Love getting ideas of what others are doing to reduce their waste! One unexpected way I've found to reduce lots of my personal waste as a menstruating human is to switch to a menstrual cup and washable period underwear instead of the tampons and pads I used previously. It's admittedly not a change that will work for everyone who gets periods, but for me, it's been life-changing because it made my heavy periods much more manageable, and I feel so much less "wasteful" during that time of the month.
Our little town in VT has an awesome transfer station. The staff are quite serious, but make it easy to get your refuse into the right container. I think this has substantially reduced the volume of stuff that gets dumped in the trash. I have to admit I am a bit cynical about where all the stuff ends up, but we are doing our part. HAVE THAT KID. Nothing that you do in life will bring as much joy (and, well, worry and frustration) than raising children. Mine are in their mid-twenties. It is just awesome to see them out on their own and to spend time with them both as your children and as independent adults. But your life will change dramatically! All the best.
Love the idea of a serious staff at a transfer station. And yeah, there's always the issue of "is this stuff actually getting recycled?" but worth a shot for now. That's part of why we try to find our own uses for so much stuff. And woof, yeah, regarding the kid everyone is pretty much like "it's the most wonderful misery of your life!"😂
Fellow JNCO-jeans-wearing, lottery-ticket-receiving kid here, which has nothing to do with what I'm about to say but just wanted to acknowledge that.
We were worried that having a compost container outside would attract bears, so we bought a countertop composter that Vitamix makes and have been loving it. During the week, we fill the waste bucket (it comes with a lid, so nothing stinks). When it's full, we plop it in the machine and in 6-8 hours we have fertilizer we can dump directly on our plants. The only downside is the energy required to run the machine, but hoping to solve that with solar panels at some point in the future.
I have been looking for a way to compost (outside is a no-go because of various animals/lack of space, and I'm in a rural area with no compost pick-up available) and this might be my solution — thank you!
I was looking at this, as well as the lomi composter, but then I found bokashi composting. I JUST started my bucket, so well see but the general gist is, t ferments the compost into a sort of pre-compost, which you can then bury in an actual compost bin, or regular dirt. The pre-compost breaks down in a few weeks, versus the normal compost time. People also do “soil factories” where they keep some soil indoors as well, to take the place of the outdoor portion of the composting.
We have a Keurig and I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it. It’s quick, but the coffee isn’t great and there are those damn cups. In the past five years I’ve cycled through the reusable cup (messy to clean), commercial brands with recyclable innards (irritating and still has some plastic), and “OMG just give me the pods and I’ll pretend not to care”. And then a couple months ago I discovered Perfect Pod E-Z Cup disposable filters. Filters! For the reusable cup! They’re biodegradable! The amount of peace this brings me is exponential to the amount of good I’m actually doing, but such is my life.
I used to swear by the Keurig but switched to a pour over. You can get a cheap one with a washable, reusable coffee filter for like 20 bucks. I thought I'd hate cleaning it but realistically, it only takes a few minutes!
Same!! But also there are commercially compostable cups with no plastic on Amazon. I put in my waste not commercial compost bucket (picked up by a truck that runs on compost!) each week
I didn't know about Stasher bags and have just ordered some. But I've been reusing heavy duty Ziploc bags for years; they're easy to wash and are good for at least 10 uses until I poke a hole (sometimes doesn't matter) or the seal gets wonky. If you reuse bags, you need to be able to dry them. I have had one of these for more than 20 years, and give them for gifts:
They fold up compactly to put away in a drawer, but mine always seems to have at least one bag or water bottle on it and is a counter fixture.
I'm all in on composting food waste. I have tried various ways of making piles that work and generally failed in one way or another until I found this gizmo: https://hotbincomposting-us.com/ I was skeptical. My composting buddy, who has much more experience than I do, was skeptical. But the thing works. It's not a panacea, but it's better than anything else we've tried. It is claimed to work in cold climates. Not sure about how compatible it would be in bear country.
