Zero Household Waste Challenge

[amandajane]

I propose a challenge! How about we try for zero household waste for a week? The parameters would have to be decided upon but I thought I'd put it out there.

We have a recycling service here so all glass and plastic goes once a fortnight. The same with newspaper and cardboard. The thing that will be difficult for me will be kitchen waste. I don't have a compost bin (yet) and don't have any pets that will eat it. There is also the meat waste, I'm not sure what to do about that. I do however have a friend that has a dog, I am going to ask him if he wants me to save my meat waste by freezing it and handing it over at the end of the week.

Re the compost bin, apparently you can make one out of a plain old heavy duty plastic bin liner, turning it would sure be easy if that were the case. I got the idea from here and there are other suggestions too:

I love to garden, but have so little money I have to do a "frugal garden". The best way I have found to get "cheap dirt" is to compost. You can compost anywhere and the piles are not stinky or gross.

Some ideas:

1. Right on the ground- just start your pile on some branches, straw, boards, pallets...something that will allow good drainage.
2. Use four discarded tires as a bin. Fill them then to turn the compost, take the top tire off and rebuild the stack.
3. A double garbage bag- the tough lawn bags. I just roll the bag around to turn the compost.
4. Four pallets wired together. Make two of this type of bin and to turn it shovel from one bin to the other.

Use "greens", your nitrogen, and "browns" your carbon in a mix of about 25:75. I can get a really hot pile going and have great compost in less than 2 months. I mix it with my local soil (blow- sand) and it makes a great gardening medium.

So, anyone got any thoughts? Things to add to the list?

[Finally_Frugal]

Amandajane, I love this idea! I create about 1/2 a garbage can of trash each month, and would love to whittle that down even further. I compost and also recycle almost everything. Composting is so easy----I was lucky, in that there was already a composter on the property when I bought my house. There are lots of websites about how to compost, and how to build/create your own composter inexpensively. I think one of the plans used old wooden pallets in some way.

I do put kitty litter in the trash, but I use pine pellets and I believe they're biodegradeable, so technically, I suppose this could go somewhere else (just not sure where?)

I hope more people sign on for this challenge!

[Megan]

I don't think that I can get down to zero household waste, but I can do my part to try to reduce waste down to as little as possible.

One easy trick I've picked up (which I'm sure many of you do) is that not only do I bring my own grocery bags to the grocery store, I also bring my own produce bags. Just little mesh drawstring bags. The argument some people make is that these might weigh more than the flimsy plastic bags offered by the grocery store, and that might be true, and if I were buying very expensive, very light produce (truffles, for example), I might be concerned. The fact that I might pay an extra penny for the apples I just bought? Well, that penny was worth it for the added benefit to the environment.

[lucille]

We tried this a few years ago. There are still some packaging you can't recycle and we don't have glass recycling here. So our trash ended up being meat scraps, unrecyclable packaging and other things that just had to be trash.

We want to start a compost bin again but it will have to be some sort of commercial one or the barrel type so it can sit next to the trash cans outside by the garage. Anything else would result in neighborhood complaints and a wild animal party.

[Finally_Frugal]

One easy trick I've picked up (which I'm sure many of you do) is that not only do I bring my own grocery bags to the grocery store, I also bring my own produce bags. Just little mesh drawstring bags.

Megan, I do the same thing (btw, I'm also a 'Megan'!) I just wash and dry the plastic produce bags I have hanging around the house, and re-use them for either produce or bulk items like oatmeal or flour. I like the idea of having more 'permanent' (plastic bags only last so long. . . .) bags, too, though. I've read some posts from people who use the mesh bags that onions come in---where did you get your bags?

Also, on thinking about this some more, I wonder what to do with, um, bathroom waste (like used tissues, etc)? I guess there will always be some bit of waste that can't be recycled/composted (as Lucille, above, mentions).

I think I'm going to try this challenge beginning tomorrow, and see how I do. Hopefully I'll come up with some creative ways of running my house without using throw-away items (like, not using a paper towel when a washable towel/cloth would do just as well. . . .)

Thanks again, amandajane, for starting this post! p.s. how's the weather in NZ? (-:

[Megan]

Originally Posted by Finally_Frugal

I like the idea of having more 'permanent' (plastic bags only last so long. . . .) bags, too, though. I've read some posts from people who use the mesh bags that onions come in---where did you get your bags?

I actually picked up the bags I use from Walgreens. They're marketed as bags that moms can keep in the car and use for whatever they might need - trash, kid's toys, etc., but I find they work great for grocery shopping. I believe they do sell some produce-type bags over at ResuableBags.com, but I can't vouch for those.

