Tag: Zero Waste

Goodbye, Old Friend

Goodbye, Old Friend

by No Makeup Mama ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Tomorrow is trash day in our neighborhood, which always has me thinking about our trash output. As I mentioned before, we are not exactly without waste, but we are making improvements. Today’s improvement happened to have a visual impact.

We have had a large black trash can in our kitchen since Brett and I got married 7.5 years ago. I don’t actually remember buying it [maybe it was a wedding gift], but it is one of the few possessions that have stood the test of time [others being our wedding rings and childhood photos], until now.

[I should mention as a side note how pathetic it is that we have had so few belongings actually last seven years. It is proof that we have spent most of our married lives prioritizing the cost over the quality and it is further proof of our desire for a constant influx of new “stuff.” Sad, but true – until recently.]

Anyway, today we gave the old friend a demotion and have sent him to the basement, where he won’t collect any garbage at all, but just sit around waiting for us to determine his fate [anyone need a trash can]?

After collecting the trash this week, we realized that we no longer need a tall trash can. [I also realized that we have a lot of trash cans sitting around not collecting any trash at all.] So, we took a small can from another room in the house and put it under the sink. The size difference is significant. But how nice not to have this huge trash can in our kitchen anymore!

This is partly a big win, and partly a leap of faith. Will our trash for a whole week actually fit into this teeny-weeny can? We will see, I guess. Worst case scenario, we have to change the bag mid-week…but I’m not planning on giving myself permission to do that. I’m just going to go for it.

It’s like I always tell my personal training clients – you’ll never know what you’re able to do unless you give it a try.

[Nearly] zero waste, here we come.

Karis

Our First [Nearly] Zero Waste Grocery Trip

Our First [Nearly] Zero Waste Grocery Trip

by No Makeup Mama ♥ 1 Comment

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