ZERO WASTE BLOG #2: MEDITATIONS ON PLASTIC Monitoring our garbage disposal during this month made it pretty clear that plastic is our biggest personal trash problem. Virtually everything we throw away - as opposed to composting and recycling - falls into that category. So, obviously, the only way to have any control over this issue is to buy less plastic. Wherever possible, we have switched over to buying products in bulk and glass. We rinse out and reuse plastic produce bags. We bring them to the store instead of taking new bags. We recently returned an unopened box of plastic wrap to the store, and now reuse our washed plastic bags to cover leftovers or rising bread dough. We try to be thoughtful consumers, careful not to buy unneeded plastic-wrapped gadgets, clothes, and other items. Since so many of our plastic containers and bottles are generated from purchase of toiletries, perhaps more direct communication with the companies themselves would be productive. Should we organize a write-in campaign? Could be a project for another day…. On the macro level, however, progress is being made. After a diving trip in Greece, Boyan Slat, a Dutch high school student, realized that the existing ideas for cleaning up the various giant ocean garbage patches were impractical, relying on nets to filter the plastic, which of course also scooped up too much marine life. Instead of being held back by the magnitude of the problem, he moved forward on developing his own solution - garbage-collecting booms. These are currently in trial runs in the Pacific Ocean and are showing a great deal of promise. Hurray for bold young minds! https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/remember-kid-who-invented-way-clean-ocean-plastic-hes-back-and-its-happening?utm_source=Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1d14c73b2b-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_FRI1012_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcbff2e256-1d14c73b2b-42076945 At the Shoreline Farmers Market a few weeks ago, we came across another ingenious solution: mealworms eating styrofoam! Yes, it turns out that the same critters that you hate to see in your flour bin are voracious consumers of this non-biodegradable plastic which breaks into tiny pieces and is the bane of beach cleanups everywhere. Not only do the worms dispose of styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene, but they turn it into frass, castings that can be used to fertilize your garden. Research is ongoing to determine how this can be applied to the global plastic pollution problem: https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-worms-digest-plastics-092915.html However, all of these innovative approaches, while encouraging, are merely stopgap measures. They address mitigation of problems that we’ve created, but should not be mistaken for permanent remedies. Ultimately, the key is elimination of unsustainable polluting materials like all forms of plastic. In the meantime, reuse (e.g. 3-D printing) and transformation (e.g. mealworms) of existing stockpiles are useful responses. Zero Waste October has brought a higher level of awareness to the Finley household and a greater understanding of the magnitude of the problem as well as how we can contribute more effectively - in our own small ways - to the solution….like inspiring our granddaughter, Liliana, to join her school’s Green Team to pick up trash on the grounds. You never know where the seeds you plant are going to sprout. Don’t forget to vote to continue funding our beloved dump!

Let’s hear it for the Recycle Dogs who wrestle up savings for Lopez residents! Put on your work gloves, ear protection and safety glasses and imagine a whirring buzz of small tools coming alive on a Wednesday morning at the Lopez Dump. Meet a group of 12 volunteers who work diligently in the din, out of the spotlight and provide a heaping pile of recyclable metals out of discarded junk. Our own Lopez Solid Waste Recycle Dogs deconstruct and organize massive volumes of recycled scrap metal, breaking it down into smaller components with much greater value. The Recycle Dogs are a group of volunteers who meet one to two times a month for three-hour sessions. They joke that their work provides both a free work-out and the best kind of anger management as they sledge hammer old washers, dryers, barbecues and lawnmowers. Led by Jim Lombard, former LSWDD Board member, this group of highly skilled volunteers have a well-organized outdoor workspace that helps them accomplish their work efficiently and effectively. Their volunteer efforts help the dump’s bottom line. Over the past 18 months, metals sorted and scrapped by the Recycle Dogs have sold for a remarkable value of roughly $3,500 to recyclers! In this period, they have helped LSWDD recycle nearly 5,000 pounds of metal, ensuring top-dollar receipts for the most valuable metals, including steel, copper, lead, irony brass and aluminum. Metal recycling is also the latest focus of LSWDD’s “Year to Zero Waste Campaign.” Most Lopezians know you can easily recycle aluminum and steel cans in the recycle plaza. Many have seen the beautiful new bins for copper, aluminum and steel, but did you know that you can recycle small appliances and other objects that are 50 percent steel or more? To find out if an appliance has steel in it, apply a magnet. Only metals that are ferrous, or contain iron, will stick to the magnet. To recycle large appliances, like washers and ovens, there is a $22 fee. All appliances that contain freon require a $56 disposal fee, regardless of size, as they require specialized technicians to handle them. On behalf of Lopez, thank you, Recycle Dogs, for all your hard work! If you have questions about metal recycling or becoming a member of the Recycle Dogs team, email info@lopezsolidwaste.org or visit www.lopezsolidwaste.org.

