Week 52: And what a year it’s been
While I have rarely grown weary of our project, I never really stopped to think how I would feel on week 52, 365 days after we started the Green Garbage Project. Well, time passed as time does, and we’ve reached a landmark. I won’t say we’ve reached the end, because now that we’re on a roll, there’s no way we’re stopping. That said, the original project was designed to take place over the course of the year. We’ve said all along we’d consider ourselves successful if, at the end of the year, we could fit all our trash in a standard shoebox or a standard plastic grocery sack.
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.
Learn to live trash-free at the Salem Saturday Market
Oops, I missed a day of updating! Yesterday was our fourth wedding anniversary, and we went out to eat at a nice local restaurant and didn’t get home until a bit late in the evening.
Nevertheless, I’d like to invite you to join me tomorrow at 10 a.m. I’ll be speaking at the Salem Saturday Market in the Friends of the Salem Saturday Market booth! I’m pretty darn excited about this opportunity. The Salem Saturday Market has recently committed to going Zero Waste – just like us. Obviously, we find this an admirable goal and are happy to help in any way possible.
I’ll be speaking about the Green Garbage Project some, but the real focus of the workshop will be helping other market-goers learn to be trash-free themselves. I’ll have handouts avaliable for those who are interested in learning how to drastically reduce their own trash. I’ll also have a few giveaways, so if you’re in the area, stop by!
New giveaway – compostable parchment paper
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!
Mesh produce bags winner!
UPDATE: The winner of the mesh produce bags is Lisa Atherton Smith, who commented on Green Garbage Project’s Facebook page,
“I would love bags like this. My kitchen tip-Instead of buying cleanser or soft scrub clean your sink with a mixture of half borax and half baking soda. Both come in cardboard boxes.Store and sprinkle it out of a repurposed parm. cheese container.”
I was wandering through my local Fred Meyer last night, trying to find a product I could use as a giveaway this week. In the produce section, I stumbled across these neat Earthwise mesh produce bags. I picked up a set for me and a set to be used as my giveaway this week.
Then I got the bags home. First, let me say they are cool. I really like them, they are durable, they can easily replace single-use plastic produce bags from the grocery store, and you can wash your produce directly in the bag. I put several varieties of produce in the bags and carried them around, ran them under the faucet, and was very pleased.
What I am not pleased about, however, is the packaging. When I grabbed these in the store, I assumed (and we all know where that gets a person) they were packaged on a cardboard recyclable tag. Nope. Turns out that the EarthWise company chose to attach their mesh bags to a plastic tag instead. Plastic! When the very point of the company is to reduce our plastic use in the first place!
Discovering this, I sent the company the following letter (feel free to use part or all of my verbage in your own letters to companies that greenwash their products):
Hi there,
I recently invested in several sets of your “Reusable mesh produce sacks” from my local Fred Meyer. I plan to use some of these bags for me, and others I will give away on my blog www.greengarbageproject.com This blog’s purpose is to track my efforts to reduce my personal “trash footprint” to its very bare minimum. As such, while I find your bags to be an extremely useful product, I am writing to ask about your packaging.
The bags came attached with a stretchy cord to a tag. In the store, I was under the impression that this tag was cardboard, and therefore recyclable. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, it appears as if the tag you use is actually plastic. This choice of packaging disappoints me, and I’m left feeling as if I purchased a “greenwashed” as opposed to truly green product.
Are you able to tell me what the cording and tag are made of? I’m hoping, at the very least, that the plastic is recyclable. I will post your answer on my blog.
I urge you to consider using earth-friendly packaging in the future, to truly make your product “earthwise.”
Sincerely,
Amy Korst
As soon as I get a response, I’ll post an update here.
Update: Here’s the response I received from the company:
Hi Amy,
I understand your concern, however, given that the produce environment is a wet environment we were unable to use paper to hold the product in place. The bag is designed to significantly reduce single use plastic bag usage over its lifetime, however, plastic products are ubiquitous in our world and a reusable bag cannot remove the need for all plastic products.
We are constantly looking for ways to reduce the needs for plastic and will always strive to find ways to minimize our use of it. In the meantime, however, we sometimes have to utilize the material in order to deliver our environmentally conscientious products to the marketplace.
