Green Garbage Project

Week 16 and we’re a third of the way there!  Four months down, eight to go.  Just that by itself seems amazing, considering how far we’ve come since July 6 when we started the Green Garbage Project.  Thanks to everyone for your continued support of our project – it really helps to have conscientious family and friends who try really hard not to bring garbage into our lives. 

My update this week will be short because my teaching life is taking priority right now.  Grades are due on Friday, and I’m grading essays like a fiend.  Next week, I’ll round out whatever I don’t mention in tonight’s post. 

The subject of teaching, however, has been on my mind a lot since our last Master Recycler Class (Thursday’s class is the last class, by the way.  Again, amazing how time flies).  At last week’s class, we listened to a presentation from a woman who talked with us about the Oregon Green Schools program, a program I intend to get involved in this year.  The title of “Green School” is given to Oregon schools that demonstrate a commitment to reducing their impact through recycling and waste reduction programs.  The elementary school in our district is a Green School, but the high school where I teach isn’t.  The elementary coordinator has approached me and asked if I would head up the effort to get the high school certified and of course I said yes.  Now, I need to get a team of students together to help me in this effort.

In a lucky coincidence, I had a student approach me last week because she was interested in starting a green club at school.  Sounds like the beginnings of a program with lots of potential to me….  Anyway, this is one of my upcoming projects, now that the first quarter of the school year is already over. 

As far as garbage goes, we’re doing well.  I’ve not talked about the contents of the shoebox for awhile, but rest assured they stay about status quo.  Any time we have visitors, they ask to see our garbage collection and all can attest that it’s not full yet!  In fact, we have a ways to go before that even becomes a concern.  All the items I’ve blogged about are in there, and the vast majority is plastic packaging – from things like medicine and moving.  Almost none is food-related.  We’re about to add two new items to the box, and they will add some bulk.  Two floodlight bulbs in our new house have burned out.  These bulbs were left behind by the previous owner and will be replaced by CFLs, but we have to incur the garbage they create.  This marks the first time a light bulb has been added to the box.  I’ll be researching these to see if any recycling options exist, but I doubt it. 

Also, some tiny plastic clothing tags were added to the box this week as my one remaining pair of jeans got a hole in them.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s nearly impossible to avoid the small plastic tags associated with clothing – even secondhand stores tag their clothes with these things.  Luckily, they aren’t bulky, but I hate to think about them ending up somewhere in the environment where an animal could ingest them. 

That’s it for this week.  Happy Halloween!

I miss mouthwash.  And chips.  Sometimes I look at how many weeks we are into Green Garbage Project and think, “Wow!  Has it been that long already?”  Other weeks, like now, I’m more of the mindset, “38 weeks to go seems like a long time.”  This is not to say my resolve is wavering; far from it.  Aside from the fact that I’m one of those people who refuses to give up, especially if other people think I’m going to, living garbage-free is teaching me about enjoying the simple things in life I tend to take for granted.  When our garbage-free year is over and we allow a select few garbage-creating items to creep back into our lives, I guarantee I’ll never again thoughtlessly chuck a chip bag into the garbage without thinking of the bag’s environmental life cycle.

But I really do miss mouthwash, in particular.  I know it’s not necessary for dental hygiene, and I also know I could make my own, but I’ve been dragging my feet on this because a) I don’t want to go buy vodka to make mouthwash and b) I don’t really like the idea of ingesting essential oils as most homemade mouthwash recipes suggest.  Rinsing with salt and warm water is all well and good, but I miss that minty fresh, dry mouth feeling that comes with mouthwash.  If anyone has any tried and true mouthwash recipes, please share and I’ll give them a go. 

As far as chips go, I had a student in one of my classes tell me today that Sunchips now come in biodegradable bags.  I’ll have to look into this, but then again, it brings me back to one of my original concerns – if things in landfills don’t biodegrade readily, then buying biodegradable products that will only stagnate in a landfill for decades without end is hardly better than buying products packaged in garbage.  If that’s the case, it’s better to simply do without.  Sometimes I walk longingly down the chip aisle in the grocery store in hopes that some new paper-bagged chip will have sprung up overnight.  And since this hasn’t been the case yet, I find that I’m frustrated with the chip industry as chips are literally the only food product on the market that I can’t find packaged in recyclable materials.  I wonder why this is.  With all the technology available today, I don’t believe it’s impossible – the motivation just needs to be there for the company to research alternative packaging options.  This is where consumer advocacy comes in – if we want products available in green packaging, we have to call the companies and let them know.  I make these phone calls each week and the consumer feedback is always well received.  I guess the fallback option is to make my own chips….

In other news, Adam and I made several garbage-free purchases this week that were more expensive than garbage-creating alternatives.  This is generally not the case, so it was surprising that two such purchases had to be made in a week.  We bought Adam a new pair of shoes with cardboard shape holders inside the shoe box instead of plastic ones.  We at first found a pair of shoes for $35 that he liked, but ended up paying $50 for shoes that he liked and that didn’t create garbage.  We also did some Halloween decoration shopping this week and needed wooden garden stakes to screw into the backs of our homemade tombstones.  These stakes were sold individually or zip-tied in a bundle of 50.  We paid $6 for 15 stakes when we could have paid $7.50 for 50 stakes.  Again, it’s about prioritizing and sending a message to companies that over-package their products. 

Finally, I wanted to address some comments I’ve been receiving about giving out small toys instead of candy on Halloween.  I meant to include this in last week’s entry but forgot. 

In my master recycler class a couple weeks ago, one of our instructors asked us to notice all the plastic knick-knacks that are so pervasive in our society.  Like the pervasiveness of garbage itself, it’s alarming to notice just how many small, poorly made plastic toys we need (I’m including adults in this, too, not just children).  Children come home from birthday parties loaded down with these toys but they are ever-present in adults’ lives, too – all over colleges as credit card companies try to entice twenty-somethings to sign up for a new card with the incentive of  a plastic Frisbee.  I came home from a motivational conference once with a new tennis ball, foam animal stickers, and scented soap bubbles.  My bank gives out these things when you sign up for a new account.  The list goes on. 

The point is, these items are essentially junk and are generally landfill-bound.  I’m as guilty as the next person in that often, I secretly enjoy getting these little “presents” from corporate America – it makes conferences and benefit fairs worthwhile.  But as I notice how surrounded by plastic junk we are, the more I’m leaning against the idea of giving out small toys to children.  The Halloween candy dilemma seems like one of those places where I can say what I said earlier – sometimes it comes down to appreciating what you have and, without doing so excessively, splurging.  If, after this year is up I want to buy chips occasionally, I do so with the knowledge that extreme moderation is the key.  Perhaps Halloween candy for the kiddos is a better solution than toys that get thrown away.  Or, maybe I’m just justifying my desire to give out Halloween candy.  Whatever we decide, we’ll be making sure our giveaways can be recycled, should the child’s family so desire, and the toys/candy won’t be allowed to generate trash on our end, either.