Struck gold at the farmer's market

Saturday morning trip to the farmer's market is always exciting.  Bumping into strangers and familiar faces strolling along, stocking up on local supplies.   This week I had a plan, I wanted to source some local meat (quarter of a cow?) and have the meat packaged in recyclable or self-supplied materials.

I spoke to one farmer who said they could fulfill my order, but not for at least another few months as the cows were still in pasture.  I put my name on the order list and proceeded down the market, when I saw a heaping pile of gold!!!

Okay, it was a pile of cow manure in the back of a pick-up truck being sold in burlap sacs for $3/bag or 4/ $10 by a 4H club from the Barriere area.  This was such luck - I had been wondering for the past few weeks where I might find manure sold by the truckload.  The club kindly delivered eight bags of manure free of charge, emptying each bag into the garden. They were quite happy to have sold a bunch of manure, and I was doubly happy to have it delivered to my home, without any packaging.

Eli was asleep in my arms not halfway through the market, having brought home a nasty bug from daycare (which later got ahold of my intestines, resulting in half-hourly trips to the bathroom for 3 days). I didn't get a chance to "steak-out" any more meat suppliers so I will be back to the farmer's market next week.  Until then, I will be busy planting our garden for a summer (and hopefully fall and winter too) of home-grown goodness.

Waste free ablutions - part two

You brush your teeth, CH CH CH CH .....

Dental products, May 2011

Dental hygiene is not waste friendly.  First there is the tooth brush, which is not to my knowledge recyclable (in our area anyways).  Yes, you can reuse tooth brushes as cleaning brushes (at least I do anyways), but if you replace your toothbrush as often as they recommend (every 3-4 months), then a average size family would go through about 12-16 toothbrushes a year. All be it in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a huge deal, but when looking for ways to minimize household waste, there are better options than the standard toothbrush, nicely summarized in this article at green living tips.

After studying toothbrush options, my first choice was the recyclable toothbrush by Preserve.  The toothbrush is made from recycled content, with a mail back option, so that the toothbrush gets recycled into other things like plastic chairs and tables.  The website also offers a toothbrush subscription, a nice reminder that it is time to replace your toothbrush. One small problem, where can I buy one of these toothbrushes?

Nature's Fare is the only store in Kamloops that sells Eco-friendly toothbrushes. As my first choice was not available for sale, I opted to buy a brand that has a handle made from recycled American dollar bills by Radius.  The heads are replaceable so our whole family can share one handle and each have a separate head.

Another source of dental hygiene waste: dental floss.  I was hoping to find biodegradable dental floss at Nature's Fare.  No such luck.  I ended up buying an antibacterial cranberry flavoured vegan floss also by Radius which came in recyclable packaging on a 50 meter spool (as opposed to the 11 meter non-recyclable plastic packaging spool by Johnson & Johnson that we usually buy).

And lastly there is the issue of tooth paste.  I wonder how much tooth paste is wasted in every package thrown away?  Have you ever cut open a tube of toothpaste to try and get every last bit of tooth paste out?

I have been looking for alternatives for store bought toothpaste and found this recipe on the clean bin blog which is pretty easy to make using baking soda, glycerine, salt and peppermint extract.   I am not going to try and sugar coat it to convince you to try, it tastes terrible.  And if you want to try for yourself, I will gladly make you up a batch as I have plenty of ingredient for more.

Another alternative is to stop using toothpaste altogether.  Mint&Cilli blogged about the negative effects of toothpaste and her experience giving up toothpaste.  She read a book, "Good teeth, birth to death" by Dr. Judd which explained what toothpaste does to your teeth - coats them in glycerin, preventing the enamel to regrow (and heal the tooth).

When I asked my dental hygienist, she told me that the act of brushing (and flossing) is enough to clean the teeth and that the only thing missed from not using toothpaste is the fluoride (perhaps a fluoride rinse every few months would do the trick?).  I haven't used toothpaste for three days and I have't really missed it.

