Week 12
Hi all! Three months into our garbage challenge already – this year is flying by! Again, our week has been marked with occasions other than things garbage-related, but regardless, we trek on in our garbage-free lifestyle. Let’s see…
My brother and his girlfriend visited on Sunday for the Seahawks game and we had good game spread that was completely recyclable when finished. Take and bake pizza wrapped in plastic wrap, cans of soda, tortilla chips from a paper bag, homemade salsa. I continuously find that if I just try to make a garbage-ful event garbage-free, it’s virtually no problem whatsoever. Usually a football party involves trash because paper plates and napkins are set out and lots of leftover food packaging winds up in the trash. We just used regular dishes and again, made sure we didn’t buy anything that comes in non-recyclable packaging.
Another thing I’ve been meaning to mention is that, since I started work again, I’ve noticed that being garbage-free keeps me completely away from the vending machine like nothing else ever has. Especially if I stay late at work grading papers or planning for the next day, sometimes the plastic or foil-wrapped junk food calls my name. Now, everything in the vending machine is off-limits, so no unhealthy snacking for me. I’ve been packing more healthy snacks, things like granola and dried fruit that I can buy in bulk.
We did add a couple small pieces of plastic to the shoebox this week; namely contact lens throwaway blister packs. There might have been a second small item but looking through the box, I can’t pick it out from the other miscellaneous plastic bits.
I felt quite green today because we’re just starting Homecoming week at school and today was Hippie Day. Not only did I get all my outfits for all five dress up days from the Goodwill (yay for reuse!), I went to school today as a hippie and was informed by my students that I could pass as a hippie already, since I’m halfway there anyway with the garbage project. Their comments generated some discussion, and I’m really enjoying answering my students’ questions about the project. They come up to me at random times asking how I handle certain trash dilemmas and they are usually intriqued by the answer. Maybe I’ve helped a few people think about their trash habits in new ways.
One of the odder questions I received this week was from a student, who asked me about disposing of hair after a haircut. At home, hair gets composted (not with food) or buried, but I haven’t yet gone to a salon to get my hair cut. I hadn’t even thought of this, but it’s true – I don’t want my hair to end up in a landfill. On the other hand, it seems quite weird to ask the hairdresser to sweep my hair off the floor and give it back to me. Even by my “breaking cultural norms regarding trash” stance, that goes a little far. The solution I’ve come up with so far is to grow my hair out and donate it to Locks of Love when it’s long enough. I’ve always wanted to do this, and maybe now is a great opportunity to help out a great cause. Any thoughts on hair disposal after a haircut?
Finally, a pair of my most favorite cotton PJs ripped tonight. The cloth will become rags for its next stage in life, but I’m soon going to need to face the challenge of disposing of cloth after it’s totally beyond use as clothing or rags. I’m wondering if organic cloth can be composted, or if there are organizations out there that take cloth and break it down to the fiber level for reuse. This seems reasonable, but so far, such an organization hasn’t presented itself. I’ll be researching this next.
I think that’s it for tonight. See you next week!
Week 11
It’s been a hectic, non-stop busy week for Adam and I, and the fact that I haven’t hardly thought about our garbage project indicates that our garbage-free lifestyle seems to have hit its stride.
That’s not to say, unfortunately, that we produced zero garbage for the week. A few small pieces of packaging have been added to the garbage box, this week from a package of gauze we opened up for medical reasons and more tape from a desk fountain I bought for my new office. In a moment of self-indulgence, we purchased a few things to make our new place feel more like home, and since this is the first time we’ve each had our own office, we wanted to add a few personal touches to our individual rooms. I picked out a fountain that was packaged in Styrofoam (I have now found a place in Salem that recycles Styrofoam, thanks to the Master Recycler class) but couldn’t see that inside the box, the fountain was taped down. I still haven’t found a solution for packing tape, and the stuff keeps adding up in our shoebox – Styrofoam can’t be recycled with the tape on it, and once torn off, the stuff is useless to me, as it’s no longer sticky.
I attended the second week of my Master Recycler class and enjoyed the instruction immensely. We discussed at length why recycling is good but not great, an issue that has been brought to my attention since we started this project. In the world of environmentalism, recycling is like playing catch-up – energy has already been expended to make, ship, sell, and use a given product. Recycling said product is a good idea because it uses less energy to recycle it than make a whole new product, but the recycling process is by no means pristine. It still expends energy and uses finite resources. This is why the “solid waste hierarchy” suggests we reduce, then reuse, then recycle. Reusing a product generally uses no energy, and cutting back on what we buy (reducing) might just save energy from ever being expended.