Lopezians, LSWDD is hosting a *free* repair cafe at Grace Hall on Monday, Nov 12 from 1 -4 pm. This is where you can bring in items that need simple repairs in three main categories: appliances, furniture, and textiles/clothes. This event is to help get all those old, beloved items out of the corners of your houses and closets and back into use! If your item needs a replacement part, please get that part and bring it with you. Simple fixes are what we do, not major rebuilds. There are thousands of Repair Cafes happening worldwide. If you want to learn more about the history and the movement, check out www.repaircafe.org If you are interested in volunteering for this event, or future Repair Cafes, contact nikytap@lopezsolidwaste.org

As a household committed to the “Year to Zero” program, we chose October, designated as “Metal Month” to share our experiences. I cannot even guess how often a vehicle gets taken off Lopez to be recycled. Maybe half a dozen times a year? Although I travel fairly frequently on the ferry, I have never seen an end-of-its-life vehicle on board. Maybe most people have been lucky (or unlucky!) enough to have their auto call it quits when they were on the mainland - much easier up there than down here to get it taken away to a salvage yard. However, I have seen vehicles on Island that look as if they could be recycled - and I actually bought one. When I first saw it, if it had been anything less than a “vintage vehicle,” a seventy year old GMC pickup, I would have said that its highest and best use was to become recycled metal. From a recycling viewpoint, there were a couple of hundred dollars worth of steel and the copper/brass radiator was worth maybe another twenty-five dollars. Because the truck was so old, the only hazardous substances were the sulfuric acid and lead in the battery, oils in the differential, transmission and engine. Environmentally, the truck would be a piece of cake to dispose of, compared to modern vehicles with their airbags, plastic components and poisonous mercury trunk and hood switches. But, the truck was not yet destined to be mega-shredded in ten seconds flat into a pile of steel shavings and shipped to an overseas foundry furnace. It was over seventy years old, even in tough shape, I knew it was worth a lot more than junk value and so did its owner. I bought it and began a laborious restoration that would take over two years. Throughout the process, I repaired instead of replaced whatever I could. My project required disposal of unusable metal components, such as the gas tank, brake cylinders and rusted steel. It was easy to recycle these in the steel bin at the dump and to find clean steel (such as bed frames) at “Take It or Leave It” that I could use to weld patches and braces onto fenders and running boards. While Ruthie was volunteering at the dump, she found a new carpeting scrap that was going to be thrown away and it made a perfect floor liner. Lopez Solid Waste District can be thankful it is not responsible for recycling automobiles. It is challenging enough to deal with the ever-increasing solid waste stream. I have discovered some daunting statistics. Auto recycling has become big business, ranked the 16th largest U.S industry and automobiles are the most recycled product. Approximately 86% of a modern car is recyclable with about 14% of it ending up in a landfill. About 12-15 million cars in the U.S. reach the end of their lives and are recycled each year. The combination of planned obsolescence and commonly inaccessible technology has forced nearly all of us to recycle instead of repair. Restoring my old GMC is my way of opposing the “throw-away” mentality. On the Maine Island where I used to live, back in the 60’s and 70’s, I kept many clunkers going as long as there was anything to clunk so that fishermen didn’t have to lay out their hard earned bucks for newer vehicles. But, back then, you could lift up a car hood and recognize the parts. As a “dump dog” I am reminded that America is the most wasteful country in the world and am continually astounded by the amount and quality of items we recycle. For example, I can imagine how quickly everything we throw away would disappear if it were dumped in the Rio de Janiero landfill!. At least some items here get a second chance thanks to “Take It Or Leave It.” It should happen more. Also, as a dump dog, I see a need to reduce our waste stream and I wonder if there might be an opportunity for enterprising individuals to repair and resell many of the bigger items that come in for recycling, such as BBQ’s, washers, dryers, and lawnmowers. I’ve done time-consuming dismantling of many items that had years of life left in them if they were repaired. Anybody interested in a feasibility study? Of course, many things that come to the dump are too far gone, and modern recycling benefits the environment by keeping steel and poisonous substances out of landfills, such as mercury used in switches and sodium azide used in airbags. The disposal problems we Islanders face are daunting, as they can only worsen as the Island’s population increases, but they pale by comparison with what the rest of the nation faces. For example, there is currently no federal legislature in place that mandates or regulates recycling of airbags. With 34 million vehicles needing airbag replacement each year, there is an immediate need for a sustainable method of disposal. Once again, environmental concerns have taken a back seat. Although Ruthie has been an avid recycler since time began, she was not very enthusiastic about my truck project in the beginning. Now that it has become an “Art for Heart” vehicle, a way for her to benefit the community through donating all proceeds from her creations to local non-profit organizations, she’s pretty happy about it. Keep recycling, or better yet, look for ways to get the most life out of anything you can. See you at the dump – look for the green and black ’46 GMC!