Loved this article! I am a 78 year old woman living in a retirement community. Once a week is trash day and on that day I set out a bag of trash and a recycling bin. I am always astonished at the amount of trash and stuff that I set out. Especially compared to my neighbors who I have noticed have much less trash / recycle then I do! So I have often wondered why I am so trashy:-) compared to some others. I have become very conscious of how much trash I do accumulate and I also wonder where my recycling ends up and how much good it does or does not to recycle but I do my best. Question, what is a stasher bag?
As to having a kid, it's a no Brainer. It's a love like no other.
The Stasher bags are a brand of reusable silicone versions of Ziploc style plastic bags! This is their website: https://www.stasherbag.com/
They are sadly out of my budget, but I would love to get some one day. Question for anyone who uses them: do they start to taste like dishwasher detergent if you use the dishwasher to clean them? Every silicone thing I have ever used no matter the quality ends up tasting like soap. Our household consists of two disabled adults and I just know we won’t be able to consistently hand wash.
I loved reading these ideas! You reminded me that I really need to start composting. I’m in a bigger city and I love our local Buy Nothing Facebook group. I appreciate knowing that things are going to someone who wants and will use them. For me, the act of spending time and energy posting and giving away things on Buy Nothing and also selling clothes on Poshmark (the shipping, I know!) has made me SO much more mindful of how much I’m buying. It’s been the best cure for my consumerist tendencies.
Also came here to comment how wonderful our Buy Nothing group is. It's amazing how much great stuff you can get that others don't want/no longer need -- and how gratifying it is to get rid of our stuff. Plus, we've gotten to meet some really nice people.
I’m pretty proud to have all but eliminated single use plastic in cleaning and storage. Love laundry sheets, stash bags, and wax cloth instead of Saran Wrap. All kitchen cleaning materials are glass bottle concentrates (same with skincare products) or tin, Swedish kitchen towels, shampoo and conditioner bars, bamboo toilet paper, toothpaste bites. The only thing I can’t avoid is contact lens solution - that plastic just is what it is I guess. Next step is eliminating plastics from grocery store food…I just love a fresh olive bar (although we do brine our own olives from our tree now!)
We were on such a good track... but then we made a kid. And then the pandemic came. 😭 We still do a lot of these things, but I need to get better and focused again. I’ve finally really crossed into using the library (I’ve only bought a couple books this year).
Personal care products are my “tricky” one right now. How do you find the products you love without spending a fortune shipping samples, but also, if it’s not great, I have a lot of stuff I’m stuck with I don’t love... and most places won’t take stuff that’s been opened (obviously) - and friends are unlikely to be like, “Oh, you didn’t like it, SIGN ME UP!”
Also... this all came into killer focus for me this summer... we were thisclose to moving to Juneau... which would’ve meant a major lifestyle change/purge.
What gets me are all the plastic clamshells. When I want to buy berries or cherry tomatoes or special mixed greens, I don't see a way around getting these awful single-use plastic containers (although I do use a local fresh food source who puts some of this produce in waxed paper bags). I put plastic clamshells in the recycling bin knowing there's a good chance they won't actually be repurposed. There has to be a better plastic-free way that major grocery chains could adopt to replace these ubiquitous plastic produce containers. Thanks for a good & important post!
In the 4th grade, my family was featured on city buses for fitting our trash into a small trash can and I’ve been chasing that fame ever since! Lol! We have 2 young kids and there are so many things we do for ease (which is I feel guilty about!) but other things we do to reduce our waste- from getting most of clothes as hand me downs, buy nothing and using rags to wash dirty hands. But we always could be doing more!
This is the best article I’ve read so far in since I signed up to your newsletter! I loved it! First thing though “ Our town has an invasive species weeding effort every year, so I create bouquets of those flowers.” - I’m wondering if this contributes to seed spreading the the invasive species?
