Change Challege - Decreasing Household Waste

Photo by Loving Earth

So, did you get the chance to do a garbage inventory?  If so, I hope that you learned a little bit more about the type of garbage your family is creating, and maybe you're ready to make some changes in the amount of waste you are throwing away.  (If not, I still highly encourage you to try it - it really is eye opening!)

Through my garbage inventory, I learned that we didn't have a lot of paper waste, which I think is a really good thing.  But, I know that paper waste is a problem for some people and it's hard to know what to do about it, where to start and what the best alternatives are.  Here are a few links to posts I've written about how we have eliminated paper waste around our home.  

Eliminating Paper Waste
Going Paper Towel-less
Wrapping Gifts 

One area that I want to improve in our household is the amount of junk mail we receive.  I always recycle it, but if I could stop it from being sent in the first place, that would be even better.  Less paper waste I am creating and less paper in general that I have to deal with on a day to day basis - it's a double bonus!

One thing that I'm going to try to do is to keep any junk mail that we do receive and see if I can figure out how to get our names off their mailing list.  A phone number, or hopefully website or e-mail address, I can contact and ask them to stop sending me junk.  This will definitely take a little extra time and effort on my part, but I think in the long run of having less mail and paper to deal with, it will be worth it.

Another option would be to opt out of having direct mail sent to you.  There is a website where you can contact the major credit bureaus and opt out of having credit offers sent to you.  I don't know anything about this site and how it actually works though, so I think I'm going to stick with directly contact companies that we receive junk mail from. 
Update 5/26: I tried calling the number (888-567-8688) on the bottom of a direct mail credit card offer I received and it was the number for Opt Out Prescreen - the website I mentioned above.  You can either give your information over the phone or fill out the form online and opt out of direct mail offers for 5 years, or permanently. 

Cutting back on paper waste is a great first step to take toward decreasing your total household waste!

How have you eliminated paper waste around your home?  Any type of paper that you struggle with giving up, or finding an alternative for? 

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Thanks for visiting Live Renewed! If you’d like to read more about my journey to becoming Frugally Green, please subscribe to my blog by clicking here! You can also follow me on Twitter.

This is a post for May's Change Challenge - Decrease Your Household Waste. You can catch up on all the Change Challenge posts here.

Are you brand new to being frugally green? Be sure to check out my Frugally Green Fundamentals.

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesdays at We are That Family 

May's Change Challenge - Decreasing Household Waste

 Photo by engnr_chik

I have one more post to finish up April's Change Challenge to Read the Ingredients, but I'm not quite finished with it yet, so it will have to wait 'til next week.  But, I wanted to go ahead and introduce May's Change Challenge since we're already half way through the month.  I wanted this month's challenge to be pretty simple and straightforward, as well as something that I have written about before, and because I just went to a composting workshop earlier this week, May's challenge is to decrease your household waste. 

The composting workshop I went to was interesting for a few reasons.  Obviously it was interesting to learn about composting, and now I feel like - I can do that! So, look for some posts in the future about how we set up and began our compost pile.  (Exciting, I know!)

It was also interesting because the presenter (from the St. Joseph Co. Soil and Water Conservation Dist.) talked a little about landfills and waste and what happens to our waste when it goes to the landfill.  Basically, he described landfills as giant Tupperware Bowls were garbage just sits, without actually rotting or decaying.  He said that there were scientists that did studies of landfills and found newpapers that were 30 years old and still legible, and carrots that were still edible! I wasn't quite sure if I believed him, so I did a little digging myself, and found The Garbage Project which is based at the University of Arizona and studies people's garbage and excavates landfills.  According to this article, what he told us at the workshop is true, and one thing he said has stuck with me, "When things go into a landfill, they don't go away!"  That really changes my view of the waste that we as a family create and throw away - it doesn't actually go away, it just moves from my house to a place where it will sit unchanged for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years. 

Almost a year ago I did a Garbage Inventory by keeping track of the waste that created in one day.  It was interesting (and kind of gross) to see the garbage that we threw away on a typical day. It was also really helpful to know what kind of garbage we were throwing away so we could find areas that we could improve in. 

So, I want to encourage you, over the weekend or sometime next week to do a garbage inventory at your house too! Just collect everything that you throw away in one central bag.  I also wrote things down as I threw them away because I really didn't want to go digging back through the garbage bag just to see what was in there. You can weigh it and look over your list at the end of the day to see how much and what type of garbage you created.  It really doesn't take that much extra time, and it is a great first step to identify areas you can make changes to decrease your waste!

