature has reached 100 F (you don’t even need a cheese thermometer – I just used a candy thermometer).  Then, let the milk cook without stirring for about 15 minutes, until the milk reaches 175 degrees.  Turn off the heat, and let sit for five minutes, until it looks like this.

3. Use a slotted spoon to scoop up the curds, and place them in the colander.  Drain for 10 minutes.

4. Gather the cheesecloth into a bundle, and secure with a rubber band.  Hang from faucet handle and drain for 45 more minutes.

5. Store in a container in the fridge. 

Makes 3-4 cups. 

This recipe, and variations, are all over the Internet, but it is SO EASY.  And, the quality is as good as store bought – but cheaper and garbage-free!  I’ve made a delicious lasagna with it so far, but I see many more uses in the future.

Adam, knowing this, brought me a “congrats on your new job!” present the other day, and it consisted of a whole assortment of green, earth-friendly office supplies.  So, whether you or your kiddo are heading back to school in a couple of weeks, keep these ideas in mind when school shopping.  There are all sorts of neat and fashionable green school supplies out there.  And, check back in a couple of days for a new giveaway!

I discovered the Sasquatch line of products last year, and I LOVE them.  Talk about a departure from the usual brown and green of recycled school supplies.  Their logo is “Leave Nothing But Tracks,” just like Bigfoot.  They have a whole line of recycled and recyclable products which are, by the way, trash-free.  Check it out!

How about this nifty invention – a staple-free stapler!  It can staple together up to four pieces of paper at a time, and it does this by stitching or weaving little strips together.  No staples to remove when recycling!  There are all sorts of varieties, from plain to kid-friendly.  Google “staple-free stapler” to find one you like.

Because being green is so trendy, all sorts of companies are hopping on the bandwagon.  While some of the marketing is simple greenwashing, I tend to feel like *some* effort is better than none.  To my surprise, the Crayola company is offering some greener products this year.  I found dry erase crayons, which are a great and non-smelly alternative to dry erase markers.

Also, the ubiquitous white-barreled Crayola markers have now been replaced with black barrels, which, the company says, helps them use more recycled plastic. 

Another simple idea are these corrugated cardboard binders.  So easy to recycle when they wear out.

 Finally, check out the super-cool Kids Konserve website.  Not only does this website sell waste-free lunch kits, they have all sorts of information about getting your kid involved in a green team at school.  This is great, and the information applies to all ages. 

Well, I posted the company’s less-than-satisfactory response on my blog here and recommended buying an alternative brand since this seemed like an obvious case of greenwashing.

I am delighted today to take back everything I said, based on this surprise follow-up email I received from the company:

Hi Amy,

I wanted to give you an update on our Mesh Produce Cards. Our original R&D revealed that retailers were concerned about using cardboard backing in the produce department because it would limit their ability to merchandise the products in a wet environment.  Large sections of the produce department are subject to frequent water spray and the use of cardboard would eliminate the ability of retailers to merchandise the mesh bags in all of those locations.

We have gotten many responses from our consumers to the use of the plastic card stock and in response we have re-addressed this issue with our retailers. Given the strong feedback, the retailers have agreed with our position that we should eliminate the plastic backing material and switch to cardboard. They are willing to except the limitations that creates on their merchandising options in return for the strong environmental benefits of eliminating the plastic – a decision we were thrilled to receive.

Given this, we will be switching to cardboard backing for all future productions of the cards. Earthwise Bag Company does not participate in nor condone green washing.  It is our company’s mission to provide eco-friendly products that conform to the highest environmental standards while also providing economical options to consumers.  

We are an environmentally and socially conscientious company and appreciate your continued support.

Thank you

Jeanine

Project Manager

Earthwise Bag Company, Inc

Awesome!  Never in a million years did I think I would get this email, but good for this company – it is listening to the many people who contacted them about a not-so-green aspect of their product and making a change for the better.  As soon as these hit the shelves in their new paper packaging, I’m going to buy some more. 

