Conscious Waste Project: Finale

In an effort to reduce my families waste, I'm starting Marvelous Adventures' very first series. The theme of the series is quite simple: Zero Waste. We're focusing right now on what goes in our garbage can - the recycling can will be dealt with another time. Feel free to learn from our mistakes

Finale

Week Four Results

Courage
Again, another sucky week. I'm still working with training my mom to not stop by the grocery store on her way home. She did that three times this week, and we ended up with so much junk food I wasn't able to grocery shopping all week. Which means, I wasn't able to try any elements of the project (refusing receipts, getting bread and cheese bulk, telling the kids no to processed foods, etc.) I'll continue to work on my courage, but this project is now done and over with. In about 3 months I'll update you on the changes we've made since the end of this project, and how it's affected our weekly garbage output. Stay tuned - and wish us better luck!

Last Week's Trash
Total: 3 1/2 bags worth

• Leftover food (2 stale bagels, hotdog bun, strawberries, sandwich, chicken noodle soup)
• Food Packaging (Saltines, danimals yogurt, strawberries, tomato soup, yogurt, rice cakes, cheese sticks, caramel syrup, icecream bars, hot dogs, hot dog buns, butter, cheese slices, frozen berries, candy, yogurt, donuts, bacon, etc.)
• Wrapping paper
• Bandaids
• Ziploc baggies
• Freezer bags
• Bathtub cleaner bottle (last bottle - never buying packaged cleaners again)
• Tissues
• Cough drop wrappers 
• Plastic dish scrubby (it's been shredded, no longer usable. We have 2 more to use before we switch to sponges or something else)
• Plastiwrap

Improvements Made
On top of the weekly project, little changes are being made as problems are realized and research is done. Our budget for change is incredibly limited, so we tend to make the changes that are cheap and will save us money first.

• Made our own desserts (cheesecake, scones and strawberry rhubarb pie)
• Switched to fair-trade liquid castille soap
• Started using our first cast-iron skillet (I'm absolutely in love with it. It's my baby.)
• The monthly clean-down of the house was done zero waste (and will continue to be done that way). We used baking soda, a scrubber, a microfiber wash cloth, broom, mop and castille soap. Simplest, easiest cleaning ever. :)
• Switched the whole family to hankies (we're completely through the last box of tissues we will ever buy!)

Improvements to Make
These are improvements my family hopes to make in the near future. Go ahead and try a few if you want.

• Use a reusable pepper corn grinder
• Ask farmer that we get our meat from to have an alternative packaging method besides shrink-wrap
• Toilet-train my little brother
• Make our own yogurt 
• Grind our own coffee beans
• Get coffee in bulk
• Tackle the junk mail
• Finish the band-aids, switch to gauze and paper tape
• Make our own almond/peanut butter (apparently there's fire retardant in the packaged stuff)
• Make our own pasta (not available in bulk here)
• Switch to refillable pens (we're still working our way through the plastic dollar store ones)
• Find a replacement for freezer bags?
• Get raw milk in glass jars from local dairy
• Switched to a reusable sea salt grinder (we can get sea salt in bulk)
• Switch to an electric razor
• Buy toilet paper in the paper packaging instead of plastic
• Buy cheese and deli meat in jars at the counter
• Buy floss in the little packs, instead of individual flossers - a lot less plastic. 
• Buy bulk beans, rice and grains
• Switch to loose-leaf tea
• Can our own pickles (not available in bulk, but we cannot live without them)
• Can/freeze our own spaghetti sauce (again, cannot live without. Spaghetti is a weekly staple that is not subject to change)
• Make my own almond milk
• Get honey in bulk (local health store carries it) 
• Make our own hotdog buns

Previous Posts in the Series:
Week One: No Wasted Leftovers
Week Two: Less Packaging
Week Three: The Bathroom 
Week Four: Courage
 
What's your zero-waste journey like?

