a year (-ish) to ungarbage our life: Month 1

With the birth of our first son, we have begun examining our lifestyle.  We have talked about going zero waste, even tried our hand at composting, and worked hard to recycle despite how difficult our local area makes it.  We've both always had our hearts set on minimal consumerism, reusing what made sense and recycling if possible.  Last year we took in a roommate to help us with bills and give them a stable home.  Unfortunately, she was not hip to the few zero waste efforts we were trying to keep up with.  Needless to say, it became very discouraging and most of our efforts fizzled out.  

September will be the first month we will have our home to ourselves again.  This renews motivation to pursue projects that before seemed like a drag.  Zero waste seems like the perfect goal to start now, while our boy is still young, so we have plenty of practice and success under our belt by the time he is old enough to understand the concept.

So here we are, ready to move forward with our plan. First we need to take stock of all the ways we are wasteful.  Kitchen/Food.  Bathroom/Personal Care.  Baby.  Animals.  Consumerism (Clothing and other purchases).  Yard.  Cars.  Then comes the action bit.  Commit to only using what we have first.  Fight against the "Throw it all out!  Buy all the things to help!" line of thinking that we've both grown up with and are trying to not introduce to our son.  

The first place to start to ungarbage is in the garbage so we took a look and no surprise there - our most obvious - if not biggest - waste is food and all the packaging that goes with that.  (It may turn out to be that baby stuff is the biggest down the road, but as he is still so young it is hard to tell.  Maybe we can stop it before it even begins!)  So this is where we will start.  In the kitchen with a focus on food.

I'm going to be honest - we probably already buy less food from a grocery store than most people.   Not necessarily because we successfully grow enough of our own food, we are definitely working on that, but it has been slow going.  Right now we are supplying ourselves with tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, lettuce, edible flowers, herbs, pumpkins, and plums.  For everything else, we glean and partake in our community food share.  

The plan this month is to rely solely on our garden, gleaning, and the community food share (except protein) - trading extra volunteer hours until we can make up the difference in what we grow at home.  For protein, I will be buying from the local butcher while I learn to bow hunt over the next year or so.  I do have some pretty significant dietary restrictions that can't be met by our garden or the food share at this time, so we will occasionally be using the store to supplement.  We will also be keeping no more than 1 week of fresh food at a time that we cannot preserve,

I have a sweet tooth, so I am going to have to get creative!  

As far as the Kitchen, beyond food...we will be saving our greywater for the garden.  We still have a little bit of unfriendly dish soap left - so going by the use what we have first principal - we will have to be smart about it.  Then either make our own dish soap or not use any at all =O

We are also committing to stop buying one-use items.  Even for events or camping,  Yes.  that means loads of dishes for Mabon/thanksgiving and winter solstice/Christmas.  Oh, bother.

Glass, since it cannot be recycled here, must only be bought if it can be reused.  (No more impulse wine, olive oil, or pasta sauce buys -  can't tell I'm Italian ;) )

Compost!  We did it wrong last time.  We learned a little bit.  We are ready to at least start the habit again until we build the next system we want to try (more about that in another thread?).  So maybe a Bukashi Bucket or something similar that we don't have to buy,  

And then last but not least...by the end of the month, we need a plan for a less wasteful holiday season (which includes samhain(halloween)).


And that is our first AMBITIOUS! month of ungarbaging.  We might find that it is a 2 or 3 month - month.  Or we might just nail it.  Only one way to find out!

Good luck! I will follow your progress.

My wife and I both decided we weren't up for the 100% task, but after reducing considerably we both really dislike throwing things out... which means we really dislike new things coming in.

One of our biggest challenges is dealing with gifts. It's remarkable and wonderful how much people give us... and a lot of that is packaged in ways that don't suit our ideals of course.

One of my goals is to only bring in things that can be re-used indefinitely, recycled with minimal degradation, or composted.