One thing I’ve done is completely stopped shopping for new clothes and shoes. Charity shops and apps like DEPOP to buy second hand only. In London there’s also pop up stores in the community now such as “Fixing things” (for people to bring in random appliances to fix) and “Library of things” (rather than a book library, one can borrow a blender, a tent, a pressure hose, a sewing machine etc). A lot community organised sharing of stuff has been really helpful, and encourages me to donate to charity stores and “library of things” to encourage a circular economy.
In my household we also bulk bought (2-3 months worth of things like rice and pulses, to eco-cleaning products) to minimise transport and packaging. And of course trying to grow some of your own small veggies can help too!
It’s a good point for people reading about the seeds: I only do this at the right time of year for each plant to prevent seed spreading, and the Class 1 noxious plants get bagged and tossed. They never make it to the table. But plenty of these weeds have times in the season when they’re safe to pull and not spread. But it took an expert teaching me!
I love that our local library is ALSO this wonderful idea of library of things! You can get everything from a sous vide machine to a metal detector. It’s a hoot.
These are great the reminders. We do make efforts in our home, but we can always do more. I love improvement, whether it's mine or someone else's. I'm behind on using stasher bags. That will be my next target, eliminating the use of plastic bags. What do you use to freeze food in? Thanks, Kelton!
It's SO helpful to understand your production. We were listening to a podcast with two of our favorite married comedians, and they were recounting this story of leaving the city to stay in a cabin during Covid (lol), and they were OVERWHELMED by carrying their trash to the dumpster. And in a good way! They were like "I cannot believe we make this much trash."
This! I love composting and sorting trash / recycling because it's so easy to lose track of how much trash we make. I used to live in a city that required you to buy special city bags for trash pickup, which was a great incentive to make less trash and sort out recyclables. Now, in a different city, I wish we had something like a transfer station, because all of the little stuff that needs special treatment (batteries, light bulbs, small electronics, hard plastic sixpack tops, paint...) has to go to different stores, drop off points, and pick up days, so I end up hoarding these things and then missing the recycling event.
They aren’t in too many cities but thought it might be worth mentioning that Ridwell (https://www.ridwell.com/) is pretty cool when it comes to offering pickups of very hard to recycle items! I used it for a short time until I sadly moved somewhere that doesn’t have it and I got to enjoy their battery, stretchy plastic, clothes and pet supply pickup. Basically they rotate categories for pickups each month. (The pet supplies went to our local humane society where I happened to volunteer...I felt silly seeing toys I had donated through Ridwell show up in the dog toy bins when I could have just brought them in myself, but hey, it validated that they were following through!)
I remember when we sold our house to leave the US and become nomads, I was astonished by how crap we had accumulate. I mean ASTONISHED because I thought of ourselves as being less materialistic. Ha!
Thankfully, being nomadic has forced us to be less materialistic and these days I can hardly recall what it was we had even owned in the first place.
Being nomadic comes with it's own issues of course -- our carbon footprint from flying first and foremost. We have made a very concerted effort to fly less and it's worked.
My other big environmental concern is one use plastic. Because we eat out more, we tend to go through more plastic containers. I'm trying to lessen that but it's hard...
So many trade-offs! I had a similar experience when I moved to the Caribbean. I could only take two bags, and what a day for the local thrift shops that was 😂 - I had been such a poster girl for fast fashion and that was a memorable day in changing that habit for good.
The flight thing is tough. Good on y'all for noting it and moving toward less. <3
Love getting ideas of what others are doing to reduce their waste! One unexpected way I've found to reduce lots of my personal waste as a menstruating human is to switch to a menstrual cup and washable period underwear instead of the tampons and pads I used previously. It's admittedly not a change that will work for everyone who gets periods, but for me, it's been life-changing because it made my heavy periods much more manageable, and I feel so much less "wasteful" during that time of the month.
