Reducing my Impact

I might have men­tioned this before, so bear with me if that’s the case. When I was grow­ing up, Girl Scouts was a huge chunk of my life. Much of who I am today can be direct­ly traced back to a troop meet­ing, cam­pouts, a week at camp or my one glo­ri­ous sum­mer as camp staff. When I was a junior in high school, I start­ed my Gold Award project and fin­ished it my senior year. I designed and imple­ment­ed a recy­cling pro­gram for camp and taught sev­er­al recy­cling aware­ness pro­grams to var­i­ous groups of kids.

It’s safe to say that recy­cling has been a pas­sion of mine for a while.

I strong­ly encour­age peo­ple to recy­cle what we can — but that’s not all we can do. I’ve always heard the phrase as “reduce, reuse, recy­cle (thanks Jack John­son) but appar­ent­ly that’s got­ten an upgrade recent­ly. St. Louis post­ed a graph­ic with the phrase as “rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recy­cle, rot”, which I’m dig­ging as a more com­pre­hen­sive phrase.

Now that I’m in a bet­ter spot in my life, I’ve start­ed to focus on more than just recy­cling. I want to reduce my impact on this Earth. Instead of just recy­cling the waste I cre­ate, what if I pro­duce less waste? I’m shamed every time I clean out my house by all the garbage I pro­duce. If you don’t take any steps to reduce your impact, I strong­ly sug­gest you do so. This isn’t me sham­ing you for not doing what I do — this is me offer­ing sug­ges­tions for easy ways to make a difference.

Hygiene

I’ve been get­ting a LOT of ads on social media about Earth-friend­ly prod­ucts. Some I did­n’t even know exist­ed! One of those was sham­poo and con­di­tion­er bars. It makes a ton of sense to use a com­pressed, dried ver­sion of a prod­uct that just needs water to acti­vate instead of ship­ping big heavy plas­tic bot­tles full of a most­ly water com­prised prod­uct. I start­ed out with a set from Lush, but there are many com­pa­nies offer­ing sham­poo and con­di­tion­er bars that don’t cost quite so much. As a bonus, the bars don’t fall off the show­er shelf and land painful­ly on my foot like my sham­poo bot­tles tend to do. Slip­pery lit­tle bastards.

Ladies! Let’s chat about peri­od prod­ucts. Tra­di­tion­al dis­pos­able prod­ucts like pads and tam­pons cre­ate a lot of waste. Plas­tic appli­ca­tors, plas­tic pads, plas­tic every­where! I reduced my need for these prod­ucts by get­ting an IUD which has worked out splen­did­ly for me. You can also get a wash­able and resuable cup like a Diva cup if you don’t want to use or can’t use an IUD or oth­er form of hor­mon­al birth con­trol. I was talk­ing to a friend of mine about this and she rec­om­mend­ed I use wash­able flan­nel pads. They work great for light days or oth­er uhh.… stuff that can cause issues 😀 Shame­less pro­mo­tion — check out her Etsy store! They’re super soft and work fab­u­lous­ly. (Plus, you’re sup­port­ing a small Amer­i­can busi­ness own­er and a mem­ber of the FI com­mu­ni­ty. See what you can start when you retire??)

Clothing

My fam­i­ly has always shopped at thrift stores or passed down clothes. As a kid, I was teased mer­ci­less­ly for it by all my class­mates. They all wore clothes from the Lim­it­ed or Aero­postale but as it turns out, my fam­i­ly was sav­ing mon­ey and being nicer to the plan­et. Accord­ing to the EPA Office of Sol­id Waste, Amer­i­cans throw away more than 68 pounds of cloth­ing and tex­tiles per per­son per year, and cloth­ing and oth­er tex­tiles rep­re­sent about 4% of the munic­i­pal sol­id waste. (source)

68 pounds is CRAZY! I’ve tak­en some steps to reduce my share of that aver­age. I wear cloth­ing as long as I can. If clothes devel­op a hole or become oth­er­wise unus­able, I set it aside for var­i­ous craft projects. I have sev­er­al box­es full of old t‑shirts that will be turned into a t‑shirt quilt or a rag rug. Hole‑y jeans will be cut into pieces and turned into some sort of pro­tec­tive cov­er­ing like a pic­nic blan­ket or floor pro­tec­tor. There are tons of projects avail­able on Pin­ter­est and oth­er crafty sites.

For clothes that are still in good con­di­tion, I share with my local Buy Noth­ing group. I like­wise get new to me clothes from the group as well (or, at least I do when a glob­al pan­dem­ic does­n’t shut it down). Local Buy Noth­ing groups are also a great place to pass on oth­er house­hold goods you no longer use, too!