ZERO waste. . . not even close! Mind disturbing how much waste two “environmentally conscious” people can produce. We spent Sept 2018 inspecting containers, lids, and all the wrapper things, that contain the things, that contain the things we consume. (Not to mention the array of tools necessary to open the container that contain the things we consume.) In the end we have changed some of our shopping habits, but the bottom line is that there is still way too much trash going out of our house. However, don’t throw us off the island just yet. When it comes to zero waste, we are good at one thing. You might even say we excel at it, and that is REPURPOSING. It is a total headache, (mindless consuming of stuff is way easier) but we have gotten good at repurposing, and more often than not, it lands on the side of “worth the effort’. Our 75% Rule. When we bought our home last summer we set a goal of keeping all “new” (and I use that term VERY loosely) furnishings, improvements, and gardening project at about 75% repurposed materials. In order to do this one becomes intimately related to the world of funk. I Never Promised You a Worm Garden OMG, I think we have the loveliest Red Wiggler Worm Garden on the island. Ron Metcalf got us started with our fist big bunch of worms and now we have 1,000s! Proud moment for city girls. 100% Repurposed Materials: ~ Old tub from TIOLI ~ Wood pallets from Sunset ~ Stepping Stones from deconstruction project on Fisherman Bay Rd ~ Wood for the frame and plywood came from a burn pile. Not sure where the gallon glass jug came from but it catches the worm tea from a tube pressed into the existing drain pipe. Yard Compost with a Touch of Class Notice the Sage Green front trim pieces connected to the pallets. They allow the plywood fronts to slide in and out for easy access and add a sweet bit of class to our yard compost. 100% Repurposed Materials: ~ Wood pallets from Sunset ~ plywood came from a pile of yard waste we helped clean up ~ scrap trim boards came from Liz & Terri’s project of adding a room for Ashwini. A Fun Little Project with a Big Payoff: Home Sweet Home, Making it Our Own We love our home, and given how challenging reasonably priced housing can be on Lopez we’re super grateful to have purchased Dandy Porter and Ernie Clifton’s place down near Hunter Bay. There are some changes we wanted to make and this was the first. The front door put you directly into the living room and then there was this side room we wanted to use as a big comfortable mud room. So out the windows came and in went some fabulous French doors. 90% Repurposed Materials: ~ French doors and window that replaced the old front door both came from a teardown on Portobello Rd. ~ Hardware from Chris Coiley ~ Weather stripping from Will ~ New header and framing 2X4s purchased from Sunset. Kim removing the old windows and our all time favorite house guests Brett and Lannie installing the new window. We live in a beautiful Cedar Forest and seeing the trees from every seat in the living room, kitchen and dining room is divine. This Pull Out Pantry works like a dream. Some of the kitchen cabinets came out so we needed to create some additional storage. 85% Repurposed Materials ~ Repurposed planks of wood ~ elastic cord from old car roof tie down. ~ purchased the wheels, backing and metal shelving strips from Sunset PS. The glasses are from TIOLI and the wine glasses are from my mom. Some Great 100% Repurposed Honorable Mentions 100% Gifted A very well made, perfectly sized island for our kitchen from Dawn (Thank you, thank you!) We’ve added a top with an overhang so people can hang out in the kitchen. We are on the look out for 4 bar stools. Just saying : ) 100% Repurposed It may be hard to see, but our fruit garden is completely covered with a tight mesh that we got from TIOLI. The logs that make up the planter box for the raspberries came from that same deconstruction site on Fisherman Bay Rd. Spotted at TIOLI A well made, solid, massage table still in good condition, that might be useful when Lopez Physical Therapy finds their permanent home. And just so you don’t get discouraged and think change isn’t possible I’d like to point out that until a few years ago, we were two card carrying city girl consumers. The nasty little rumor about America’s gross overconsumption destroying the planet, hadn’t stood a chance against the all clamoring noise of buy, buy, buy. As Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” So we’re thinking we all better be learning really really fast! Blessing on all you already do, and all you will do. Hugs, thanks for reading, Kim and Liz

