Week 30
It’s probably no surprise that the hardest room to “de-trash” is the bathroom. The kitchen is pretty easy – just buy food that comes in zero or recyclable packaging. Cleaning is easy – use natural products like lemon, baking soda, and so on. Even buying home decorating items or souvenirs or the like is easy – if it comes in recyclable packaging, buy it – if not, do without.
The bathroom, on the other hand, contains all sorts of items I find necessary (or at least really difficult to eliminate from our lives). So far, we’re doing pretty well. In fact, we’ve mademajor leaps and bounds in just the past couple weeks as we work to find new solutions to the waste we are producing. If you read my New Year’s post, I talked about a couple of our environmental resolutions, which include reducing our recyclable “trash” to almost zero and working to eliminate plastic from our purchases. We’ve been extra conscientious of this as we’ve been doing our regular shopping. The goal for the bathroom, then, is three-fold: zero trash first, zero plastic next, and finally, zero recyclables, too. Here are some of the steps we are taking:
Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and lotion: We finally made it to Salem’s natural food store Life Source, a little marketplace I was quite happy to find. Finally, I can buy my bathroom items in bulk! Bring your own bottles and pump liquids right into them. We invested in some nice glass bottles to fill with bathroom soaps, and now I’m going to order some cork bottle plugs with lotion pumps on them. Zero waste!
Bar soap: Very easy to find wrapped in recyclable paper or nothing at all. Life Source has soap we can slice off a giant block! You might remember my soap-making adventures back in August, so that’s always an option, too….
Toothpaste:We use Tom’s of Maine paste, which I love. It comes in a recyclable metal tube, and though this is packaging, at least it’s not plastic (except for the lid). I’m stumbling across some people who use plain baking soda to brush – anybody try this? I’m pretty attached to my toothpaste, since it uses all natural ingredients and I can get it with or without fluoride.
Toothbrush:We tried out Preserve toothbrushes earlier in the year. The handles of these brushes are made from recycled yogurt containers, and when you’re finished with the brush, you mail it back to the company to be recycled again into a plastic lumber. While we had some success with these toothbrushes (Adam still uses his), I find I much prefer a battery-operated toothbrush. I use a rechargeable battery in mine and throw away the disposable head every couple of months. I’m interested in the wooden toothbrush option, but I want something that cleans as well as my current toothbrush before I make a permanent switch.
Deodorant: We’re using the Crystal deodorant right now, which I really like. It works great, I swear! I was skeptical at first, but I’m a convert now. While the crystal lasts about a year, it still comes packaged in plastic. Once the crystal is gone, I’ll be making the switch to trying out baking soda on a powder puff, which No Impact Man and Beth from Fake Plastic Fish swear by.
Hair removal/shaving:Finally, we come to the hardest of all bathroom products to eliminate – the razor. Adam’s taken care of, as he uses an electric razor with a rechargeable battery. We’ve only had one razor break, and that’s after it lasted about three years. I don’t use an electric razor, because I love the feel of clean-shaven legs. For most of the year, I’ve been using my old Gillette Sensor Excel razor with disposable razors – I reuse the handle and throw away a razor after every fifth use or so. But – these blades keep piling up in the ol’ garbage shoebox and I needed to find a way to eliminate them. With a new product I tried out a couple weeks ago, I think I’m on track to finding a solution.
Months ago, a reader wrote to me and suggested I try Moom, a natural waxing product. I’ve been on the lookout for this for awhile and finally found it! Moom is pretty neat stuff – it’s a sugar wax that comes in a glass jar. The wax itself if made from only a few ingredients – water, sugar, lemon, chamomile, and tea tree oil. The really neat thing is that Moom comes with reusable muslin waxing strips – wax,wash, and reuse! So I bought some and tried it out.
Overall, I loved the stuff and will definitelykeep using it. The jar did come with a foil-plastic composite seal, so a little bit of garbage. But, weighing this against the option of using a disposable razor blade, I’ll get more hair removal for less garbage from Moom versus a razor. I’ve only had my legs waxed once, and this was in a professional salon. All things considered, I can easily say that the first time I used Moom was much less painful than that professional waxing experience. It took longer than shaving, and was quite a bit messier/stickier, but I loved it. And, I haven’t had to shave for two weeks.