Our little town in VT has an awesome transfer station. The staff are quite serious, but make it easy to get your refuse into the right container. I think this has substantially reduced the volume of stuff that gets dumped in the trash. I have to admit I am a bit cynical about where all the stuff ends up, but we are doing our part. HAVE THAT KID. Nothing that you do in life will bring as much joy (and, well, worry and frustration) than raising children. Mine are in their mid-twenties. It is just awesome to see them out on their own and to spend time with them both as your children and as independent adults. But your life will change dramatically! All the best.
Love the idea of a serious staff at a transfer station. And yeah, there's always the issue of "is this stuff actually getting recycled?" but worth a shot for now. That's part of why we try to find our own uses for so much stuff. And woof, yeah, regarding the kid everyone is pretty much like "it's the most wonderful misery of your life!"😂
Fellow JNCO-jeans-wearing, lottery-ticket-receiving kid here, which has nothing to do with what I'm about to say but just wanted to acknowledge that.
We were worried that having a compost container outside would attract bears, so we bought a countertop composter that Vitamix makes and have been loving it. During the week, we fill the waste bucket (it comes with a lid, so nothing stinks). When it's full, we plop it in the machine and in 6-8 hours we have fertilizer we can dump directly on our plants. The only downside is the energy required to run the machine, but hoping to solve that with solar panels at some point in the future.
I have been looking for a way to compost (outside is a no-go because of various animals/lack of space, and I'm in a rural area with no compost pick-up available) and this might be my solution — thank you!
I have fought with my husband for years about the need for composting. I’m just going to get this and let him fuss about it. Thanks!
I was looking at this, as well as the lomi composter, but then I found bokashi composting. I JUST started my bucket, so well see but the general gist is, t ferments the compost into a sort of pre-compost, which you can then bury in an actual compost bin, or regular dirt. The pre-compost breaks down in a few weeks, versus the normal compost time. People also do “soil factories” where they keep some soil indoors as well, to take the place of the outdoor portion of the composting.
Um, that sounds AMAZING.
We have a Keurig and I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it. It’s quick, but the coffee isn’t great and there are those damn cups. In the past five years I’ve cycled through the reusable cup (messy to clean), commercial brands with recyclable innards (irritating and still has some plastic), and “OMG just give me the pods and I’ll pretend not to care”. And then a couple months ago I discovered Perfect Pod E-Z Cup disposable filters. Filters! For the reusable cup! They’re biodegradable! The amount of peace this brings me is exponential to the amount of good I’m actually doing, but such is my life.
I used to swear by the Keurig but switched to a pour over. You can get a cheap one with a washable, reusable coffee filter for like 20 bucks. I thought I'd hate cleaning it but realistically, it only takes a few minutes!
All about that pour over life!
Haha, but the curiosity is there and it's important!
Same!! But also there are commercially compostable cups with no plastic on Amazon. I put in my waste not commercial compost bucket (picked up by a truck that runs on compost!) each week
I didn't know about Stasher bags and have just ordered some. But I've been reusing heavy duty Ziploc bags for years; they're easy to wash and are good for at least 10 uses until I poke a hole (sometimes doesn't matter) or the seal gets wonky. If you reuse bags, you need to be able to dry them. I have had one of these for more than 20 years, and give them for gifts:
https://www.lehmans.com/product/economical-plastic-bag-holder-and-bottle-dryer
They fold up compactly to put away in a drawer, but mine always seems to have at least one bag or water bottle on it and is a counter fixture.
I'm all in on composting food waste. I have tried various ways of making piles that work and generally failed in one way or another until I found this gizmo: https://hotbincomposting-us.com/ I was skeptical. My composting buddy, who has much more experience than I do, was skeptical. But the thing works. It's not a panacea, but it's better than anything else we've tried. It is claimed to work in cold climates. Not sure about how compatible it would be in bear country.
Loved this article! I am a 78 year old woman living in a retirement community. Once a week is trash day and on that day I set out a bag of trash and a recycling bin. I am always astonished at the amount of trash and stuff that I set out. Especially compared to my neighbors who I have noticed have much less trash / recycle then I do! So I have often wondered why I am so trashy:-) compared to some others. I have become very conscious of how much trash I do accumulate and I also wonder where my recycling ends up and how much good it does or does not to recycle but I do my best. Question, what is a stasher bag?
