Mrs. Green is guest posting today. In the picture to the left she is holding all of their household waste for the entire year of 2010!
Mrs Green runs My Zero Waste which gives tips and advise on reducing household waste – find out how to reduce, reuse, recycle AND save money!
I’m honoured to be sharing a guest post on Alea’s blog today and I want to talk about minimising waste.
Like losing weight, reducing waste tends to plateau after a while and you might be wondering how you can up the stakes and get back on track!
That certainly happened to us during 2009 where we were accumulating 100 grams of waste per week. When we got to the end of the year we took a look at our habits to see where we could reduce waste even further. Our goal for 2010 was for ZERO waste to landfill, so we needed to make some pretty radical changes to achieve this.Here are some ideas that might help you:
1 COMPOST
You might be surprised to learn that up to 60% of your household waste can be composted. This includes things like fruit and vegetable peelings, but extends to coffee grounds, crushed egg shells and even the contents of your vacuum cleaner and hair brush!
Check out our beginners guide to compost to learn about achieving the right ‘green to brown’ ratios and to see what other items you can compost.
2 PACKAGING
We all need knowledge to become aware of issues, so it might be time to take a bin audit! For a week, keep everything you might ordinarily throw away and ask yourself if you could reuse it in some way, recycle it or even swap your shopping habits to buy something with less packaging in the future. You might be surprised to see what wasteful habits have crept in.
3 REUSE
Do you buy disposable items? Maybe it’s time to ditch the disposables and switch to reusable options. Here are 7 commonly bought disposable items which you might be able to switch:
Microfiber cloths instead of kitchen towel
Rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones
Furoshiki instead of wrapping paper (See here for information about furoshiki)
Nappies – cloth diapers are kinder to the skin and better for the environment
Sanitary protection – try the mooncup or washable pads
Disposable biros – try a fountain or ink pen instead and replace just the ink
Water bottle – say no to bottled water and take your own reusable bottle with you
4 FOOD WASTE
In our house we don’t have food waste, we have INGREDIENTS! This simple shift in mindset can bring creativity and some exciting meals to your table. Sure it can bring disasters too, but see what you can come up with. One of our favourite meals of the week is on a Monday lunch-time when we have ‘Sunday Lunch Soup’. As you might guess, Sunday Lunch Soup consists of leftovers from our Sunday roast blitzed in the blender, livened up with a few herbs and served piping hot with crusty bread.
POSITIVE SIDE EFFECTS
Many people are feeling a bit of ‘green apathy’. We’ve all heard the green stories and we’re getting a bit fed up of people telling us what to do. But the great side effect of making these changes is that we can save money and who doesn’t want to do that? By composting household waste you don’t have to buy expensive compost for your garden or house plants. By switching to reusable products, you’re not throwing money away on ‘once-use’ items and by reducing food waste, you could be saving up to a third of your grocery budget.
Tell me, what methods do you use every day to minimise waste in your home? I’d love to hear them!
mrs green @ myzerowaste.com says
Congrats the book lady! There's no better time to be more conscious of the earth than when you've just bought new life into the world. Remember, take baby steps to avoid overwhelm…
You may indeed, RubbishGeek; I think it's rather good even though I say so myself 😉 Loving the white board idea; I have one for listing things that need using up but I'm not as organised as listing everything in there – brilliant, well done!
RubbishGeek says
I do love this concept of not thinking of things as Leftovers, but as INGREDIENTS!
Permission to pinch and re-post please Mrs Green!?
At our house, lots of bits and pieces go in the compost bin, and pretty papers end up in my craft supplies.
We also have a magnetic white board on the fridge and freezer, to show what's inside, so nothing gets the excuse of being 'forgotten'.
Keep it up Greenies!
The Book Lady Online says
What an encouraging post. I would love to reduce our garbage and will ponder your ideas and put them in to practice as our life returns to normal (just had a baby).
mrs green @ myzerowaste.com says
Hi Stephen,
Thank you for your comment!
I love the 'make and do' philosophy – it makes total sense. Sometimes I feel embarrassed writing about what I do because I know it is no news at all to my parents generation and I aspire to do more in my own life to reuse things carefully and be a good custodian of things.