Natural hair removal using Moom.
Oh, I know I could not shave, but I really am attached to the clean, fresh feeling of smooth legs. I am also continuously on the lookout for a safety razor handle in antique stores, which would turn my shaving into a completely plastic-free experience, but for now, Moom is a great way for me to reducing shaving-related garbage.
Week 29
For Christmas, my parents gave us a night’s stay at the lovely Cape Kiwanda Inn on the Oregon Coast, and we decided to take advantage of this gift over the past weekend. The gift certificate, which I mentioned earlier came wrapped in a bath towel, was a great “green” gift, because instead of getting a “thing” we received an “experience.” Nothing to throw away or get tired of here, and there’s nothing Adam or I like more than a day spent on the Oregon Coast.
The hotel we stayed in is located in Pacific City, about an hour away from our hometown. We spend as many weekends as possible on the coast, touring the various beach-y towns lining Highway 101. PC is one of our favorite towns, because it’s essentially a quiet fishing village with a very low-key tourist trade. The Inn is one of the major exceptions to this rule, and so we got to be pampered tourists for an all-too-brief amount of time.
Our hotel room was beautiful and filled with state-of-the art luxuries – a gas fireplace, a sliding door with a balcony overlooking the ocean, a two-person tub, champagne waiting in an ice bucket upon our arrival. And even here, at the height of a lavish night away from home, we couldn’t help but be environmental activists.
If there’s one thing the Green Garbage Project has done, it’s make me minutely aware of how my every little action can impact the planet. This is not to say we spent our mini-vacation mired in environmentalist guilt; far from it. Instead, we had to make a concious decision to – just for a night – check ourselves out of the environmentalist mindset and just live in the moment for a change. With just under 200 consecutive trash-free days, we gave ourselves a day off.
Did we throw anything away? No. Did we leave our dirty towels on the floor to be washed after a single use? No. Did we crack the sliding door to sleep to the sound of the ocean surf while the gas fireplace was on? Yes.
One of the things I have learned over the course of our 6 trash-free months is the simple fact that, very occasionally, we have reason to indulge ourselves. If we are working to save the planet, we’re also working to save our quality of life, and so the modern environmental movement must consider that, by and large, our society will not embrace environmental activism if this means deprivation of the things that make our lives worth living.
I’ve recently finished Vanessa Farquharson’s book “Sleeping Naked is Green,” about a year in which the author makes one green change each day. I’m currently reading “No Impact Man,” about Colin Beavan’s attempt to leave zero impact on the planet for one year while living in New York City. And in each of these books, I encounter the same sentiment: that most realistic environmentalists realize that, in order to stop the degradation of our planet, the human race (or the Western world, at least) must make immediate, large-scale lifestyle changes. At the same time, every green change matters, no matter how small, when we’ve looking for a cumulative effect.
And so there I was, torn between duct-taping shut the mouth of the little shoulder-perched environmentalist I wear around and trying to spend a sustainable night in a fairly unsustainable environment, when I received a little ray of hope and a sobering reminder why we’re doing this project in the first place.
Our hotel participates in Project Planet, an effort between hotel and consumer, which aims to have hotel patrons opt out of traditional but environmentally taxing services like having the sheets and towels washed and changed each day. A little note about this project hung from our bathroom towel bar and rested on our bed. We were happy to oblige, but even better, this is such a small change, I imagine it’s one others choose as well.
The Project Planet brochere in our hotel room.
On the other hand, we headed down to the beach after a high tide and some rough surf to look at all the flotsam that was newly piled on the beach. Everywhere we went, we saw garbage washed ashore with the driftwood and kelp. It was all plastic. Plastic spoons and plastic tampon applicators and plastic chew containers, styrofoam, condiment containers, and on and on. I’m desperately afraid that, 10 or 20 years from now, the amount of plastic on the beach will have increased, not decreased. Seagulls were picking their way through the refuse, and I kept thinking about how we now know that sea animals all across the world are ingesting little plastic bits they mistake for food. They’re washing ashore dead with bloated bellies full of human junk.
