January 2018 - Plane Packaging

This January I had the pleasure of attending my cousin's wedding in the Dominican Republic! It was quite the adventure and while I've done pretty well traveling while being zero waste, I did accumulate some waste on the trip including a few straws, a plastic bag, and some wrappers.

I also had a really weird exchange with an airline host. I asked if he could fill up my reusable mug about half way with the tea they were serving. He gave me all sorts of excuses of why he couldn't:

Host: "That'd be way too much tea!"

Me: "You don't need to fill it all the way, it can be equivalent to the cups you normally use"

Host: "Well what if I poured it into one of our cups then into your mug?"

Me: "... that sort of defeats the whole purpose, why don't you just pour it directly in here?"

Host: "Well there could be something weird in your mug"

Me: "There's not ... This is pretty routine, coffee shops do this for me all the time!"

Host: "No, no..." as he not so slowly makes his way down the aisle away from me "it definitely violates a health code..."

Well, the hostess on the last flight did this for me with no issue! At this point I just stopped, I was exhausted from an overnight flight and didn't have the energy to fight this guy over some mediocre tea. I don't know where the line is here between holding your ground and making a scene. Navigate this as best you can!

I also totally caved and got some of my favorite bagged tea because I wasn't feeling so well for a few days. It's Yogi Tea's Throat Comfort Tea and I have not been able to find a loose leaf alternative that does it for me. I may need to try mixing my own soon to prevent me from buying it whenever I have a sore throat!

November 2017 - Comfort Tea

I had 10 grams of trash in my trash jar for November, but that was definitely not all the trash I produced.

Over Thanksgiving I was supposed to go to my parent's house in California, where I grew up. However, I was called last minute to New England because my grandfather had fallen very ill.  If you know me, then you know that my personal form of comfort comes in the form of a piping hot cup of tea (with or without whisky). Because I was called away last minute, I didn't arrange to bring any loose leaf tea with me. So, I had regular tea. A lot of it. I think at least 30 bags. 

So, after weighing some empty tea bags, I'm going to add an extra 24 grams to this month's jar assuming that I used about 30 bags.

That comes out to 0.075 lbs for the month of November. 

Besides tea bag wrappings, there's also a small stir straw, and some plastic wrapping that came with some gifts I purchased for the holidays in there.

August 2017 - Plastic Jungle and Popsicles

Including my waste from NYC I produced 0.15 lbs of trash this August. That's definitely an upturn for me, but without NYC I was only at 20 grams or 0.04 lbs of trash. I feel ok about that, I felt like i could barely breath in NYC without spending money and producing trash!

What really did me in (other than NYC) was freaking popsicles. It's been warm here in Denver and I'm a sucker for frozen treats of any kind! I think I'm going to need to invest in some home-made popsicle supplies to prevent this in the future.  

I did make some homemade sushi this past week. The wrapping around the top of the soy sauce bottle and the plastic wrapping around the seaweed were the only two pieces of waste for 10 rolls of sushi. I'd say that's significantly better than those prepackaged ones you find in the grocery store!

Weekly Weigh-in 6: Flowers and Thin Mints

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WEIGH-IN

So this week, I bought flowers wrapped in plastic, you can check out the journal below for the reason why, and these were my biggest item. I also finished a tube of lip balm that I had from before, two straws that I forgot to ask the bartender to leave out, the usually fruit stickers, and the wrapping of some girl scout cookies.

My total trash weighed in at 41 grams, or 0.09 lbs

This was up from last week, but not by too much, so I'm still feeling ok!

JOURNAL

So, about the flowers... this past weekend a neighbor of mine passed away. I didn't know her or her spouse very well at all, but I did feel that a show of kindness was needed.  Unfortunately, with my work and school schedule, I didn't have the time to bake cookies that evening. Also, fun fact, there are no flowers growing in Colorado in February.  So, in my haste to bring what I could as soon as possible, I bought some very pretty flowers wrapped in plastic.  I know I probably could have waited a few days and baked something (or gone to a bakery as a different neighbor did) but I didn't. My desire to get something immediate overwhelmed my need to be zero waste. For now, I'm ok with that. But I do feel I should maybe have some go-tos for situations like this. 

On a happier note, this week my boyfriend and I celebrated our 3-year anniversary.  He knew how torn I was about buying the flowers in plastic, so he bought me a beautiful bamboo plant, already potted, with zero plastic in sight!

Also, my roommate informed me that as a household of four we only went through 1 bag of trash! We think the combination of me not adding anything to it, and composting is the reason. I don't know what the average trash-bag production per household is but I'd guess that's on the low end!

And finally, girl scout cookies. I'm so torn on this one. Thin Mints are one of my favorite things of all times, and I really do like supporting the GS. I know I could make some on my own, but I just can't decide which cause to stick to, supporting young women or zero waste. For now, I'm caving on zero waste, but I think I'll need to come up with something better in the future. Maybe learn to make my own and then just donate to the girl scouts w/o buying cookies? That seems like the most logical choice. We'll have to see how my homemade ones turn out!

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!