As to having a kid, it's a no Brainer. It's a love like no other.
The Stasher bags are a brand of reusable silicone versions of Ziploc style plastic bags! This is their website: https://www.stasherbag.com/
They are sadly out of my budget, but I would love to get some one day. Question for anyone who uses them: do they start to taste like dishwasher detergent if you use the dishwasher to clean them? Every silicone thing I have ever used no matter the quality ends up tasting like soap. Our household consists of two disabled adults and I just know we won’t be able to consistently hand wash.
Laura, I have a stack of Stashers and run mine through the dishwasher often. No dish detergent/soap taste in my experience!
Thanks! Now I know!
I loved reading these ideas! You reminded me that I really need to start composting. I’m in a bigger city and I love our local Buy Nothing Facebook group. I appreciate knowing that things are going to someone who wants and will use them. For me, the act of spending time and energy posting and giving away things on Buy Nothing and also selling clothes on Poshmark (the shipping, I know!) has made me SO much more mindful of how much I’m buying. It’s been the best cure for my consumerist tendencies.
Also came here to comment how wonderful our Buy Nothing group is. It's amazing how much great stuff you can get that others don't want/no longer need -- and how gratifying it is to get rid of our stuff. Plus, we've gotten to meet some really nice people.
Bravo! You’re doing swell.
I’m pretty proud to have all but eliminated single use plastic in cleaning and storage. Love laundry sheets, stash bags, and wax cloth instead of Saran Wrap. All kitchen cleaning materials are glass bottle concentrates (same with skincare products) or tin, Swedish kitchen towels, shampoo and conditioner bars, bamboo toilet paper, toothpaste bites. The only thing I can’t avoid is contact lens solution - that plastic just is what it is I guess. Next step is eliminating plastics from grocery store food…I just love a fresh olive bar (although we do brine our own olives from our tree now!)
I cut up old tshirts to use instead of Kleenex. I store them in an old Kleenex box. One added benefit, it's softer on your skin
We cut up old t-shirts to use as rags, but this is next level. I love it.
We were on such a good track... but then we made a kid. And then the pandemic came. 😭 We still do a lot of these things, but I need to get better and focused again. I’ve finally really crossed into using the library (I’ve only bought a couple books this year).
Personal care products are my “tricky” one right now. How do you find the products you love without spending a fortune shipping samples, but also, if it’s not great, I have a lot of stuff I’m stuck with I don’t love... and most places won’t take stuff that’s been opened (obviously) - and friends are unlikely to be like, “Oh, you didn’t like it, SIGN ME UP!”
Also... this all came into killer focus for me this summer... we were thisclose to moving to Juneau... which would’ve meant a major lifestyle change/purge.
I so get that. I use almost all Ursa Major products now, trying to get them all at once to decrease shipping.
And it's so hard with a kid. You're just trying to figure out how to make it through. <3
What gets me are all the plastic clamshells. When I want to buy berries or cherry tomatoes or special mixed greens, I don't see a way around getting these awful single-use plastic containers (although I do use a local fresh food source who puts some of this produce in waxed paper bags). I put plastic clamshells in the recycling bin knowing there's a good chance they won't actually be repurposed. There has to be a better plastic-free way that major grocery chains could adopt to replace these ubiquitous plastic produce containers. Thanks for a good & important post!
They're the worst! Just throw the berries in a bin with a scooper like they're nuts or grains. Let us do the work!
In the 4th grade, my family was featured on city buses for fitting our trash into a small trash can and I’ve been chasing that fame ever since! Lol! We have 2 young kids and there are so many things we do for ease (which is I feel guilty about!) but other things we do to reduce our waste- from getting most of clothes as hand me downs, buy nothing and using rags to wash dirty hands. But we always could be doing more!