Beach debris sprinkled with bits of plastic - too many pieces to count.
So what’s my point? That I took a moment to relax with my husband and chose to put our carbon footprint on the back burner for a small moment in time. We spent our weekend walking on the beach and found that the beach, the environment, and yes, our planet, are things we’re willing to save, no matter what the sacrifice.
Week 28
And so, the garbage squatting continues. Sure enough, we put out our can containing litter and meat scraps on Wednesday night and as I walked past the can Thursday morning, I peeked inside and saw … one bag of trash resting at the bottom. This time, the trash was tied neatly into a bundle inside a white plastic bag, as opposed to thrown loose inside the bin. And honestly, this infuriates me, and I’ve spent all week wondering whether this is irrational or justified annoyance. Here’s our situation – we live between a single mom raising three kids on one side and an elderly, housebound woman on the other side. It is possible, then, that either neighbor could be secretly saving their trash and using our can – and it’s understandable to me that some people simply cannot afford to pay their bills, so maybe the trash bill is the logical one to go. And hey, we’re not using our garbage can, so why not let someone else use the space?
On the other hand, it’s the principle of the thing. We’re living a garbage-free year here, and now the garbage man could think we’re cheating! If it wasn’t for the Green Garbage Project, we’d have no problem with a neighbor throwing an extra bag in the garbage can once in a while. But this year? I want a clean record – I want nothing from our can heading toward the dump.
So what do you think? Ignore the garbage squatters or take measures to prevent other people’s trash from winding up in our can? The irony of this dilemma is just laughable.
While we added nothing new to our shoebox this week (!), meaning I don’t have a picture to share, I did have a minor trash-related meltdown in the produce aisle on Saturday. Adam and I had just finished working out at the pool after a day of housework and yard chores, and we were swinging by the grocery store for some last-minute dinner stuff. We were having pizza, and I wanted to pick up salad fixings.
So there we were, in the produce section, trying to get in and out of the grocery store as quickly as possible, and I kept staring longingly at the premixed salad bags, which of course come in # 7 plastic and are not technically recyclable. I say “technically” because now that we’ve found AgriPlas, I have a plastic loophole, meaning if I ever slip up or have a weak moment and buy something encased in plastic, I have a legitimate way to recycle this. But still, recklessly buying plastic and pawning it off on AgriPlas isn’t really in the spirit of the project, so we’ve decided to use this option only as a last resort, not as a way to indulge cravings or dinner-preparing laziness. Instead, I bought the individual salad ingredients even though I was tired and REALLY didn’t want to peel and cut carrots, slice radishes, wash and tear lettuce, etc. It was when I was standing in the stinking checkout line that I realized that I was buying more packaging, albiet recyclable packaging, than if I’d bought the # 7 bagged plastic salad. The head of iceberg lettuce came wrapped in recyclable cling plastic, and so did the carrots. The radishes were rubber-banded and I had put them in a plastic bag since I didn’t have a cloth mesh version with me. Argh!
So here’s the rub – what is the best environmental choice, assuming I don’t forgo salad altogether? Should I have bought the premade salad in the nonrecyclable bag, or was I better off buying produce items wrapped in recyclable plastic? Why does produce have to be wrapped in plastic at all? The frustrating thing about this type of questions is that there’s really no right answer. No wonder the modern environmental consumer is so confused.
Speaking of recyclable plastic, I have updated the links page to include the following site, which I find comprehensive and helpful: www.plasticbagrecycling.org Click on “consumers” and you’ll find a neat page with pictures that explains what types of plastic packaging can generally be recycled with grocery sacks at your local store. There’s also a store locator to help you find a plastic drop-off location. Happy recycling!
Week 27
The bad news first, I suppose. We accumulated several items of trash this week, one under terrible circumstances I don’t want to repeat anytime soon. This week’s trash: two blister packs from contact lenses, 1 piece of foam-type stuff from a box of chocolates we received for Christmas, and two broken bungee cords. Here’s the picture:
Our garbage for the week - two broken bungee cords, a piece of foam, and two contact lense packs.
