Hello, friends! This week's #KISS blog prompt is: "What are some of your regular practices for achieving harmony in minimalism for an environmentally friendly lifestyle?"
And what this made me think of was, producing less waste.
My aesthetic isn't minimalism, but I'd say my lifestyle is. I don't buy much, and I don't produce much waste. I don't say I'm ZERO waste, because no one really is, but I am low waste. The majority of my trash-trash, that is, what goes to landfill - is scooping the kitty litter box. For recycling, I produce about one cloth shopping bag full of recycling per week. I try to minimize plastic there, but I am not completely plastic-free. I can only hope that what little plastic I put in the bin actually gets recycled.
I compost on my balcony, so food scraps and houseplant pruning and matchsticks and whatever else goes there.
I buy products made from recycled materials as much as I can, so for instance my toilet paper is recycled paper, as are paper towels, and tissues. I use cloth handkerchiefs some of the time, too. A roll of paper towels lasts me several months, and I always wondered what people were doing to run through them so quickly, and then just recently I saw a video of this guy from the US who had moved to the Netherlands and the topic was "things that are different in the Netherlands compared to the US" and one of his examples was that they don't use paper towels to do the dishes and dry their hands. ARE PEOPLE USING PAPER TOWELS TO DO THE DISHES AND DRY THEIR HANDS??????? IN THEIR HOUSE?????? Paper towels in a public restroom, sure. But in your house?!?!?!?!
...I digress. People confuse me.
Anyway, recently I have been considering my trash and recycling station setup under the sink in the cupboard:
So on the left you see the cloth bag I collect recycling in, inside the outer metal part of my trash can (it's a step trash can that I used to keep out from under the cupboard, but I took it apart and took the lid off to fit it under the cupboard in this apartment). On the right, in the black plastic inner part of that same trash can, is the actual trash, with a small size trash bag in it.
I usually use packaging as my trash bags, especially since I scoop kitty litter most every day, but I run out of packaging to use, so I keep small size trash bags on hand like this:
If I were to put the kitty litter in that white bag every day, I'd probably fill it in about a week with litter scoops, but in practice a) I think it would tear open with that much weight in it but more importantly b) I throw it out sooner than that because of the smell. So my usual practice is, when I have little bag like from cereal or something to use, I use that for the daily litter scoop and keep the "big" trash bag in the can for what little other trash happens until I really don't have any other bags to use for litter scooping. Even then, I'll scoop into it for a couple of days to try not to waste it, but on the second day it starts to stink up the kitchen and I take it out. So usually, it isn't full when I take it to the trash chute, but it's the smallest size trash bag they sell (I used to be able to nab some store bags from my mother using them, since I use cloth - but now that stores charge for those, she's finally using cloth too. These trash bags are about the same size as a store plastic bag, though).
So I was thinking, I need a smaller trash bag than the smallest trash bag.
And then it dawned on me!
Puppy poop bags exist! LOL
I actually have this roll that was sent as a freebie with some other pet stuff I ordered once? I'm not sure why as I don't have a dog so I wasn't ordering dog stuff, it would have been cat or fish stuff. But I was like, huh, alright, I'll use them for litter scooping. But they could be my trash bags, too. They'd be too small to fit in the trash can without falling over, but I can put the big black can back inside the metal part and then use an old whey protein bucket for the trash-trash, which should fit one of these bags just fine. And then I won't be wasting so much plastic bag throwing out the too-big bags before they're full. Plus, I found a brand of puppy poop bags that are made of 100% recycled plastic, at least some of which is recovered ocean plastic, so I wouldn't be buying virgin plastic bags, either, which is much better as well.
So once I finish up this box of "small" trash bags, I will change my setup under the counter. It will be nice to have less space taken up by trash as well, especially since I don't really need it.
I am under no delusions that I am saving the planet with each little ounce less of trash or plastic that I use, but it gives me a little peace to do my best to cause as little harm as possible. It also gives me peace for my home to not be taken up with the waste of a disposable lifestyle.
Everyone has their own issues in life, their own busyness, their own priorities, their own difficulties, so I'm not sitting in judgement here, but it does make me sad when I see my neighbors throwing out giant bags of trash on the regular (and I do see it, because the trash chute is right outside my door, so I hear them prying the door out of it's normal holder to open it wider than designed so they can sit there stuffing their too-big bags that otherwise don't fit in the door down the chute. You ever see someone pack a suitcase too full? It looks like that, lol). This apartment building was built in the 80s and you can definitely see the difference in norms since then. The chute is designed for singletons and couples (all the apartments are one bedrooms so we rarely have kids in this building, but we've had a few) trash norms of the 1980s. I was a kid in the 80s and I remember the metal trash cans that were about hip-height that people in houses would take to the curb once a week. These days the norm are those giant wheeled plastic bins, and often they are overflowing. PLUS the same size recycle bin, and in Denver, houses have compost bins from the city, too. This year, the city made a new rule that recycling and compost are free but you have to pay for trash pickup (trash pickup used to be free for houses), and people were LoSiNg ThEiR mInDs about it. You can get the smallest size trash bin (the size of the 1980s metal bins) for less money, and there are programs to help the poorest folks who can't afford any bill at all. But even so, the rich people in their big houses just wanted to continue to throw everything away in absurd amounts for free. Instead of seeing it as a challenge to lessen how much trash they produce, they complained. And it made me sad.
Maybe they could try not using paper towels to wash their dishes. 😩
