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!

October 2017 - Cheese life

This month I produced 29 grams, or 0.06 lbs of trash.

This is a 0.02 lbs improvement from September, which I am pretty pleased about. 

I feel like I've definitely reached a pretty sustainably minimal level of trash production. By changing a lot of my consumption patterns, habits, and methods, I've eliminated a lot from my day to day life. 

In my trash jar this month was mostly tea bag packages, wrapping from a prescription of mine, fruit stickers, and the wrappings around some cheese. I think there were some other random pieces of plastic from price stickers, and the tops of bottles. 

I've become a bit complacent recently. I've been able to produce very little trash the past few months, an amount that seemed incredibly difficult to achieve earlier this year!  But now that I've attained this level of trash production, I think it's time for me to reevaluate and set new goals. Probably before the new year, but definitely by then!

September 2017 - Sample Struggles

This September I produced 37 grams or 0.08 lbs of trash.

The biggest item in my trash this month was a bunch of sample spoons from our local ice cream joint. This amazing local creamery actually serves ice cream zero waste (which is why I go there). However when my friend and I went there to celebrate her getting a new job (yes we went for ice cream over wine, it was hot out, and it was awesome), the very kind gentleman on the other side of the counter just started giving us a bunch of samples w/o us asking for them! I didn't have the heart to tell him that I didn't want the plastic.

I sort of struggle with situations like this. I want to educate people, and at least feel ok telling them what I'm doing and why. But I also don't want to present it in a way that would insight any resentment. If someone is being very kind, you may make them dislike the whole zero waste movement by not handling that moment correctly. 

I usually just don't say much, but I think I'll need to come up with a better way of handling these moments when they happen.

Oh well, on to October!

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 5: Normalization

WEIGH-IN

So this week, nothing at all that miraculous happened.  It was utterly and undeniably normal.  I had some tea that came in wrapping, ate one bar that came wrapped (at a volunteer event), used one cauliflower packaged in plastic, and had the normal accumulation of fruit stickers.

My total trash weighed in at 17 grams, or 0.04 lbs!

That's my lowest weight so far, which I'm stoked about. 

JOURNAL

As I said above, this week felt really normal. I didn't have anything that seemed to outrageously affect my trash.  This gives me hope that reducing my trash to nearly zero really is possible, since several things in my trash were really avoidable (like the bar and cauliflower wrappings).  Maybe soon I can start switching to a monthly weigh-in instead of weekly!

However, starting today, I am working two full weekends at ski school.  For the environment, it's pretty eco-friendly, but it's definitely possible to produce more waste in that environment and I'll need to prep to avoid it! Update on how it all went down next week.