Bones, bones, bones

Thanks to a comment from a woman on an earlier blog post, we have been able to avoid meat waste for the past 2 months by storing the bones in our freezer, and burying the bones in the garden.  Bonemeal is an organic fertilizer that contains phosphorus - an important chemical for plant growth.  Bonemeal is a slow-release fertilizer... I suppose the chunks of bones I put under the shrub will feed the shrub it's whole life?

The process was easy: 

1. Dig a hole in the garden where you want the plant.  
2. Put the bones in the hole. 
3. Crush and mixed the bones with the shovel. 
4. Fill the hole with water and let it drain
5. Put the plant in the ground.

And voila: win-win plants are fed organically and we have no meat waste!

I have spent the past three weeks with a group of university students at landfills throughout the region, dissecting loads of garbage.  Most of what we see is "garbage", but some loads, referred to in the waste industry as "residential self-haul loads", are full of treasures.

A residential self-haul load is waste that is brought to the disposal site by a resident, and is usually a result of some sort of clean-up around the home (spring cleaning, moving).  I am not all that surprised by what we find in these loads, but it does sadden me a little to see a product in perfectly (or near perfectly) good condition destined for the grave.

Our team has rescued many of these products, some of which have gone home with the team members, some of which I have claimed, some are stored in my husband's VW, and many more have made their way to the Salvation Army.  Technically we should not be doing this, there is a no-scavenging policy at landfills, but we are up to our elbows in garbage all day (literally) so I feel it is justified, and if nothing else, a reward to these brave students for their hard work.

I have tried to photo document all the stuff we take from the landfill, so take a look and tell me if you think this stuff is garbage?

Landfill project

Some of the research team at the Barriere landfill

My apologies blog followers for the scarcity of blogs posts lately, I have been working long days undertaking a landfill study throughout the region.  I have been traveling throughout the region with a team of six amazing university students, dissecting loads of garbage coming into the region's landfills.

Dissecting means that we are taking a bag of garbage and sorting it's contents into lots different categories (133 to be exact), with the fourteen broad categories being paper products, paper packaging, plastic products, plastic packaging, organic, textiles, rubber, metal, glass, wood, construction materials, hazardous waste, electronic waste, and residuals.

Thats all the time I have for blogging today, we are off to Lower Nicola landfill (near Merritt) today - bright and early 6:00 am.

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?