While the foam and contact lense cases are fairly standard trash, the bungee cords represent a nasty turn of events. Our dog was let out of our yard this week by someone who decided to cut the bungee cords holding our gate shut. Yes, the gate is padlocked, but due to construction circumstances, the horseshoe closure is too far away from the pole it wraps around to be secure enough for our comfort, so we take the extra precaution on bungee-cording the gate shut. About two weeks ago, we came home to find our gate open and chalked this up to my dog deciding to go on the lam (which he’s never done before) but now I don’t think so. After the gate was opened the first time, we secured it, but last Wednesday, Adam came home to find the cords cut through, the gate wide open, and our dog missing. A 12-hour search ensued, culminating in, thankfully, our dog making his way back home. To have our home broken into like this is unsettling, to say the least. We’re just happy to have our furry friend back.
We’re taking a second look at the trash that ended up in our can last week, wondering whether we’re dealing with a malicious neighbor or a child who likes to play pranks. We’ve even wondered whether someone could be trying to deliberately undermine our project. Regardless, we’ve had enough and are installing a monitored home security system to avert future incidents like this.
The good news: Thankfully, in the midst of a stressful week came one of the most exciting events we’ve experienced so far during our project – we made contact with Agri-Plas. Located only a half hour away from our house, this cutting edge company takes used plastics and converts them into crude oil through an innovative recycling process. I missed the tour of Agri-Plas offered during my Master Recycler class, so I had to go alone, but boy am I glad I did. When I contacted them, I was put in touch with Allen, an extremely personable man who agreed to sort through the contents of our garbage shoebox to see what leftover plastics I have that he could recycle. Here’s the before picture of our shoebox full of garbage:
The garbage in our shoebox before Agri-Plas.
I sorted the various plastics out of our shoebox, which accounted for about half of our total garbage. It included things like medicine bottle safety seals, plastic wrapping from a movie, yellow birth control pill packs, small plastic tags from clothing, and so on.
And here’s the shoebox now – Agri-Plas took ALL of our plastic garbage to recycle into oil!
6 months' worth of garbage. The box is new because the original shoebox was left with Agri-Plas.
Allen spent a lot of time talking with me and my mom (who had come down to Oregon to help look for our dog) about the process of converting plastics into oil. Agri-Plas is one of the only facilities like it in the country, but it makes so much sense – I hope to see Agri-Plas expand their facility and can only imagine what this sort of enterprise could do on a large scale to keep plastics out of the landfill. There’s no real negative about this process – plastic is kept out of the landfill and oil is produced, which saves that much oil from being drilled out of the earth. It’s win-win, and I’m delighted that a small amount of my plastic can go to help this process. Check out their site - interesting stuff. I’ll be touring Agri-Plas with the next round of Master Recyclers in February and can write more about the recycling process at that time.
As promised, here’s a run-down of the remaining trash in the shoebox. I’ll note that I still hope to do a few upcycling projects with some of this stuff, so the final tally at the end may change slightly. Over the past six months, our total garbage has been:
- Two broken bungee cords
- 1 piece of foam from a candy box
- Two pieces of nonrecyclable, plastic-foil composite Christmas wrapping paper
- 1 dog toy run over by a lawn mower
- Two empty Theraflu pouches
- 3 used lightbulbs (moved into a new house and bulbs subsequently burned out)
- 4 used Gilette razor blades
- 7 foil tops from contact lense blister packs — the plastic parts were recyclable at Agri-Plas
- 3 Alkaseltzer foil wrappers
- An oil change sticker
- 1 broken tack
- Assorted stickers
- 1 insect sting relief foil pouch
- 2 pieces of tape
- Flea medicine garbage
- Birth control pill packs and wrappers
- 1 tangled mess of bubble wrap and tape about the size of my fist (and I honestly don’t remember where this even comes from)
All of this fits easily into the bottom of a shoebox. We’re on track to meet our goal – only 6 months to go!
