How Disposable Is Your Life?

Today is the practice Day! To prepare for Zero Waste Day coming up in just one week we are having a practice day. I will be tracking EVERYTHING that I throw away today (see below) and then asking for help from you all as to how I eliminate those items so that I can go one whole day without any trash. Any questions you may have about waste, recycling, how to reduce waste, habits that are wasteful, ANYTHING please leave them in the comments. The Zero Waste Home will be answering our questions right here on my little blog on Saturday! So ask away!

And if you are having a practice day too please link up below so we can all hop around and show each other support and read how we all did! If you don't have a blog but are participating please feel free to leave your facebook page or twitter page in the comments too so we can find you and see how you did.

So here goes my list of trash for today -

1. Sam's pull up! She takes it off and throws it away before she even sees me most morning so I had completely forgotten about this one! Do they make cloth training pants?
2. Small silver film, cover thing on a new bottle of hand soap. Not recyclable. How do you avoid this one?
3. Husband called to inform me that he threw away a restuarant styrofoam carry out container this morning. Packed his lunch today with leftovers from dinner last night. Do you take your own containers to the restuarants with you to avoid the styrofoam?
4. One "Three Musketeers" candy bar wrapper.
5. Two packages (the empty wrappers!) of white-chocolate chips. Darn birthday treats for Sam's school tomorrow.
6. Dryer lint. I have NO idea how you would go about not throwing away dryer lint. Can it be composted?
7. Two foot long section of wax paper; used to lay the chocolate cover pretzels on for decoarting and then to let them dry.
8. Packaging from our tool shed; three plastic bags.
9. Foil film from the top of a yogurt container.
10. Plastic wrapping around my husband's new golf clubs (two clubs); golf season has begun!
11. Paper/foil seal from new peanut butter container.

Okay, I think this is the list from our whole day. 11 things. Had to open three new items in the kitchen today; yogurt, peanut butter and hand soap. All three had some type of packaging I could not recycle or reuse. Frustrating. Also we opened the new tool shed and a few new golf clubs tonight. Annoying that they both also had plastic packaging that could not be recycled. I have questions about these things for the Zero Waste Home. I am also curious about some of the things that I noticed in our home that didn't run out today but would have lead to some serious waste had they run out. 

Please leave your questions about waste reduction, leading a zero waste life, or anything else that you would like to know from the zero waste home in the comments section!

Hope you will join me today to examine the amount of trash we throw away in one day.

Comments

[butterfly wishes and wonderland dreams]

I used cloth training pants and the covers from the cloth diapers. I just used Gerber's thick training pants. You can get them at target and stuff they worked fine for us.

I'm doing a post tonight of our trash will there be a linky?

I posted a question for the zero waste home on facebook but had another one:

I love their meal plan days and was wondering does having this in place not only cut trash but cost too?

[butterfly wishes and wonderland dreams]

ignore my is there going to be a linky I see it now :)

[Angela]

I also use the cloth Gerber pants. Sometimes you may have to order them online. Stores don't carry them that much.
You know I think people do sometimes just bring their own containers ti restaurants, but I wonder if that may be against the law.
This is wonderful what you are doing!

[Cheryl]

Our recycling facility has improved leaps and bounds in the last few years. They've recently added food waste and even more types of plastics. The only things that go into the black bin for landfill is some plastics.

I used cloth nappies and pull ups for my children. The pull ups were not much of a success, but the children were dry very quickly, so it wasn't an issue.

I remember reading that you could compost tumble dryer lint, which we do. Must depend on what your clothes are made from. Also read that it could be used as fire lighters, but we had little luck with that.

We try to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as we can.

[Angee]

I haven't heard of zero waste day but now I'm intrigued. I'm always up for a good challenge. You can compost dryer lint. New follower from Green Mama bog hop. http://haveahappygreenday.blogspot.com/

[Darlene]

Joining from the blog hop!

[Lisa @Retro Housewife Goes Green]

I try and remember to take my own containers to restaurants. I just wrote about it even- http://www.goodblogs.com/view-post/Being-Green-Away-From-Home

[butterfly wishes and wonderland dreams]

I linked up it was a somewhat success I didn't throw away tons but I threw away some bad stuff like Styrofoam and stuff.

I think it is against sanitary laws to bring your own containers. Now I've had them in my bag (just happened to be empty) and I just emptied my youngest chicken tenders in it and that is ok I was told by the waitress but they can't take it back (or so she said)

[Jennie]

They do make cloth training pants. You can see some online here http://www.jilliansdrawers.com/products/clothdiapers/trainingpants. Some are plastic coated, and some are not. We are not there yet in our family, so I don't have a recommendation about which to choose. Cloth training pants are supposed to help potty training go faster because they don't wick away urine. We have a couple for when our 2 year old is ready...but he's not ready yet.

Regarding unrecyclable waste...is there any way to use those silver tops for crafts? Color pictures on them or cut into star and glue for cards maybe?

And here is a way to use dryer lint when/if you go camping. http://www.instructables.com/id/Waterproof-Dryer-Lint-Fire-Starter/

[Gina]

I asked a lot of questions yesterday at work and happily found that so many things that I initially thought were non-recyclable can be tossed in our recycle bins (Hello, Styrofoam!). This made my day!