Conscious Waste Project: Week Four

In an effort to reduce my families waste, I'm starting Marvelous Adventures' very first series. The theme of the series is quite simple: Zero Waste. We're focusing right now on what goes in our garbage can - the recycling can will be dealt with another time. Feel free to learn from our mistakes

Week Four

Week Three Results

The Bathroom
I must confess, I nearly gave up on the project this last week. Several times, in fact. Why, you might ask? Because we had some really major setbacks this week and it was depressing. Our trash toll is the highest yet this month and I literally broke into tears when I counted it up. We switched back to disposable diapers because my little brother is allergic to the cloth ones (wtf?!), and we succumbed to several frozen-junk-food binges. However, I know nothing that is worth it is easy, so I'm pushing through. This project is too important to give up on. Let this be a testament that zero-waste isn't always easy, but it's worth it in the end, and eventually it will work out. It'll just take time. Lots, and lots, and lots of time

As for the bathroom project in and of itself, we minimized our bathroom and filled almost an entire garbage can with all the chemical-ridden crap molding under our sink. We're working through the last bottle of toothpaste, mouthwash and individual flossers. After that, I'll be making my own. Stay tuned for a homemade, all-natural whitening mouthwash recipe later this month (there will be no man-made chemicals!) And while we didn't switch to a composting toilet (my mom wouldn't budge on this one), our bathroom trash can is unneeded now (I'm very happy to get rid of it! Yay!!).

Project 4
Courage

One of the major obstacles I've ran into the last couple weeks is my lack of a backbone. I haven't had the strength to tell the kids "no, no over-packaged cheese sticks". I haven't had the courage to refuse receipts. I haven't had the courage to tell myself "no, I don't need cocoa puffs". I haven't had the courage to ask "2 Italian loaves, no packaging please" at the bakery or "1 pound of cheese, in my jar please" at the cheese counter. And I need to get over it. So, here's what I'll be focusing on for our very last project:

• Telling the kids no, and offering them zero-waste alternatives when no would be mean(like bulk chocolate-covered pretzels instead of potato chips)
• Refuse receipts. Period.
• Resist junk-food cravings.
• Don't go grocery shopping hungry and stick to my list.
• Ask for bread at the bakery at least once, packaging free.
• Ask for cheese at the cheese counter in my jar, at least once.

Wish me luck.


Last Week's Trash
Total: 2 bags worth

• Leftovers (spaghetti, potato chips, crab salad, yogurt, sandwich, cereal, etc.)
• Food Packaging (raspberries, cream cheese, potato chips, yoplait individual yogurts, cheese sticks wrappers, lasagna, ice cream, milk caps, peanut butter, cornbread, cocoa puffs, cream cheese, popcorn, frozen juice, milk caps, cheese, oregano, tater tots, ice cream sandwich wrappers, bottled water caps, honey, etc.)
• Disposable diapers (I'm not even going to bother to count these...)
• Individual flossers (working through the last few, figured we'd use them instead of just tossing them unused)
• Baby wipes
• Tissues (3/4 the amount we used to go through, though, since I use hankies now)
• Hair gel, toothpaste, air freshener spray, hair spray, shampoo, conditioner, body soap, lotion, cleaning solvents, etc. (this is from minimizing in our bathroom and cleaning closet, all the half-used chemical-ridden products under our sink that we had to dispose of) 
• Ziplocs galore
• Bandaids 
• Fishing supplies packaging (hooks, weights, filet knife, line, and pole)

Improvements Made
On top of the weekly project, little changes are being made as problems are realized and research is done. Our budget for change is incredibly limited, so we tend to make the changes that are cheap and will save us money first.

• Started potty training the toddler (far from fully trained, but hey, it's a start)
• Bought bagels in bulk at Safeway - super yummy bagels, and package free!
• Switched to a refillable sea salt grinder (It's made out of glass, stainless steel and rubber - so it's high quality too)
• My mom switched to using hankies too. The kids are finishing our last box of tissues - now we just have to convert them.
• Gathered and ate some wild-foods (trout, strawberries, dandelion greens)
• Made our own scones using this recipe (instead of buying the buttermilk, you can just use regular milk and some lemon or lime juice - that way you don't have the buttermilk packaging).
• Harvested some food from our organic garden (strawberries and salad greens).
• Switched to digital coupons using Safeway's online system (it adds the coupons directly onto your safeway card) and this website (Saving Star provides coupons for Albertsons, Rite Aid, and several others).

