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The solutions are :
1)elimination of waste pollution at source.
2)having a green bin/composting program to divert useful rich compost and
3)reducing the four bag limit to one bag on household garbage to curb.
Recycling is offered within my co-op. I reuse bags but I feel like I've acquired too many. Composting is not conveniently available in the city; food waste either goes down the shoot or in the garbage disposal. I feel bad that I'm more wasteful than I'd desire to be.
Once I get the money to buy a great blender, I'm going to try my hand at making my own almond milk. Almond milk [at least where I live] comes in a carton-not a plastic bottle, and I've read that recycling these materials is challenging and even when we do recycle it, it may not get reused.
I do this often -- just this morning, in fact -- and it's so easy. If you want a little sweetness, try soaking a couple of seeded dates with the almonds. Delicious!
Do you know that thing you do when you go to the bathroom?
That's waste too.
Have you ever heard of "family cloths?"
Using them cuts down on the waste that goes into the toilet (no t.p.).
There are also composting toilets on the market.
What food doesn't get eaten by me, gets eaten by the dogs or the cats or the chickens and ducks. Even the goats are happy when they're treated to stale bread and bagels.
I recycle aluminum and re-use all the glass and plastic that I can.
Since I heat with wood, I can easily use any paper products as fire stater; heavy paper products like cardboard gets put down in my garden and around my trees for weed control and mulch.
Any vegetable waste that an animal can't or won't eat goes on the compost - of which I have a lot of because of having the chickens and goats (wasted hay, bedding, and poop).
I also don't have a huge amount of plastics - I don't buy milk (milk the goat and use reusable half gallon glass canning jars for the milk) - so no plastic milk jugs to deal with.
I do need to work on my dependence on things like plastic wrap and zip lock bags; I do wash and re-use most of the freezer zip lock bags and I'm trying to at least use more of the good quality plastic freezer boxes that can be used over and over.
I do have my garbage picked up twice a month and I have to work at filling the can. When my son moves out, I'm going to take it down to either a once a month pick up or on a "will call" basis - just picked up when I let them know it needs to be picked on.
Waste free living? What a joke? Think of all the heat or AC that is being wasted if you live in a house. You're heating and cooling rooms that you are not in. If you want true waste free living, you'll have to live without heat or AC.
No I don't bother with waste free living. Someone reminded me of something the other day. Remember when all your groceries were packed in paper bags, and the environmentalists attacked this practice because we were cutting down too many trees. So the plastic bags were the solution, far less waste and we "saved" the forests. Now we're supposed to get rid of plastic bags? If you live in many rural isolated areas of the USA, recycling doesn't do much good. It has to be shipped so far to be recycled, its just not economical.
No AC, but I understand your point. My focus is not on bodily waste (re: Ric_NY) or my heating costs, although I do try very hard to conserve energy and water in my household. Instead, my focus has been trash, specifically single-use, non-recyclable plastic.
Waste free living? What a joke? Think of all the heat or AC that is being wasted if you live in a house. You're heating and cooling rooms that you are not in. If you want true waste free living, you'll have to live without heat or AC.
No I don't bother with waste free living. Someone reminded me of something the other day. Remember when all your groceries were packed in paper bags, and the environmentalists attacked this practice because we were cutting down too many trees. So the plastic bags were the solution, far less waste and we "saved" the forests. Now we're supposed to get rid of plastic bags? If you live in many rural isolated areas of the USA, recycling doesn't do much good. It has to be shipped so far to be recycled, its just not economical.
Plastic bags have been outlawed in my city. I don't believe the bags were the culprit, they do disintegrate when disposed of properly but unfortunately, people would litter the rivers and highway with them endangering fish and wildlife and strew them along the highway making a mess. It wasn't the fault of the bags, it was the morons who left them lying around who caused them to be a problem.
I miss the bags. I used them over and over again until they wore out. I recycled what I didn't use. But oh well, that's life. Now as you say, they are yelling that paper bags cause too much pollution to make and kill trees.
