On Our Way to Zero Waste

With all the bad news we hear every day regarding the environment, it’s easy to feel hopeless and frustrated in the face of such reported facts. But there is a straightforward and easy solution that everyone can embrace at home and make every action count as an effort to make this world greener.

I’m talking about the Zero Waste solution, which is a great way to start reducing our carbon footprint from the environment, and in the long run, reducing environmental pollution in general.

Modern society can be tremendously wasteful of resources, whether by unconsumed food, unnecessary packaging, or excessive energy and water consumption. The idea is that the zero-waste plan involves looking at every area of life and asking if there is a better way to reduce waste. Each step can be a small one, but the cumulative effects can be enormous, and when more people get involved, they only intensify.

Important First Actions

Moving into the lifestyle of zero waste is a process that only gets stronger and evolves with time. To get started, it does not need to be a huge disruption to your current lifestyle. Here are only three changes that you can make at home, that will have an immediate impact on your carbon footprint and serve as a framework for creating a longer-term strategy around it.

Using Jars and Glass Bottles

For the kitchen, glass jars and glass bottles are an excellent way to store dry and wet goods. They are more stylish and can be reused again and again. It is also possible to take them to bulk stores and fill them with loose items, eliminating the need for packaging.

Look for jars you can offer a new life, reuse tomato sauce jars, peanut butter jars, olive oil glass bottles, or any other jars and bottles of stuff you finish, instead of sending them to the garbage bin, use them in your daily life to store goods in your pantry or fridge.

Using Grocery Tote Bags

Reusable tote bags will be of great help to create a dent in the billions of plastic and paper bags that are discarded all the time. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on this, and they’ll last for years if you treat them with care. For a total zero-waste lifestyle, you could even create your own tote bags out of old clothes or bed sheets you don’t use anymore.

Giving Priority to Reusable Items

You should substitute single-use everyday items with their reusable versions to reduce plastic waste. Go for the fabric-made napkins instead of the regular paper ones, or even make your own, use kitchen towels or stainless steel containers to carry your sandwiches, instead of wrapping them in paper towels.

Instead of relying on bottled water, get yourself a good quality water bottle made of bamboo or stainless steel and fill it before you leave home. Go back to the old days when paper tissues didn’t even exist, and have a handkerchief in hand all the time, then wash it and reuse it as many times as you want.

Going deeper into the Zero Waste lifestyle Applying the Five Rs approach

There is a realistic way for a more advanced zero waste standard to be approached. Bea Johnson, a central figure in the minimalist living movement, created the concept of the 5 Rs, expanding on the initial 3 Rs of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle implemented in the 1970s. The two additional Rs of Refuse and Rot lead to a holistic alternative by keeping the waste footprint minimal.

1) Refuse

You will start to work on your environmental impact by rejecting the wasteful stuff thrown at you almost every day. There’s no need to accept whatever you’re being offered because it’s free, from newsletters, flyers, and promotional magazines, to gift items and other free handouts. In almost every case, these free things are barely used or even looked at before they go to the trash.

2) Reduce

An excellent way to minimize the total amount of things that you need to survive in your daily life is to plan ahead; whether it is for grocery shopping or any other stuff you feel like you need to buy, make a list of the things that you intend to acquire and be very honest in regards to the real utility of these products. If you decide on purchasing the new item, aim for the best quality option you can find to make sure that your investment will be durable and valuable over time.

3) Reuse

Consider new ways to put old things to new use instead of throwing anything in the trash when it’s no longer necessary. If something is broken, see if it can be repaired instead of discarded. In case that the object is no longer wanted, you can always consider donating all these kinds of things to a charity or a second-hand store where they will be of value to someone else.

4) Recycle

Whenever you buy something that cannot be found in a bulk store, try to go for recyclable packaging products. Nowadays, there are at least one or two recyclable options for every product offered in every store. As the vast majority of individuals continue to choose recyclable items, this will eventually become the standard choice.

