Living Lightly

Rejoice! Easter is here and I no longer have to measure trash. Of course Easter is first and foremost about the resurrection of Jesus and the hope that gives the world. I don’t want to in any way trivialize this holiest of days. Still, my practical Lenten sacrifice side reminds me that I no longer have to sort through my garbage and separate the recyclables from the trash. I will continue to recycle and compost, but digging through this stuff and composing it for a photo has been a pain. Following are some things I’ve learned:

1. The impact – Even though I was able to reduce the amount of garbage I produced during Lent, this was miniscule in terms of making an appreciable dent in reducing the overall human contribution to landfills.
2. Consciousness Raising – Probably the most important value of this experience was the increased awareness I now have for how I buy and dispose of material goods. I learned a lot more about what is recyclable, compostable, and terracyclable thus increasing the likelihood that I will use this knowledge in the future. I also am looking at the things I buy more carefully. Is it something I really need? How long will it last? How is it packaged? This is changing how much I buy and what it is packaged in.
3. Habit Forming – Recycling can be enhanced by setting up a system and developing a habit. Once I had made a container for my terracycling stuff, it became easy just to put the appropriate stuff in it. Once I learned some finer points of how much in my ordinary garbage was recyclable and what was compostable, I got in the habit of putting it in the assigned place. Once I got in the habit of taking a small bag with me on walks, it became a habit to pick up bottles and cans. In fact, when away from home I started noticing plastic bottles in other neighborhoods and felt a pang of guilt that I wasn’t in a position to pick them up.
4. Recycling Etiquette – It was hard for me not to rescue recyclables from under neighbors’ bushes or to refrain from commenting on others’ lack of recycling when visiting. With my increased awareness, it became an etiquette dilemma. Does one overlook the fact that another household does not recycle something that I know could easily be done? Does that violate good manners and become over-responsible? Or is it proper to “educate” another about what they could recycle or buy differently – like suggesting that someone not buy bottled water.
5. A Game or Game Changing? – I admit that in many ways these six weeks of reducing my waste was like a game for me. It was a challenge to see how low I could go. I also admit that I bordered on cheating a few times like when I turned a blind eye to a Styrofoam cup on my neighbor’s lawn because it would have increased the level of my garbage that week. I also let my husband buy me a dress I coveted. It came with no packaging but did I absolutely need it? No. My compulsive side sometimes went to extremes to avoid adding 1/8th of an inch to my trash level. Does stomping down the trash to make it look like less really change how much I threw away? Indeed, it was part game, but it was also game changing in that it changed me. I became more informed and now see recycling opportunities where I didn’t before. I’m more careful about what I buy and what it’s packaged in.
6. Any Spiritual Growth? One of the tenets of Catholic Social teaching is Care for God’s Creation, and certainly I grew in implementing that. However, I think the more important spiritual growth that took place in me over these six weeks is what I have come to call the “Smug Factor.” I’ve long known that I should tame my pride. Not the good kind of pride that urges me to do my best work, but the vice kind of pride that prompts me to want to appear better than others. Facing my temptations to cheat – even in an artificial contest with myself – punctured my pride. Digging through garbage taught me respect for those who do this to survive. Letting go of the goal of perfect recycling and no waste was humbling. Trying not to judge others when their lifestyle decisions differed from mine was an important lesson.

5 weeks in white bucket
6th week in clear jar  Click to enlarge

Wait, wait, let me explain. I know it looks like I’m really back sliding this week but here’s the back story. We had 12 guests stay with us over the weekend for the Pig Town Fling contradance. Actually our friends are very conscientious about the environment and make very little waste. But 12 extra people making very little waste still adds up. As you can see, I couldn’t fit it all in my see through jar. The big culprit was that one person had gone out for dinner and brought home his leftovers in a styrofoam “doggie container.” I’m sure he didn’t have much choice other than to waste the food. That’s what took up most of the space. Extra cans, beer bottles, oyster tins, and other paraphernalia were mostly recyclable or compostable. Several people brought their own bedding. All brought snacks. It was an easy group to host.

My goal this week was to focus on pre-cycling. The problem is that NOT buying stuff doesn’t make for a very interesting photo. Just so you know, we bought some food for our guests but I didn’t buy convenience foods. Conveniently, I have a husband who doesn’t mind cooking from scratch. I got my sewing machine fixed which will help me mend some clothes and avoid buying more. I didn’t buy those Papas Easter eggs (but I might go back and get a couple of my favorites later :-?) I didn’t buy some fancy paper that I had considered getting.

