Weekly Weigh In 3: Mermaid Hair

Weigh in:

So this week I did okay.  Ordering things for the school year has been killing me! If I couldn't find a book used (most of them I did) the new ones were all wrapped in plastic. I cut my hand and needed a band-aid, forgot to ask for no straw at a restaurant, finished my birth control packet, and got my hair dyed.

So my normal trash weighed in at 29 grams

My hair dye waste was less than I expected it to be, but still substantial:

1. Lightener: 4.4 oz = 125 g
2. Foil Sheets: 204 g
   • about 90 sheets weighing .005 lbs each = .45 lbs = 204 g
3. Colored Dye: 113 g
   • Approx. 2 oz of teal, 1 oz of purple, 1 oz of blue

So the total weight of my hair dying visit was: 442 g 

This means that my grand total trash this week was 471 grams, or about 1 lbs. This is the most I've had so far, but it was essentially because of dying my hair. 

Journal

This week went relatively smoothly. Getting my hair dyed produced the most trash that I've made in a while.  Most of it was aluminum, which isn't as bad as plastic, but because of the colorant that was on it the sheets couldn't be recycled.  I thought about taking them home, washing them, and then recycling them.  But I also didn't know if it was worse to rinse the colorant down the drain, or to send it to the landfill.  I went with landfill, but I would like to do some more research on hair products in general to see if my concerns were well founded. 

Weekly Weigh-in 1

So part of this journey for me, and most in the zero waste movement, is tracking the waste I do produce in an effort to identify the things I am throwing away, and eventually eliminate them from my lifestyle!

To clarify: this is my non-food, and non-recyclable trash. I did recycle, and I did produce food waste. I haven't built my compost bin yet so food waste is still going in the regular trash as of now.

So my mason jar and its lid weigh a total of 258g

My trash with my mason jar weighed a total of 361g

Which means that my grand total this week was 103 grams

• Just for reference, 103g is about the weight of a deck of cards (just a smidge more)

My full mason jar of trash for this week

My full mason jar of trash weighing 361g

My trash all spread out

Empty mason jar weighing 257g

I feel pretty good about that, seeing as this is my first time actually tracking my trash. I did need to move to a larger mason jar, but only once!  

I found that most of my trash was tea and coffee related. Other than that I had one wrapper from an egg sandwich, one dixie cup, some medical supplies from cleaning and bandaging a friend's cut, one plastic lid that came with a USB drive, and some miscellaneous candy and food wrappings. 

Many of these things were purchased before going zero waste, and I just happened to use them up (like the coffee bag). Some things I purchased in a hurry (still working on habit), and some were the result of nannying.  I nannied for five kids this past weekend and was totally unprepared to keep my zero waste habits around them. Now I'll be better prepared for next time!