I look forward to the day when recyclablitliy is incorporated into the design of all packaging.  Why can't toothpaste (or anything for that matter) come in a reusable and appealing jar?  Why do they even sell tiny rolls of floss? Why can't we recycle toothbrushes?

Bread crumbs

I never really understood why so many recipes called for bread crumbs until a moment ago, while wiping breakfast off the counter.  I imagine that 75 years ago when my "go-to" cook book, the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, was published, back when my grandmother was learning how to cook, they would save bread crumbs, rather than just wipe them into the sink.

Visit to Mission Flats Landfill

I consider myself a pretty lucky person.   I somehow managed to land my dream job right out of school, in which I perform contract work (exclusively at the moment) for the regional district.

I have worked in the industry for about three years.  My most recent project is a waste composition study, which is essentially a big audit of what is going into the region's landfills.  Now maybe I am a little more excited about waste than the average person, but how cool is that???!!!

Today I had a guided tour of Mission Flats landfill.  It was really amazing.  Our first stop was the recycling area.  My favourite is the scrap metal pile - there is always some amazing find, today was a set of four vintage chairs.

An old hippie acquaintance of mine, Tony, is always going on about how they closed the Drop and Shop at the landfill, and how he thinks is is absolutely ridiculous that the "City" won't let anyone take stuff away from the landfill.  He thinks that a 'no scavenging' policy is totally counter to their waste reduction goals, and to be honest, he has a point.  It's such a shame that the world has come to the point where everything has to be so tightly regulated, because if it's not, someone is going to do something stupid, and sue whoever let it happen.

I could never work at a landfill, it would make me sick watching perfectly good or fixable or reusable stuff get tossed into the bin, later to be buried.

After visiting the residential area, we headed up towards the active face, an area of the landfill that only commercial waste haulers get to see.  Along the way we passed the asphalt and concrete recycling areas, massive piles that get crushed and used in various operations like road bedding.   Greg explained to me that he wanted to start collecting toilets and other ceramic objects to crush.  He said that somewhere in California they use the crushed toilets as pathways in parks - as most toilets are white, the paths are highly visible at night - how ingenious!

The active face of the landfill was surprisingly not as bad as I thought it would be.  There was a small area where a huge tractor like thing with big spiky metal wheels looking like something that would really kick ass at a monster truck rally was driving over the day's garbage.  Greg told me that he used to drive one of those tractors.  Back and forth all day long, compacting the waste. The City trucks compact garbage as they collect it, but Greg says that that machine will compact even that garbage by a factor of six.

After discussing the study with the landfill operator manager for a while, we headed back the way we came and back to the city.  On the way I asked Greg if the City was considering wood waste recycling. He told me that they used to recycle wood waste, but that someone up the ladder put a stop to it because it was claimed to cause too much damage to the chipper.  Greg didn't agree with it, he said that those chippers could handle anything and that we only wished they would give him the go ahead to start wood waste recycling again.

The more time I spent with Greg, the more I started to like him.  He was my kind of person, waste diversion specialist, with ideas a lot bigger impact than my little zero-waste challenge.  But I understand how the City operates - they take their time and do it right.  So it will take time, but I know we will get there Kamloops.

What do think will be next on the list of diversion options for the City? What would you like to see being recycled in your community?

Compost Happens

Last week I asked the question, "What has the most impact on waste reduction in a household?" (or something like that).  All three people that answered, said that bringing bags and containers shopping has the most impact on waste reduction.

It is true that brining bags and containers shopping considerably reduces household waste, but, according to the US EPA, organic materials (yard waste, food waste, wood waste and paper) makes up over two-third of the US waste stream.

I wouldn't recommend trying to compost wood products in a backyard composter, but most every other organic material will decompose into an organic nutrient rich soil amendment that can be used as a fertilizer in the garden.  If you already compost, high five! You probably divert about one third of your household waste, not to mention the benefits to your garden.