Improvements to Make
These are improvements my family hopes to make in the near future. Go ahead and try a few if you want.

• Switch to handkerchiefs instead of tissues
• Use a reusable pepper corn grinder
• Ask farmer that we get our meat from to have an alternative packaging method besides shrink-wrap
• Toilet-train my little brother
• Grind our own coffee beans
• Get coffee in bulk
• Tackle the junk mail
• Finish the band-aids, switch to gauze and paper tape
• Make our own almond/peanut butter (apparently there's fire retardant in the packaged stuff)
• Make our own desserts/treats instead of the prepackaged stuff (candy bars, jell-o, cake, etc.)
• Make our own pasta (not available in bulk here)
• Switch to refillable pens (we're still working our way through the plastic dollar store ones)
• Find a replacement for freezer bags?
• Get raw milk in glass jars from local dairy
• Switched to a reusable sea salt grinder (we can get sea salt in bulk)
• Switch to an electric razor
• Buy toilet paper in the paper packaging instead of plastic
• Make our own yogurt
• Buy cheese and deli meat in jars at the counter
• Buy floss in the little packs, instead of individual flossers - a lot less plastic. 
• Buy bulk beans, rice and grains
• Switch to loose-leaf tea
• Can our own pickles (not available in bulk, but we cannot live without them)
• Can/freeze our own spaghetti sauce (again, cannot live without. Spaghetti is a weekly staple that is not subject to change)
• Make my own almond milk
• Get honey in bulk (local health store carries it)

Previous Posts in the Series:
Week One: No Wasted Leftovers
Week Two: Less Packaging
Week Three: The Bathroom
 
What's your zero-waste journey like?

Conscious Waste Project: Week Three

In an effort to reduce my families waste, I'm starting Marvelous Adventures' very first series. The theme of the series is quite simple: Zero Waste. We're focusing right now on what goes in our garbage can - the recycling can will be dealt with another time. Feel free to learn from our mistakes

Week Three

Week One Results

Less Packaging
Unlike predicted this was really, really difficult. I realized about the third day in that cutting food packaging meant more than just avoiding it - we had to change our eating habits, too, and deal with the plethora of packaged food in our over stuffed pantries. Breaking my mom of microwave popcorn happened over night, though and I lessened the amount of packaging brought in to the house by making stuff myself. There was some packaging from the "making it myself" ingredients (the seal on the cinnamon and vanilla extract, for example), however it is significantly less than the packaging of the pre-made products in terms of size.

But this is definitely going to take longer than a week to completely deal with. I'm guessing it would take about a month to completely clean the packaging out of our kitchen and shift our eating habits. 

Project 3
The Bathroom
Once food waste and food packaging are taken out of the equation, the majority of our trash comes from personal hygiene products. You know, deoderant, disposable razors, Q-tips, toothbrushes, etc.There's a whole bunch of it, and the majority of it we don't need to be bothering with. For example, Q tips are so not good for you. Here's what strategies we'll be using to tackle this waste:

• Minimize the bathroom, so that we only have to deal with zero-wasting the bare necessities (no more Q-tips, bandaids, etc.)
• Find sustainable alternatives to disposables ( i.e. glass cup instead of dixie cups)
• Buy in bulk, or at least in large, minimally packaged quantities what we can't live without
• When items needs replaced, replace with eco-friendly alternatives (real loofah instead of the plastic ones, organic or homemade conditioner)

Last Week's Trash
Total: 3/4 bag
I think this was our worst week in the entire project... Oh well. We made some good fundamental changes.