It’s so good that you’re starting early. One thing I hear sometimes about how my family lives and eats is “wow I wish I could do that, but I can’t because…” and the because is usually because their children are used to eating plastic-packed white bread from the shop and won’t eat homemade, refuse to drink plain water, have grown up thinking it’s normal to wear fast fashion clothes rather than second hand/natural materials, and many more examples. Starting early means that zero waste stuff is ‘normal’ for the family and less of a challenge than trying to convince older children into something different.

For zero waste sweet foods, honey can be a good sweetener, local beekeepers will often sell in refillable buckets, and some bulk shops have honey in bulk too.

Best of luck with it. I hope this thread will inspire others to do similar efforts.

How's it been going, S Rogers! I would love to read an update. It's something I would like to move closer to, especially while my daughter is young and not yet used to so much consumerism. I'm not even close to my goal, but my "no spend" month of January may help.

Nikki!  Yes!  I have been so busy, thank you for the kick in the pants to update.  I like your idea of no spend january.  I think that's a huge step!

I was right in my assessment of my goals being ambitious.  

Our food waste was going really well, until the holidays hit.  We ended up with more food than we could possibly eat and the business led to not planning out our meals which led to a bit more waste than we wanted.  All in all, we have been bringing less food into the house and we really are not throwing away as much food as we were before we began.  The only area that I haven't made much improvement in is my darn sweet tooth.  That is where I find most of our packaging trash comes from.  

So the kitchen is a work in progress.  Our compost bin was not complete before it got super cold, so we will finish after the thaw. Recycling is going well.  I'm still trying to convince hubby that we don't really need a plastic trash bag.  The dish soap has gone a very long way.  I thought we would be onto our biodegradable dish soap by now, but I still have some left.  So greywater will have to wait until we are done there.  We have stopped using single-use items! YAY!

We use biodegradable diapers 90% of the time.  I'm almost ready to go to cloth diapers, but it would mostly be my husband dealing with laundry, so it is him who has to sign off on it.

We have reusable baby food jars, I make the food.  which helps reduce food waste as well.  I am also taking my old clothes and making baby clothes from the fabric.  

So lots of little steps.  I'll try to make a more organized update here soon.  

Kate Downham wrote:

Starting early means that zero waste stuff is ‘normal’ for the family and less of a challenge than trying to convince older children into something different.

That's pretty much what we did. The kids got mostly garage sale toys. I sewed most of their clothing (with triple reinforced right knees - only needed double on the left!) If they wanted to buy a new toy, even if they had birthday money, I made them earn 50% of the cost - usually by picking up pop cans and bottles which could be returned for the refund - so they had an appreciation for the link between money and time and effort (not to mention road-side trash!)

Similarly, they got very little of what I would call "junk food" which included white bread. As babies their drink choices were breast milk or water! Neither were much into drinking cow's milk. Just making our own bread, muffins, and most meals cuts down hugely on incoming packaging, but more and more fruits and veg seem to be going the wrong direction. Eggs cartons can be easily had as pressed wood-fiber - why can't more veggie holders be the same?

S Rogers wrote:

The only area that I haven't made much improvement in is my darn sweet tooth.  That is where I find most of our packaging trash comes from.  

So what is the craving? Strictly sugar, or the ease of grabbing something you don't have to cook yourself? I make a lot of muffin recipes in a square pan, cut the sugar gradually and add home-dried fruits, choose only recipes I feel have "redeeming characteristics" like the Canada Jay Cake I make with nuts/seeds, pumpkin and dried fruit, and the advantage of the square pan is that it's *much* quicker to clean up than muffin tins. If I eat a piece of that *before* I'm starving, it reduces my desire to hit the dark chocolate! That's fairly critical for me, as my blood sugar tends to drop at fairly predictable times. I need something that will stabilize it, without risking the "spike and crash" phenomenon that eating the wrong things promotes. Hopefully you can analyze what's leading you in that direction, particularly before you pass it on to your son!

I have noticed that at least where we live, there's a definite subculture of 20-something year olds that are *much* more aware of not over-consuming and living lighter on the land, so I do think it's not only possible to raise children with an attitude of "low" waste, if not zero. Good luck on your journey!