Thirty-Seven - No Impact Week: Trash

On the list for today:

1. Empty your trash bag from yesterday. Separate items into two piles-- stuff you used for more than ten minutes and stuff you used for less than ten minutes.

More than ten minutes:
Some yarn bits (non-compostable), some food bits (things the worms don't like), non-recyclable food, plastic stuff, and packaging material in Guthrie's home brew kit. 

Less than ten minutes:
dental floss
non-recyclable cardboard piece from my no-scratch fabric "kitty gate" project with glue guns bits on it.

We are supposed to evaluate how that makes us feel. Good, I guess, but I'm not too surprised. We don't usually have much trash. Composting is amazing (though we have had a horrible fruit fly problem and our worms are banished to the basement with jars of apple cider vinegar until they get that straightened out. We just started composting again after a couple month break :(

We will still keep our trash and collect it with us as we go through the day. We are not counting what we recycle, since this is to get people to look at what they are throwing away and what they can actually recycle.

2. Put together a no-trash travel kit. Done and done. We already take reusable water bottles, coffee/tea mugs/tumblers, forks, spoons, handkerchiefs, glass leftover food containers, reusable bags, etc with us. If you aren't, you should too.

3. Stop making trash :) The three Rs again: reduce, reuse, recycle. This is where our change comes into play. Guthrie and I are excited to have discovered through a friend that the Eastside Food Co-op on Central in NE has a great plastic recycling program! We will be saving all of our plastic and recycling it at the Coop when we have a big enough load. Here's the deal:

Rinse, sort by number (and some by color), and save the plastic and bring to the Co-op on Thursdays 3-7 pm or Saturdays 10-2pm. All items must have a number.

They accept #1-7!!  

#1 - need to separate clear from color

#2 - need to natural from color

No foam (#6) or prescription bottles (usually #5) - though read on for info on how to recycle these. 

I also copied some of their info from their FAQs:

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Q. Why don’t you accept foam? It’s marked with a #6 PS.

A. Foam is EXPANDED Polystyrene (EPS), and it behaves differently than Polystyrene in re-processing, so we cannot accept foam. There are machines that can reprocess EPS, but none available for the post consumer market in the Twin Cities at this time.

Q. Why don’t you accept unmarked lids? I’ve heard that Aveda does? 

A. Aveda doesn't accept unmarked lids either.  What they do accept is rigid plastic caps.  Click here to learn more:http://www.aveda.com/aboutaveda/caps.tmpl

Q. Why don’t you accept prescription bottles? They are marked with a #5. I’ve heard the Humane Society takes them – why don’t you?

A. Even our recycler doesn’t know why prescription bottles are a recycling no-no, but they are. We can’t take them. We’ve heard that the Humane Society re-uses prescription bottles. The labels must be soaked off, the bottles must be thoroughly cleaned and dried, and they must be delivered to the Humane Society with the lids intact. We encourage our patrons to do that independently of this program.

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Okay, back to the list. 

4. Reflect on our trash each day at the end of the day. So, for today:
Not as much, because we ate leftovers that were already cooked. The 2010 calendar Guthrie got for free last year with orange peels (the worms don't like them as much as we are not food recycling in the outdoor compost bin since it is full and we need to address getting a new one in spring, so we are only saving no food waste compostables that don't go with the worms (another post for another day).

5. Be proud of your efforts and write down five things we are grateful for:

   1. Family
   2. Food / Farmers :)
   3. Friends
   4. Kitties when they sleep through the night (done with the Fs)
   5. That Laura only has one more semester of grad school left :)

Peace!