We need to talk about trash.

There have been some important stories about trash in the news lately that are weighing on my mind, and yet they seem to be going unnoticed.

If every grocery store looked like GoodFor in Aukland, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The biggest is that China is no longer taking our trash. Before the new policy went into effect on January 1, 2018, China recycled about half of the entire world’s paper and plastics. Now they are refusing to take on our dirty business due to environmental damage, poor quality of the materials we send, and hazardous waste and trash that’s mixed in and bring down the value of the recyclables. Countries including England, Ireland, Germany, and Canada are already reporting a buildup of plastic recyclables according to the article in the New York Times.

As more plastics and paper products build up in cities and ports around the world, the article reports that many are looking to export their waste to other countries like India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. But what are these countries going to do with this overflow of trash? Without proper recycling facilities and a capacity to actually process the massive surge, these countries will be inundated with our castoffs and left with the same problems that has left China reeling.

Sure, it feels like you’re doing the right thing by recycling – and yes it’s better than throwing things straight into the trash – but this is yet another (7.3 million ton) reminder that recycling is not enough. So what is?

We, as an entire global community, need to make less trash. It starts at home, but we also need to hold companies accountable for the packaging they use and demand better options.

For more of what you can do to reduce your waste right now, go here.

It’s been a full year. A full 356 days of standing up for what I believe in, fighting for what’s right, and bracing myself for the next New York Times notification.

Many of the things below are not necessarily new to my life – some have been around for at least a decade – but they have taken on new meaning to me. Here’s a fairly exhaustive list of what I’ve been doing to resist (in no particular order).

1. Reading

Books are powerful. Written language carries weight and meaning beyond the letters on the page. There’s a reason the current administration doesn’t want anyone reading newspapers or getting their right to free education.

Newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books illuminate other perspectives and immerse you in someone else’s experience for a brief moment. They add context and gravity to the things happening around us and help us better understand the real stakes. While I think any reading can be an act of resistance (and self-care!), here are a few of the books I read in the past year that fired me up or gave me much needed understanding:

• No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need
• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
• Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
• Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do about It
• Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
• Hope in the Dark
• We Were Eight Years in Power

The first two are must-reads.

2. Supporting Real News

It’s vital to support valuable sources of truth with money. I have a NYTimes subscription, but just remembering to turn off my ad blocker and spending more time with their content can make a difference for newspapers and journalists.

3. Riding My Bike

Every time I pick up my helmet instead of my car keys, I’m giving this repulsive administration a massive middle finger. Oil money has bought them off, and I refuse to put any back in their pockets. Instead I make every effort to ride my bike and pay for public transit. Each time I buy a ticket for the local train I am voting with my dollars and insisting that we need more funding and investment in our shared resources and sustainable transit. Riding my bike improves my community’s air quality, reduces traffic and road congestion, (hopefully) inspires other people to bike, and makes it safer for everyone. It also makes me really happy.

Who knew riding could feel so damn satisfying.

4. Calling My Representatives

I am lucky to live in a state/region that has politicians who are fighting for equality and justice. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need to hear from the people who support them. Actually calling makes me nauseous (and I totally cried once while talking to a staffer about health care and how much the Affordable Care Act has helped me), but I always feel better when I do.

5. Eating My Values

I’ve been vegetarian for more than a decade. This year we’ve made an even bigger push to eat local foods by skipping the grocery store and getting our produce at our farmers’ market instead. Our veggies are from fields around the area and our money goes straight to the farmers instead of filtering through Amazon’s pockets. I refuse to give Monsanto or other massive agro-companies my money. We buy organic to protect our local environment, the workers, and ourselves. We’ve also been paying attention to foods with big carbon or water footprints and trying to eat them less.

6. Working Toward Zero Waste

In general packaged foods don’t fit my values or come from companies I feel good supporting. Even more so, I can’t stand the idea of sending chip bags and granola bar wrappers to a landfill where they will either end up in the ocean or be buried in other plastic junk longer than I will be alive.

Reducing our trash has pushed us to support local business and farmers, discover new resources around us, reuse what we already have in different ways, and slowly cut down on our environmental impact. (You can see more about the changes we’ve made here.)

7. Refusing to Support Companies Who Support Hatred, Racism, and Sexism

A simple Chrome extension let’s me know when companies support the current administration. Before I purchase anything I do a quick search to make sure that the company ethically produces their goods, has sustainability practices, and aren’t in favor of the current regime. (Here’s a good list to get you started, compilations of dirty donors, or dive into the ultimate list of people and companies to boycott.