If you are someone who thinks composting is a good idea but just haven't made the commitment, now is a great time to start.  There are many resources on composting, every municipality has some sort of booklet or information package, and if you live in the TNRD, chances are you can get your hands on a worm or backyard composter at cost (about $25).

I have read a lot about composting and there are many different styles. If you don't mind the sight, composting can be done in the open air (which makes it easier to turn) by simply creating a compost pile.  I do this with my weeds and garden waste, which I am reluctant to put into my food waste bin, mainly because it would fill too quickly and I don't think my pile gets hot enough to kill any weed seeds.

I have also attempted vermicomposting (worm composting), which is great for people that live in apartments or flats that don't have space for a backyard compost.  A special type of worm is used for composting, usually Red Wigglers.  There is no need to turn a worm compost because the worms do all the work.  Mel Anderson at All Things Organic sells worms and compost bins, but you don't need to get a fancy as the multi-tiered compost bins made for worm composting, a simple rubbermade tote will do the trick.  To get started you need to put some bedding down for the worms, like dampened shredded paper or coconut coir.  Then add the worms and start to feed.

 I say attempted worm composting because (sadly) I have killed my worms on more than one attempt. Good ole Mel though, keeps encouraging me, because worm composting is superior to backyard composting, simply because the material breaks down so much faster in a worm compost and what you are left with is this amazingly rich nutrient rich, super fine, worm castings that any gardener would say looks like gold.

I digress yet again.  How did I kill my worms?  I starved them to death.  The first time I lived in an apartment with two guys that were not into having the worm compost under the kitchen sink or in the closet.  So I put the compost way out of the way in a back staircase that nobody used.  Unfortunately, the compost was in a really inconvenient place for me too. In the winter I had to tredge through the snow and wedge the door open with a stick so I didn't get locked in the staircase.  I started to feed the worms less regularly but in greater amounts, which didn't really work for the worms.  One day I went out to feed the worms and had a dig around to see how there were faring and there wasn't a single worm wiggling in the pile. I felt terrible, like I killed my pet (which I had).  Too embarrassed to tell Mel that I had killed my worms, I gave up worm composting.

On my second attempt (after confessing to Mel about what happened), I got more worms and was determined to make it work.  After all, I had just finished organizing a bunch of worm composting workshops across the regional district and had preached about great worm composting was.  Surely I could make it work.  But by this time I had invested (or inherited, I can't remember) a backyard compost bin, which I found to be a little less finicky than the worms (I wasn't going to kill anything in the backyard compost bin).

By this time I had moved in with my now husband Trevor and we were renting an old house downtown.  Trevor is a hippie so it wasn't hard to convince him that we should have the worm compost in the kitchen.  This worked really well. I fed the worms regularly and they were happy as could be in our little kitchen.  I would show them off to all our visitors and would even give a few gardener friends some castings to take home (if they were lucky).  You aren't supposed to overfeed worms so whatever I thought would be too much for the worms was tossed in the backyard compost.

This system worked wonderfully, until Eli was born and we moved and I started to notice the smell of the compost in the house.  It wasn't really a bad smell, more earthy, but for whatever reason, it permeated our new home much more that the one downtown.  So into the garage went the compost, which was the beginning of the end for the worms (I still feel like a murderer).  Because we still had the backyard compost, it was so much more convenient to throw everything into the one bin, rather than taking some compost into the garage for the worms and then tossing the rest in the backyard compost.

The moral of the story is, if you are going to compost, make sure that you put the compost bin (or pile or whatever sort of system you choose) in a convenient location that you will use.  Otherwise it will just sit there collecting dust (like my worm compost in the garage).  On a happy note though, I am donating the worm compost to Elianna's daycare.  Kids love to play with worms, and its all about learning some important life cycles.

Recently a friend posted a link to a different type of compost system called the Green Cone that I am going to look into because with this system you can compost all kitchen waste including meat and bones, something that shouldn't be put into a backyard compost bin (mainly because of the odour attracts animals).