CAN TWO OLD RECYCLERS BE TAUGHT NEW TRICKS? THE FINLEYS PONDER ZERO WASTE About 25 years ago, a young, enthusiastic UW ecology student interviewed us about our recycling habits for a class project. We gave her an example of how we handled tea bags, sorting the bag into compost, the string into a string ball and the tag and staple into recycling. Maybe a little extreme and even a pain in the neck for recyclers to deal with all this minutia, but it shows our dedication to the practice which goes back decades into our young adult lives. So, when Nikyta announced the Year to Zero Waste (Y2Z) Program, it didn’t seem like such a radical concept to either of us. Obviously, what goes in the trash starts with your choices when you shop. And a real gut-punch is the realization that even recycling is not actually sustainable. It is no longer enough to transfer an item into another form (or ship it somewhere else out of sight like China), but much higher on the resilience spectrum is reuse. When the Lopez dump made the announcement about changes in recycling plastics, the next time we went to Blossom we walked around making an inventory of all the items we would have to replace with ones in reusable containers or refrain from purchasing. Like dairy products in glass, particularly returnable milk and cream bottles. Like choosing single tomatoes rather than the more tasty cherry versions in plastic. Like bringing plastic and paper produce bags to reuse. We’ve started using our Instant Pot (combination pressure cooker/crockpot) to make our own yogurt. Still it isn’t possible yet to eliminate everything. A recent analysis of our two-person household’s trash showed primarily plastic bags, lids and containers from kitchen and toiletry items, waxed paper ice cream boxes, and hard-to-compost items like peanut shells, avocado pits, and meat scraps. Alternatively, the uncompostable food can go into a refuse pile in our forest. But how to get around all this plastic??? We have cut down to what we consider the bare minimum – taking a 32 gallon contractor size garbage bag to the dump every 2-3 months. Can we challenge ourselves to do better?

Our Zero Waste month has proved to be an interesting exercise that has made us reassess our buying choices and has sparked a number of conversations about the inherent waste issues in our grocery system. During the course of a typical month we typically generate a comparatively small quantity of garbage, and this month was no exception. During the month of September we produced a single small kitchen bag for our two-person household. While this is certainly something we could work on reducing, there are a number of things that are either not cost efficient to purchase in alternative packaging and items that are simply not available in alternative packaging. One example of non-cost effective packaging is yogurt. While yogurt is available in glass containers, it is a fair margin more expensive than its plastic-clad counterparts. This may be a small sacrifice for some, but for others it is an unjustifiable expense that prevents them from making a more environmentally-friendly choice. Another example we found was tortilla chips. It is nearly impossible to find a bag of tortilla chips that does not produce at least a small quantity of waste. Short of making your own at home or simply not buying them, there is simply no way around this waste. Though we try our best to reduce waste by using Mason jars instead of plastic tupperware and using homemade, crocheted produce bags instead of plastic ones, we are setting a goal of using zero plastic wrap. We’ve invested in waxed cotton wraps to use on tricky items. Hopefully this will help us keep our food fresh in a more eco-friendly manner. Another point of discussion we had throughout the month was the idea of reusing, repurposing and revitalizing items. We are both passionate about working with our hands and bringing new life to things that would have otherwise fallen into further disrepair or simply been thrown away. Just this month we have reinforced aging jeans, installed new foam in decaying speakers and upcycled old fabrics into useful items. Not only does this reduce our collective impact on the environment, but it creates a stronger connection with those items that we utilize throughout our day. Repaired jeans hold a personal touch, and speakers that you’ve spent hours repairing sound all the more sweet. While this clearly isn’t something that we can do in all cases, breathing new life into old objects is just one small way we can keep things out of our landfills and make the world a bit greener for generations to come.