8. Keeping an Ethical Wardrobe

Creating an ethical wardrobe is about more than just buying from ethical retailers. Instead I have been taking good care of the clothes I already own. I have refused to buy from companies who don’t use sustainable materials and practices, don’t treat their workers fairly, and don’t pay fair prices for their raw materials. For much of the year, I just didn’t shop at all. When I did need something, I checked for used options first.

9. Reducing Online Shopping

 10. Supporting Independent, Ethical, Environmental Business

11. Staying Off Twitter

12. Ignoring Clickbait

13. Listening to New Voices

14. Talking

There have been some falling outs in the last year over social and political beliefs within my extended family. But that hasn’t stopped me from seeing how important it is to talk to the people in my life candidly about what’s happening, how it’s affecting everyone, and what we can do to help one another.

15. Supporting Public Services

16. Refusing Greed and ‘Me First’ Attitude

This obnoxious, toxic behavior is what got us here. We’re all trying to grab what’s ‘owed’ to use before the next person can, and it’s destroying our societies and our happiness.

I’m actively working on not getting mad at people who cut in front of me when driving, being mindful to hold open doors, wave other people through at stop signs, and generally reassess whenever I feel like I have to have something before someone else gets it. This also includes not chasing after the latest and greatest things and instead being thankful for the things we do have.

17. Recognizing Humanity

American society is weird. We pride ourselves on giving each other personal space and being self-reliant individuals. And yet we close ourselves off from others and ignore the humanity in the people around us. I’m all for gliding through the background unnoticed, but there are times when I think it does more harm than good.

This one is as easy as saying ‘hello,’ ‘thank you,’ or even ‘good morning.’ Start with people who hold doors open for you and move on to every service worker who helps you, homeless people, or strangers on your commute. Talk to the person in your office that you’ve never actually met. Get to know the people who take care of your yard or your local park. If an introvert like me can do it, anyone can.

Noticeably Absent:

This year I didn’t make it to any protests. I let my still healing ankle and fear get in the way. 2018 seems like a good year to change that.

I long ago cut out paper towels at home, but I have been plagued by paper towels in public restrooms and offices for years. It’s easy to forget just how many paper towels we use in a day. In the U.S. we use an estimated 13 billion pounds of paper towels per year according to the Paperless Project. That’s a whopping 45 pounds per person. To add insult to the landfill-busting number, paper towels use more energy and create more waste than other drying methods.

Since April I have been working in an office a couple days a week. I bring my own lunch and all of the things I need to eat zero waste all day like a cloth napkin and my own fork, but each trip to the bathroom or kitchen would end with me guiltily drying my hands on the only available option – paper towels.

Paper towel conundrums are not new to me. In college I helped launch an initiative to reduce the amount of paper towels used on campus by encouraging people to use the bare minimum instead of cranking out towels longer than toddlers.

But using a single towel or one crank still felt unnecessary and like a lot of trash. As soon as I started working in the office, my daily/weekly trash at least doubled from paper towels alone. I wash my hands a minimum of 10 times a day (between bathroom trips, snacking, and general cleanliness), which means over the course of the month I was using a minimum of 120 paper towels.

While this is still less than the average (according to an reusable towel manufacturer), I wanted to do better. I needed a zero waste paper towel substitute.

On the Go Paper Towel Substitutes

1. A Small Hand Towel

For a while I had small hand towels that could be clipped to a bag or a drawer to dry. After more than a year working from home, I let them go. They are a great size, and feel more like a regular towel than some of the other options (and I miss them a little bit).

You can also cut a sad looking towel into smaller pieces to take with you. This would work best if the towel is thin, or it will be bulky to carry and dry slowly.

2. Old T-Shirt

Much like an old towel, an old t-shirt can be cut into little hand towels.

3. Camp Towel

A small, quick-drying towel is also a great option. I decided not to go this route because I didn’t want to buy something new, but you might score a good one used. A larger microfiber or quick-dry towel could also be cut into smaller sizes.

4. Reusable Baby Wipes / Handkerchiefs

This is the option I ended up going with. Each day I grab two handkerchiefs off the stack. Half of our handkerchiefs are reusable baby wipes that I bought online, and the other half is handmade tissue-sized handkerchiefs. I honestly can’t tell the difference. Both are absorbent, the same size and thickness, and they work great for nose-blowing or hand drying.