I haven’t been inside a store to buy clothes in a very long time (exclud­ing basics like bras, under­wear, and socks; and spe­cial­ty items like cycling clothes). I’ve been on a sort of unof­fi­cial clothes buy­ing ban, and will con­tin­ue that for as long as is feasible.

As for wash­ing clothes, I used to use what­ev­er Tide Sport deter­gent I could find. The big plas­tic con­tain­ers are heavy, hard to use, and take up a lot of space. I’m a vic­tim of mar­ket­ing in this case. I saw an ad for Dropps and was intrigued enough to buy a box and give it a shot. Any CEO that’s will­ing to be filmed in a bath­tub deserves a chance, in my opin­ion. I’ve been using their laun­dry pods for the last few months and I got­ta say, I’m a fan. No more strug­gling with heavy plas­tic jugs that spill deter­gent all over the machine and the floor. Just toss a pod in the wash­er (two if you have a big or par­tic­u­lar­ly soiled load of clothes) and you’re good to go. The pods come in a recy­clable card­board box, too. Less plastic!

Food

So much food comes in plas­tic bags or con­tain­ers when you get it from the gro­cery store. I’ve start­ed off­set­ting this by either buy­ing straight from the butch­er counter (wrapped in paper) or by get­ting my meat from my local CSA or Farmer’s Mar­ket. The local pro­duc­ers are more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly by wrap­ping most of their prod­ucts in paper and I reduce the amount of trans­porta­tion-relat­ed con­t­a­m­i­na­tion since I’m keep­ing my sup­ply chain local. The prod­ucts are more expen­sive but they’re very very good (grass-fed, antibi­ot­ic free, hor­mone free, free range, etc).

I’ve swapped out my plas­tic cut­ting boards for bam­boo cut­ting boards. They are incred­i­bly hard, look fan­tas­tic and since they’re made from bam­boo, they’re a far more sus­tain­able option than using cut­ting boards made from old dinosaur goop (oil).

Once I make the food, I need a way to store them. I’ve been using glass con­tain­ers for a few years now and I love them. Unlike my old plas­tic con­tain­ers, I can pop these straight into the microwave and I don’t have to wor­ry about plas­tic chem­i­cals leach­ing into my food. I used to go through Tup­per­ware con­tain­ers pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly, but I’ve had this set of glass con­tain­ers for a few years now and hope to con­tin­ue this for many more years.

I also just recent­ly switched to sil­i­cone-based sand­wich bag­gies. I went with Stash­er bags, but there are tons of options now. I was attract­ed to them by being able to wash them and reuse them with­out get­ting gross. They also can go in the microwave! And the dish­wash­er! And the sous-vide! (if I had one) So far, so good!

I’ve also amassed quite the col­lec­tion of reusable mugs. I use my Yeti mug every day which cuts down on waste from one use cups. A lot of shops will even give you a dis­count for using your own mug (again, not the case dur­ing a pandemic).

And final­ly, once I’m done with the food, it has to go some­where. Sev­er­al of the places I lived in around the DC area offered com­post­ing ser­vices and that real­ly reduced my garbage. My cur­rent res­i­dence does­n’t offer com­post­ing ser­vices, but work does. You know, when I can get into the build­ing. It always felt a bit weird to bring a bag of food waste in with my lunch so I’ve been explor­ing oth­er options. There is a ser­vice that offers com­post pick­up in cer­tain areas of St Louis City (specif­i­cal­ly South City where I live) but I’ve yet to start that. For one, it costs $20 a month for two pick­ups. I’m also only one per­son and don’t cre­ate that much food waste, so I’m not sure it’s worth any of our efforts to cap­ture so lit­tle. But, any lit­tle bit helps, right? My trash would also get a lot less smelly 🙂 As you can see, I’m still con­flict­ed on adding a reoc­cur­ring charge to my month­ly expens­es. I’m fine pay­ing high­er prices for prod­ucts that are more eco-friend­ly, but adding more to my bud­get still caus­es me to pause and think it over. I’ve also dis­cov­ered some green waste bins in the alley behind my house, so I need to inves­ti­gate those and see if that’s some­thing I can use.

Final thoughts

I’ve come a long way from need­less­ly throw­ing every­thing away with­out think­ing about my impact on the world, but I have a ways to go yet. I would like to swap out more things in the kitchen to sus­tain­able choic­es, like my soap (pel­lets in glass con­tain­ers instead of liq­uid soap in plas­tic con­tain­ers), alter­na­tive sponges like bam­boo sponges, and bet­ter clean­ing products.

There’s always progress to be made, but it’s worth tak­ing a step back and see­ing how far you’ve come! If this post sparked any ideas, or you have ideas for me that I did­n’t men­tion, sound off in the com­ments below!

As always, thanks for reading!