Starting Friday, September 21, LSWDD will be open from 11 am - 3 pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for all services. We will not be open on Mondays.

The cost of recycling printers has skyrocketed to roughly $16 a printer, without any guarantee that full recycling of the printer is actually taking place. Rather than pay high fees for a product likely to end up in the landfill, old printers will no longer be accepted as recycling at LSWDD. Printers are unfortunately a “non-program” item that the state’s E-Waste subsidies do not cover. LSWDD is encouraging customers with printers to recycle these by sending them back to the manufacturer or by taking advantage of printer and ink recycling programs at box stores near the I-5 corridor. Customers are encouraged to check out Staples, Office Depot, and Best Buy. Hewlett Packard (HP) takes back nearly all of their products back for free as a part of their consumer buyback and recycle programs. LSWDD tested out HP’s system and found its directions clear and easy. Placing your machine in a box and shipping it off is the best way to recycle your printer for free To Recycle Printers through HP’s “Consumer Buyback and Planet Partners Recycling Program” go to https://hphho.tradeups.com/Customers/51/GetQuote.aspx. Enter your product name and number and a quote will be generated for you. Create a customer profile. In 24 hours, you will be sent a confirmation and a shipping label for to you print to return your HP Product free of charge. On Lopez, you may call FED Ex for a free home pick up: 1.800.463.3339 or https://smallbusiness.fedex.com/manage-pickup.html. Simply put your printer in a shipping box, (available at the Dump!), affix the label and leave it for FED Ex pick up. Once your printer has been received, you will receive a confirmation email. Staples box stores also participate in printer recycling programs and will accept other brands of printers besides HP. The closest Staples is located at 105 Mall Way, Marysville, WA 98270. Currently, Office Depot stores will give you $2 for each printer cartridge you return to their stores up to $20 in store credit. Although this takes a little more effort, recycling this way puts more responsibility on the manufacturers and saves you money.

LSWDD’s ReMake Lab has the honor to be presenting at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle on September 22 and 23 as part of their thematic weekend called “Evolving Cities”. We will be joining architects, city planners, emergency responders and others in an on-going weekend of stage presentations and exhibitions. The discussion centers on the future of cities and human populated areas. We will be presenting a stage show to showcase LSWDD and the out efforts to divert plastics from the waste and recycling stream in our ReMake Lab. We will also have a hands-on activity at our Exhibition Booth called “Captain Fantastic’s Recycled Plastic” and has participant groups of people (ages 5 and up) that will trace the possible life cycle outcomes of single use plastics from landfill to the full path of recycling, to remaking and ending in reuse. It is a fun and engaging, play based activity and we will be giving away prizes. We will also have our ReMake Lab shredder on site for folks to try shredding a plastic water bottle or two. In the end, we will show how reuse beats recycling or remaking and many participants will end up with free reusable water bottle. For more information : https://www.pacificsciencecenter.org/curiosity-days/

“Time spent with cats is never wasted.” -Sigmund Freud This dubiously attributed quotation belongs to a refrigerator magnet in my home. Though I often delight in its ridiculousness and spare truth, the past month has increasingly revealed the beguiling power of its reaching implications. What is waste? In July I participated in Lopez Island Solid Waste’s “Year to Zero Challenge”, attempting to reduce my trash to, theoretically, zero for one month. In preparation I toured our recycling facility, greatly increasing my knowledge of what exactly can be recycled (more than you think). But when almost everything can be recycled or composted, repurposed and reused… the rest remains. And the rest is trash. And the rest is not insignificant. My struggle against this reality, for one month, resulted in the following revelations. The first, and essential, shift was an increased awareness of the ubiquity of plastics in our world. This was a matter of simply tuning into it and beginning to see what had been there all along. Next came the internal bargaining process: which of my habits I was willing to change based on an assessment of their practicality and longevity; cost to me in time and resources; and impact? This was the comic calculus of the performance, and ran the gamut from googling “can you compost tampons?” (possible, but yuck) to agonizing over whether or not to stop eating cheese (no, sorry not sorry). The particulars of this process have been well documented by others who have taken part in this challenge, so I won’t linger. The upshot is that the experience of attempting to produce zero trash-waste is enlightening enough