Given your very legitimate concern about the recyclability of the plastic, as well as other similar inquiries received since our launch, we are sending a sample of the plastic card to Waste Management in order to determine what number it may be recycled at on the plastics scale. Once we have this information we will forward to you.
In addition, when we print a new batch of the stock cards we will include the recycle symbol and plastics number directly on the card in order to encourage recycling by consumers in the future.
With thanks for your continued environmental support
Earthwise Bags
Hmmm. I don’t buy it, because about two days after I sent my email, I wandered into Whole Foods and found these mesh produce bags by Blue Avocado.
They were hanging in the produce section and packaged using only cardboard. Somehow, all the moisture in the air wasn’t causing the bags to disintegrate on the spot. Looks to me like the Earthwise company needed to do a little more R&D before launching their product.
Nevertheless, buying or making mesh produce bags to avoid the throwaway plastic ones is still a good idea.
In the meantime, I will certainly add these mesh bags to my collection. I’ll also give away a set of three mesh bags, considering that 3 reusable bags should save a lot of resources – meaning one small plastic tag might make up for itself in saved plastic bags.
If you want to be entered for these bags, leave a comment here or on my Facebook page telling me what you are doing to reduce trash in the kitchen. If it’s something I haven’t thought of, I’ll enter your name twice.
If you don’t happen to win, but you’d like to purchase your own mesh produce bags, there are many stores on Etsy that sell these bags for a reasonable price. There are also tons of patterns online, if you’re interested. On Etsy or when searching for a pattern, use the words “mesh produce bags.”
Week 51: Strawberries!
Yum! Strawberries are in, and they mark the beginning of my busy summer canning schedule. Even though I get the summer off, I keep plenty busy putting up produce for the winter months. Tomatoes, peas, corn, all kinds of berries, and applesauce in the fall. The start of the canning season is always – for me – big ripe strawberries.
We always buy these berries locally, and this year I bought two flats’ worth. For the two of us, this gets us through the year if I dole out the berries a bit stingily. If I was rich, I would buy hoards of summer fruit – it’s a challenge for me to save the berries rather than eat them all at once.
Anyway, today was strawberry day. It took me four hours to deal with two flats of berries, but the results were well worth it: strawberry jam, fruit leather, dried strawberries, frozen berries, strawberry shortcake, and some berries left over for eating. Though I do this every summer, and though I usually feel pretty “green” afterwards, what with buying local, organic produce and all, I looked at the process a bit differently this year. My usual garbage-free lens found me encountering yet another one of those “environmental catch-22s” I often write about.
This catch-22 had to do with the jam-making process. I feel that making homemade jam is WAY more environmentally friendly than buying the grocery store stuff that’s laden with high fructose corn syrup (and it’s probably healthier, too). But, while I could buy jam in completely recyclable glass jars with metal lids, I couldn’t make jam without producing just a smidge of garbage.
Jam is made with pectin (a thickener derived from apples), and pectin can be bought in two forms – gel form or powder form. Traditionally I have used the gel form, but this is squeezed into the jam from a foil and plastic composite pouch. So this year, I went with the powder pectin because it is packaged inside a paper pouch in a cardboard box. Well, since I’ve never used the stuff before, I didn’t realize the paper pouch is also lined with plastic, much like Jell-o packaging. Bummer. So, I added a little garbage to the shoebox but got 9 jars of jam out of the deal. Plus, I can comfort myself with the fact that, while I created a little garbage, it’s likely nothing compared to the garbage created upstream in the jam-making factories (not to mention the fossil fuels burned during jam transport).
Old pectin versus new. Both produce some garbage, but in my mind, homemade is always better than store-bought.
Strawberry jam - yum!
The other place I would normally make garbage on strawberry day is when I actually freeze the berries. These normally go into Ziploc freezer bags. Well, I’m not buying freezer bags anymore, so I had to be more creative. Whole washed berries went into plastic containers or quart-sized glass canning jars. I left a little head room for expansion in the freezer, labeled the containers, and presto – garbage-free frozen berries.
Looking to freeze berries without freezer bags? Here is my solution.
***
Somehow, we are only a week away from the end of Year 1 of the Green Garbage Project. Now, it’s not like we are going to wake up on July 7 and start throwing things in the trash can, but this is still a landmark week for us. During the home stretch, be sure to check back each day for new blog updates – I have a lot to talk about as we reach the end of our project. As always, rest assured – we’re not nearly done acting as environmental advocated.