5. Air Dry or Use a Dryer

If it’s available and you don’t have a reusable option, a hand drier is a great alternative to paper towels. Just be mindful of how long you spend with the dryer turned on, and try to use jet air dryers over the old-school hot air dryers to save energy and avoid extra bacteria growth.

How I Avoid Paper Towels

I’m still not in a place where I’m proud of my zero waste solutions. I don’t like drawing extra attention to myself, so my handkerchief solution works great as an incognito alternative. I tuck it into my back pocket, waist band, or a strap before leaving my desk.

So far I’ve dried my hands in front of people, and clearly haven’t taken a paper towel first, but no one has said anything. It definitely helps that my handkerchiefs are close in color to a bleached paper towel. I’m starting to get more bold with it. I used to try to time my drying to when other people weren’t paying attention, but these days I just whip it out and move on with my life.

When I get back to my desk I drape my handkerchief over a handle. If I’m out I keep it in a outside mesh pocket in my backpack so it can dry. No backpack? I typically just choose to air dry with a few good shakes over the sink first instead of shoving a wet towel into my bag to fester.

But Isn’t This Unsanitary?

While I certainly wouldn’t recommend this method for a surgeon before they clock in, using a reusable cloth or a jet air dryer is perfectly hygienic. It’s important to let your towel dry and use a new small towel daily. If you’re really worried about it, you could also bring a small stack of the reusable baby wipes or handkerchiefs and use them a few times before moving on to next.

When I’m really worried about the cleanliness of my towel (like before I want a quick snack at the end of the day), I don’t beat myself up over using a single paper towel or shaking my hands off until they’re dry.

Every little bit saved counts. It’s not about perfection, but about consistently making choices that reduce waste, save resources (and money), and feel empowering. Each paper towel I refuse to use is one less that paper companies can use to justify cutting down old growth forests and dumping bleach into our waterways. Every small rebellion and bit of resistance matters.

Going zero waste or living a low-waste lifestyle takes time. We are actively working towards reducing our waste, one swap at a time. We’re a long way from being able to fit our yearly trash in a jar, but that really isn’t our goal anyways. Here’s the progress we’ve made since January.

Zero waste swaps: Kitchen

The majority of our household waste historically comes from food packaging. While we haven’t eliminated it completely, we have definitely made progress.

Dried beans

As a vegetarian, I eat a fair bit of beans. We have beans at least twice a week, and all of those cans really started to stack up. I was tired of the cans cluttering our cabinet, counter, and eventually recycling bin. The BPA can lining worried me greatly, and the fact that BPA-free linings may not actually be any safer meant there wasn’t an easy canned choice.

The swap for bulk dried beans meant I no longer had to worry about plastic chemicals leaching into our beans and it eliminated at least 50 percent of our can consumption.

Pasta

We’ve struggled to find pasta in bulk that both my boyfriend and I can eat. I can’t eat wheat, and he can’t eat quinoa. For some reason the only wheat-free pasta we can find in bulk is made with quinoa.

Instead of freaking out about it or cutting it out entirely (a sin as an Italian), we’ve been buying pasta from a company that uses 100 percent recycled cardboard, non-toxic inks, and compostable cellophane in its packaging. It’s not the perfect solution, especially since the product is imported from Italy, but it’s progress.

Lunch Meat

As someone who hasn’t eaten lunch meat in more than 10 years, I was surprised by how it easy it is to buy lower-waste options. We bring a reusable container to the grocery store and ask the people at the deli counter to put the lunch meat straight into it. This saves us at least one plastic bag and often a couple of plastic sheets each time we shop. Unfortunately they still use a plastic sheet to catch the slices when they cut it, but hopefully with enough pestering emails and requests they will swap it for something compostable.

Chocolate

Oh man did I get excited when I saw the bulk chocolate selection at Rainbow Grocery. I eat at least a square of chocolate a day, so this discovery made my day. Bulk chocolate cuts out at least two chocolate bar wrappers a week. Hopefully our three jars will last us the month until we go back to Rainbow.

Soy Sauce

Technically, it’s tamari, but the store sold soy sauce in bulk too. We filled up a jar and then came home and topped off our nearly empty glass container of tamari. I felt like I’d somehow outsmarted all of the companies who make it too easy to make trash.

Sandwich Bread

The lucky among us now eat a freshly-baked whole wheat sandwich bread that comes in a compostable paper bag. In the future he may also pick up bread in one of our reusable bulk bags from the farmer’s market, but most of those are currently pre-bagged as well.