Life being what it is, however, I got laid off and had to start looking for a new teaching position.  I’m delighted to announce that I’ve found a position, so I’m only unemployed for another two weeks, then I get to go back to work!  However, this new position is in Washington state, so we’ll be moving back up to our old stomping grounds.  While this is a great opportunity, it means another across-state-lines move for us, which is never fun.

We’ve found a likely house, and we’re planning to move mid-September, almost exactly a year from our last move. 

So now, it’s time for another garbage-free move.  I imagine this time will be a little harder, since we’ve moving hundreds of miles away, not just across town.  Everything has to be wrapped, boxed, and taped securely for a bumpy ride on a moving truck. 

Here’s how we accomplish a garbage-free move:

• Obtain empty, recycled boxes from liquor and grocery stores.  Let your cats play fort while you’re packing.

• Wrap all valuables in recycled newspaper.  If you don’t subscribe, it’s worth going to your local newspaper office to see if they have leftovers from old editions.
• Tape boxes using paper tape, which is recyclable.
• 
• Donate all unwanted items to charity.
• Throw out only that which is too worn to be donated and which you cannot find a reuse for.

We have encountered a few items that are going to have to be thrown out.  Our old shower curtain liner, which I’ve been using as a tarp, has got to go.  My rubber-backed bathmat is also on the list of potential tosses.  So, what about you?

• How do you reduce your trash when you move?
• What kinds of trash do you usually generate?

Next week: Going back to school green

Sue wrote:

Speaking of using a plate, when I make a salad or something else I’d want to put in the fridge in its bowl (instead of a rubbermaid), I use a plate to cover it. Foil is almost eliminated by pyrex dishes with covers – a linen dishcloth can also sub in many cases where air-tightness is not important (transporting a pie, for example).

This little giveaway got lost in the shuffle!  If you want to enter, you have 24 hours.  I’ll draw a winner tomorrow.  See original post, below.

***

Okay, as a cook, I’ll admit it’s sometimes been hard to give up: foil, cling wrap, waxed paper, and parchment paper.  I mean, sometimes, it’s just nice to have something other than Tupperware to cover food.  This stuff, then, has been a lifesaver for me. 

Check it out – silicone coated parchment baking paper.  I use it when I’m out of Tupperware to wrap things like sandwiches in, though this is rare.  It’s really nice to have for baking,especially sticky cookies or the like. 

And, lucky you, I have one extra roll to giveaway.  The packaging is 100% recyclable cardboard, the paper itself is unbleached, and silicone is derived from sand or quartz, so it is essentially natural, too.  The paper is oven or microwave safe.  When you’re done with it, the paper can be tossed in the compost pile. 

So, all you need to do is leave me a comment telling me how you are eliminating those three substances from your kitchen – cling wrap, foil, and waxed paper.  For example, I no longer use waxed paper to cover dishes I reheat in the microwave – I just use another plate. 

If you think of something I’m not doing, I’ll enter you twice.  Good luck!

I haven’t talked about this yet because the honest answer is we just don’t know.  Being unemployed right now, we feel like our lives are a little bit in limbo, and until that gets straightened out, basically things are staying the same.  Here, then, are the steps we are taking/are planning to take:

First, we continue living essentially trash-free, just like we have for the past year, until our next step is decided.  Some school districts are still hiring, so my last chance to find a teaching job is basically right now (fingers are crossed here).  We may have to move, or we may stay in the same town, it just depends.  If I don’t find a teaching job, I’m going to have to take whatever I can get in Salem.

