Sunday, April 22, 2012

Happy Earth Day


It is a beautiful Earth Day here in Boise. We plan on spending the rest of the day outside - napping and reading in the grass.

I am happy to report that Trevor and I have drastically reduced our trash/waste. We were really inspired by this family last year and have tried our best to follow the 4 R's: REFUSE, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We have been able to save a lot of money by doing so. Pretty much the only thing we throw out now is organic waste, which really is just a couple of  handfuls a week. Meaning we no longer need our regular sized, white garbage can anymore! It has now been replaced by a small, bathroom sized garbage can. Someday when we have our own garden, we will have a compost pile.

One thing that we can't recycle are the thin, plastic produce bags at the grocery store. So I try to never use them, but sometimes ya gotta. Example: brussel sprouts. So this is what I'm making - reusable mesh produce bags!

They're not nearly as cute as I imagined they would be. But that's okay because being cute is not the purpose of these bags. I'm excited to try them out this week!

4 comments:

  1. Can you please go into detail on how on earth (happy earth day!) you only have a small bathroom can? Seriously, I watched that video last year too & thought it was amazing. But I still have a huge white garbage can.
    EX: When you buy a roast from the grocery for a meal & it comes in plastic wrap & styrofoam what do you do with that? Because I come home with plastic every day & we fill a big white kitchen bin every 2 or so days.
    Good for you guys! I love it.

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    1. Well we recycle whenever possible and we shop with 'low waste' in mind. We buy in bulk and cook everything from scratch which really cuts down in waste. True, when we buy meat we do have to toss the plastic...but we eat very little meat that a bag of chicken breasts lasts us 4 months so I don't feel too bad when it comes time to toss it (maybe that's a bad attitude?) For me it's not about eliminating waste completely just minimizing it :)

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  2. Also you can make bags out of old tshirts. That is what I use for produce.

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    1. I've seen those bags on Pinterest but was worried that the smaller vegetables would slip through the holes. Do you ever have problems with that? Plus, when I spoke to the cashiers about bringing my own bags they said the white, mesh bags were the easiest for them when it came to ringing up...so that's what I went with.

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