Week 26
Bubblewrap, garbage squatters, and New Year’s Resolutions – it’s been a busy week for the Green Garbage Project.
New Year’s Resolutions and the Green Garbage Project Halfway Point: Adam and I are both back to work this week after an enjoyable holiday. Tonight, the Christmas decorations came down and we’re busy setting our goals for 2010. We are excited that, right at the turn of the decade, we are just about the hit the halfway point of our project – quite an accomplishment! Next week, I plan to do a run-down of the garbage we have accumulated so far, because our official halfway point is January 6, which occurs this Wednesday. I’ll show you pictures of the small amount of garbage we have and write up an itemized list. I don’t want to do this yet because I have something in the works that may eliminate a good amount of the plastic garbage we have collected, and I’ll know whether this pans out by the end of the week.
Adam and I have spent a lot of time discussing our project as it exists right now, and we’re pretty darn proud of ourselves for the meager amount of trash we’ve accumulated thus far. But, as a Type A personality, New Year’s just wouldn’t be the same for me without some resolutions, so in that spirit, for the remainder of our project, we have resolved to:
- Test out one new garbage-free product each month
- Make one green change to our lives each month (in addition to our garbage-free-ness) – things like using my graywater to water plants
- Include more pictures in this blog
- Work to eliminate all non-essential, if recyclable, plastic from our lives
Garbage Squatters: In other, more absurd news, I have a story I just have to share. First, just to establish the appropriate mood, let’s review – Adam and I live garbage free. This means nothing goes into our garbage can except for meat scraps and used kitty litter. Since our landlord pays for our garbage, we do haul the bin to the curb each week with the aforementioned items filling about an inch of the can. Last Thursday (garbage day), I cleaned out the litter box before the garbage truck arrived, so I hiked out to the curb and dumped the litter in our garbage can. You can thus imagine my surprise when I opened the can and found … garbage. Almost a whole can full. I stared at the garbage for a minute in confusion, shut the lid, and decided that I must have opened the wrong can. So I looked around for our can and realized ours was the only small bin for three houses up or down the block (the other houses use bigger, family-sized garbage cans). What was going on? Reopening the can, I spent more time examining the garbage (I almost took a picture, but decided that might be taking it a bit far). The garbage consisted of stuff we never bought, even before the Green Garbage Project – paper snowman plates and holiday napkins, empty toy packaging, meat packaging. The only conclusion we could come to is that one family on our block, clearly unaware of our garbage-free existence, decided to use our can in what I can only consider garbage squatting. Oh, the irony.
Bubblewrap: I ordered a Christmas present for Adam that just arrived in the mail last week, and inside the package we found bubblewrap, something we’ve not been faced with yet. Just thought I would share that a quick Internet search tells us that bubblewrap is indeed recyclable with other plastic film/stretchy plastic as long as the bubbles are popped. As fun as it would have been to spend our time popping those bubbles, we have decided to keep the stuff and reuse it for future packaging needs. Reuse before recycle. Oh, and fun fact for the day: Bubblewrap was originally invented as a type of wallpaper.
Two days until we’ve reached the halfway point! See you on the flipside.
Our 2010 calendar, produced by AmericanForests.org. This is a great product we discovered - the entire calendar is paper and a couple of staples. Absolutely zero plastic packaging. For each calendar sold, the company plants a tree, and it's printed on post-consumer waste paper.
Two weeks' worth of garbage. The gold thing and the red thing are foil/plastic wrapping paper we were given, the plastic film is from a movie we received as a Christmas present, and the red plastic strand is from a bottle of sparkling cider that we thought was wrapped only in foil.
Week 24 and 25
As usual when a holiday rolls around, thank you for being patient with me as I skip an update and combine two weeks into one.
The last two weeks have been holiday-centered for me with the build up to Christmas occupying most of my time. I am currently in the midst of my winter break, so school’s out for another week, then it’s back to work for me. It’s been nice to spend time with family and friends, many of whom I don’t get to see on a regular basis.