Zero waste swaps: Bathroom

Our bathroom is far from zero waste, but I’m slowly chipping away at it.

Handkerchiefs

As much as I don’t love the handkerchiefs I purchased, I’ve been doing my best to use them instead of tissues. I’m slowly getting used to them – although I do hope to find some made out of thinner material in the future.

Compost Bin

This was such an easy swap, it’s silly. I finally turned our trash can into a compost collector and added a small paper ‘trash’ bag for things like floss that we still haven’t swapped out for compostable or zero-waste alternatives. We are lucky enough to have city-wide compost collection, so composting is just as simple as taking out the trash.

What can you compost from the bathroom? Nail clippings, hair, used tissues, latex condoms, and anything made from cotton fibers or cardboard.

Related:

Zero Waste Pantry

Zero Waste Grocery Shopping Inspiration

The Truth About Plastic

Toxins Hiding in Your House

Zero Waste Tea

Can I Recycle This?

Tales of a Paper Towel

Our zero waste pantry staples are the items that we buy unpackaged in bulk and keep on hand at all times. We have about half of a single under-counter cabinet for food storage, so we don’t keep much more than the basics. Our weekly shopping fills in the gaps.

Our Zero Waste Pantry Staples

1. Grains: brown rice, wild rice, and quinoa

2. Oats: thick-rolled and steel-cut

3. Beans: black, garbanzo/chickpeas, kidney

4. Nuts: cashews, almonds, sometimes peanuts (we tend not to store these since I can’t eat any of them. Instead, my boyfriend makes his own trail mix and takes the whole container to work with him.)

5. Flours: oat (easy to make at home as well), brown rice, white rice, tapioca starch, potato starch, xanthan gum.

6. Dried fruit: typically cherries

7. Coconut: Unsweetened chips and shredded

8. Chocolate chips

9. Seeds: chia, flax, pumpkin, sunflower, hemp

10. Baking: baking soda, sugar, brown sugar

11. Spices: We refill all of our empty spice containers with bulk spices including salt and pepper.

12. Honey: Okay, I haven’t done this yet. But when our current jar runs out we are planning to refill it at the grocery store. It’s also significantly cheeper.

13. Coffee and tea

What We Make With Our Zero Waste Pantry Staples

In a given week we make granola bars, trail mix, and no-bake “cookies” for snacks from our cache. I use the flours to make my own gluten-free blend for baking (and pancakes… all of the pancakes).

Our meals typically build off of the rice or the beans. We use rice at least 1-2 times a week. A quart jar tends to last us 3-4 weeks depending on how often we eat it. (You can see some of our favorite fall/winter meals here.)

More:

Zero Waste Trail Mix
Zero Waste Grocery Shopping Inspiration
Digging Through the Trash
Loose Leaf Tea

I’m a stickler about laundry. I have been air drying my laundry for years – most of my clothes have never been through the dryer.

I have always been particular when it comes to laundry. I carefully wash my clothes to ensure that they last as long as possible and have the smallest environmental impact too. I refuse to dry clean anything and instead either don’t buy things that can’t be washed at home or wash ‘dry clean only’ pieces anyways (I’ve never had a problem). My laundry soap is gentle on my clothes. I carefully separate regular loads from more delicate pieces and wash them separately. I’m the queen of stain hunting, a practice my boyfriend takes great care to keep me on my toes.

All of this is to say, I take laundry seriously, and not being able to air dry laundry is a deal breaker.

Our apartment is rather small, and we fit a lot in our downstairs area. The roughly 10 by 12 foot room is home to our office, living room, yoga/foam rolling space, entryway and kitchen. It’s a hardworking space that can quickly feel cluttered or claustrophobic, especially with two of us trying to get something done in the kitchen together.

I don’t say this to complain, we really love our tiny house, but rather to point out that even in our already filled space, we intentionally make room to air dry our clothes. The clothes drying rack takes up an enormous percentage of the space when it’s up. I feel like I am constantly adjusting it or dragging it around to try to get a little bit more space, but being able to gently dry our clothes no matter the weather is so worth it.

Why You Should Air Dry Your Laundry

1. Your clothes last longer.

Way longer. The dryer not only stresses the fibers with heat, but it also breaks them down with friction and stretching tumbling with the other clothes.

2. Clothes look better.

Air drying can help preserve color, prevent pills, and protect a piece’s shape.

3. Smaller footprint.

Despite intense farming practices, synthetic material production, and the thousands of gallons of water used to create your clothes, the majority of their impact comes from you washing and drying them over their lifetime.

