Friday, May 23, 2014

The only plastics waste home

Last year I read Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. It was interesting enough that I blogged about it, but I really didn’t like it a whole lot overall. I gave it three stars on Goodreads and wrote this:
I definitely admire a woman on a mission. And it's always nice to read a missive by someone with even more crazy-out-there ideas than my own. … But I had problems with maybe half of her suggestions. And of the half that didn't frustrate or annoy me in some way, I can see myself actually implementing maybe half of those. …
The things is, my subconscious has been chewing on that darn book for the past seven months. We bought a composter recently — and, yes, I know that buying a big plastic composter as opposed to making one out of twine and discarded planks sort of defeats the purpose, but M.H. refused to have one of those, so stick with me here. With all the organic waste now removed from the trash, and all the recyclables already pulled out as usual, it became really easy to see what our trash problem is. Plastic containers, plastic wrappers, plastic mesh thingies, plastic-coated floss, plastic bags, plastic bags, and more plastic bags — that’s basically all the can has in it right now.

Well, Zero Waste Home had like a million ideas for getting rid of plastics! Most of them involved buying stuff that wasn’t packaged in it (** cough COSTCO **), but it’s nearly farmer’s market season, and I think I’m ready to make more of an effort.

My suggestion is that you read the book, get annoyed for a while, and then see what happens.

8 comments:

  1. My local food bank is always looking for plastic bags. Maybe yours is too.

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    1. Our problem is more like the bags that Costco vegetables come in, nothing that would be reusable.

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    2. You're right. I don't know how to recycle those at this time. If something comes up I'll let you know.

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  2. I want to know how the composting goes. I like the idea, but everything I have ever read mentions the issue of attracting unwelcome pests, and fear of that has put me off. Glad to see you blogging again.

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    1. Well, we certainly have a bunch of fruit flies over there, but the composter keeps everything off the ground, so hopefully that will be the worst of it.

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    2. fwiw, the key to keeping fruit flies at bay *inside* is to keep your compost really really dry (use a cone of newspaper in your container and add more as needed). in the actual composter? add leaves/paper/anything dry.

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    3. Oh, good. I had been thinking our compost needed more dry stuff, but I wasn't really sure. We have several huge bags of shredded paper waiting its turn to go in!

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  3. yer funny! but it's true. annoying books have a penchant for getting lodged into the nether regions of the brainworks like a popcorn kernel under your gums. every ian mcewan book i've read. eesh.

    i'll add the book to my 'to read' list. but i'll wait until i feel the need to be annoyed. ;)

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