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Episode 71: Zero waste; how do you do that? (E60)
So I hadn’t heard of the “zero waste” concept until recently. It’s getting more popular, with the rise of zero waste shops and markets, the backlash against plastic bags in supermarkets and the rise of so-called “zero waste products.” I thought it would be difficult to figure out what to buy and what to look for, but once I started looking, it’s actually pretty neat and not that hard to find out what you want to know. So I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned with all of you. This episode builds on the things I talked about in E60, Let’s save planet Earth, shall we? Go back and listen to that one, after this one.
Finding out more ways to help the planet? It’s a big job, but not too hard for us to tackle. Let’s get started.
Excerpts from E60
-“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is in order of importance
-Trash is for Tossers is a resource for reducing waste and other environmental hacks
-Lauren Singer started this site in 2014 to document her journey of reducing waste to zero; Lauren fit two years’ worth of waste in one 16-ounce mason jar
-Package Free is Lauren’s space online for makers of sustainable products to help reduce waste
E60 Recommendations
-Things we can do without a lot of impact on our time or budget:
-Bring bags and containers to farmers markets for zero plastic bags (extra points for bringing egg cartons for buying eggs!)
-Bring growlers to breweries to buy beer
-All of these you can buy in compostable form: dish sponges (it’s a brush instead), toothbrushes, reusable cotton rounds instead of cotton balls, compostable utensils both for serving and for individual use, recyclable packaging for makeup which some companies have programs for
-I also noticed that Lauren uses her mason jars for many things: serving drinks, all the groceries, all the products she makes herself, basically everything I could see on her video was in a mason jar
-Reusable shopping bags for groceries and even for regular shopping trips; keep the bags in your car so you always have them, and go back to your car when you forget them (it’s more exercise!)
-Some strategies focused on zero waste are the following:
-Bring your own mug to the coffee shop; bring your own utensils to work; skip the straw or bring your own
-Buy secondhand from garage sales or consignment stores; donate as much as you can instead of tossing
-Buy Nothing groups and buy and sell groups in Facebook and other social media sites are becoming very popular, and I have picked up and sent out many items for free or for a low price, with the convenience of doing all of this in my own neighborhood
-With sites like catalogchoice.com and ecocycle.org, you can opt out of most junk mail
-With dmachoice.org, you can even take yourself off of mailing lists to further reduce junk mail
-Buy things with less packaging; a good example is those new Dawn soft-packs and other products that are moving toward this
My Zero Waste efforts:
-I created a spreadsheet
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to help figure out what we can afford to replace with zero waste products
-What I found is that a lot of the products we could buy is actually cheaper than the one-time-use products we currently buy
These items are cheaper to buy as the zero waste version:
Makeup wipes
Large and small Ziplocs
Paper towels
Hand soap refills
Dish sponges
Napkins
Qtips
Baking mat
Garbage bags
Bathroom/kitchen surfaces cleaner
Body wash refills
Face moisturizer
Rechargeable batteries
These are the categories I used:
-Is it cheaper? (Example: hand soap is cheaper to buy in larger containers)
-Does it use less plastic? (Example: household cleaners come in one-time-use plastic spray bottles, which is a lot of plastic to throw away)
-Is there less waste when using this zero waste product? (Example: a safety razor can be used for a lifetime)
-Are there more biodegradable or compostable materials used? (This can apply to shipping materials as well as the product itself; many of these companies use cardboard only to ship, or use only recycled materials to ship)
So far I have bought:
Hand soap refills in bulk with plastic reusable pump bottles (Amazon)
Dish sponges made of walnut (Public Goods)
Dish scrub brush made of wood (Package Free)
Bathroom/kitchen surfaces cleaner refills in bulk (Common Good)
Cotton produce bags (Amazon)
Shampoo and conditioner refills with plastic reusable pump bottles (Public Goods)
*My household will save about $100 per year by buying these products
Next on my list:
Makeup wipes
Large and small Ziplocs (from Stasher)
Toilet cleaner
Safety razor
*These purchases should save my household another $150 per year
Thanks for listening to Determine Our Future. See my transcript for all of the research I used in the making of this episode.
Music credits are as follows: gravitationalWaves, departures, seachange, reCreation, urbanblues, blackSnow, forgottenland and nightWalk are all by airtone; aether theories is by Vidian; Perfect Circle is by ScOmBer; and Isolation Swing is by Admiral Bob. See the full credits in the transcripts of each episode.
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Music credits:
blackSnow by airtone (c) copyright 2021 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/63513
forgottenland by airtone (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/61959
nightWalk by airtone (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/56520
Isolation Swing by Admiral Bob (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/admiralbob77/61465 Ft: SmoJos
Perfect Circle by ScOmBer (c) copyright 2010 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/scomber/28519 Ft: Sassygal, Rach, Scomberina and Unrealdm