A moment on the lips. An eternity where? Food waste is a big deal for your pantry, budget and the planet. 

You’re not going to love this week’s challenge. Next time you visit the grocery store I want you to come home and before you take the bags inside to the kitchen toss half of them into the trash can. That’s right; if you’ve bought four bags, throw two away. If you’ve bought eight bags, chuck out four of them. You get the picture.

Crazy right?

Well according to a recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, this is exactly what we’re doing because Americans waste every other mouthful of food.

Stop for a moment. Don’t just read on, stuffing this golden McNugget of information into a brain where it doesn’t touch the sides. Stop. Think. Feel…

Every. Other. Mouthful.

Half. 

Three out of six grocery bags.

Has it sunk in yet? Have you tasted the ridiculousness of the situation we’re in?

Many people make the assumption that tossing food in a landfill is ok; it’s a natural product that composts down. The trouble is when air doesn’t get to the food (such as when it’s been wrapped in a plastic bag and has a ton of other stuff sitting on top of it in a landfill site) it decomposes and produces methane gas instead. Hello global warming!

But it’s not just that, is it? What a terrible waste of resources – resources you might not even think about such as water, fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, packaging, transportation, energy to run greenhouses… then there’s your money; money you’ve worked hard to earn, perhaps you’ve sat at your desk and missed your child take his first steps so that you can throw money away on food you toss in the garbage can.

This month, I’m asking you to rise to the challenge of overhauling your food habits. Traditionally autumn is the time of harvest where long hours would be spent picking, storing and preserving foods for the winter. With supermarket shopping available to us 24/7 we no longer need to worry about harvesting; we simply go out and buy more. I’m not asking you to go back to living off the land, but to be more reverent about food in general.

We’re told we will face food shortages in our lifetime but I’m not so sure. Maybe if people in the Western world were more thoughtful and less hasty there would be enough to feed everyone for a very long time.

Here are six ideas for reducing food waste to get you started.

• Start your day with a smoothie made from anything going wrinkly in the fruit bowl
• Use your leftovers in the following day’s lunch box – rice or pasta salads are delicious
• Menu plan; brainstorm your family’s favorite meals and plan this week’s meals around them
• Make old veggies into soup or pasta sauces
• Don’t shop when you’re hungry; seriously – you’ll end up buying more than you need
• Never judge a book by its cover; we’ve been conditioned to judge everything by appearance but check out this brown banana and moldy pineapple

I know you creative people out there have plenty more to share. Let me know what you’re planning in the comments below!

The post The Zero Waste Trash Challenge: Our Personal Food Crisis appeared first on EcoSalon.

Adding recycling to errands you already do attaches a new habit to a bad one. 

Last month I encouraged you to part company with your trash can and set up a recycling center. That old faithful friend who has been happily eating your garbage for the past however many years needs to go if you are ever going to get your trash to a trim size zero. We also imparted the mantra “Wash and squash” for rinsing and compacting your recyclable materials, another skinny trick.

By now your recycling containers are probably overflowing at a rate that surpasses regular curbside pick-up. With summer temperatures soaring you don’t want to be hanging onto things much longer, so here’s where this month’s challenge comes in: It’s time to get out your calender for a little forward planning.

Let’s face it: there is little point washing, squashing and storing your recyclables only to make a special journey to the recycling center. By the time you’ve burned gas and belched out your carbon emissions into the atmosphere, you may as well have well kept your kitchen bin and chucked everything in the landfill.

So this month, take a look at your schedule. Peruse your calendars for work commitments, errands, gym visits, visits to friends and families and anything else you are doing. Do any of these take you past a local recycling center? You can find them via Recycle Now in the UK  or 1-800-Recycling in the U.S.

Once you’ve found the perfect opportunity, mark it in your diary or schedule it on your smartphone, then make a commitment to yourself and the environment. The next time you are going past a recycling center, you will leave your home ten minutes earlier and take your recycling with you.

It couldn’t be simpler.