Click to enlarge

Bottled water is my nemesis. I avoid it unless I’m in a 3^rd world country or camping without access to clean water. Thus I was discouraged to attend a recent non-profit dinner that only had bottled water. I decided to put water from the water fountain in the Styrofoam cup meant for coffee. I then complained to the person sitting next to me about the bottled water. My friend gently pointed out that Styrofoam is not recyclable at all while the plastic bottles were. She was right and I felt duly humbled but not satisfied.

I decided to talk with one of the organizers and offer to bring several pitchers for water the next week and fill them up at the site. As a bonus I brought recyclable cups. The effort this took was minimal since I already had the supplies at home. Mostly I had to remember to do it and put a towel around the pitchers so they wouldn’t break. SUCCESS! I then took the plastic cups home and washed them in the dishwasher. It’s a small thing and won’t make a big dent in global warming, but I hope that the consciousness raising will multiply my efforts. Now I just have to work on not being too proud or self-congratulatory. So, remember the lesson, but forget that it started with me. 😕

Ho Hum: The rest of the week was pretty boring as far as creating waste. I think we created a little less waste at home by looking at my red capped jar, but maybe I’m just getting better at arranging my waste. As I did the dirty, messy work of checking through our garbage to make sure Jim had not put anything in that could really be recycled or terracycled, I thought of you all. I thought of how I’m picking through garbage and measuring it so you don’t have to. If I wasn’t blogging on this and taking photos I would just put it in the outside trash can and forget about it. The result would be the same. Bottom line, this is mostly about raising my awareness and learning recycling habits for the future. So, learn from my experience.

Who is winning? As I look around our neighborhood and remember our days of active parenting my pride in reducing our waste is balanced by realizing that there’s only two of us. It would be a lot harder if we still had children at home. I did, however, notice that someone in our household had put several pieces of facial tissue in the garbage. It squishes down pretty small but still…I’ve switched to a handkerchief!

Oh oh. I got worried this week when Jim replaced his 3’x4’ chair mat. The old one had a hole in it and would never fit into my 1’x4” red capped container. After a bit of research I found that the chair pad was 100% vinyl PVC recycling number 3 and the manufacturer said it was recyclable. To verify this I called my city’s recycling manager who confirmed that it could be put out with our curbside recycling. That’s a relief. I know that this Waste-Less Lent is an artificial project, but I’m really aiming to keep my weekly trash small enough so that it can fit in my red cap container.

Lesson: One of the things I’m learning is that wasting less can take a fair amount of research and that takes time. Most of my research has started online but I usually find that I get the clearest and quickest answer when I can call a company on the phone. Of course finding a phone number for a national company from their website can take longer than the call. I guess this is one of the reasons that doing a project like this for a period of time like the six weeks of Lent makes sense. I probably wouldn’t go to the trouble to do the research on a regular basis, but knowing it’s for a time-limited stretch gives me the motivation. Since the recycling research only has to be done once for the household items that I’m uncertain about means that after Lent I will have built up a pool of information that I can continue to use.

The white waste bucket photo continues to grow. 2 week’s worth are in the white can while Week 3’s garbage is in the red capped container. Looks like I’m not going to fit all 6 weeks of garbage in my white waste basket. Maybe, I’ll have to stomp it down. 🙂  (The ruler and Jim’s hand are for perspective.)

1 wk’s trash in red lid jar
Click to enlarge.

Well, it’s been one week of watching my waste. The biggest challenge was grocery shopping since we need food and often the packaging can’t be avoided.  I’ll chronicle what we learned from grocery shopping tomorrow. Today, I’m focusing on measuring our garbage and learning a lot about what we can and cannot recycle/compost in my city of Covington, KY. I thought I knew a lot about this already, but the goal of keeping my garbage small motivated me to learn even more.