to permanently impact buying practices. Make no mistake, trash-waste is almost entirely about buying practices. This was my second revelation: trash first enters our lives, almost exclusively, by way of the items we purchase, and the choices we make around what to use and possess. I came to see the world through trash-glasses; “I want/need ____, but I also have to buy the trash it is wrapped in, the trash it will be shipped to me in.” Every item became inseparable in my mind from the future-trash to which it was forever bound. Once I choose to own it, that trash belongs to me as well, for all time. I essentially purchase immortality in a plot of landfill somewhere, as well as that landfill’s ecological effects. I marry that trash. I adopt it as my legacy. Taking this view to heart had the greatest impact upon my personal shopping decisions, from the foods I chose to eat to the all-cotton (compostable) futon I chose to sleep on. Some decisions made me feel good about myself, but increasingly an inescapable and more sinister culpability began to haunt. The most troubling revelation came as my month wore on, in three satori-like flashes involving the purchase of a simple household fixture, a trip to Costco to grocery shop for my family reunion, and a volunteer shift at our very own Lopez Island “Take It or Leave It”. Even if I go to extreme lengths to minimize my own individual waste, even if we all do, the fact is we live within an economic/cultural/political system the body of which is pumped to life by the blood of moving goods, far across seas. An inconceivably vast and complex system, centuries in the making, which relies upon the consumption of and the moving around of “future-trash”. Setting aside all judgement, this system is entrained with our livelihoods, bound to our psychological conceptions of identity. It is as consequential as the physical infrastructure all around us, connecting continents, reaching to space. No matter what I do, I cannot escape this system. None of us can. The implications of this realization for trash reduction are demoralizing. I continue to ponder my future role; in action, in responsibility, in acquiescence, in grief, in forgiveness. And so I return to my refrigerator magnet musings... What is waste? Waste is more than an “unwanted byproduct”, as defined by the dictionary. Waste is a potential and implicit quality-state residing in all things, material and otherwise. Waste is not in the thing alone, though. It must by catalyzed. Waste is in the action which activates the potential, or fails to do so. Waste is born when the intrinsic value of something is not utilized. Anything, therefore, can be wasted, or not wasted, depending upon how it is used, but first by how it is seen. A banana peel can be wasted if its nutrients are not used to help other plants grow. A fishing reel from 1950 can be tossed in the trash, or it can be repaired and used for many more years. A moment can be wasted if it is not experienced to its fullest. Time can be wasted. An opportunity can be wasted. An education can be wasted. A life can be wasted. It is all in the approach and the follow-through. The alchemy is in a state of mind. It is in the long-game. And it is utterly arguable and subjective. Whether as insignificant cogs in the machine of modern industry, or as omnipotent titans of that industry, each of us choose, wittingly or otherwise, to affect all that touches us at the place where we intersect with the machinery. But we can only truly make choices regarding that of which we are first aware. I invite you to consider that our trash has something paramount to teach us. Strive not to waste. Waste not your money, or your love. Draw out the value that lives in every single thing. Seek that value, always. Waste not your power. Let not your agency be buried, married to that plot of landfill, your legacy for all time. Don’t settle for tossing things aside. Let the story your trash tells about you be one you are proud of.

Amy Studzienko, July 22nd, 2018 Want my advice on how to avoid trash? It’s actually fairly straightforward. Don’t buy it. Nearly ALL my trash this month was purchased. My gallon jar tells a story of trash topped coffee; trash glued to other trash for the purpose of a going “bloop” at the cash register; and big poofy trash delicately accompanying my Amazon purchases across the globe. Some trash sneaked casually into otherwise neutral purchases. Tubes, neon yellow, who spent a fraction of their lives serving the grand purpose of transporting a few fluid ounces two inches north into various pie holes. I didn’t ask for you, but here we are; now you’re mine. I own you. I am taking accountability. You came home with me June 30th. I cleaned my car July 1st. I didn’t even drink cocoa, I reasoned, staring at my pristine one gallon jar, sitting next to Jessica’s also pristine jar. It’s not really my trash. Taking the high road, I deposited the plastic tops and lids into their new habitat, where they’ve lived the last 22 days. Since then their ecosystem has developed. Labels off wine bottles, a lemon squeezy, and a rainbow of lids who used to belong with glass or #1PDE clear