Waste-Free Wednesdays
Waste-Free Wednesday
According to the U.S. EPA, each American generates about 4½ pounds of garbage each day. So, in my family of four, we are tossing away over 17 pounds of milk cartons, coloring books, juice boxes, broken dolls, toy packaging, torn-up clothes, Ziploc bags, and leftover sandwiches on a daily basis. Now that’s rubbish!
All this trash is not only an eye sore, it also contributes to global warming, air and water pollution, energy consumption, resource depletion, and the need for the creation of new unsightly and pollution landfills and incinerators.
So I’m taking on trash this year with a new feature: Waste-Free Wednesdays. The strategy for reducing trash is simple: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Still, as a mom, I know that kids and stuff often go hand in hand and it can be hard to reduce the amount of stuff you use, and even harder to recycle it.
That’s where waste-free Wednesdays come in. I want to take a moment (and trust me, I’ll be lucky if I get a moment) every week to think about how I can minimize waste in my home. And I’m looking to green bloggers for my inspiration. So every week I’ll seek out and share with you some of the best info I’ve found on reducing waste. And I hope you’ll share your ideas as well. Here are a few gems that I found recently:
- Mindful Momma tells how to skip the plastic at the grocery store.
- Enviro Mom reminded us to rediscover our stuff.
- Diane at Big Green Purse took Trader Joes to task for their wasteful packaging.
- JessTrev shared how joy over lightening her load over at Green Phone Booth.
Feel free to leave your tips as a comment, or leave a link of your own in the box below.
Photo by loricwilson
Why don’t we have a Waste Free Wednesday at Trader Joe’s? We can all shop there and leave our wasteful packaging there, too?
I’m going to go with your Waste free Wednesday idea and begin focusing on changing one thing (or getting rid of one thing) every Wednesday. Thanks for the inspiration.
love the Waste-free Wednesday idea! I’ll be checking back for more tips! Thanks for the link.
Great post! I have really started focusing on giving time as presents instead of stuff; taking my niece to a play, going bowling for a birthdays, things like that. I also use my consignment store a lot as well as giving lots of things to my daycare.
There is a much better way to get Americans to stop being so wasteful with packaging. In Sweden, recycling is done free of charge, as long as you do the separating. Garbage is another thing entirely. The garbage trucks are equipped with a scale, you pay by the pound! This is a simple solution to reduce waste, and your zealous capitalistic friends can’t complain as it relies on the simple desire to save money.
As for implication, thats easy too. Its no secret that some of the companies that make garbage trucks for Europe are based here in the US, and they make the same trucks that we use here. Its a simple process to add the scales and computer used for adding up the monthly bill.
In the US, garbage is big business. And its also subsidized big business. The government pays a large portion of what it costs in real dollars to throw away our mountain of trash. If normal consumers were asked to pay the real costs associated with disposal, we would see a real push back for less packaging, and more recycling.
Great idea for Waste Free Wednesdays — our school is looking into a waste free lunch program so that’s been on my mind lately (everyone commits to generating no trash at school one day each week in order to help educate parents who haven’t thought about reusable containers and to help inspire those who have to keep at it!). I love Diane’s idea of making Trader Joe’s deal with their packaging. I’ve commented on their corporate site and also chat up their cashiers (who all completely agree) whenever I’m in the store. Thanks for the link! Hoping to keep my consumption in check so I don’t need to purge again soon….