Christmas was, of course, one of the most anticipated times of the year as far as the Green Garbage Project goes. We approached this season with trepidation, and even back in July we considered how we would get around all the holiday garbage. The concerns were many: would someone who finds our project a waste of time (there are a few of those in the extended family) deliberately give us unrecyclable packaging? What would we do about wrapping paper, tape, ribbon, gift tags, and all the packaging that goes along with the presents? How about packaging/would-be garbage associated with baking or decorating?
Well, the big day has come and gone and honestly, we only added two things to the garbage shoebox – everything else could be recycled or, better yet, reused.
The biggest surprise of the season was how mightily members of our families rose to the occasion, making sure to give presents that were garbage-free and, even better, wrapping these gifts in extremely creative ways. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera for our holiday party, but thanks to my aunt and uncle, we were able to borrow a camera and take pictures of the neat ways our presents were presented to us. As soon as I have those pictures, I’ll post them here. For now, a list of ways our presents came packaged: In gift bags (reusable many times, though these will ultimately be garbage, if not this year), in baskets, wrapped in towels, wrapped in fabric, placed in pretty boxes without ribbon or tape, and in tissue paper.
We never expected our families to go so far out of their way to support our project, but we owe them many thanks and truly, their efforts demonstrate what just a little extra effort will accomplish. One family – virtually zero garbage at Christmastime. Clearly it’s time we start rethinking packaging and wrapping as a culture. It’s not impossible to have an eco-friendly Christmas, just unpopular.
Here are ways we handled various holiday dilemmas:
- Giving presents: I made cloth drawstring bags using Christmas fabric for each of the presents we gave by following this tutorial. They turned out great, and the hope is that recipients will reuse the bags for future gifts or to store holiday decorations in.
- Wrapping paper: Actually, most all wrapping paper is recyclable as long as ribbons are removed from it. The wrapping paper must be made from paper, not plastic or foil. Most communities allow some tape to be left on the paper, so as long as the wrapper wasn’t overzealous about tape, you should be fine to put this in your comingled recycle bin.
- Ribbon: Most of our gifts came wrapped without ribbon, but when we encountered it, we carefully cut or untied the material and saved it away in a bag for future use. I set aside all ribbons/raffia/yarn to be untied after the unwrapping frenzy was complete, then worked the knots apart while watching TV. A little extra effort, but worthwhile because I now have a stash of pretty ribbons and bows to use in the future.
- Styrofoam packaging: None of our presents came with this, but if they had, we are lucky enough to have a recycling facility in the nearby town of Salem, Ore.
- Plastic packaging: This gets trickier. Plastic tags (the kind that hold clothing tags to the clothing) are garbage, no way around this. Plastic packaging that is stretchy, like plastic wrap or plastic grocery sacks, can be put into our grocery store plastic bag recycling container. Even plastic packaging backed with cardboard (think about the containers batteries come in) is recyclable at Far West Fibers. The only packaging issue we regularly encounter is non-stretchy plastic film. We had to add a couple pieces of this to the box after unwrapping movies we were given.
- Gift tags: Generally made from paper so easily recycled.
One of the major things we’ve learned while undergoing our project is simply how to correctly direct the items in our waste stream. When I look at the list above, I realize that really all I’m doing differently this year is sorting things more carefully. Last year, things like ribbon and virtually all plastic packaging would have ended up in the trash. Now, I’ve learned of alternative ways to deal with these items, and they are saved from winding up in a landfill.
In closing, I have to say how this holiday season, combined with this project, has changed my entire mindset on gifts. I’m looking carefully at my life, at my choices, at the way Adam and I choose to spend our money, and I realize how fortunate we are, how much power we have as consumers, and how unfortunate others are. At the risk of editorializing, Christmastime has gotten out of whack and the point of the holiday celebration has been lost under an utter landslide of consumer culture. We buy, buy, buy to the point that oftentimes, the gift itself doesn’t even matter. The presents I value most are homemade items like the marmalade Adam’s parents gave us, or experiences like a weekend stay at the coast given to us by my parents, or money donated in my name to a charity. What I value is being surrounded by family, friends, and good food, and what I don’t need is someone to buy me more “stuff.” This point was driven home when we went shopping at Whole Foods tonight. We bought more than $100 worth of groceries to feed ourselves for what, two weeks? We also bought a Whole Foods bag for $10, the proceeds from which go to feed 100 children in Africa. What if, instead of buying stuff for each other for Christmas, we each bought 10 bags and fed 1,000 people? The power of the individual is an amazing thing, and once we start harnessing it, we will change the world.