• We have decided to allow ourselves one “luxury item” a month, so we’ve eased up on our overall trash-free ways just slightly.  If I want to buy candy canes at Christmas, I’m going to!  This also allows me to buy exotic cooking ingredients that come packaged in garbage, or the occasional bath product.  We’ll report our luxury items each month.
• We are also going to ease up on the cheese restriction.  It is so hard to find cheese not packaged in plastic!  I’m a vegetarian for ethical reasons, so I’m well-versed on the cruelty issues associated with cheese production, but I’m just not ready to become a vegan yet.  Soy cheese is so not the same as dairy cheese.  That said, we will occasionally buy cheese in the largest bricks possible, freezing what we need to.  I’ll make every effort to buy locally grown, organic cheese, and I’ll make my own cheese whenever possible, too.
• Finally, when eating out at restaurants, we’ll make reasonable efforts to bring home napkins for the compost, straw wrappers for recycling, etc.  But, if I’m a long way from home and a waiter brings me salad dressing in a little plastic cup,I’m probably not going to continue smuggling the oily cup out of the restaurant and stashing it in my purse for hours before we get home.  I will request “no disposables” at all restaurants, but wait staff compliance varies from place to place.
• I’ll document the trash we do create each month on the blog, then I’ll throw it away.   

What does the future hold?  Hopefully, an extension of this project.  I talked previously about the need for extended producer responsibility legislation.  Basically, this means the producer of packaging, not the consumer, is mandated to incur disposal costs of said packaging.  Bottle Bills are an example of extended producer responsibility mandates.  There is only so much an individual can do when faced with manufacturers who don’t have to foot the bill for their over-packaging.  What we need is a person – people – who can work to widen the scope of take-back packaging laws.  It seems like my experience may best be put to use in this arena. 

In the meantime, I’ll be shifting the focus of my posts from our personal trash-free journey to helping others go trash-free, too.  This means tutorials and how-tos, more posts like this one that show how to make homemade hamburger buns.  Anything you’ve ever wanted to know how to make, rather than buy?  Leave a comment here and I’ll research it.

Adam and I attended a wedding last Saturday.  A friend from work was getting married.  I was invited as a guest, and Adam was the wedding photographer.  Day to day, he’s a photojournalist, but summers tend to get pretty busy as he travels throughout the Northwest photographing weddings on weekends.  Frequently, family and friends hire Adam to photograph their weddings (it’s always nice to have a photographer in the family), so I tend to attend weddings by myself, which gives me lots of time to contemplate all manner of things.  I spent my time thinking about all the trash generated at weddings, and was planning a post about times when it’s okay to put environmentalism on the back burner.

Then Sunday, we got a call from Adam’s mom.  His dad was in the hospital, so we made an emergency trip up to Washington, and we just got home last night.  Thankfully, everything turned out okay, but we generated a bit more trash during trips to the hospital.  Not only did environmentalism get put on the back burner, so did blogging. 

Then, I climbed Mount St. Helens.  This was already planned – I went with my parents, my brother, and his girlfriend.  In some ways, it worked out nicely that we were already in Washington, because I just hopped a ride with Mom and Dad while Adam stayed with his parents.  We stayed at a motel in Cougar, Washington the night before our climb, planning on a quick continental breakfast the next morning.  Turns out, our motel’s version of continental breakfast was nothing but prepackaged muffins, donuts, mini boxes of cereal, and yogurt.  Well, I wasn’t about to climb a mountain without eating breakfast, so yet more trash was generated.  Good thing, too, because I’m so sore I can barely move.   

Here’s the trash tally from these three events (I didn’t bring most of this home with me, due to the circumstances):

Wedding: Paper plates, monogrammed napkins, lots of appetizer toothpicks, individual container of bubbles, lots of ribbon used to decorate my chair, my favors (box of homemade chocolates – yum!), plastic cup for strawberry lemonade.  I was able to recycle my glass bottle from a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, because the bride and groom set out a recycling bin for empties.

Hospital: All trash associated with eating out at Taco Bell at 11 p.m. including paper wrappers, straw, and hot sauce packets.  We did recycle the soda cup and lid.  Also, all trash associated with hospital cafeteria, late night coffee, and celebratory lunch when Adam’s dad was released from the hospital. 

