New Ideas

The following is a list of my newest harebrained ideas:

Get a wagon - this will be used to transport Eva, as well as the recycling, as I walk to the recycling bin in the Geyer's parking lot. I have been making trips for the last few days up there, but I have been filling a grocery bag and hanging it on her stroller handle. This would be fine if I would stay motivated enough to make the daily trips, but I know myself well enough to know that I will lose my gusto soon enough, and get back in the habit of filling my garage before I take the recycling. The wagon will have to be big enough to hold a trash can and a 2 1/2 year old. I'm going to check on Craigslist for one after we get this wedding reception out of the way (financially out of the way, that is) so that I will still be as eco-friendly as possible.

Take some plastic containers - While I was cleaning out the refrigerator, or as my great uncle calls it, the rotter, I noticed that I had to throw away a few styrofoam clamshells that were used to bring home leftovers from restaurants. I was trying to come up with a solution for the waste, and at first considered washing them out to take back. Then it hit me. All I need to do is take a few plastic containers with lids to restaurants with me. This will completely eliminate all waste, until the container gets too old. This way is more sanitary anyway.

Buy Nothing Month - This will probably have the biggest impact of all of the ideas listed here. The punk rock thing to do is take part in "Buy Nothing Day," which the rest of America knows as "Black Friday" as a protest of consumerism. My reasoning is nothing so deep. I will be doing it to save money. We are thinking about having another child sometime in the near future, as well as moving (in the more distant future.) These things will take money, so in an effort to assist my savings, I am planning to force myself to wait a month from the day after our reception to buy any item that is not food, gas, or a utility. This means no video games (gasp!), no Justin Sane solo 7", no preorder of the next mc chris album, and no random spontaneous ebay purchases, as well as no wagon. For a whole month, I will have to act like an adult and exercise some self control when I am at the store. Food will not include items such as Monster energy drinks, 2 am Taco Bell burritos, or ice cream from Frank's. Food will include nutritional items such as vegetables and fruits. In addition to helping me keep much of my disposable income in savings, it will also help the environment because I will be consuming less packaging, less raw material, and less gasoline on random trips to buy junk.

I will update my progress and findings with these projects at a later date. Please leave any suggestions in the comments, which should now be open to anonymous posting.

Shortest Update Ever

Today's green task:

We walked to the ice cream place and I got a cone because the sign said it had "no cup, no spoon, and no waste."

It's the little things...

Zero Waste?

One of my goals for this year is to be as near zero waste as possible. There are some things that I'm not willing to do, like reuse toilet paper, etc, so I'll never be able to be completely zero waste. I have come up with plans to overcome some of the obstacles preventing me from getting close to zero waste, such as buying pre-owned video games to eliminate plastic shrink wrap. The problem with this is that I want to support the industry, which buying used games does not do. I am trying to come up with a solution to this problem, but I'm not going to let it hinder my progress.

Last week, I was excited to discover that I had less than a grocery sized bag of "new" trash to send to the landfill. That may not seem like a huge deal, but considering that we used to have at least a large trash bag full each week, I see it as progress. Once I realized that most "waste" can either be composted or recycled, our trash was cut drastically. My compost bin has become my biggest green asset (although, it is black.)

To help me meet my goal, I am focusing on "pre-cycling" at the store, by looking at packaging, as well as price and quality. This is something that I have been terrible at paying attention to previously. Most of the garbage we had was plastic containers that were made of #5 or #6 plastic, which is not accepted by any recycling centers near us. There were also some plastic bands from the tops of containers (yogurt, etc.) I have recently noticed that Stonyfield yogurt, which is also organic, does not have the plastic bands. I need to find out now if you can recycle the foil lids though. The problem is that the actual container is #6 (I think), and I don't know what to do with them.

As of now, my other green project wish list includes building a greenhouse using the windows we're going to be replacing, finding a rain barrel, and finding more ways to reuse things that I would normally discard. I'm also going to start keeping plastic containers in my trunk for when we go out to eat so that we can put leftovers into them instead of using the throw-away styrofoam containers that most restaurants offer.

Please feel free to leave comments with your own green ideas and advice!

Introducing...

This blog was created a while ago to accompany a website that I was working on. Like with most of my other projects, I have moved on to 30 other things. I still want to build the site, but it will probably be quite some time. In the meantime, I will be using this to document my attempts at becoming as eco friendly as possible. Enjoy, and feel free to share your own ideas.