Did you realize that trash in landfills doesn't really go away?  Have you ever done a garbage inventory?  Do you know how much and what kinds of waste your family creates on a day-to-day basis?  
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Thanks for visiting Live Renewed! If you’d like to read more about my journey to becoming Frugally Green, please subscribe to my blog by clicking here! You can also follow me on Twitter.

This is the first post in May's Change Challenge - Decrease Your Household Waste.  Last month's Change Challenge was Read the Ingredients! You can catch up on all the Change Challenge posts here.

Are you brand new to being frugally green? Be sure to check out my Frugally Green Fundamentals.

Garbage Inventory - Part II - You Are What You Waste

As I mentioned before, a few weeks ago I did a Garbage Inventory - keeping track of the garbage that myself and Kaelyn created over the course of one day. It was very interesting to me, and I shared a few of my observations in Part I, and I still have a few more thoughts I want to share.

While I found that we had a lot of food waste, I also realized that we had a fair amount of waste that related to food - wrappers, containers, things of that sort that food comes in. I realized that the more you eat whole foods (as in not processed foods), cook from scratch and buy in bulk, the less food related/packaging waste you will create. This is an area I really want to get better at - it will save us money and is much healthier to eat less processed food. I am hoping in the coming months to learn to cook/make even more things at home, and from scratch.

Thinking about process food packaging, made me think about packaging in general and how much waste is created simply in the packaging of items. I would really like to become more aware and thoughtful of the packaging and waste created in a products that I purchase, whether food or otherwise. When deciding whether or not to buy something, does the amount of packaging the item have play into your decision making? It never has for me before.

But, now I want to start looking at an item on a store shelf or rack, and think "Do I want to throw away the waste created by this items packaging? Is there a way I can buy what I need with less packaging involved?" This would include buying baking supplies, cleaning supplies, etc. in bulk, as well as not buying single serving food items - like single serving fruit snacks, cheese sticks or granola bars, but trying to figure out a way to create my own single servings in re-usable packaging. This may also mean looking at a toy or household item and trying to find the one that has the least packaging waste. This is also another great reason to buy items used whenever you can - no new packaging to throw away!

"You are what you waste". The types of things you throw away and the waste your family creates says a lot about the kind of life you live - the kinds of food you eat, the way you clean your home, the way you care for your children and ultimately the way you think about the environment. I think so many times it too easy to throw things into the garbage can and it becomes 'out of sight, out of mind'. We don't think about the fact that our garbage doesn't just go away into some vast black hole of trash when the garbage truck comes and hauls it away. It has to go somewhere, it takes up valuable space on this earth, and it has effects on the ground, the water, the air that we don't even realize. I want to become more and more conscious of the things my family throws away and try to reduce our waste in any and every way that I can.

Is this something you think about, or does never really cross your mind? Have you thought about the type of waste you and your family create? Have you taken steps to reduce the amount of garbage you throw away?

Eliminating Paper Waste

Image source

A few weeks ago in my Garbage Inventory, I realized how little paper waste our family creates. I have tried in many different areas to eliminate paper products from our home and replace them with reusable items. I think for those just getting started with going green, this is one of the easiest steps you could take, once you make one small change to not use paper, you will start thinking about how you can make changes in other areas too.

So, here are some of the ways I have eliminated paper waste in our household.

In the Kitchen:

• Hand towels and kitchen washcloths - somewhat obvious, and something that most people use in some form anyway. Use them to dry your hands, or dishes after washing, wipe down counters and the table, light cleaning, etc. Just the normal stuff that you might otherwise have used a paper towel for.
• Washcloths - instead of using paper towels to wipe off Kaelyn after she eats, or clean or wipe down her high chair I now use baby washcloths. I bought 2 packs of 12, so I have 24 washcloths and either use one throughout the day, or grab a new one whenever it gets too gross to keep on using.
• Bar Mop Cloths- I use towels like these that I got from Meijer for most cleaning type of jobs in the kitchen that I would have used a paper towel for. They are for messy cleaning, like wiping a spill up off the floor. Because they are white, I can bleach them if they get too dirty. And I think they actually do a better job than a paper towel would anyway.
• Cloth napkins - We used to use paper towels for napkins, but we had cloth napkins that we received as wedding presents that we never used. So I pulled those out and we use those instead of wasting paper towels as napkins.
• Dishcloths - this isn't something that you would necessarily use paper for, but I use cotton knitted (either by me or by my mother-in-law) dishcloths for washing dishes. I have read so many disgusting things about sponges and the bacteria that live in them that I refuse to use them or have them in our house.
  

Cleaning:

• Microfiber Cleaning Cloths- I use microfiber cloths that I got in the automotive section at Target (thicker and cheaper than the ones you find in the cleaning section) for most of my cleaning around the house. They are great for dusting without any harmful cleaners. They scrub and clean without scratching surfaces and they are lint-free and super absorbent.
  