• Leftovers (1/2 egg, 1 bowl of cereal, crab salad sandwich, 1 piece of gum, )
• Food Packaging (microwave popcorn,8 seasoning jar seals, cinnamon container,  tear strip on frozen juice can, Parmesan cheese, sweet peas bag, red potato bag, baby carrots bag, butter wrappers, crescent roll can, fruit stickers, star burst wrapper, tea box wrapper, bottled water cap, 5 milk caps, 2 plastic produce bags (ran out of cloth ones), green onion bag, olive oil wrapper, tortilla chips bag, dried mango, pistachios, shredded cheese, oreos, chicken, pork chops)
• Individual flossers (why did we buy these?)
• Tissues
• Some bits of tape
• Babywipes
• Ziplocs
• Dentists goody bag 
• 2 deoderant sticks (partially used, but too icky to use ever again)
• 1 bottle of conditioner, found myself allergic too it after the third use (local woman's shelter wouldn't take it since it's been opened)
• 2 disposable razors found while cleaning the bathroom
• Clorox wipes (container recycled) 
• Prescription bag and bottle
• Plastic packaging for a set of pens
• Dry erase marker packaging

Improvements Made
On top of the weekly project, little changes are being made as problems are realized and research is done. Our budget for change is incredibly limited, so we tend to make the changes that are cheap and will save us money first.

• Got rid of our plastic dishes
• Switched to glass jars instead of Tupperware
• Quit using cupcake liners (if every US citizen did this, we'd keep 15.5 million pounds of paper out of landfills. In case you were curious.)
• Make our own muffins, without the mix
• Recycled the last of the plastic grocery bags at Walmart
• Quit pre-sliced cheese 
• Made our own graham crackers (we go through a whole family-size box of these a week, now I make them myself!)
• Make our own popcorn on the stove, instead of using the microwave kind
• Minimized the bathroom: Got rid of the disposable face wipe-pad-thingies (Mum never uses them anyways, and a soft microfiber washcloth works better), got rid of the Q-tips!, composted fingernail clippings, and donated the tiny travel toothpaste things to the Woman's Shelter.
• Started making chai tea from scratch (tastes better than the packaged stuff), and can be done mostl
• Switched to using the tooth powder, instead of the tube stuff. I used the jar the Q-tips were kept in. Sooo much cheaper than Toms (all natural) toothpaste. And, this is 100% natural.
• Switch to handkerchiefs instead of tissues (just me, the rest of the family isn't quite jumping on this bandwagon yet)
• Successfully refused my first library receipt (this was very, very embarrassing but my librarian was super nice) 
• Using a low-flow showerhead
• Put a brick in our toilet bowl (reduces the amount of water used per flush) 
• Made our own sandwich bread (will be buying this bulk from the farmers market from now on, way too time consuming)

Improvements to Make
These are improvements my family hopes to make in the near future. Go ahead and try a few if you want.

• Switch to handkerchiefs instead of tissues
• Use a reusable pepper corn grinder
• Ask farmer that we get our meat from to have an alternative packaging method besides shrink-wrap
• Toilet-train my little brother
• Grind our own coffee beans
• Get coffee in bulk
• Tackle the junk mail
• Finish the band-aids, switch to gauze and paper tape
• Make our own almond/peanut butter (apparently there's fire retardant in the packaged stuff)
• Make our own desserts/treats instead of the prepackaged stuff (candy bars, jell-o, cake, etc.)
• Make our own pasta (not available in bulk here)
• Switch to refillable pens (we're still working our way through the plastic dollar store ones)
• Find a replacement for freezer bags?
• Get raw milk in glass jars from local dairy
• Switched to a reusable sea salt grinder (we can get sea salt in bulk)
• Switch to an electric razor
• Buy toilet paper in the paper packaging instead of plastic
• Make our own yogurt
• Buy cheese and deli meat in jars at the counter
• Buy floss in the little packs, instead of individual flossers - a lot less plastic. 
• Buy bulk beans, rice and grains
• Switch to loose-leaf tea
• Can our own pickles (not available in bulk, but we cannot live without them)
• Can/freeze our own spaghetti sauce

Previous Posts in the Series:
Week One: No Wasted Leftovers
Week Two: Less Packaging
 
What's your zero-waste journey like?

