Garbage Inventory

I suppose this question will come up in the next few weeks: How much garbage do you produce? When I say garbage I mean waste that is sent to the landfill, not compost or recyclable waste.

Daily garbage inventory (before the challenge):

• 1 or 2 diapers per day (depending on if Eli poos after we change her before bedtime or if we get lazy on washing diapers, or more when traveling);
• Meat/ seafood packaging (styrofoam tray and cling wrap or soft plastic shrink-wrap;
• At least one plastic bag/ soft plastic liner from chips, crackers, cheese, pasta, cereal, etc.;
• 12 inches of dental floss;
• Table scraps from uneaten food;
• Meat bones/ fish bones/ prawn shells;
• Sink gunk;
• Residual / non-recyclable paper from cans (when Trevor is cooking, I try to take them off before I wash them out);
• Gum / candy wrappers (every now and again I make impulse purchases in the grocery store line);
• Kleenex when Eli has a cold;
• 14 stickers.

Throughout the past year:

• Paint rollers and trays from painting the bathroom and Eli's room;
• Window washing waste (twice a year): wad of paper towels or newspapers about the size of a basketball;
• Renovation waste: this year we ripped up our bathroom floor and replaced the sink and cupboards;
• 30 empty plastic bags of manure/ compost/ peat/ other soil amendments (major landscaping job as we bought a new home that had never been landscaped, and I love to grow my own veggies;
• A few broken toys;
• Rotten non-compostable food waste from cleaning out the fridge, approximately one shopping bag full in the past year;
• 2 vacuum bags;
• 3-4 broken glasses / light bulbs / plates;
• 3 empty pens;
• 4 shirts beyond repair;
• 3 pairs of socks

I am sure there are other items I am missing but I put in a full day and am quite tired.  Thanks for all the comments

How much waste does the average Kamloopian Produce?

I put a poll on my blog asking "How much waste does the average Kamloopian Produce?" In case you are not familiar with BC or Canada (I notice that there are lots of people from New Zealand visiting my blog), Kamloops is my home town, thus the term Kamloopian.

Okay... so the answer to my poll question is this: the average Kamloopian produces 1.2 tonnes of waste per year. Wow, thats a lot of garbage! And I can assure you that this information is pretty accurate as I calculated it myself. Well, not really, the City of Kamloops keeps pretty good records of what goes into the Mission Flats landfill and I did a little math (total waste/ total population = per capita waste generation).

Compare that to the waste generation rate in the State of California, 400 kg/capita, and it doesn't look very good.

Which leads to my next question, why do we (in Kamloops) produce so much more garbage than the people in California? Do they have better recycling? Are they poorer so they buy less stuff? Or are we just a bit more wasteful than our friends in the South?

If there is anyone out there from California, please enlighten us.  I welcome any comment on this subject so please feel free... I am all ears.

Waste free trip to the Butcher Shop

I invited my friend Keith and his new girlfriend over for lunch on Saturday. Wondering what I should cook, I thought hmmm, guys like steak right?  Not knowing that steak isn't something that people generally eat for lunch (I plead ignorant because I don't eat meat), I set off to the butcher shop.

Trevor, being the wonderful husband
he is, appeased me by posing for this shot.

Even though we haven't officially started the challenge, I just couldn't wait to try out this new way of shopping.  I proudly walked into Summit Gourmet Meats with my containers and shopping bag and asked the clerk if she would put the meat in my container? She replied that she would.

It felt so good when they filled my containers and said "Everyone should bring their own containers."  When I explained what I was doing, the guy behind the counter repeated "Everyone should do that (go waste free)." Hmm, I wonder if this guy working at the butcher will spread the word about our challenge?  I wonder if he will start taking his own containers shopping?

It is so easy to bring a container to the shop and makes me wonder why I never did it before? And why is our society so obsessed with packaging?

Which reminds me of this story that my friend Emma has told me.  It is a bit off topic but makes me laugh every time I hear it so I think I will share.  Emma and I lived together in Thailand for a couple of years. If you have ever been to Thailand you will be able to relate.  Thais put everything in a plastic bag, even soda and coffee! Anyways, I digress.

Emma used to buy a bagel-like breakfast sandwich on her way to work everyday from the same street vendor.  Every time she would ask the lady to just hand it to her without the wrapper or bag because she was just going to eat it.  But the lady would wrap it anyways and put it in a bag.  Emma would try to grab the bagel from the lady and say in her posh English accent, "Just give it to me, I just want to eat it!"