with neck plastic bottles, who were carefully selected, lovingly used, delicately washed and have now gone on to serve a higher purpose. They seem pretty happy as they look out at me from their terrarium community of various polymers. The exact same as they did 22 days ago, and the exact same as they will 22 days, months, years, and decades from now. The jar is my big, little living room window into a landfill: a colorful, dark place frozen in time. Here is a peek at a what’s known in geometry as a ray. A narrative. A one-way, irreversible, permanent formula. Crap goes in. Crap sits. The end. That’s it. Finito. Or more like Indefinito. No kaleidoscope of microorganisms to break it down. No nutrient return. No miracle-cycle which includes special effects such as lightning depositing bits of plant food from the air into soil. No, the other miracle, that of human ingenuity, which forged these non-latex gloves stops with their single use, and fails to give them continuing purpose- unlike every. single. iota. of. our. natural. world. Maybe my great, great, grand babies will figure out what to do with the hundred or so gloves I discard every year- seeing as the pile will still be here in flossin’ their equally brilliant purple, stretchy selves to meet my unfortunate kin. The human miracle here is if all my waste stays put, and OUT of our natural cycles. A lot of trash, we can simply not buy. I saved a boatload this month avoiding to-go food and BS from the mainland, internet, or grocery store. I only sort of missed my chips, cheese and kalamata olives with their lids who live forever. Similar to my “Eat Local Challenge,” it is a trying moment such as this where I most appreciate Barn Owl bread, Goosefoot produce, and Sunnyfield cheese for filling my stomach without filling my jar. And of course some props to my own garden. It’s no coincidence we ended up doing this in July. I ate well this month. Inherently, if it comes in sustainable packaging, in bulk, or in a shelf stable pile: it is fresh. It is healthy. It will likely need to be cooked. So I’ve been cooking, which is GREAT. That is, it’s great in July, while I’m not simultaneously grading papers, responding to emails, setting up field trips, going to meetings and preaching sustainability to little ones. While I’m saving $ and eating well, living “0 Waste” is hard. Partially it takes more time, but also there’s a lot of “other people’s crap” to navigate. It’s hard in that it is unavoidable. Three hot cocoa’s left in my car (after three amazing young activists spent three merciless hours in the rain). My six foot deer fencing which came wrapped in two pounds of garbage. The very first day of my challenge I helped a friend with a dump run, and took an entire truckload to rest. Just like 100 other truckloads, every Friday- Monday from 10:00 to 2:00. Just like 100 other bubble-wrapped set of cat collars which travelled 10,000 miles across nations, oceans and continents to wind up lookin’ so fly on my KiKiMeowMeows. It’s easy to point a finger at Amazon, at BigCorp Incorporated. It’s just as easy to bring rinsed out yogurt containers to Blossom. My silly grocery hacks may look adorable in the face of the mammoth mechanism of our industrialized, prepackaged, bubble wrapped world, but you know darn well I’m going to keep doing them. But seriously, perhaps folks want less stream of conscious, and more practical advice. Here you have it, some helpful tips for O Waste living. More receptacles- Good for you for having compost and recycling vessels in your kitchen, alongside the trash. I realized that I was un-stoked to carry my paper towels from the KiKiMeowMeow room, my Qtips from the bathroom, and my pocket’o’receipts from the bedroom to the hub upstairs. Often non-trash items were ending up in the can b/c lazy. Now we have more recycling and compost around the house. I especially advise bathroom compost. Shopping vessel kit- I was inspired by my home girl, Libby. She has her jars, bags, twisties and whatnot live in her car, so she’s never caught in a grocery aisle, moral dilemma. Then you can feel all proud and fancy as you crouch in bulk section of Blossom and fill your jars with deliciously crunchy granola, ya hippie. Garden- Not only do you get to eat fresh, unpackaged food, this is a “waste” loving zone. You can mulch with paper/cardboard. And of course you can make use of food waste and clean carbon in your compost. Compost- ok I know I just mentioned compost, but it really deserves its own category. So compost goes beyond just your veggies. I put in everything “natural”. Qtips, newspaper, coffee filters, tea bags, egg cartons, tissues and even some fabric. Your pile probably wants more carbon, more loft. (Your pile probably DOESN’T want “compostable” keurig cups, utensils, cups, to go containers, etc. To me this is the biggest green marketing scam ever. Being cellulose based does not mean I want it in my garden, and as I’ve discovered, it also does not mean it breaks down in a reasonable amount of time. And most likely folks just trash the stuff anyhow.) So, want my advice on how to avoid trash? It’s actually fairly straightforward. Don’t buy it.