Happy holidays to each of you, and may the New Year be a happy and prosperous one.
Week 23
I had several exciting developments last week in Green Garbage Land. First, and most exciting, I got to speak in Salem after a screening of Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home. This is an independent movie produced by a Canadian man who, like Adam and I, got sick and tired of seeing the environment trashed in order to power our consumer culture. In order to raise awareness about this problem, he asked a family he is friends with to save their trash for three months. Saving both landfill-bound garbage and recycling for only three months entirely filled this family’s garage. But the filmmaker didn’t stop there. He traced garbage from its source inside the home to far-reaching places around both Canada and the United States. It reminded me of the book Garbageland (an excellent read, by the way), a book about where our trash goes once it leaves the curb. Additionally, the film addresses other environmental issues the average U.S. or Canadian family contributes to – water pollution and road runoff, excessive energy use, and so on. The tagline of the film is as follows: “Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home is a feature documentary about how the family household has become one of the most ferocious environmental predators of our time.” I think that description of the family household as a ferocious, albiet unaware, enivronmental predator is one of the most apt I’ve yet to run across. This film is a great reminder that our smallest actions have far-reaching consequences. If you want to know more, go to this site.
Anyway, about 200 people showed up for the movie, and I got to speak afterward, along with my Master Recycler course instructor. This is one of the first times I’ve gotten to speak to such a large audience about our project, and I have a marvelous time doing it. Thank you to everyone who came out and saw the film, supporting the Salem Progressive Film Society.
A reader also sent me a link to a super-cool upcycling project that I just have to post pictures of. It took me awhile to get around to this email, but once I did, wow! All I can say is thanks for sending in the link! If you’re like me and looking for a way to recycle/reuse old lightbulbs, check out this link. I haven’t tried this yet, but it’s now added to the list.
Has anyone tried any crafts with lightbulbs? I’ll post about how this turns out as soon as I try it. Take care!
Week 22
Only a month until we’re halfway through the year! With work and life and all, I’ve let some of the pages of this site get a little out-of-date, so this is my promise: give me another two weeks until my winter break and then start looking for updates to pages all over the site. I’d like to get our Tips and Tricks page updated with new info, and I’ve been thinking about adding a section to the site for book reviews. I’m doing a lot of garbage-related reading these days, and I would like to add that information to the Green Garbage Project for those who are interested.
This week, I have added two new links to the “news” tab, thanks to the fact that I have a speaking event coming up this Thursday. If anyone is in the Salem, Oregon area, I encourage you to come to the Salem Progressive Film Series’ screening of a new film called Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home. After the film, I will be speaking briefly about our project, and one of my Master Recycler class instructors will also be speaking. We’ll answer garbage-y questions in a panel format afterward. For more info, check out http://www.salemprogressivefilms.net/ The movie starts at 7 p.m. at the Grand Theater. The new articles I’m posting appeared in The Oregonian (good article, but one error – I teach at Willamina High School, not Dallas High School) and in Salem Monthly. Check ‘em out!
We’ve spent our last week preparing for Christmas and settling back into work after Thanksgiving. This past weekend, we put up our tree and strung lights on the outside of the house. I’ve received a few comments from readers about our cutting a tree down as opposed to using a fake tree or buying a potted tree and planting it after Christmas. I appreciate comments like these and hope everyone realizes that I spend a lot of time thinking about these sorts of issues, weighing environmental factors with other things I need to consider – financial impact, time constraints, and something that is important to me, family tradition. Adam and I discussed the merits of a fake tree over a cut tree, but besides the fact that I just can’t bring myself to let an artificial tree in the house, we’re not so sure the fake tree is better for the environment in the long run. After all, though the artificial tree is used over and over, it does eventually wind up in the dump. Our tree will be composted and its nutrients return to the earth. I haven’t yet looked for a life cycle analysis of a cut Christmas tree versus an artificial one (it’s on the to-do list!), but if anyone has a link, let me know. As for the potted tree, frankly, it’s not in the budget for us this year. The holidays are expensive already, and we’ve decided to commit our social activism money toward Green Garbage Project related expenses. Maybe next year will be the year we invest in a potted tree. We did, however, replace ALL our outdoor holiday lights with energy-efficient LED lights. The house looks quite pretty all decked out for the winter.