This is the best article I’ve read so far in since I signed up to your newsletter! I loved it! First thing though “ Our town has an invasive species weeding effort every year, so I create bouquets of those flowers.” - I’m wondering if this contributes to seed spreading the the invasive species?
One thing I’ve done is completely stopped shopping for new clothes and shoes. Charity shops and apps like DEPOP to buy second hand only. In London there’s also pop up stores in the community now such as “Fixing things” (for people to bring in random appliances to fix) and “Library of things” (rather than a book library, one can borrow a blender, a tent, a pressure hose, a sewing machine etc). A lot community organised sharing of stuff has been really helpful, and encourages me to donate to charity stores and “library of things” to encourage a circular economy.
In my household we also bulk bought (2-3 months worth of things like rice and pulses, to eco-cleaning products) to minimise transport and packaging. And of course trying to grow some of your own small veggies can help too!
Thanks for a great post.
It’s a good point for people reading about the seeds: I only do this at the right time of year for each plant to prevent seed spreading, and the Class 1 noxious plants get bagged and tossed. They never make it to the table. But plenty of these weeds have times in the season when they’re safe to pull and not spread. But it took an expert teaching me!
I love that our local library is ALSO this wonderful idea of library of things! You can get everything from a sous vide machine to a metal detector. It’s a hoot.
These are great the reminders. We do make efforts in our home, but we can always do more. I love improvement, whether it's mine or someone else's. I'm behind on using stasher bags. That will be my next target, eliminating the use of plastic bags. What do you use to freeze food in? Thanks, Kelton!
The stasher bags are actually freezer compatible! So we use those. They've been a revelation in this house. 💞
Okay then, I'm on it! 💟
Love this. I think all Americans should have to take out their own trash and sort it!!
It's SO helpful to understand your production. We were listening to a podcast with two of our favorite married comedians, and they were recounting this story of leaving the city to stay in a cabin during Covid (lol), and they were OVERWHELMED by carrying their trash to the dumpster. And in a good way! They were like "I cannot believe we make this much trash."
This! I love composting and sorting trash / recycling because it's so easy to lose track of how much trash we make. I used to live in a city that required you to buy special city bags for trash pickup, which was a great incentive to make less trash and sort out recyclables. Now, in a different city, I wish we had something like a transfer station, because all of the little stuff that needs special treatment (batteries, light bulbs, small electronics, hard plastic sixpack tops, paint...) has to go to different stores, drop off points, and pick up days, so I end up hoarding these things and then missing the recycling event.
They aren’t in too many cities but thought it might be worth mentioning that Ridwell (https://www.ridwell.com/) is pretty cool when it comes to offering pickups of very hard to recycle items! I used it for a short time until I sadly moved somewhere that doesn’t have it and I got to enjoy their battery, stretchy plastic, clothes and pet supply pickup. Basically they rotate categories for pickups each month. (The pet supplies went to our local humane society where I happened to volunteer...I felt silly seeing toys I had donated through Ridwell show up in the dog toy bins when I could have just brought them in myself, but hey, it validated that they were following through!)
I remember when we sold our house to leave the US and become nomads, I was astonished by how crap we had accumulate. I mean ASTONISHED because I thought of ourselves as being less materialistic. Ha!
Thankfully, being nomadic has forced us to be less materialistic and these days I can hardly recall what it was we had even owned in the first place.
Being nomadic comes with it's own issues of course -- our carbon footprint from flying first and foremost. We have made a very concerted effort to fly less and it's worked.
My other big environmental concern is one use plastic. Because we eat out more, we tend to go through more plastic containers. I'm trying to lessen that but it's hard...
So many trade-offs! I had a similar experience when I moved to the Caribbean. I could only take two bags, and what a day for the local thrift shops that was 😂 - I had been such a poster girl for fast fashion and that was a memorable day in changing that habit for good.
The flight thing is tough. Good on y'all for noting it and moving toward less. <3