You might be able to squeeze in a visit between pumping iron at the gym and picking up the kids or perhaps you can stop on your way home from work or the supermarket. By adding recycling to errands you already do this makes it more convenient and less likely that you’ll forget. One of the best ways to put a new habit into place is to attach it to something you already do.

For more from the Zero Waste Trash Challenge, check out:

First Stop: A Bin Audit
Just Say No (To Plastic Bags)
The Five Step Program for Better Recycling
Set Up a Recycling Center Based on Your Habits

Image: Signal Station; Gosia Malochleb, Peter Kaminski

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How streamlined is your recycling system? The Zero Waste Challenge continues, daring you to trash your trash can. 

Give yourself a pat on the back for all the wonderful things you’ve done so far to reduce your landfill waste. In April you took a bin audit, from which you created your top five list to discover the materials that make up the majority of your weekly trash. Then you gave up disposable plastic bags for good; after all, these are such a waste of resources and can damage wildlife if dropped as litter. Last month you armed yourself with local information by finding out what you could recycle at your curbside and in local recycling areas. You should now have a list of the materials you can recycle and where you can recycle them.

This month you’re going to give your entire home recycling set up a Zero Waste makeover.

Here’s a before and after look at my recycling area. Note the borderline hoarding effect of dutifully saving all my materials vs. the practicality of dividing and conquering.

My before was not exactly conducive to inspired recycling. For example, I couldn’t get to the containers at the bottom so frankly, it was easier to throw things away. And we all know where “away” is:

As a solution, I dumped my kitchen bin. There’s nothing like throwing yourself in at the deep end. The problem is it’s so easy and convenient to open that door and pop something in the bin. Out of sight, out of mind, never to be thought of again. But by not thinking about the consequences of our actions we are wasting resources and polluting the planet.

Therein lies this month’s challenge. We’ll call it Operation: Bin Be Gone.

Now you’ll need to make recycling really work for you regardless of any difficulties you might face. You might have specific requirements such as dogs or cats that might enjoy sniffing around empty cans or toddlers that can’t resist the sharp edge of a tin. Perhaps you’re limited by space or live with an elderly person who needs supervision around rubbish and recycling. There are solutions to all of these issues.

Solution 1: People with small spaces can hang bags on the back of kitchen cupboard doors to store things in.

Solution 2: You might need a shelf outside the back door or on a balcony.

Solution 3: Maybe you need a few boxes in the garage or basement or maybe it’s easier to dot things around your house, like paper recycling next to the computer or plastic bottle recycling in the dining area.

The most important thing you can do to reduce the amount of space needed is to compact your recycling: crush tins, squeeze the air out of bottles and tetra pak containers, flatten cardboard boxes and keep paper flat rather than crumpling it.

Like this:

Keep it clean too, so you aren’t surrounded by stinky trash. Rinsing out a can is pretty much like washing a plate – do it straight away and don’t let anything set hard around the edge. Use old washing up water to save resources and give bottles and cartons a rinse at the same time before squashing down. Your new mantra for this month is “wash & squash!”

Spend some time thinking about your habits. Where are you when you need to recycle something? Sitting at your computer, washing up in the kitchen or doing your morning routine in the bathroom? Put a suitable container in that room for the type of materials you want to recycle.

Figure out whether you prefer to have everything in one place with an assortment of labeled containers or if you need to put up a couple of shelves somewhere. Be creative, think outside the recycling box and always focus on solutions. With a bit of thought you can make recycling just as convenient as throwing something in the trashcan.

Image: Martha Stewart; Goodwill

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There’s recycling, and then there’s hyper-localized zero waste recycling.

How are you getting on with your zero waste challenge? I hope it’s been fun. (Yes, rubbish can be fun.)

To recap: So far you’ve done a bin audit and found, like our editor, an abundance of items you could have reused, recycled or composted instead of trashing. You put together your top five list, as in materials that make up the majority of your weekly garbage. Perhaps you went an extra step and did a “before” weigh in.