5) Rot

If you are one of the lucky people with enough backyard space, try to build compost and throw all the organic residue from your kitchen into the compost, all the veggie scraps go in there. Just remember to never put any animal products or dairy in it since they can attract rodents and risk of disease.

If you do not have the required space to build a compost, in almost every city some places receive food waste of all kinds where the residues go to a waste treatment center or a plant to process biofuel.

Waste Reduction Tips For Daily Homelife

Here are some practical steps you can take to start your journey to be free of garbage if the idea of zero waste is an attractive one for you.

Wrapping Gifts the Zero Waste Style

We all know that the holiday season can be very wasteful in every home, particularly when we talk about gift wrapping. We have collected the best and most innovative solutions for a zero-waste holiday season here:

-Everyone loves mason jars, whether for drinking a smoothie or for storing goods. They are a great packaging idea for your gifts, especially considering that they come in a variety of colors, sizes, and styles. This way, you offer a great option to put to use instead of tossing the gift bag in the garbage.

-Go to the recycling bin and get some newspaper sheets, magazine pages, or even old maps or pamphlets and use them to wrap your gifts. Pick a nice and colorful section with pretty images for a pop of color, or if you are more a traditionalist, you can stick with the black and white pages, either way, you can still recycle the paper after it’s been used.

-Look for old paper grocery bags that you may have in your kitchen and reuse them for your gift wrapping. If the bags have a company’s logo on them, you can always write a lovely Christmas card and cover the parts you don’t find attractive with it.

-To add some decorative elements to your presents, you can use natural materials like tree leaves and branches, pine cones, or even cinnamon sticks that will add some pleasant smell to the gift, tied with some fabric ribbons or hemp lace.

Zero Waste Kitchen Tips

-Buy in bulk as much as possible, bring your tote bags for the dry goods like cereals, nuts, and seeds, the jars and glass bottles for the wet or liquid stuff like cheese, olive oil, peanut butter, soy sauce, or even personal care stuff like shampoo and hair conditioner.

-Give yourself some time in the kitchen and opt for making your own salad dressings, mayo, jams, hummus, etc., instead of shopping for that kind of stuff at the supermarket.

-Grow a herbal garden at home and include your favorite fruits and vegetables. That way, you will always have fresh produce at home, reducing the need to shop for that.

-Make vegetable broth from your veggie scraps like onion cuts, tomatoes, carrots, cilantro, etc. Then you can use the broth for preparing other dishes. After that, you can compost the veggies’ leftovers and use the outcome to nourish your veggie garden.

- Substitute all single-use products like disposable paper plates and cups, disposable utensils like spoons, forks and knives, paper towels, cleaning garments, aluminum, and plastic wrap, for their long-lasting versions. For your events and gatherings, use ceramic, bamboo, or metal dinnerware and fabric napkins.

-Use a pressure cooker to prepare time-consuming foods like lentils, beans, or potatoes. This way, you reduce cooking time and gas or electricity expenditure and avoid buying the canned versions of these foods.

Zero Waste Bathroom Recommendations

-Buy a menstrual cup, this will save you a lot of money in the long term, and you will stop throwing disposable pads in the garbage bin.

-Replace all your family’s plastic toothbrushes for the eco-friendly versions made of bamboo and compostable wood; these materials decompose much faster and easier than plastic.

-Make your personal care and skin care products at home. Millions of organic natural alternatives for homemade versions of toothpaste, deodorant, skin moisturizers, face scrubs, and even organic makeup substitutions are very easy to make with ingredients you usually have in your pantry.

-Go for the unpackaged versions of shampoos and soaps, nowadays you can find shampoo bars, conditioner bars, and soap bars that don’t need any extra packaging, you will find these items in bulk stores or natural organic stores.

These are only a few ideas that you can start putting to practice right away. Still, you’re only scratching the surface of the millions of alternatives available to reduce garbage at home, with a little bit of imagination and commitment to this idea, new ways to minimize waste will come to your mind over time. Every small action is important, and the cumulative effect has a significant positive impact on our planet’s resources and environment.