Mt. St. Helens Climb: Muffin wrapper, donut wrapper, yogurt tub and lid.  (I should add, though, that this particular climb was one of the very few wilderness experiences I’ve had where I noticed virtually no garbage.  Kudos to St. Helens climbers for observing Leave No Trace rules).

So what do you think?  Are there times when environmentalism just isn’t a priority?  Certainly, when we were driving to the hospital, it wasn’t on our minds, nor should it have been.  But what about at the wedding?  Do I forgo a toast to save a plastic champagne flute? 

Interesting to note, too, that a full 100% of this garbage is food-related.  This really speaks to the need for food manufacturers/restaurants to move away from single-serve disposable packaging.

Last week, I made hamburger buns.  As you know, I’m big on making things from scratch rather than buying them, especially if I can avoid all the nasty packaging and food preservatives.  I got to looking at bags of buns in the grocery store the other day and thought, “I can make those!”  A look at the ingredients in a bag of hamburger buns confirmed it – there is no need for high-fructose corn syrup to be in my buns!

So, I found this recipe on Food Network and followed it.  The results were excellent, and they really weren’t hard to make. If you can make bread in a bread machine, you can make these buns.  Benefits: no preservatives, better taste, and garbage-free!  (Hamburger bun bags are, by the way, technically recyclable, but still – one less plastic bag is not a bad thing).  Here’s what I did:

1. Gather ingredients.  Everything is packaged in recyclable or compostable paper or plastic. 

2. Make the dough.  It needs to rise, twice. 

3. Divide dough into equally sized balls.  The recipe calls for 10, but I think I could have gotten 12 buns out of it.

4. Cut each dough ball in half.

5. Pinch 2 halves back together.  Don’t pinch too hard, just enough to make the top stay put.  Otherwise, you’ll pinch the halves back into one piece of dough.  Once the buns are baked, they should pull apart nicely.

6. Sprinkle with onion or sesame seeds, then let rise for half hour.  Right before baking, brush with melted butter.

7. Enjoy!

If you have leftovers, they only keep for three or four days.  Otherwise, stick them in the freezer and they’ll keep until you’re ready to use again.

Our trash for one year - pictured here with a women's 7.5 shoe, for scale.

We did it.  With our (first) year officially over, the amount of trash we’ve produced between the two of us weighs in at about 3 pounds.  Considering that the average American creates 4.6 pounds of trash A DAY (about 3 pounds of that ends up in a landfill, the remaining 1.6 pounds is recyclable), we consider this quite the feat. 

Today, I’m not going to talk about what we’ve learned or what comes next.  Those are posts for another day.  Instead, I will tell you the story of our year – in trash.

Our trash can be separated into categories, and maybe here is the best place to start. 

Object trash – trash created from household items breaking or wearing out.

Object trash

• Broken dog squeaky toy: One of our very first pieces of trash, this frog squeaky toy met an early end thanks to a lawn mower.
• Severed bungee cords: Result of someone letting our dog out of our yard.  Thankfully everything turned out okay.
• Lightbulb: Burnt-out bulb that had to be replaced.  If you recall, we moved last September and had several bulbs burn out on us.  Some I’ve saved for craft projects, but a bulb like this I can’t do anything with.  It was replaced with a CFL.
• Broken Christmas ornament: Knocked off the tree by our cat and shattered.
• Ear plugs: Resulting from a mandatory field trip to a lumber mill.  We toured the local mill in the small town where I worked.
• 2 pens and a highlighter: A good, productive year as a teacher is bound to result in some worn-out writing utensils.  To avoid in the future, I will use a fountain pen or colored pencils.

Bathroom trash: By far the hardest to avoid.  Even a year later, I don’t have any new ways to avoid some of this stuff.

8 razor blades and 2 toothbrush heads.

A small mound of the rest of our bathroom trash.