Mesh produce bags review and giveaway
UPDATE: The winner of the mesh produce bags is Lisa Atherton Smith, who commented on Green Garbage Project’s Facebook page,
“I would love bags like this. My kitchen tip-Instead of buying cleanser or soft scrub clean your sink with a mixture of half borax and half baking soda. Both come in cardboard boxes.Store and sprinkle it out of a repurposed parm. cheese container.”
I was wandering through my local Fred Meyer last night, trying to find a product I could use as a giveaway this week. In the produce section, I stumbled across these neat Earthwise mesh produce bags. I picked up a set for me and a set to be used as my giveaway this week.
Then I got the bags home. First, let me say they are cool. I really like them, they are durable, they can easily replace single-use plastic produce bags from the grocery store, and you can wash your produce directly in the bag. I put several varieties of produce in the bags and carried them around, ran them under the faucet, and was very pleased.
What I am not pleased about, however, is the packaging. When I grabbed these in the store, I assumed (and we all know where that gets a person) they were packaged on a cardboard recyclable tag. Nope. Turns out that the EarthWise company chose to attach their mesh bags to a plastic tag instead. Plastic! When the very point of the company is to reduce our plastic use in the first place!
Discovering this, I sent the company the following letter (feel free to use part or all of my verbage in your own letters to companies that greenwash their products):
Hi there,
I recently invested in several sets of your “Reusable mesh produce sacks” from my local Fred Meyer. I plan to use some of these bags for me, and others I will give away on my blog www.greengarbageproject.com This blog’s purpose is to track my efforts to reduce my personal “trash footprint” to its very bare minimum. As such, while I find your bags to be an extremely useful product, I am writing to ask about your packaging.
The bags came attached with a stretchy cord to a tag. In the store, I was under the impression that this tag was cardboard, and therefore recyclable. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, it appears as if the tag you use is actually plastic. This choice of packaging disappoints me, and I’m left feeling as if I purchased a “greenwashed” as opposed to truly green product.
Are you able to tell me what the cording and tag are made of? I’m hoping, at the very least, that the plastic is recyclable. I will post your answer on my blog.
I urge you to consider using earth-friendly packaging in the future, to truly make your product “earthwise.”
Sincerely,
Amy Korst
As soon as I get a response, I’ll post an update here.
Update: Here’s the response I received from the company:
Hi Amy,
I understand your concern, however, given that the produce environment is a wet environment we were unable to use paper to hold the product in place. The bag is designed to significantly reduce single use plastic bag usage over its lifetime, however, plastic products are ubiquitous in our world and a reusable bag cannot remove the need for all plastic products.
We are constantly looking for ways to reduce the needs for plastic and will always strive to find ways to minimize our use of it. In the meantime, however, we sometimes have to utilize the material in order to deliver our environmentally conscientious products to the marketplace.
Given your very legitimate concern about the recyclability of the plastic, as well as other similar inquiries received since our launch, we are sending a sample of the plastic card to Waste Management in order to determine what number it may be recycled at on the plastics scale. Once we have this information we will forward to you.
In addition, when we print a new batch of the stock cards we will include the recycle symbol and plastics number directly on the card in order to encourage recycling by consumers in the future.
With thanks for your continued environmental support
Earthwise Bags
Hmmm. I don’t buy it, because about two days after I sent my email, I wandered into Whole Foods and found these mesh produce bags by Blue Avocado.
They were hanging in the produce section and packaged using only cardboard. Somehow, all the moisture in the air wasn’t causing the bags to disinegrate on the spot. Looks to me like the Earthwise company needed to do a little more R&D before launching their product.
Nevertheless, buying or making mesh produce bags to avoid the throwaway plastic ones is still a good idea.
In the meantime, I will certainly add these mesh bags to my collection. I’ll also give away a set of three mesh bags, considering that 3 reusable bags should save a lot of resources – meaning one small plastic tag might make up for itself in saved plastic bags.
If you want to be entered for these bags, leave a comment here or on my Facebook page telling me what you are doing to reduce trash in the kitchen. If it’s something I haven’t thought of, I’ll enter your name twice.