This class session also raised a question I have been wondering about, which is ironic given our current project: is recycling really worth all the effort? The recycle process is seriously time and energy intensive – as consumers, we spend time sorting our trash from our recycling, making sure the recyclables are clean and in the right container, then heavy trucks drive on the roads and use gas, drivers must be paid, and then the recyclables go to sorting facilities to be sorted several times before they are finally broken down and remade into a new material. Phew.
According to an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality study, recycling is indeed worth the effort by a long shot. If you first consider the energy used to mine, process, make, ship, and sell a product like an aluminum can, you can then compare this energy use to the energy expended during the sorting, transporting, melting, and reforming of the same can. The DEQ study found that a person would have to truck aluminum 121,000 miles across country before the energy used in the recycling process equaled the energy used to make the can from scratch. Metal, as the most valuable recyclable, of course has the highest figure here, but even glass would have to be truck 1,300 additional miles before it broke even on the virgin mining versus recycling comparison scale. That’s a seriously encouraging figure.
Oh, and I did start using a fountain pen at home and at work. I have a bunch of fancy office supplies I’ve bought and then used as decoration. Now, I’m actually trying to use my quill pen from Ireland and my glass fountain pens, which I have to dip into ink to use. My hands are often stained blue at the end of a writing session, but this just makes me feel like a more authentic writer. Cheers for another week!
Week 10
Week 10 of Green Garbage Project has been marked by more unpacking, my second week of school, and a lovely weekend spent with old high school friends and hiking at Mount Rainier.
Our house is almost unpacked, which has been a major accomplishment for us. We hate living in boxes, not being able to find anything, and generally having our house in disarray. I realize that I haven’t spent much time discussing how we actually managed a garbage-free move, so let me address that a bit. First, we’ve always gone to Safeway for free boxes to use for packing. I was surprised to get some reader feedback that some grocery stores charge customers to take empty boxes from the stores, because we’ve always gotten these for free in the produce department. Ask at the customer service desk or ask one of the produce aisle employees and they should point you in the direction of boxes. It’s first-come, first-served and the best time to get boxes is late at night or early morning. These are great boxes because 1) they are heavy-duty and 2) they are recycled. Incidentally, we now have a boatload of boxes that are free for the taking should someone be interested (as long as you’re willing to recycle the boxes or pass them along when you’re done). We’re in Dallas, Oregon and these boxes are available to anyone who wants them. Send me an email and we’ll arrange a pick up, if interested. We’ll be posting them on Craig’s List shortly, thanks to a suggestion from another reader. Normally, we’d just break down our boxes and recycle them. Now they’ll hopefully be used a third time.
Now, we packed our stuff carefully into boxes and found that we didn’t need much tape. When we did need tape, we used fiberglass reinforced paper tape, which must be wetted in order to stick to boxes. Once wetted, it’s super-strong. This can be found at any office supply store or through an Internet source. You can take a look here.
For wrapping our valuables, we used old newspapers from Adam’s office. Later, I received a phone call from my aunt and uncle in Independence, Oregon. They had just picked up the first box containing airplane parts for the plane they are building. Parts of the plane were wrapped in off-white craft paper, which they gave to us for packing. This paper is also up for grabs, or we can recycle it. I’ll use the un-crinkled paper for wrapping Christmas presents in.
I also found that reusable grocery “green” bags are great for packing oddly shaped things in, like shoes. We got creative with some of our packing materials, making sure that anything empty was filled with moving stuff. This includes the plastic bags under the sink I haven’t taken to the store to recycle yet, an old plastic zippered case sheets came in, gift sacks, etc.
Generally, moves generate lots of trash because moving is a great excuse to purge belongings and simplify. Anything we wanted to get rid of we donated to the Goodwill if in good condition. Otherwise, we’re eeking more life out of things we might usually throw away – perfectly good things we are just tired of or didn’t want to move. These came with us, which took only a little extra effort and saves landfill space.
On the classroom front, I’ve received reader suggestions that I look into fountain pens or colored pencils for grading, both of which are excellent and welcome suggestions. My new challenge – dry erase markers. I don’t have access to a chalkboard, use PowerPoint slides whenever possible, but I like to write a daily agenda on my white board for the students to see. Eventually, these markers will run out. Any thoughts?
I also took my first Master Recycler class on Thursday and enjoyed myself immensely. The class runs for 8 weeks and includes several field trips which I am really looking forward to. I’ll be able to visit a waste-to-energy plant, an industrial composting facility, a biofuel manufacturer, and a place that turns plastics into fuel. The first class was really interesting but basically served as an introduction to what the class would cover. Nothing new to share yet.
