My Magical JourneyCreating a fabulously fantastic life!

I am lucky enough to live in a town where recycling is very easy.  We have single-stream recycling, which means we don’t even have to separate the recyclable materials.  Up until about a week ago, when Mark and I watched the documentary No Impact Man (which is also available on NetFlix), I thought it was great that most of our waste went into the recycling bin.  However, now I realize that the idea is to minimize or stop creating any waste, whether it is recyclable or not.  This is due to several reasons:

• It still takes a lot of energy to recycle materials
• Much of recycling is “downcycling“, meaning that the materials degrade in value and usability each time they are recycled.
• Even if we do recycle, a lot of energy is used to create the product that we are now recycling.

What we need to focus on is how to make more products that are meant to be reused, that are built well, rather than how we can make something cheaply, use it once, and throw it away.

Now I look around and realize all the waste we are creating and try to figure out how to live more sustainably.  Here are a few of the things we’ve thought of/done so far:

• Made homemade detergent.  This saves on packaging, shipping costs, harmful chemicals, and the 3 ingredients used to make it last a LONG time.  The reason we’re reducing costs to ship (which means carbon emitted during the shipping process, along with gas and oil usage) is because our old detergent was in liquid form, which is much heavier than the powder products we used to create our detergent.  Also, instead of plastic, the ingredients in our detergent are packaged in recyclable cardboard.  We use the same container to make additional batches of detergent, rather than buying and recycling a new, large, plastic container every time we buy new detergent.
• Using fabric instead of paper napkins.  Trees are cut down to create all the paper products we use and waste every day – toilet paper, paper napkins, paper towels, paper plates, etc.  Now we use fabric napkins, rags to clean with instead of paper towels or disposable disinfectant wipes, and we use real dishes instead of paper or plastic ones. No Impact Man even had a great idea for when going to restaurants.  He suggests bringing your own fabric napkins, asking them to take back the paper products on the table, and bringing your own to-go boxes that are reusable.  I think these are fabulous ideas!  Mark and I talked about keeping fabric napkins in the car.  I’ve also read about using fabric handkerchiefs instead of tissues.  As for toilet paper, Mark and I are talking about what our next steps are to make that more eco-friendly.  Some people use cloths for toilet paper.  Check out this hilarious post about that subject.
• Instead of using tinfoil, plastic wrap, or plastic bags, storing food in reusable containers.
• Buying fresh fruits and vegetables instead of packaged products.  We’ve been doing this for awhile, but haven’t figured out a way to not use the plastic bags at the store to bag individual fruit/veg.  We already bring our cloth bags to take our food home in, but the other plastic bags really bother me.  I’m wondering if this will be solved when we visit a farmer’s market.  Even though places we shop have bulk bins, I’m concerned about putting those items in the plastic bags they offer too.  Everything is measured by weight there, so if I bring my own containers, it will throw off the scale.  Hmm…if anyone has suggestions, please let me know.  I’ve seen mesh bags you can buy, but then that’s another product we’re buying.  The jury is still out on this one.
• Making real food at home, rather than getting take-out or fast food.  This is something we’ve been doing for several years.  Mark said before we moved in together, he had loads more trash than he does now just from the to-go containers.  Now, apart from being healthier, we have fun making our meals together.  One thing we do to make things quicker is to cut and wash some of the vegetables when we get home from the store so they are ready to cook with at a moment’s notice.  We started this when we realized that we would only eat the lettuce we bought if it was already washed and cut when we wanted a salad.  Otherwise, we would choose something else to eat.  Our salad spinner is my favorite kitchen tool.  We use it to wash salad, grapes, beans, etc.
• Buying furniture and other items that are built well and last, rather than things made to be thrown away in a few years.  So many items are made to be thrown away, and that contributes to landfill waste.  We realized that trash never goes away.  On the documentary, we saw a landfill in New York that was near where people were living.  Just the number of trucks driving the waste to the landfill created so much pollution, the air was cloudy.  A larger percentage of children in the schools nearby had asthma than in schools not near a landfill, and there are countless other effects on the community because of the incredible amounts of waste we are creating.  Plus, the idea of putting trash into the Earth, a vital living energy, feels so wrong to me.  When Mark and I needed furniture for our apartment, we went to Craig’s List.  It was such a cool experience!  We were able to meet with the families, make new friends, and now we have stories to go along with our new-to-us furniture.  Not to mention it was SO cost-effective.

There are so many other things, but I’ll save those for another post.  Now that my eyes are open to the disposable culture we live in, I see it everywhere!  There are so many ways I want to reduce my consumption of *stuff* while still living a wonderful life.  I think that’s the big misconception – that making these kinds of changes equals a less fulfilling life.  That’s what advertisers teach us to think, but I find that all of the changes we make actually make me feel more joyful!  I’ve learned how to make peanut butter from scratch (which will hopefully turn out better than my vegan brownie experiment), feel extra wonderful when I do laundry with my homemade detergent (anything that makes doing laundry more fun is great), and so many other things.  Plus, these are changes Mark and I are experimenting with together, which makes them extra special.  The green life is the good life, for our family and the planet.