Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: The Dog Days of August

I don't know about you, but I occasionally have difficulty finding small and effective tweaks to make in our lives on this reduce-reuse-recycle project, especially since many of the monthly adjustments we made have stuck. We're free of corn products in the house, and compared to a year ago, have very little in the way of prepackaged or processed foods. I'm schlepping around my Tupperware sandwich keeper, my SIGG water bottle and the few remaining plastic sandwich baggies, which I re-use for weeks. I'm saving my faucet run-off. My O-mop has replaced the Swiffer.

We're already a carpooling, walk-our-errands family. We haul totes to the grocery store. Aside from a bottle of RoundUp Ready that lurks in the garage like a guilty skeleton, we're gardening organically (hello, fish emulsion!). We've given up harsh household cleansers for castille soap, vinegar and other gentler solutions.

So I'm pretty much okay with declaring this month as sort of the coasting month. Above is my re-use for the month: the beautiful containers that my Kobo candles come in. Once I burned through the Fresh Currant and Champagne Ginger scents, I cleaned out the heavy glass jars they came in and repurposed them in the bathroom. I figure we'll recycle more of our stuff at the annual block sale at the end of the month. And I think I'll take the month off from finding a new thing to reduce -- I'll just stick with the status quo.

How about you? Are you in?

* No item is too big or too small to be on the list. See above. Some months, you just want to coast.

* You don't have to jump in every single month. If you do, cool. I would love the company. If you want to just drop in on the months where you're not meeting yourself coming and going, cool.

* You don't have to nail all three things -- Reducing, Reusing and Recycling -- every month. If you do, great. Because -- again -- I would love the company. But maybe some months, you need to coast too.

* The point is for us to put our collective brains to use, and get a mental grip on our material worlds. Hence throwing open comments and asking all of you: What will you be reducing this month? What about re-using? Recycling?

Comments

[Lauren]

Yesterday we cleaned out our garage and had EcoHaul come and take a whole bunch of stuff away. Apparently they donate/reuse/recycle about 85 percent of what they take, and they take nearly everything. We got rid of some stuff I'd failed to sell on craigslist, some we hadn't used in years and years, some that goodwill didn't want, and some broken stuff.

Plus, while we were cleaning out the garage, some people who happened to be driving by stopped and bought some of the old electronics from us. An impropmtu tag sale! All these years of storing crap and all we had to do was put our old stereo system on the curb for someone to come take it. No garage sale hassle necessary.

[becky]

I think your idea of one change per category a month is so cool...in fact, I made it an assignment for my environmental biology class this week. Unfortunately, it's a summer class, so I won't know how well they actually did on their pledges. I can tell you, however, that one student thought your idea of re-using shower water for the garden was the neatest thing he had ever heard in terms of personal water reuse, and at least 4-5 other students (out of a class of 14, freshman-level), said that they thought the idea of making one change a month was something they could really stick to.

So..thank you. I owe you a debt of gratitude, and more, here.

[molly]

This month, I am on a quest for bio-degradable trash bags that won't rip while carrying them out to the large trash. I want to reduce my use of reg. trash bags. Any suggestions?

I have bought packs of disposable diapers for babysitters and my mother-in-law (difficult for others to use gDiapers or cloth diapers if it isn't their child) but my son has grown out of them. So I am going to take the almost full packs of diapers to women's crisis shelters.

[drunken monkey]

The corn syrup avoidance went okay -- turns out I don't eat a lot anyway, because we're eating a lot less processed foods than we used to. But I'm sure I had some, because I kind of wanted to eat everything in site last month.

I will probably take it easy this month. I was going to do the thing about avoiding stuff made in China, but I have a crazy month ahead of me and I don't think I will be that ambitious. And I will be out of town a lot this month. So I guess my goal will be to continue my general planet-friendly efforts while I'm on the road.

[verucaamish]

One silly thing I do now is that I buy huge bottles of Excedrin and Ibuprofen and have saved the little bottles of those things. I just fill up the little bottles with pills from the big bottles. It's definitely saving m a bit of cash and using less packaging.

[drunken monkey]

I thought of something I will do, as I was thinking how great my Annie Chung's soup bowl would be for salads -- reuse as much packaging as possible.

[Julie]

I do the same thing with Advil, verucaamish. Make sure you keep track of the expiration dates though--my husband almost threw out one of my tiny bottles because the exp date said 3/06, even though the pills inside were new!

I made a tiny reduction by calling my alumni magazine and tell them they don't need to send copies to both my husband and me. I also attempted to reduce my newspaper--we used to get just Fri-Sun, and then they started giving us Thurs for free. But I don't want it--I don't have time to read the paper on Thurs. But I just cannot get them to stop delivering Thurs. "But ma'am, it's free!"

[Jana]

I am on a crusade to get my school to stop power-washing gum and other debris off the sidewalks in front of our buildings. I am sickened by how much water is wasted on a daily basis by this task.

[molly]

Jana, I like your crusade!! I am obsessed with water conservation, no doubt due to a childhood spent in Arizona. I was stunned however that the City of DC recently bought a European power sprayer to get gum off the all the monuments around town, which made me ask what heathen spits gum out on a monument?!

drunken monkey, if you do avoid all products made in China in the future you must write a long post on it. I would think this task would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. I would think you would almost end up buying nothing besides food. (Although, I have noticed that everything I have bought so far from IKEA isn't made in China. Say what you will about IKEA but I was pretty impressed with that.)

[Lisa S.]

The no-products-from-China thing makes me think that maybe, it might be an interesting holiday challenge to try and do one's Christmas shopping without picking up any made-in-China goods. Hmmm ...

*

Jana, I wish you luck with that crusade. I am also impressed that you identified a practice like that, 'cause it seems like something that not a lot of folks would notice.

[drunken monkey]

I was also thinking I might postpone it until Christmas, Lisa, as part of my wider effort for this year to get gifts that I'm comfortable with, without forcing my ideals on my family and friends or giving everyone ugly hand-knit toques or something.

molly, even just from paying more attention last month, the China thing looks to be quite difficult. Of course, part of the problem is the stuff that isn't even labelled. The jeans I had on yesterday were made in the USA, for example -- but what about the zippers? Where did they come from? Or the fabric itself?

As well, I strongly suspect that avoiding "Made In China" also means "No Plastic, Ever".

[Jana]

Well, so far my crusade isn't going well. But I am doing enough about it that I am not going to be the only one who notices the wastefulness anymore, that's for sure.