Low waste resolutions

If you want to make a New Year's resolution to reduce waste, but getting creative with the trash is not your cup of tea, here are a few ideas to generate less waste in 2024 that go beyond refusing straws and bringing your own bags to the store. These are all things my household has incorporated into our routines. 

1. Switch to solid shampoos and conditioners. There are a growing number of high-quality shampoo bars and conditioner bars available. These bars eliminate the large plastic bottles and reduce the need to transport water. I have thick but dry, hair that tangles easily. I use a moisturizing shampoo bar from  J. R. Liggetts and a moisturizing Hi-Bar conditioner.  While not cheap, the Hi-Bar conditioners are less expensive than the creamy conditioner I used to use. I purchase both locally because ordering from Amazon and all the accompanying packaging would defeat the purpose. 

2. Buy in bulk and bring your own containers. My local co-op Mississippi Market and the local zero waste store Tare Market allow customers to bring their own containers for dry goods. I regularly shop the bulk bins at both stores, weigh the containers before filling them, mark the tare weight and buy exactly the quantity I need. 

3. Turn old clothing into rags.  Reduce the need for paper towels by cutting up old clothing and towels into rags. Place them in the wash when you are done. Or if you use it for a heavy-duty job such as oiling a cast iron pan, simply throw it away. 

4. Bring your own containers to restaurants for leftovers. When we eat out, we bring our containers to the restaurants to bring home leftovers.  We also rinse out the thicker zip lock bags that granola or frozen fruit come in. I often tuck a bag that I have rolled up and secured with a twist tie in my purse so that I can use that as a takeout or bulk bag when I don't have a container. 

5. Use laundry strips and wool dryer balls. Like shampoo bars, laundry strips eliminate plastic bottles and water. As an added bonus, they take very little room to store. We use unscented Tru Earth strips.  In the warmer months, we often hang our laundry out to dry. In the colder months, we use wool dryer balls instead of fabric softener. Our dryer balls have lasted a decade. 

And for a bonus, please check out my blog post on normalizing reuse. 

Denim ornament upcycle

 

It's the holiday season. While my Jewish-Muslim family does not do a lot for Christmas, many of our friends celebrate. I had a few events to attend, a few gifts to give and a desire to be sustainable. My stash of scraps and materials to upcycle is also getting too big for the space that I have in my house.  Given all that, I decided to start crafting. 

While I seldom wear jeans because I can't find jeans that fit well (but someday maybe I will make a pair),  I have found that I  like to work with denim especially piecing together different colors. I found the directions to make quilted denim stars from Pillar Box Blue and thought I would make a few as Christmas gifts for a few of my friends who celebrate. 

The directions from Pillar Blox Blue were fantastic, so I won't repeat the step-by-step, but I will share my tweaks. 

I made the first star using a 7cm template as described in the blog, but that turned out a little large for a Christmas ornament so I created a 6 cm template for the additional ornaments I made. The seams on the first one were a little messier than I wanted so I switched my sewing foot to a quilting foot and that helped me sew more precise about 1/4 inch seams. I also chain-stitched the diamonds for multiple starts didn't have to waste time or thread. 

 

I basted the ribbon I wanted to use as the hanger on the edge of the right side of the denim star before I sewed the denim to the backing. That way the ribbon emerged nicely from the seam once I turned the star right side out. I also used small pieces of fabric to stuff the stars. The opening from which I stuffed it was pretty small so I used a funnel and a chopstick to help push the scraps in.  While I did attach a button to the center, the ornaments looked good without additional quilting stitches so I skipped that as well.

I  was pretty amazed at how well the stars turned out. And I was able to wrap the stars with upcycled materials before gifting. 

Upcycled holidays

This year it appears that we have reached 1.5 C of warming above preindustrial levels.  This level of temperature increase is not sustained at this point, but things don't look great for Mothership Earth. I am freaked out. I am also human and therefore a social creature. I have been thinking about recent temperature anomalies and I was invited to two holiday/birthday social gatherings this weekend. It can be hard to reconcile my desire to consume less and participate as a member of society and the consumption that entails. 

These two events involved gifting items to multiple people. So, as I often do, I decided to incorporate zero-waste principles. I did purchase a few new items such as a bottle of wine and books. But then I had fun getting creative with the garbage.  Instead of purchasing gift wrap that would be used once and then tossed or recycled, I chose to reuse other items. I wrapped a few gifts with an old map and even created bows with strips cut from it. 

The bottle of wine came in a bag so I cut a '5' and a '0' from a catalog that came in the mail and pasted them on to create a birthday theme. I also turned a coffee bag inside out to create a gift back for another item. I wasn't so thrilled with how simply turning it inside out looked so I cut the bag into a rectangle and transformed it into wrapping paper.  I cut a few narrow strips from the bag and ran scissors against it to create curly ribbon. 

I also made some upcycled gifts for these events, and you can read more about that in my companion blog post. 

When we exchange gifts within the immediate family, we now use cloth bags that we then save for the next time. We have been using them for the past few years.  

Upcycling the food scraps

Food waste in the United States is a problem. The Department of Agriculture estimates that 30 to 40 percent of the food supply eventually becomes waste.  Sometimes food is left unharvested in a farm field. Other times it spoils in a store or is thrown away by the consumer.  

I feel pretty good about our household composting routine, which involves composting at home in the warmer months and taking food waste to a local drop-off site in the colder months. But food cultivation requires inputs like land, water and energy for transportation. The most sustainable thing is to not waste at all. My family has work to do in this arena and I am striving to waste less food. Often this includes paying attention to what I have, processing things before they spoil, forgoing something tastier for leftovers and substituting ingredients in recipes for what I already have. I also am actively trying to find recipes to use items that would ordinarily go to the compost bin. Two examples are below.  

Orange peels

A panettone recipe I want to make in a few weeks calls for candied orange peels. In preparation, I  considered purchasing orange peels. But since I  cook a lot and know you can make a lot of things people usually buy from the store, I decided to google candied orange peel.  The recipes I found didn't seem difficult. My kid eats a lot of tangeries. I had to persuade him to save the peels, which might have been the hardest part of this project.  I also saved my own. After I had several saved in the refrigerator, I followed a recipe from Epicurious. I blanched the peels for a little less time than called for since I was using tangerines instead of navel oranges. I also halved the amount of syrup. I ended up with delicious candied orange peels that I had to put in the freezer before I ate them all. 

I also ended up with a jar full of orange-flavored sugar syrup, that I didn't know what to do with.  My kid asked what the jar of pee-colored water in the fridge was so I wasn't going to get him to drink a soda with the syrup.  A week or later I was making a limpa recipe that called for both honey and orange peel and I realized I could substitute the orange syrup for those two ingredients. Later,  I  substituted the orange sugar syrup for sugar in a pancake recipe so the jar is nearly gone.

Sushi ginger 

My family occasionally purchases grocery store sushi and does not eat all the pickled ginger (let's not talk about the non-recyclable plastic that it comes in). My spouse put unconsumed ginger in a couple containers in the fridge with no plans on what to do with it. The fridge was getting crowded and I thought "I need to do something with this ginger." So Google came to the rescue again. I found a recipe for salad dressing using pickled ginger.  I followed it loosely, not measuring. I blended toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, the pickled ginger and mirin and ended up with a lovely dressing that I used on roasted brussel sprouts. My son would not eat the sprouts but he did ask for some of the leftover dressing to use on other things.