It got to the point where the lady would see Emma coming down the street and have the bagel wrapped and bagged before Emma could even get close. I don't know why Emma didn't just find another vendor,  I imagine that it was probably the only one she passed on the way to work.

Emma is a great storyteller so you really must hear it from her to appreciate the humour.  But the point I want to make is that we can all make choices that leave less of a footprint on our Earth.  I will eliminate our family's waste to landfill by shopping at the places that will allow me to, like Summit Gourmet Meats and Fratelli Foods.  I won't buy the bagel from the street vendor who insists on double bagging the sandwich because that is her 'policy'.  Sooner or later things are going to change. They have to. For Eli's sake. ;)

Cloth Diapers

One of the biggest challenges for a family with an un-potty trained child to go waste free is disposable diapers.  Luckily we use cloth diapers most of the time (except at night and when travelling) which means that it should be easy to ditch the disposables.

Elianna helping wash the diapers

It doesn't take a waste free challenge to use cloth diapers - they just make sense.  There are plenty of resources for cloth diapering.  There is a Facebook group for parents in the Kamloops community and if you are a parent (or soon to be) considering cloth diapers, I highly recommend paying a visit to Jen at Lizzie Bits downtown. She has lots of cloth diaper products and accessories and she even hosts a Diapering 101 seminar that gets you a $25 gift-certificate towards the purchase of $100 or more on cloth diapers.

If you are new to cloth diapering, it is worth doing some research before you buy your diapers.  I am a big fan of bamboo cloth and that influenced my decision to buy a dozen Bamboo Baby diapers, which I hate because the velcro has sharp edges that rub and doesn't stick very well, and while I love the fact that they are made of natural fibres, that means that they hold moisture.  Thankfully we also bought a dozen bum genius (highly recommend) that have synthetic outer layers and cotton liners which means that the moisture is held in the inner liner.

A few other tips for cloth diapering:

• Buy a sprayer nozzle that attaches to the toilet to rinse off the poopy diapers.
• Put a basket of cloth wipes in the bathroom cupboard (if there is room) and just wet them as needed.
• Put a few (damp) cloth wipes in a yogurt container in the diaper bag when you go out. Don't put too many in and don't leave them wet in the container for too long or they get mouldy.
• Get a big pail (like the ones at Scoopz Ice Cream) to put the used diapers until wash time (I put it under the sink in the bathroom for convenience).
• Rinse poopy diapers right away or as soon as possible to avoid drying onto the diaper.  If poo does dry onto the diaper, rinse as best as possible and do a pre-rinse cycle in the wash.

Here are some reasons to ditch disposables and go green!

1. Fashion:  Cloth diapers come in lots of colours and patterns that make your baby look even more adorable (if that is possible). I got some really cute plush animal print cloth diapers that we use when we go out and I get so many comments as looks of astonishment when I say that they are diapers.
2. Blow-outs: Cloth diapers are better designed to contain the runny baby excrement better than disposables.  
3. Save money!!! Cloth diapers cost between $15 - $25. I recommend at least 25 diapers which means an initial investment of $375 - $500.  Compare that to the average cost of a disposable diaper $.10 - $.25 times 6-10 diapers per day for about 2 years = $500 - $1800.  If you have more than one child then the savings really compound if you use cloth.
4. Save the environment: I have been doing some unrelated research and came across a study performed by the Capital Regional District in 2009/2010. This study found that diapers were about 3.28% of the waste going into the Hartland landfill, which equates to 5027 tonnes of diapers in 2009 in Victoria BC! I have also read on various websites that the average disposable diaper takes between 300 - 500 years to decompose and the average baby produces about one tonne of diapers.

Soft plastics - Not Recyclable in Kamloops

Our goal is to produce no landfill waste for the month of April, 2011.  Small problem, I have just done an inventory check of our cupboards and freezer and there is plenty of stuff that is packaged in soft plastic which is not recyclable in Kamloops and that we will likely not be able to consume in the next 11 days.

I know that there is a company in Kelowna that recycles soft plastics (or used to anyways).  I have contacted them to see if they still recycle soft plastics and if so, if it would be possible to drop off our soft plastics at their facility. Btw, we won't make a special trip just to recycle the plastic, so if anyone is going to Kelowna and wouldn't mind taking a bit of a side trip to Metro Materials, please comment on this posting.