• 8 razor blades: For financial reasons I did not invest in an electric razor (like Adam uses) or a safety razor.  Instead, I opted for these, which are way better than the full disposable razors.  I was (and still am!) unwilling to give up shaving entirely, though I used a natural wax called Moom whenever I could.
• 2 toothbrush heads: All in all, neither of us were in love with the Preserve brand toothbrushes.  The producers should be commended for making a recycled, recyclable product and for being responsible enough to deal with the product after its usefulness has expired.  Still, the bristles weren’t firm enough, and after using an electric toothbrush, my teeth never felt clean enough with Preserve. 
• Birth control pill packaging: 12 plastic wrappers, 12 plastic cases, and 12 plastic-foil pill packs. 
• Flea medicine: In the spring and summer months, the pets get fleas and so far, this is the only thing that works.
• Hospital bracelet: Plastic, from the time I was admitted earlier in the year.
• 2 Theraflu pouches: If you recall, both Adam and I got a nasty flu last winter.  We felt so bad that we couldn’t care less about creating garbage.  One reader correctly pointed out that, because it’s inevitable that you get sick, it’s necessary to do the research and have garbage-free alternatives on hand ahead of time.  That, and using herbal remedies are both things I plan to research in the future.
• Insect sting relief pad: From a visiting child over the summer.
• Various pill blister packs: Many medicines come packaged in plastic blister packs and covered with foil.  We could often, but not always, recycle the plastic.
• Seals from contact lens blister packs

Gifts

Sometimes, gifts we received contained trash.

• Styrofoam cup: From teacher appreciation week, when the student council brough us coffee.
• Popped balloons: From a night out at the Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant.  The Portland location has a balloon man who makes balloon animals for kids.  He wears big, crazy Dr. Seuss-style balloon hats, and at the end of the night, he gives the hat to one lucky diner.  I was that person.
• Wrapping paper: Refer to our Christmas posts to see how we made it through the Christmas season with only two pieces of trash.  Our families went above and beyond, wrapping our gifts in towels, fabric, and baskets.  Only one family wrapped our gifts in non-recyclable/reusable packaging.
• Cut flower preservative powder: Adam brought me flowers for our anniversary last week, and they were wrapped in tissue paper!  Unfortunately, this little packet of powder came with the flowers.

Trash we regret

Would have, could have, should have avoided it....

• Plastic tag from mesh produce bags: Oh, this makes me mad!  See this post for full rationale, but basically I fell victim to greenwashing.  The bags themselves are useful, but I wish I had purchased a different brand.
• Two pairs of latex gloves: From our beach cleanup last spring.  Had we thought ahead, we would have brought our own. 
• 2 Crackerjack liners: Again, I swear these didn’t used to come with a plastic-foil pouch inside.  Well, regardless, they do now.

Food or medicine seals

Food or medicine seals.

• 14 seals: Some of these fall into the category of regrettable (or avoidable) trash.  But, since living garbage-free is so easy, it wasn’t always at the forefront of our minds when we were replacing a condiment or medicine. 

Miscellaneous  and packaging trash

• Big ball of plastic and tape: I’m really at a loss as to where this came from.  The only trash from our move, perhaps?
• Plastic mailer: I might be able to fuse this, but for now, it’s trash.
• Flat packing foam: Again, we can also probably reuse this for mailing our own packages in the future.
• Miscellaneous: Some odds and ends plastic – tags from clothing, a plastic tag from a bundle of radishes, two suction cups from the bottom of our bath mat.

And there you have it.  A year’s worth of trash.  Oddly enough, this has become enough of a talking piece that we’re unlikely to ever throw this stuff away. 

One last look inside the box.

To our faithful readers ~ we hope you know we couldn’t have done this without you.  Thank you for your support, advice, and ideas.  We would have created much more trash if it wasn’t for the excellent, resourceful reader network this site has developed.  Please continue to check back in often (at least once a week), because the Green Garbage Project doesn’t end here.