Finally, Adam and I went on a hike with my parents this weekend. We hiked to a fire lookout on Mount Rainier, made sure we were on the mountain at twilight, and spent some time watching mountain goats poke around on a grassy mountainside. We ate dinner surrounded by trees, the setting sun, the goats, and some rocks – nothing more. And I was reminded that nature, in its beauty and majesty, is really the reason we’re doing what we’re doing. That scene should be preserved for future generations – it would be a great tragedy to see it trashed and ruined. Hiking, I think, is the original no-trash challenge, thanks to the Leave No Trace principles which guide hikers in leaving nothing behind in the wilderness.
And before I forget, I want to say something I’ve been meaning to say for weeks, ever since our project started gaining publicity. I’ve learned, since we were on the news, something I suspected all along – that there are pockets of individuals and families all over the country and especially in other countries who are living garbage-free lives. A site I recently discovered (and that I found tremendously helpful) is http://zerogarbagechallenge.info/ I am proud to join the small ranks of those who live garbage-free and I hope that one unique aspect of our project is that we show everyone that average Americans can live garbage-free, too. It doesn’t take a radical effort.
Week 9
More than two months into Green Garbage Project and we’ve adjusted to this lifestyle so thoroughly that it’s become a habit for us. It’s hard for me to pick up where I left off since my last updates have been so brief, but I’ll do my best.
Adam and I are officially moved out of our old house and into the new one. One collosal weekend of effort and we’re more than halfway unpacked. Our new house looks more like really messy people live in it than like we just moved in which is definite progress. We hate living out of boxes, so our goal is to be completely unpacked by next weekend.
We managed to move from one house to another almost completely without creating garbage. I can’t say we were 100 percent successful, because little garbage pitfalls tripped us up along the way – little things I don’t think we could have worked around even if we’d anticipated them. We had to peel off a piece of tape in our old house while cleaning, which went directly into the trash can thanks to the dead bug that was attached – gross. A kitchen timer was broken during the move and cannot be repaired, so this now constitutes our first piece of garbage that isn’t packaging. That in itself, by the way, is quite the statement about the way our society works – that a vast majority of the unavoidable garbage we’ve accumulated over the past weeks is packaging-related. Maybe we need to do something about our wasteful packaging…. But I digress. We unpacked and, as always happens when we move, started a list of items needed to complete our new house. Among them, a new extension cord, hot pads (left the old ones at the old house, silly me), a dryer pigtail, and a holder for venetian blind cords. We accumulated a very small amount of packaging when buying these items (one more piece of tape and a plastic tag thing on the oven mitts). Still, our garbage from the past weeks fits nicely into the bottom of a shoe box. I’m simply amazed at this myself – it’s hard to believe we’ve gone from a bag of trash a week to virtually no trash whatsoever.
In other news, I started teaching again this week and was a minor celebrity to my students when I returned. We had some good discussions about why I’m doing what I’m doing, and I have some students interested in being greener and more trash-free, too! All my students now point out any time they are using a green product, from the student using pencils made from tires to the student wearing green-friendly socks. I gave away green, recycled prizes to students during my first day back as well. I mentioned in my last note that I may be working with the district’s elementary school to make the district, and particularly the high school I work in, more recycling savvy. On the teacher side of things, I am totally at a loss about how to avoid garbage created by used pens. I can’t exactly grade papers in pencil, and it’s only a matter of time before a pen dies on me. I’ll be researching this, but in the meantime, if anyone has any thoughts, please share.
I’m starting my master recycler class this week on Thursday, which I’m really looking forward to. I also posted a new, handy article to the links page – if you haven’t checked it out already, it has A to Z tips on recycling unusual items like keys and tennis shoes.
Finally, I owe a public apology to a Korean news station that was supposed to interview me live today, an interview I was quite looking forward to. My cell phone charger got buried in the move and I think my phone must have gotten confused when I first charged it and turned it back on. The phone registered phone calls but couldn’t answer them – not sure why but ended up missing the interview.
Thanks to all for reading. Look back next week for info about my first master recycler class. Cheers!
Week 8 update will be delayed
Hi all,
For the first time, I missed my regular Monday blog update about our garbage project. Here it is 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday night and I’m so tired I could drop asleep right here. This entry serves to let all our readers know that, between moving this week and me starting work again, we are busy, stressed, and exhausted. Please be patient with us as we make it through this week and check in next Monday – Labor Day – for a complete update.
A couple teasers, though, before I sign off:
- Project has been so well received at school that, though I teach high school, my district’s elementary school 5th grade teachers are interested in me mentoring them in the process of making their classrooms trash free for a year!
- So far, the move hasn’t produced any garbage. Recycled boxes from Safeway, recycled tape, and packing paper are all we really have needed.
Have a good week! Please check back next week when week 8 and 9 and detailed much more thoroughly.