While washing in cold water does help save energy, skipping the dryer all together will save significantly more. Air drying is one way to help reduce their lifetime carbon footprint and energy consumption. A typical dryer can create half a ton of carbon emissions in a year (less if you have an electric dryer and solar/renewable energy). Skipping the dryer can save you as much carbon emissions as not driving one day per week all year long.

4. Save money.

Running a dryer can cost you up to $0.70 a load. That’s not a ton of money, but it adds up. And if you use a laundromat, skipping the dryer can save you $1-3 a load (at least in our neighborhood).

How to Air Dry Laundry in a Small Space

It is fairly easy to air dry clothes with very little space. A little creativity goes a long way.

1. Rack it up.

Clothes racks come in all shapes and sizes that will fit into even the smallest corners. My rack takes up quite a bit of space, but it also uses both its horizontal and vertical space well, so it’s worth it.

2. Make space.

Hanging clothes on hangers in doorways or off any other surface is another way to increase the amount of clothes you can dry at once. If you have a sturdy shower curtain rod and you won’t be using it in the next day or so, you can also expand onto that.

3. Spread out.

Clothes that are too tightly packed won’t dry effectively. Be sure that each piece can breathe. I generally try to make sure I can see between each hanging item. For smaller things like socks and undies, I don’t worry as much about them touching as long as they aren’t overlapping.

4. Stagger loads.

I can fit a full week’s worth of laundry on my drying rack. It easily fits everything (minus bed sheets) for one person, and about half of our total laundry for two people. 95 percent of my clothes air dry, while only 20 percent of my boyfriend’s do. We could easily air dry all of our clothes by spreading our two loads out over the week and drying them one at a time.

5. Take advantage of your space.

During the winter the heater in our apartment blows directly on our clothes. Not only do they dry faster, but the damp clothes also help add some much needed moisture back into the air. In the summer I open the windows, and on really hot days the ceiling fan makes quick work of drying.

6. Fold it up.

This guideline is twofold (see what I did there?). As soon as your clothes are dry, put them away! The faster you can get them out of your small space the better. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and cluttered. I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief every time I put all of our clothes away. Our space feels huge afterwards.

Once you’ve put away your clothes, hide the rack away. I keep ours under the couch in the living room. It’s completely out of sight that way, and it’s quick to set up when I’m ready again.

Quick Tips: What Should Air Dry

My rule of thumb: Towels and sheets go in the dryer, everything else hangs up. I’m slowly transitioning my boyfriend to hanging up more of his clothes, but he generally prefers his shirts, socks, and underwear to go through the dryer. We hang up all of his technical-fabric workout clothes and his jeans/shorts.

Related:

Laundry Tips to Save Money and Energy

Homemade Laundry Soap

Easy Stain Remover

This winter I have been waging a battle against some resilient mold in the bathroom. We replaced leaking, cracked calk around the tub of our shower this summer, and since then it has been slowly growing a pink mold. I’m not about to rip out the calk and do it all over again (although it has crossed my mind!), but the mold is driving me crazy.

I scrub our entire shower weekly with castile soap, but the mold kept coming back until even the castile soap didn’t seem to do much at all. Recent heavy rains in California meant our grout also started to grow black mold in some patches along the calk. (Lesson learned, always pay extra for the mold resistant calk.)

I finally got fed up and doused the entire shower with undiluted vinegar. When I stepped in the next morning, I was pleasantly surprised! While it was a bit extreme, it gave me a nice starting point.

DIY Mold Cleaner Recipe

1 part white vinegar
2 parts water

This is a strong solution. After the first few rounds of using the cleaner I would recommend reducing the amount of vinegar for maintenance. You can just add some more water to your partially-used container.

How to Use the Mold Cleaner

I filled an empty (completely rinsed) dish soap container with 1 cup of vinegar and 2 cups of water. After a couple of shakes I squirted the liquid onto the grout, tile, calk, and our reusable shower curtain. Then I Let it sit overnight or until completely dry.

Our reusable, fabric shower curtain still has quite a bit of mold trapped in the hem at the bottom, so I have been drenching the bottom with the solution and letting it sit overnight after every shower (every two days or so). The mold is almost completely gone, and the vinegar has been slowly removing old mold stains as well.

If you are applying the liquid to your entire shower, the squirt bottle works great. For everything else, I would use a spry bottle. It’s less wasteful and makes it easier to apply to smaller areas. While the squirt bottle works well, it also floods the whole area with more of the cleaner than necessary. I will eventually upgrade to a spray bottle.