I hear you that our value system needs to change. We need to pull away from mindless consumerism and stop and think about what we are doing. Everything we buy is a vote for manufacturers that we support what they are doing, so let's use that vote wisely. Most of all let us make a conscious choice before we buy ANYTHING!
Let's ask ourselves, Do we really need it (or is it a want that will be pushed to the back of the cupboard in a fortnights time)? Are we buying the best we can? Is there something at home which could be repaired or repurposed?
Like you we try and keep things going for as long as we can. Increasingly this gets difficult with built in obsolescence as standard. I think the point you make about us not understanding the true 'cost' of an item and comparing this to 'cheap' is a good one and it shows where we need to step up education the most. The relentless push towards consuming cheap goods has a lot to answer for and we are being blindly led into the trap of extract, manufacture, consume, dispose…
It sounds like you are not poor to me, Stephen; you are richly abundant and live a meaningful life.
Hi Shana!
Everything begins with awareness. Once things are bought into our consciousness we can make empowered decisions. I hope you get your compost heap soon!
Hi Alea,
Thank you for giving me the space to talk about something I am passionate about. I love your cheap and cheerful compost idea 🙂
Alea says
Mrs. Green is definitely the Jedi master of eliminating household waste! I am always inspired to try harder when I read about all that she does.
You can make a very simple (and inexpensive) starter compost bin by using a rubbermade container. Drill(or hammer) holes in the bottom, so worms can make their way in because they speed up the process. Place it outside and add your kitchen waste. I add the peelings and waste to a bowl through out the day and then put it in the bin after dinner. We have high winds so I use a bungie cord to keep the lid on in winter.
We live in the country so, I scrape all of our dishes into my "compost bowl" rather than let food go down the garbage disposal, this reduces the work load on the septic tank.
Shana says
it almost embarrasses me at the amount of waste we have here. So much it is crazy. I recycle some but I know I could do more of it. I have been begging Chris to make me a place so we can have a compost pile since we have a garden every year it would be great for us.
stephen says
Thanks Mrs Green for inspiration on packaging. With respect to other waste we produced in society.
In our age group we were brought up in families where it was common to "make and do". Our parents have after all survived wars!! It is indeed possible but we need a different value system from the top. We need to be people again not consumers!! This label says it all!!! The economy is dependent on it. Until we change our value system our objectives will not follow naturally.
We have for many years repaired our goods keeping our items for 20 years or more is not uncommon when they truly have died. We cant fill the clothes bags for charities or do a boot sale it's life has ceased. Our clothes go to the recycle. We have a washing machine an ISE that has a guarantee for 10years, a team of engineers are tired of appliances being scrapped in 3 years! Their ethos is good 'longevity' and they guarantee to keep parts and keep these machines going for at least 10 years. Our freezer is kept in outbuilding and is again a long lifespan item and lowest energy consumption. LED lights are long life low energy. But these items are all expensive a long term investment. People are fooled by cheapness and pay more for these items in the end. We cook food from scratch which reduces packaging waste by batch cooking in the weekend for the week . We use the freezer to store this as well as vegetables that we grow etc. Potatoes are eaten all year long from the garden and we now have a pollytunnel to extend the growing season and plan to grow as much as possible . When we have to buy veg we try to buy organic which tends to have recycled packaging.
We never waste food it is fed to birds, chickens, dog, pigs and compost. All go back into the soil for veg and fruit.
Clothing is kept for long periods and is repaired we darn socks!
Our house is wattle and daub the sheds are clay lump all made of materials from our garden and our hard labour. We repair ourselves. We have no plastic on site. Our rainwaterware is recyclable. We store our animal feeds in blue recycled bins to stop rats. We have straw thatch roof again from local source.
Poverty seems good for the environment!! Having said that we are not poor.
Our cars are tax free because the are Eco? at least the best presently, and electric cars we shall have to wait and see. We live very rural so we have no option with few buses now at threat of withdrawing in Uk particularly in low population rural areas due to cutbacks.
Waste is one facet of a larger picture we need lifestyle change to change which might not please the economy but we survived in the past this is not rocket science