If you don’t happen to win, but you’d like to purchase your own mesh produce bags, there are many stores on Etsy that sell these bags for a reasonable price. There are also tons of patterns online, if you’re interested. On Etsy or when searching for a pattern, use the words “mesh produce bags.”
Shampoo bar giveaway winner!
The winner of this Seed Shampoo bar is Jessica Sundheim. Jessica commented on Green Garbage Project’s Facebook page,
Week 49: Where do we go from here?
As this year of garbage-free life draws to a close, we are asked over and over again where we go from here. We’ve hesitated to answer this question only because we’re not quite sure ourselves. It’s certain that living garbage-free for a year has drastically changed us for the better – never again will we go back to a creating trash. We may, depending on our next step, decide to let a few choice items back into our lives, but I’ll go into further detail about this issue in a future post.
Right now, I want to enlist your help. We’ve had such helpful, supportive readers over the course of this year that we would like you to help us decide the direction we head next year. You can expect a brief hiatus in July, while we prepare for our next step, but we have every intention of keeping this blog up and running full time. Here are the ideas we’re considering for the future of this project:
A. Continue living garbage-free, blogging about garbage-related issues and keeping the blog as-is: This would keep greengarbageproject.com the same as it’s been for the past year. I’ll blog weekly and we’ll work to eliminate more waste for our lives. While we’re down to very little actual trash, this would likely include us working to eliminate the amount of packaging we recycle as well.
B. Take the plunge and move toward living plastic free: Let’s face it, plastic is ultimately garbage. I’ve talked before about how plastic isn’t truly recyclable in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, plastic “downcycles,” meaning each time we recycle it, it becomes a less valuable material. For example, reycled yogurt containers can’t be melted down and turned into new yogurt containers. The plastic degrades and must be made into a coarser material like plastic lumber. Ultimately, we reach a point where plastic is simply trash. This is a problem, too, in that plastic never, ever biodegrades (at least as far as we know). Instead, plastic photo-degrades, meaning the elements slowly break it into smaller and smaller particles, where it can enter our food chains via animals mistaking these bits of plastic for food. There are many bloggers out there who are living plastic-free, most notably Beth at Fake Plastic Fish.
C. Use my experience as an environmental activist to enact legislative change, such as Germany’s Green Dot system, through formation of a non-profit and lobbying: Okay, this one scares me, but I can’t deny that collective action can be more impactful than individual action. We’ve done a lot of good this year and learned a lot, so perhaps it’s time to push this project a little further.
My biggest epiphany during this project has been that overpackaging is not my fault as a consumer. Instead, the single-use, overpackaging epidemic in our country is enabled by us as consumers but is led directly by companies that package their products in layers of plastic and sell them to us. Where’s the incentive to today’s corporations to use less packaging when those corporations don’t bear the burden of disposing of their mess? We dispose of corporate America’s obscene packaging and we assume the guilt of handling this packaging.
Other countries have different ways of dealing with this issue, notably Germany’s Green Dot program. Have you ever noticed this symbol on any of your personal care products? (I’ve found it on my St. Ives bottles). This dot represents a program in Germany where corporations, not consumers, bear the onus of disposing of their overpackaged products. Consumers buy products, use them, then throw the empty containers/packaging into a bin supplied by the garbage/recycling haulers. When containers are returned to corporations, the corporations must either recycle the packaging or pay the price to dump it. As you can imagine, as soon as this program went into affect, corporations drastically reduced their packaging. The Green Dot ordinance went into affect in 1991, and between 1991-1995, Germany’s packaging waste decreased by 14% while our rate in the U.S. INCREASED by 13%!
The U.S. desperately needs a law like this, and Adam and I could work as advocates for such a change. Of course, I know next to nothing about starting a nonprofit or the innerworkings of political reform, so I’d have a lot to learn.
D. Buy nothing new (except food) for a year: We’d generate very little to no garbage and we’d send a powerful message about where our consumer dollars are going. We love to shop here in the United States, but there’s really more to life then shopping. Maybe we can make do with what we have, and only patronize antique and thrift stores for any goods we do need.
E. Boycott corporations, buying only locally made products or patronizing only “mom and pop” establishments: While this has little to do with garbage in the traditional sense, we are getting more and more fed up with corporate America’s garbage (as is pretty much everyone else, too, I think). Would it be possible to only patronize locally owned businesses for our consumer needs? Can we buy everything locally from small stores in our area?