Conscious Waste Project: Week Two

In an effort to reduce my families waste, I'm starting Marvelous Adventures' very first series. The theme of the series is quite simple: Zero Waste. Feel free to learn from our mistakes

Week Two

Week One Results

No Wasted Leftovers 

Cooking more towards the kids' taste was harder than I thought - they're favorite foods tend to be unhealthy, and heavily packaged (which would reduce our food waste but increase our plastic waste, which is worse). Cooking in smaller portions worked perfectly - if we were still hungry after dinner, there were snacks (nuts, dried fruit, fresh fruit, etc.) and leftovers. 

The most surprising thing, though, was that once I committed to eating the leftovers in our fridge instead of making something new, it became surprisingly easy. I'm hoping to make a habit out of it.

And while my amount of food waste actually went up this week, it was because of the annoying coincidence that the first day of the project a ton of food in our fridge went bad. :P

Project 2
Less Packaging
Now that leftovers are rarely being thrown away, our biggest trash-producer is... food packaging. Thankfully, this one is easier than most to fix.As a family, we'll be focusing on a couple things to decrease our food packaging:

• Buying in bulk (Safeway and the health food store offer this)
• Shopping for produce at the farmers market
• Making our own yogurt, bread and condiments such as ketchup
• Avoiding packaged foods whenever possible
• Gathering wild foods (mushrooms, onions, wild berries and meat such as fish are widely available in my area)

Last Week's Trash
Total: 1.25 garbage bags

• Leftovers (mac and cheese, some disgusting guacamole, pepperoni, canadian bacon, spaghetti, and 1/2 can of soup)
• Food Packaging (Coffee, jell-o, muffin mix, hot pockets, popcorn, waffle cones, crepes, peanut butter seal, cheese-slice liners and shrink wrap, yogurt container, honey seal, yogurt seal, big container of swiss miss, cliff bars, and fruit stickers)
• Baby wipes
• 3 disposable diapers (the box is 6 months old, and now empty. We won't be buying more.)
• Plastic packaging for the disposable diapers (very last box!)
• Ziploc - 3 baggies, mom succumbed to the temptation of a whole box 
• Plastic packaging on a speed ball pen and ink kit (bought in December)
• Tissues
• A few plastic scraps from broken toys, and a broken toy car
• Safeway and library receipts
• Band-aids
• 1 paper napkin (where in the world did that even come from?)
• Broken necklace (non-recyclable, made of some rubbery-plastic stuff)
• Toilet paper packaging 
• 9 Cupcake liners (never using them again)
• 5 milk caps
• 2 disposable razors

Improvements Made
On top of the weekly project, little changes are being made as problems are realized. Our budget for change is incredibly limited, so we tend to make the changes that are cheap and will save us money first.

• Use reusable produce bags at the grocery store
• Got rid of our plastic dishes
• Switched to glass jars instead of Tupperware
• Switched to a down-cycled cat litter (made out of old newspaper, at least it will decompose at the dump now) 
• Quit using garbage liners/bags
• Quit using cupcake liners
• Make our own muffins, without the mix
• Recycled the last of the plastic bags at Walmart

Improvements to Make
These are improvements my family hopes to make in the near future.

• Switch to handkerchiefs instead of tissues
• Use a reusable pepper corn grinder
• Ask farmer that we get our meat from to have an alternative packaging method besides shrink-wrap
• Toilet-train my little brother
• Grind our own coffee beans
• Get coffee in bulk
• Tackle the junk mail
• Finish the band-aids, switch to gauze and paper tape
• Make our own almond/peanut butter
• Make our own desserts/treats instead of the prepackaged stuff (candy bars, jell-o, cake, etc.)
• Make our own pasta
• Switch to refillable pens (we're still working our way through the plastic dollar store ones)
• Find a replacement for freezer bags 
• Get raw milk in glass jars from local dairy
• Switched to a reusable sea salt grinder (we can get sea salt in bulk)
• Switch to an electric razor
• Buy toilet paper in the paper packaging instead of plastic
• Make our own yogurt
• Buy cheese and deli meat in jars at the counter

Previous Posts in the Series:
Week One: No Wasted Leftovers

What's your zero-waste journey like?