I Miss My Garbage Man

 

 

We moved to the country 7 months ago. It was, without a doubt, the best thing we’ve done for our family with all the space, the trees, the view, it’s soul filling. However much we’ve gained for doing the big move, we’ve also had to give up some of the comfort and conveniences of city living. Being able to walk to the corner store for milk, sending the kids to the neighbours to borrow a cup of sugar, street lit sidewalks for after dark running. All things I miss but have gladly given up.

The biggest shock is how much I miss my garbage man.

He would show up every week and take away my full bins leaving me guilt free for another week believing that I was doing the environment a favour simply by sorting my recyclables and washing my tin cans out. Boy, was I wrong.

Living outside of the city, we’re no longer a part of the weekly pick ups. We have the option of paying a private company to collect our waste and recycling but with the added expense of doing maintenance around the property, this just isn’t an option.

The solution?

The SC Johnson Zero Waste Challenge

SC Johnson strongly believes that small changes in your home and community can make a big difference, and is dedicated to helping Canadians make those changes. They’ve created this challenge for all families to work at minimizing their waste, daily.

 

 

I am challenging myself and my family to work to get us as close to zero waste as we can. I know it won’t be easy, I don’t even know if it will be possible but we have to try.

The State of  things!

Presently, I keep a big red storage bin in the kitchen to collect all the recyclables. It’s about half the size of a curb side pick up bin and is a constant visual reminder of how much we consume. The recycling is my responsibility to take to the community bins inside the city limits (open the the public). Hubby takes care of all the garbage disposal, seems like a blue job to me, non? I’d say at this point we’re sending out an average of 2 kitchen bags of garbage every week.

The Plan!

1. Identify where the majority of our waste is coming from.
2. Make better choices when I buy products at the grocery store to minimize waste.
3. Repurpose or re-home items that we no longer need or use.

The Goals!

1. Reduce our output of kitchen garbage from 2 (white) garbage bags every 7 days to 2 (white) garbage bags every 10 days. Putting less garbage into the can means emptying our kitchen garbage can 3 days later will reduce our output of garbage bags from 104 annually to 73 annually!
2. Find ways to compost, burn or use our acreage waste like grass, branches and leaves. Mowing our lawn produces 6 bags of cuttings every 2 weeks in the summer. Nature takes care of forest waste seasonally, why can’t we? Our goal is zero bags!
3. Buy less, cook more. I cook every single day for my family of 6 but I confess that I look for ways to short cut using “convenience” products that ironically are an inconvenience to the landfill. 3 out of 7 dinners a week include a product that I could easily make from scratch to avoid extra costs and waste. Lets reduce that to 1 out of 7 🙂 because everyone needs a pizza every now and then.

What could you do to reduce your families waste? Will you join the SC Johnson Zero Waste Challenge?

Check back with me next month for an update on how my challenge is going and if we’ve reached any of our goals.

Wish me luck and then pass it on to someone else, see, we’re recycling already!

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“Disclosure: I am part of the PTPA Brand Ambassador Program with SC Johnson and I received compensation as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.”