10 NEW THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT RECYCLING:

1. It depends on your city or county. I found that the city of Covington has a robust recycling effort and accepts a number of things that our neighbor across the river, Cincinnati, does not. This made me happy for myself but heightened my awareness of the complexity of giving recycling advice. When searching online, I realized that recycling criteria vary from city to city, or county to county. You have to call your public works dept. to get local criteria.
2. Terracycling: The good news for Cincinnati, however, is that it does have several “terracyle” centers which recycle things like candy wrappers, snack bags, drink pouches, squeezable fruit, glue, plastic cups, cereal bags, and more. Since we have friends in Cincinnati we now trade garbage. They bring their #5 and #7’s to us and we take our terracycle items to them when we see each other.
3. Receipts: Most cash register receipts now use thermal paper which should not be recycled. Many recycling sources I checked, however, said that this is such a small percentage of their paper recycling that they aren’t super strict about it. It does, however, reduce the quality of the recycled paper made from it and the chemicals used to produce the paper are not friendly.
4. Plastic credit/gift cards: Our daughter who lives in Afghanistan left a couple old library cards with us. I wondered if they were recyclable. NO, EXCEPT there is a place in Bedford, OH called Earthworks that recycles these plastic cards. Of course you want to make sure your identity has been obliterated. I used to use a credit card to break into my own locked car or open a locked door. It’s probably good that this kind of re-purposing no longer works.
5. Lids: bottle caps (metal or plastic) are now recyclable in most places, but I wasn’t sure about jar lids. I was happy to learn that Covington accepted glass jar lids. Take them off the jar or bottle before recycling.
6. Paper labels on cans or plastic: Even though I knew that one didn’t have to peel/scrape the paper off containers before putting them in recycling, it made me feel better to do it – the pristine look of a clear bottle or jar was appealing to me. I’d just let the bottle soak in the sink for awhile to get it off. Now that I’m compulsively measuring my waste, however, I decided to let it stay on since that’s one less piece of garbage to put in the trash can.
7. Other Labels: Unfortunately, most of my research indicated that those sticky labels (like name tags or that are on plastic film) are not recyclable.
8. Paper towels: I didn’t think that paper towels could be recycled but they CAN be COMPOSTED. This is good news since we have a low maintenance compost pile behind our garage. Just make sure they don’t have chemical residue on them. Mini confession: Before I knew this I had been avoiding using paper towels this Lent and instead used cloth rags to wipe up spills. This isn’t a bad idea because I have plenty of rags and I’d just include them with my regular wash so it didn’t take any extra washing. I did, however, go a little over the top when I saw a bug in the kitchen and wanted to squish it with a smidgen of paper towel but didn’t want to add it to my trash container. I thus carefully picked up the bug and threw it outside. I’m not sure it this is virtue or foolishness.
9. Dryer sheets and lint: Dryer sheets are not recyclable but dryer lint is compostable. Aren’t you glad you know that?
10. Is it cheating? I admit that this Lenten “Waste-Less” project of mine is partly a game. It’s like a competition with myself to see how small I can keep the level of my trash each week. Is it cheating to squish the stuff down (like in a compactor) so it looks like less? I did that.

Want more: There are many websites which give more detail about recycling. Earth 911 is a good one. When I wasn’t sure about something I simply googled “Can I recycle ______” and usually came up with quick answers. Again check with your county municipality for local requirements.

I interrupt this story of giving-away “S’s” because Lent has just started again and I have a new plan. In 2010 and 2011, I was giving things away. In 2012, I ate on $4.50/day. This Lent I’ve decided to waste less. It’s my attempt to create less trash as a way to honor God’s creation and decrease how much garbage I heap on the earth. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and am not sure how well I will do or if it will made any difference. After all, Jim and I are just two people in a world of  7 billion (give or take a couple people). Besides, we already recycle glass, plastic, cans and a whole bunch of stuff that we give away. We take reusable cloth bags when shopping and do a simplified form of composting. We’ve even downsized our garbage can. Can we do much more? We’ll see.

My plan is twofold:

1. Recycle more vigilantly by learning what additional things might be recycled and where to take them.
2. Pre-cycle by trying to buy less packaging that would need to later be discarded.

Each week I will measure how much garbage I’ve created and see how low I can go.

In thinking this through I thought I’d need some rules to avoid becoming overly compulsive or stinking up the house. Therefore:

I won’t count as garbage:

1. Anything that I will recycle (paper, plastic bags, plastic containers, glass, cans…)
2. Anything that goes into the compost pile or down the disposal.
3. Anything that goes down the toilet. (Although when I spent time in Southeast Asia and Africa I learned that some cultures don’t use toilet paper, I’m not going to that degree of “purity.”)

I will count:

1.  Anything that I would normally put in the weekly garbage collection (Although I plan to save my treasured waste in see-through containers, at least for the first few weeks, so I can measure it.)

I suspect that the hardest part of this will be grocery shopping where it’s hard to avoid pre-packaged food. What will we do about milk? The organic milk we usually buy only comes in waxed cartons. Can those be recycled? I’ll have to find out. Anybody know?

Cheating: I’ve already caught myself cheating. Since I knew I was going to start on Ash Wednesday, I made sure that I put several larger non-recyclables in last Monday’s pick-up so it wouldn’t count. I’m justifying this as sort of a Mardi Gras splurge before Lent.