[amandajane]

Finally_Frugal - I'm glad you like the idea. Even thinking about it has made me see ways I could reduce my trash. I also remember the days when cotton handkerchiefs were washed by hand :0)

I don't use paper towels in the kitchen and have only just begun to buy facial tissues, mainly because they are so inexpensive here. I'll be rethinking that one.

The plastic bags are going to be the major challenge for me. I reuse them for lining my kitchen bin and the small ones that I put my veggies in get used for storing food in the freezer or fridge. I'll miss my plastic bags! lol. I thought I was doing ok reusing them in this way but maybe it's not the best. Our local supermarket is having a push on reusable bags at the moment. They are selling them for $1 each but they don't last very long and aren't made very well. It seems I only get maybe 4 or 5 uses and the seams start to come undone.

I need to make a decision about how I'm going to compost. I don't have much room here and only have a courtyard garden, consequently I'm container gardening. I'd really like one of those barrel composters and need to check out how much they are and whether I can get them from the local counsel. They do sell composters and they are only $30, I'm just not sure what sort.

Once I've decided what I'm going to do with that I'll be ready to go.

Oh btw, the weather here is great at the moment Finally_Frugal. Thanks for asking! :0)

[purplefdu]

The reusable shopping bags we have here are $1-1.50 and last great. All the grocery stores carry them as do Walmart and Target (although we were worried about Target's quality). We stuff ours pretty full and haven't had an issue yet, although I am debating buying a couple extras to stash away for if that happens. We've found the biggest trash source is packaging as our dump doesn't recycle some things like plastic bags(thankfully walmart does).

My grandparents never stopped living in the Depression Era mindset. They recycled bottles and cans, had two huge compost heaps for using in their acres of garden, and burned paper (although I imagine it would have been recycled these days). Ziplocs were washed, dried and reused. Aluminum foil was as well, string was tied into a ball and reused. I don't ever remember going to the garbage dump when we were there. So I imagine there isn't anything that can be saved and reused or recycled if you try hard. Eventually you may have to throw out the foil/ziploc bags but thats not much garbage.

So long as you aren't buying treated tissues (lotion, Vicks, etc) you should be able to compost them. The heat of the pile should kill any germs that might be there, although if you have a cold or virus you might want to trash them for safety reasons.

[lucille]

One thing I have found with using the reusable grocery sacks is if you have your own canvas bags some stores will look at you funny. Yet if you use the store brand reusable bags you get better compliance.

I had one store bag my canvas bags in a plastic grocery sack & put them with my groceries that they bagged in plastic without even saying anything. So we have some of the red ones from Target and green ones from our local grocery chain. I wish more stores had their own version of those bags in their store color. I would be willing to get a few from each of the stores I shop at if they would let me use them without hassle.

Check out people also seem to be willing to put more stuff in one of the reusable bag. My biggest pet peeve with plastic grocery sacks is they would put two items in each sack so I had tons of sacks with two items in them. Why?

[Miss Rosie]

Originally Posted by lucille

Check out people also seem to be willing to put more stuff in one of the reusable bag. My biggest pet peeve with plastic grocery sacks is they would put two items in each sack so I had tons of sacks with two items in them. Why?

Because they know perfectly well that their bags are so flimsy that if they put more than two items in, the bags will break. I hate that!

Whole Foods Market has the best plastic grocery bags. Unfortunately, my understanding is that they're phasing them out, and I say "unfortunately" because those were my best-ever trash bags. I can't use Kroger bags without double-bagging my garbage, and it irritates me to have to buy trash bags.

Since I will have to, I think I'll buy reusable grocery bags. The hard part is remembering to use them. I'm horribly absent-minded.

As far as the zero waste thing is concerned, we have no recycling here and no place to compost. It's one of the downsides to apartment life in a dubious town. City services and space just plain suck.

However, as far as tissue use is concerned, most craft shops have hankies for a few dollars each. I wash them with the napkins and cleaning rags, with a bit of bleach to kill germs. Once washed like this a few times, they're much softer than tissues and they get better as they age. I keep tissues and toilet paper* in the bathroom for company, but I don't use either one myself, and I only use paper towels in the microwave.

My son's answer to tissues when he has a really bad cold is to blow his nose in the sink, then rinse the gunk down the drain. Might sound gross, but we use a netti pot, and the netti pot has pretty much the same result, as well as easing the congestion.

I recycle my copyediting manuscripts and absorbent paper junk mail to use as pet bedding. I bought a micro-cut shredder, and the end result is very soft and fluffy.

Plastic bags I'm not so great with. I would like a ziploc bag drying rack, but I haven't figured out how to get around the space issue yet.

*For anyone who hasn't seen it, my toilet paper replacer is an empty dishsoap bottle filled with water, 1 tsp cider vinegar and two drops baby shampoo, plus some cut-up washcloths to dry off with. I think of it as a frugal bidet, with the added advantage of a bit of gentle soap.