Reducing our waste to [nearly] zero – the way I like to describe our efforts at sustainability – has been a process. Not to imply that we have arrived, because we are continually making small [and occasionally large] changes in our habits that we think benefit the planet. But we hope to arrive someday at [nearly] zero.

I say “nearly” because I know I won’t be storing a year’s worth of trash in a mason jar any time soon…or maybe ever. My goal is to aim for zero but be satisfied with nearly zero.

We’ve been slowly reducing our waste for a few months. We now compulsively recycle and religiously compost [which is “rot” for our list of sustainability R’s]. Those two things alone reduced our trash output to less than one full kitchen trash bag per week – which is significantly better than it was, but we could do a lot better [like stop using trash bags, for instance]. We also always shop with our own reusable canvas bags and bag produce in our mesh produce bags. And today we made our first bulk bin purchases at Whole Foods using our own cotton muslin bags.

Here is our haul.

The only waste was the stickers that we had to print in order to purchase and the receipt.

Then we got home and reorganized our pantry so we could store all of our newly acquired zero waste bulk goods.

Something about the zero waste life appeals to my inner neat freak. But even more than that, it appeals to my inner health nut. Look at all of that plant-based, healthy food!

Today is also the first day of a new month, which means we refilled our cash budget envelopes [yay!] Also, we are doing the 30-Day Minimalism Game this month. More on that tomorrow.

But for now, I’m happy with the efforts we’ve made toward being [nearly] zero waste.

Karis