Do you compost? What type of system do you have?  Do you have problems or concerns about composting?  Have you ever tried this digested Green Cone system?  What about worm composting? Please comment about your compost experiences.  What are some of the challenges you face?

Week 4 - Now What?

Our fourth and final week of a month-long challenge to live waste free is over, and although we didn't quite achieve our zero-waste goal, I would say that we had a successful month. In four weeks we produced a little over a grocery bag full of waste, which was mostly stuff we had in the house before we started the challenge.

The garbage we didn't avoid:

1. Dental floss
2. Expired tooth brush
3. Plastic seal from a bottle of Tylenol
4. 3 bandaids
5. A small piece of gauze and its sterile packaging (I think I might try to compost this stuff though)
6. Coffee Cup (Sister-in-law's sister brought Tim Horton's coffee for everyone on Easter morning. Trevor didn't want to be rude and refuse)
7. Plastic wrapping that came around daycare forms
8. 2 bracelets/swim passes from the TCC 
9. Broken plastic headband
10. Broken plastic tongs
11. 2 empty pens
12. 2 candy wrappers (Trevor accepted some candies from a lady at work before he realized that they were wrapped in garbage)

Now that the month is over, I can't see ever going back to living the way we did before we started the challenge.  Plus, it has taken me a whole month to get rid of all the garbage in the house (which feels amazing) so why would I undo all that hard work?

A common misconception is that living without waste is difficult. I don't feel like we are really doing anything different besides being a little more prepared for grocery shopping, and not buying things that create waste.  

I suppose if you rely on convenience items, like prepared meals and individually packaged snacks  to get through a hectic life schedule then it would be difficult to avoid garbage.  But it is all about the choices we make.   The only way individuals can affect change is through consumer decisions

Slow down. Relax. Breathe. Simplify. Enjoy the small things in life, because, as a wise woman once said, they are really the big things.

Saturday Night Poker

About once a month my friend Ken (aka Norm) phones me up and asks if I want to deal a poker tournament.  I enjoy dealing poker and this particular poker tournament is a quality run game with seemingly endless perks, and a decent bunch of players.

The host is a flush business man who loves playing poker, and is a generous entertainer as well.  His basement is the ideal poker room, equipped with two professional size tables and a huge flat screen TV, inevitably showing UFC or the Canucks. There is always a spread of snacks like veggies and dip, fruit, chips and salsa from a local business (thanks to the owner), and various other niceties like olives and cheeses and a fridge full of non-alcoholic drinks to tide you over before dinner, usually pizza or chinese food.

Needless to say, it is hard to turn down an opportunity to participate in the tournament. But from past experiences I have seen first hand, and had to swallow my tongue, when, at the end of the evening Norm and I would clean up and take the garbage out and I would turn a blind eye to the disgust I felt in watching at least two big black garbage bags full of disposable and recyclable material taken to the curb for burial at the TIB (formerly KIB) landfill.

The poker tournament is hosted in an area of town owned by the Tk'emlups Indian Band, which does not currently have recycling. I'm sure if the residents were so inclined, they could take their recyclables to the nearest recycle depot.  This is not the case with our lovely poker host.

Never in the past have I offered to take recyclables home to put in my curb side recycling container. I have always tried to avoid using disposable plates and utensils, but I am not in the habit of bringing my own dishes, and my non-imposing self never has the courage to ask for a "real" plate and fork. This is my round-about way of saying that I am guilty of using disposable items - does that make me a hypocrite?

Saturday night was going to be different.  April 30, the last official day of our first month challenge to live waste free.  I was going to this poker tournament and I was not going to contribute any waste to those two huge bags.  I also went with the intention of taking all the recyclables home with me, but because I went home before the game ended, I didn't get the chance. Perhaps next time. And perhaps next time I will have a brilliant idea of how to cut down on the use of disposable items. Any suggestions?