Such a fuss. But I don't often hear people mention the worst polluters of all: disposable diapers. They are designed specifically not to be biodegradable and I see them all over the place. Even when disposed properly, they are here to stay. But how many of the plastic bag haters are willing to give those little conveniences up?
So as long as I see those things on the supermarket shelves, I can't take the rest very seriously.
I'm trying to reduce my consumption of plastic.
I stumbled upon this great blog, My Plastic Free Life, that has been really helpful.
I was semi-conscious of my plastic consumption-packaging for certain goods, the plastic envelopes my online orders come in, etc. but I'm trying to buy my foods in bulk in reusable cloth bags. Ex: Instead of buying beans in a plastic bag, I'll go to the local co-op and fill up my reusable bag with beans from the bulk aisle.
I rely a lot on frozen vegetables so it will be more challenging to buy my vegetables more frequently.
I live by myself and generally I can make a trash bag in my kitchen last for about 3 weeks and even then, most of the time it's filled with packaging waste-from my online orders, chip bags, etc.
Once I get the money to buy a great blender, I'm going to try my hand at making my own almond milk. Almond milk [at least where I live] comes in a carton-not a plastic bottle, and I've read that recycling these materials is challenging and even when we do recycle it, it may not get reused.
I'm still amazed at the people who buy bottled water-considering how easily available (and affordable) a lot of reusable bottles are. If you live in area with good quality tap water, I see no need to buy bottled water.
I'm going to check out the "Plastic Free Blog" that you mention. Thanks.
I buy all my foods like beans, rice, nuts, etc. from the bulk food section of the store I do most of my shopping at but I always use the plastic bags they provide. I wonder if they would have any problem if someone used some type of cloth bag. I imagine the cloth might end up weighing slightly more than the plastic but it would be pretty negligible.
I buy canned veggies mostly but I am on a path to trying to raise as much of my own as possible. Since I prefer homegrown veggies frozen over canned, I will probably have to break down and use the plastic freezer boxes; at least they are reusable. I have tried to use glass canning jars in the freezer but they do tend to break if overfilled or knocked around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prairieparson
Waste free living? What a joke? Think of all the heat or AC that is being wasted if you live in a house. You're heating and cooling rooms that you are not in. If you want true waste free living, you'll have to live without heat or AC.
No I don't bother with waste free living. Someone reminded me of something the other day. Remember when all your groceries were packed in paper bags, and the environmentalists attacked this practice because we were cutting down too many trees. So the plastic bags were the solution, far less waste and we "saved" the forests. Now we're supposed to get rid of plastic bags? If you live in many rural isolated areas of the USA, recycling doesn't do much good. It has to be shipped so far to be recycled, its just not economical.
You don't have to waste the heat or AC (if you use it); if you have electric heat, just shut down the heat in the rooms that aren't being used and keep the doors closed. It's not rocket science.
I heat with wood, so the heat is somewhat centralized to the end of the house where the wood stove is. Since the heat from the wood stove doesn't reach my bedroom (the opposite end of the house), I use a space heater in there but it is only on at night when I am in there. I would leave my bedroom door open to take advantage of at least some heat that might reach there from the wood stove but if I did, I'd end up with a gazillion dogs and cats in there taking over my bed.
I don't have AC (don't really need it in the PNW) but I do have fans. Again, only on in whatever room I'm in. Ceiling fans help, too.
Also, someone mentioned disposable diapers. I managed to raise five boys using cloth diapers only (usually drying them on the clothesline, weather permitting). And since boys number one and number two were only nineteen months apart and boys number three and four were fifteen months apart, I often had two in diapers at a time.
I also made ALL their baby food (except for the infant cereals), so I had no baby food jars to dispose of or to recycle or re-use. In fact, the ONLY times I have ever bought baby food was for sick animals or to raise the baby Stellar Jay that I found on.
Quote:
No I don't bother with waste free living.
I'm sorry, but I find this attitude a little disturbing and I'm glad that not everyone thinks that way.
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