After rummaging through your rubbish, you were encouraged to ditch the disposable plastic carrier bag forever. Many people carry their own shopping bags, but we also leave them at home, in the car, or don’t take enough with us so we reach out for convenience – just one more bag won’t make a difference right? Wrong, capital W. Disposable plastic carrier bags are the ultimate waste in resources; made from oil which takes hundreds of years to create, used for 5 minutes then tossed in landfill where it takes hundreds of years to decompose. If you don’t have enough reusable bags and boxes, catch up now and add to your collection so you can be plastic bag free.

This month you’re going to empower yourself with local information, really local, starting with your own curbside. Recycle outside of your home in five easy steps.

Step 1: If you’re in the UK, like I am, type your postcode into Recycle Now to discover the materials your local council will collect. In the U.S., check out 1-800-Recycling or Earth 911.

Step 2: Take advantage of local collection points outside of supermarkets, schools, pubs or the kind of local authority household recycling centers we call “Bring Banks” in England, hence the spelling.

Step 3: Spend a moment thinking about the journeys you make in a typical week: use the database to see what you can recycle near your workplace, near friends you frequently visit or on other weekly errands.

Step 4: Find out where your nearest civic amenity site is and check out the range of materials recycling available to you.

Step 5: Write down the materials you can recycle and where you can recycle them.

That’s all you need to do this month. Easy. Let me know what you found out. Are there more or less recycling facilities than you expected?

For more of Rachelle Strauss’ series on Zero Waste Living, check out:

The Zero Waste Trash Challenge: Just Say No (to Plastic Bags)
The Zero Waste Challenge: First Stop, a Bin Audit
16 Ways to Trim Your Trash

Image: Pylon757; epSos. de

The post The Zero Waste Trash Challenge: The 5 Step Program for Better Recycling appeared first on EcoSalon.

The hardest part of the Zero Waste Challenge is making a conscious decision and sticking to it.

Assuming you persevered through your bin audit – any horror stories to tell? – you should now be aware of how much you are throwing away and what your top five wasters are. If you haven’t already done so, let us know in the comments below.

My top five landfill lay-a-bouts were plastic milk bottles, yogurt cartons, food waste, plastic bags and aluminum foil.

I promised this month’s challenge would be much easier, less messy and something most of you are doing already. But before my family got started, it was the last straw in the trash pile that finally got my husband on board.

Say No to Disposable Plastic Carrier Bags

Think about the absurdity of plastic carrier bags for a moment. It’s believed that oil takes hundreds of thousands of years to produce. We extract it and make it into a carrier bag, which we use for the duration of one shopping trip. For most shoppers, that carrier bag is filled with things to be wheeled from the checkout line to the car, then hauled from the car to our kitchen: a total of 5 minutes. After that we throw the bag in the trash where it ends up in the landfill and takes around 500 years to decompose.

So let’s get this straight: We take something that has taken hundreds of thousands of years to produce, use it for five minutes then leave it for another 500 years to decompose?

Not a good use of resources.

But that’s not all. Our oceans are now a soup of plastic consisting of slivers of plastic that have broken down into smaller and smaller pieces. These slivers end up in the food chain: the fish eat the plastic and we eat the fish. Hardly a foodie trend we should want to partake in.

Sadly, for marine life like turtles and albatross, things aren’t quite so good. They mistakenly ingest plastic bags or get caught up in them, resulting in a painful death.

There is no need to use a disposable plastic bag when there are so many options. Our shops are bursting at the seams with beautiful, sustainable shopping bags made from organic cotton, jute and repurposed materials like rice sacks.

If you’re good with a sewing machine, put your fabric stash to good use and make a morsbag. Reuse cardboard boxes and stack them in the car.
Get a beautiful wicker basket and carry it proudly on your arm.
Even consider reusing your plastic carrier bags until they are no longer useful.

Next, the challenging bit: make a conscious effort to remember to take your bag alternatives to the store with you.

Are you up for this month’s challenge? Show your commitment by leaving a comment below.

Images: Ars Electronica; Ocean Resources; ailatan

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