F. Go all natural, making sure there are no chemicals or ingredients I don’t recognize in food, hygiene, and cleaning products: This is attacking the “chemical” garbage side of things, but the more I read about the sheer volume of chemicals we encounter in our lives, and their health impacts, the more I want to avoid them. Could we buy only products containing ingredients we understand? There are some sticky areas here, like prescription medication and the chemicals foods are packaged in, but we’d figure it out.
Whew! Please help us decide! What would be most valuable to you as a reader? Is there anything we should be considering that we haven’t thought of? Feel free to post this poll on Twitter and Facebook so we get all sorts of feedback. My disclaimer is, of course, that ultimately this decision is up to us – but we’ll strongly consider reader feedback when making our decision. Thanks!
Shampoo bar giveaway!
De-garbaging the bathroom can be a hard task, as many of the daily hygiene products we’ve come to rely on come in non-recyclable packaging. From floss to toothpaste, shampoo to body wash to hair gel, and everything else in between, I think the bathroom has been one of our biggest challenges. To read about how we handle our bathroom products, read the week 30 blog post here.
Then, enter my giveaway for a free bar of Seed Conditioning Hair Shampoo Bar Soap. A two-in-one product, this is essentially a bar soap you use on your hair as both shampoo and conditioner. Ever wondered how this stuff works but not wanted to spend the money in case it was a bad investment? Here’s your chance to try it!
The Seed brand bar is made with all natural ingredients, comes packaged in a recyclable cardboard box with no packaging inside, and it is not tested on animals. To read about this company, use this link.
To enter the contest, leave a comment here or on Facebook explaining one thing you are doing to eliminate trash from your bathroom. I’ll enter you twice if you come up with something I’m not doing or haven’t thought of yet. Enter by next Monday night!
Week 48: 11 months down, one to go!
I looked at the calendar yesterday and realized it was June 6 – and since we started the Green Garbage Project only July 6, 2009, that means we have only one month to go! I’m not totally sure where the time went, because this year has passed in a flash. Looking back, I realize I’ve learned a lot and grown a lot in one short year. As we begin to wrap things up, I know there are many questions that remain, such as what are we going to do next?
Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing I’m not working at the moment, because we plan on ushering our project out with a BANG! Which means lots of goodies and information for our loyal readers who have so helped us maintain moral and commitment during our year-long journey. If you’re not already a fan of our project on Facebook, please “like” the Green Garbage Project by clicking here.
I’ll be updating the site regularly, if not daily, so check back often. Here’s what you can look forward to in the coming weeks:
- Weekly garbage-free giveaways! That’s right, starting tomorrow, I will be giving away garbage-less goodies once a week for the rest of the project. All you’ll have to do is leave a comment either on the contest blog post or on Facebook, and I’ll enter you into a drawing. Read the weekly posts for more details.
- A poll and opportunities for you to get involved in the future of our project. Where do we go from here? We’re not sure – but we have lots of ideas! One thing’s for sure – we’re not done yet. We believe strongly in the ability of an individual to make a powerful difference, and this year has been inspiring for us, even as the ones doing the garbage-free living. Help us decide the future direction of this blog.
- A rundown of the garbage contents we did accumulate over the course of a year. What each was, why we incurred it, and whether we’ve subsequently found alternatives.
- My upcycling efforts – crafting using some of the “would-be” garbage we’ve accumulated this year.
- My reflections on our garbage journey as a whole – what we learned and what we have left to do.
Before I close tonight, since I celebrated my 26th birthday last week, a rundown of the very cool garbage-free gifts from my husband:
Check out the cool flower arrangement he found at our local Safeway! I’m very fortunate to have a husband who brings me flowers for no reason throughout the year, and this is one of the things I’ve missed during the Green Garbage Project. Since most flowers come wrapped in cellophane, or with an expensive vase, I haven’t gotten flowers as often. Adam said he was going to spring for the vase, but found this instead – a rose wrapped in a banana leaf and tied with raffia. Now there’s a great idea!
I also received a gift certificate for a spa massage – the gift of relaxation on recyclable paper! Giving experiences is really the way to go in my mind, and here’s a great example why.
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