• Rags - I have a wide variety of rags that I use for cleaning as well. I use old t-shirts and socks, old hand towels, thin white cloths that I got from Sam's, Gerber Prefold Cloth Diapers, etc. I just think you can never have too many rags for cleaning - then you will never run out and have to grap for a paper towel because they are all dirty.
• Swiffer mops - I use Gerber Prefold Cloth Diapers that I cut down and hemmed to fit onto the Swiffer for light cleaning and mopping. The diapers are so great for this because they are thicker and more absorbent in the middle, which is the part that does the actual mopping, and they are thinner on the outside, so they fit well into the Swiffer notches. I either spray the floor with my vinegar and water cleaner before mopping, or just wet the cloth with water before I put it on the mop, or use it dry for more "dusting"/picking up dog hair type of jobs. Better for the environment, and MUCH cheaper than buying Swiffer replacement cloths!

With all of the different types of cloths above, when they are dirty and ready to be washed, I just throw them down our stairs into a laundry hamper by the washer and dryer. I try to wash cloths and rags about once a week, and have built up a large enough stash that I don't run out before I've had time to do the wash.

Diapers and Wipes

• Cloth Diapers - we use cloth diapers on both Kaelyn and Brenden. (Although I do have to confess that K wears a disosable for naps and bedtime - she got used to them when we went through a period where we were not using cloth.) This really requires a whole separate post - one that I plan to write in the near future.
  
• Cloth Wipes - I use cheap gerber baby washcloths as well as some homemade flannel wipes from unused receiving blankets. I use a disposable wipes tube and fold the washcloths in half and lay them in. I mix up water with a squirt of baby soap and a few drops of Tea Tree Oil and pour it over the wipes. With two babies in diapers now, I go through a tub of my cloth wipes a day. I usually make up a new tub of wipes first thing every morning.
  

I think that's most of the ways that we have replaced paper products with cloth in our house. Sometimes though, I forget what we used to use paper for because I am just so use to using cloth for everything now!

What are some ways that you have reduced or eliminated paper waste in your house? Are there any paper products that you would like to stop using, but just haven't found a good replacement for yet?

Garbage Inventory - Part I - You are what you Waste

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Garbage - Yuck!!

Garbage is one of those things that most people probably wish that we didn't have to deal with - and is probably not something that you want to really spend any time thinking about. It smells, it's dirty, it's just plain gross! But what I had never really realized or thought about before, is that we are what we waste.

Think about it, our garbage says a lot about us. You've heard the stories about investigators who go through people's garbage and find out all of the details about a person's life (not sure if this really happens in real life, or just in the movies). But when you think about the kinds of things you throw away, you can start to see how it reflects on the type of person you are.

On Monday, I did a garbage inventory to see how much, and what kind of garbage I was throwing away on a typical day. I really tried to do things as I normally would, and not avoid creating garbage or throwing something away. I want to try to reduce our waste and the amount of garbage that we produce as a family and I figured the best way to start was to figure out what we are actually throwing away. Jer was not involved at all in this because he wasn't at home (and I'm not sure he would've cooperated anyway - he gave me a pretty strange look when I showed him the garbage bag sitting on the kitchen counter!) So, it was just K and I's waste for the day. It was pretty interesting to me and I have a few observations, some good and some not so good about the waste that we create.

1. It was more than I expected.
We created just about 2lbs. of waste for the day. The garbage bag I used was not very full, but when I weighed it on my kitchen scale, I was surprised. 2lbs a day x 7 days a week = 14lbs of waste a week, 728 lbs. a year. Yikes! That is a lot! And that doesn't even include Jer's waste.

2. I was surprised by the type of waste we created.
There was a lot of food waste, and I really hate to throw away food - it just feels so... wasteful!
Kaleyn is in a stage of not being a great eater, so she leaves a lot of food behind that she doesn't eat. There were also just things like banana peels and grapes that were just a little too old. One thing I have been contemplating doing for a while, and now am pretty sure I want to start doing, is composting so I can reduce the amount of food waste we throw away.

3. I was surprised by the type of waste we didn't create.
We are lucky that in this area we have a great recycling program that accepts almost all types of recycling. We really try to recycle everything that we can, including most types of paper. On top of recycling, we have already taken some steps to reduce our waste. We use towels, cloth napkins, wash cloths and rags in the kitchen instead of paper towels or paper napkins, so we had no kitchen paper waste, and basically no paper waste in general. I didn't realize that we really throw away very little paper, I'm a little bit surprised and actually quite proud.

I have more to process/write about this garbage inventory, you can now find part II here!