I know I’ve made this point several times already on this blog, but I really am concerned that the environmental apathy we often see in our country stems from the fact that no matter what a person does, often it’s never judged as enough. There’s no escaping the fact that we are a consumer culture – that consumption is a part of who we are – and radical changes are not going to happen overnight. I think we have to pick our battles and reward progress – every person who uses a green bag instead of a plastic bag at the grocery store is doing something good for the planet. This year, we choose to focus on drastically reducing our garbage footprint. Maybe next year, we’ll focus on energy conservation, and the year after that, water conservation. To stay sane, we have to take this one step at a time.
Before I close, I do want to say a big thank you to a woman I only know as Mary Lou. In response to the Salem Monthly article which mentioned we were sad to have no candy canes this year, Mary Lou called the editor of the paper and passed along her homemade candy cane recipe. We’ll be trying it out soon, and I’ll post the results as soon as I have them. Thanks so much for thinking of us!
Weeks 20 and 21
As I write this, I’m realizing for the first time that we’re just a month away from our halfway point! This has been an incredible journey so far, and I’m delighted to report that our shoebox isn’t even close to full. We’re sailing through these weeks leading up to Christmas, which is probably a good thing given the potential trash we’ll receive from gifts packaged in non-reusable materials. We’ve decided to cross that bridge when we come to it, hoping that we can repurpose some trash items. Our family and friends are so supportive of our project that I know many are going out of their way to package gifts in recyclable paper or reusable containers.
Since it’s approaching faster and faster, I should mention that I received several tips from family and readers about how to package Christmas presents in an eco-friendly way. My cousin’s wife passed along a project she’s made in the past – cover an old shoebox with fabric and reuse the box over and over for gift-giving. Great idea! The fabric attaches easily to cardboard with a spray adhesive (make sure a local facility can recycle the aerosol can). Many years ago in Girl Scouts, I did a similar craft project in which I covered an old cigar box with fabric. I still have this box today (this must have been 18 years ago).
I also found a suggestion in this month’s Martha Stewart magazine suggesting the use of old glass jars for packaging small presents, which is an idea I also love.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last updated, mostly because we spent a week in Washington with my family over the Thanksgiving holiday. We had a nice time visiting relatives, even though it was Adam’s turn to get the flu over the holiday. We’ve gotten better at being garbage-free during times of sickness, thanks to our recent bouts of illness.
I have found one item that produces leftover packaging that I’m simply willing to live without. Call it my amnesty item, if you will, but all year long, I look forward to satsumas hitting the grocery stores. These are essentially seedless mandarin oranges, and I love them. I eat them by the dozens. They are only in season for about two months a year, and I swear these are my secret weapon against any winter colds, I eat so many. I know they aren’t local, unfortunately, but I buy local produce all year round so I can afford a few splurges. My satsumas are one of them. This said, satsumas have always come in a recyclable box. This year, however, the satsuma people are bundling the fruit in netting, and this netted bag of satsumas then comes in a box. This irritates me greatly, but I’m still buying them. So now, I have four or five of these orange nets floating around my house. I refuse to add them to our shoebox, because I’m sure I can reuse them for something. Right now I’m thinking I can trim the raw edges of the net with fabric and perhaps use the nets are reusable produce bags. Any other ideas?
In the past weeks, we run into no other garbage dilemmas. Thanks for reading, and have a good week!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, I did not update the Green Garbage Project last week. Please look for a two-week update this upcoming Monday. I hope everyone had a wonderful week and has much to be thankful for.
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