Once you have let the vinegar dry completely, you can add more of the cleaner and scrub with a microfiber cloth to remove any surface mold and soap residue.

It’s important to let the vinegar sit until it’s dry. This allows the vinegar (an acid) to slowly remove the mold on the surface and deeper into the fabric/grout/surface. I leave it overnight because it’s easy and it has been too cold and humid for it dry quickly.

Warning

Do not use this on natural stone! Vinegar is too acidic and may permanently etch the stone.

Your entire bathroom (or house/apartment if it’s small like ours) will also smell heavily of vinegar until it dries. It’s best to apply it before bed so the smell is gone by morning. You could also add some essential oils like tea tree oil or lemon essential oil to help reduce the intense salad dressing scent and help boost the mold removal process.

We don’t produce anywhere near the 4.3 pounds of trash the average American creates every day, but we could definitely do better.

The indoor can fills up about every two weeks or so. It doesn’t smell at all since we compost all food scraps so we tend to let it fill up completely. But every time I toss something into it or take it to the curb I am flooded with sadness and frustration.

Our trash is full of plastic bags.

At least 75 percent of our total trash volume is non-recyclable plastic food packaging like chip bags, cracker containers, and the plastic film that goes around jars or over hummus containers.

What’s in our trash (by volume):

1. Chip/snack packaging
2. Tissues
3. Plastic films and safety seals
4. Floss

I’ve known for months that we could cut our trash down by 50-75 percent just by no longer buying packaged potato and rice chips. At 4-8 bags per week, we are stuffing ourselves and the trash with junk. But the habit is much harder to kick than I anticipated.

How we can reduce our trash:

1. Ditch the packaged snacks.

In my dream world we buy crackers, chips, and healthy snacks from bulk bins. Our local bulk bins have nuts, granola, and cooking staples, but very few snacks. There are only 1-2 pre-made snacks that I could conceivably eat out of the bins since I am allergic to nuts and gluten-intolerant.

But that doesn’t mean we have to starve or overfill the landfill. A recent trip to Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco gave me hope that we can find more snacks and staples in bulk bins – we just may have to travel a ways for them.

Actions:

1. Buy tortilla chips from a local restaurant in bulk to replace our packaged rice/potato chips. This makes it more likely that we will skip the snack isle at the grocery store, and it helps us increase our daily calorie intake (important with our training schedules).

2. Make more snacks at home. In the past I have massively struggled to not only come up with zero-waste snack ideas, but also to then set aside the time to make them. When I did manage to make something like granola bars or homemade hummus, we quickly got tired of them and I’d have to find a new recipe and start all over.

The good news is that I now know we get tired of snacks every 2-4 weeks. We can plan a snack for each week and rotate them to keep things interesting. It’s time to dig into some of my snack ideas and make snack preparation part of our weekly meal prep/cooking dinner habits.

3. Eat more whole foods for snacks. In the past couple of months I’ve been eating salads as snacks. It’s an easy way for me to sneak in more greens and also not feel like I’m loading up on junk throughout the day. More options are veggies with hummus, leftovers from dinner, and hard-boiled eggs.

4. Schedule monthly trips to better bulk bins.

2. Use Handkerchiefs

This switch has been on my list for months. Due to allergies, I use at least a couple of tissues each day. After a ton of research and decision paralysis, I finally chose a pack of reusable organic cotton baby wipes to use at handkerchiefs. Well, the internet was wrong. They make terrible hankies.

My failure was disappointing, and I lost motivation. But I need to go back to my list and find a set that will actually work the way I want them to.

3. Compost Tissues

My boyfriend is less than enthused on the handkerchief idea. Since I make the bulk of tissue waste anyways, this isn’t going to impact our trash greatly. To make composting tissues easier, we can add a small paper bag next to (or inside of) our trash can to collect tissues.

4. Floss

Eventually we may switch to completely compostable floss, but for now we should start with reducing how much we use in the first place. Most of the floss we pull off the roll each night doesn’t get used. We need to use shorter strands each time. I might get super nerdy and make a guide for the smallest amount of floss for comfortable flossing so we don’t have to think about it each time or accidentally take too much.

Related:

Zero Waste Grocery Shopping Inspiration

The Truth About Plastic

Toxins Hiding in Your House

Zero Waste Tea

Can I Recycle This?

Tales of a Paper Towel