1 Simple Step to Say No to Plastic Shopping Bags (and still take out the rubbish)

We all know how bad plastic bags are for our earth.

Watch an orca calf and a dolphin experiencing the wonder of a plastic bag that could have been yours, for all you know. We all know that we should be taking reusable bags or boxes to the stores, and sometimes we even remember.

(For more motivation, check out the free film Addicted to Plastic.)

But it can be hard to turn down a free bag, and lots of us still find those plastic shopping bags useful around the house, especially as liners for messy kitchen rubbish bins. Even though I work hard to reduce my waste, so did I - until now.

One Simple Step - Attitude Adjustment

"Nom, nom....nom?"

Many foods already come in plastic packages. So now, your empty bags are not rubbish, they are rubbish bags.

In other words, don't use bags to throw away more bags.

How?

I buy several products in bulk, so this is simple for our house. When a bag of rice, pretzels or chips is empty, I trim off the top and put it under the sink near the kitchen bin.

• They aren't 100% clean, but they won't stay there for too long anyway.
• They aren't the perfect size, but remember the orcas and dolphins?

Even if you don't buy in bulk, you will probably have other moderate-size grocery items you can use. Regular cereal and chip bags can hold a good amount of messy mess.

Use your imagination; it is worth it. Orcas and dolphins and turtles and seals. I even use the bags that hold toilet paper - they're not very strong but they can still hold their share for long enough to get to the big bins.

"Does this scarf look good on me?"

It Really Works

I now really really hate to see new plastic shopping bags come into the house. "What am I going to do with that? My bag holder is totally full!"

And I still have several food bags waiting under the sink to hold the kitchen mess.

Another plastic reduction tip

Never put a half-empty plastic bag in the rubbish. When you're throwing stuff away in a plastic bag, and if you're not late for a visit to the Dalai Lama, take a few extra steps around your house and find other rubbish to fill up that bag.

No Such Thing as a Free Plastic Bag

Three cheers for those stores who now charge a small fee to help you think twice about getting a plastic bag!

"Squawk! Thank You!"

Biodegradable "Plastic" Wrap from FriendlyPak

I got really excited when FriendlyPak first gave away a roll of BioBag - a biodegradable "plastic" wrap. I didn't win, but I still wanted it.

We were almost at the end of our roll of supermarket plastic wrap. Plastic pollution is a serious problem, and this flexible, nonrecyclable stuff kills animals every day and isn't great for human health either. I'm thrilled to see an earth-friendly choice.

As a new product, it seemed to take forever to find out how I could buy it. The product was announced in April, but didn't seem to be orderable from the advertised outlet. So when I saw one big catering roll in  Wise Cicada, I impulse-bought it for $50. (It is now available through ecostore.)

We didn't use plastic wrap for much anyway - sealing the ends of cucumbers, mostly. We use wax paper for the kids' lunches. With a catering-size roll, I'm using it for everything!

Results

Good

The wrap performs well as a wrap, sticking to the end of the cucumber and protecting it.

It worked well on the kids' sandwiches too at yesterday's picnic - held two together very nicely.

I wrapped the end of a frozen Cheezly (vegan cheese) in it. (It's still fine, but I think I should have wrapped the whole Cheezly because it didn't stick on when left in a freezer drawer jumble. My bad.)

And I can see when I empty the compost that the wrap shows signs of breaking down as promised.

Cautions

The biodegradable wrap is more fragile than regular plastic wrap, which is not too surprising for an organic product that is going to break down soon. I can't use the tug and unroll method with the large heavy catering roll - the wrap stretches so much from the weight. So I use scissors to cut off the pieces I need. It doesn't have a tear strip on the box anyway, but that's fine because a plastic or metal tear strip is just more to go on a landfill.

After a few days of protecting a cucumber end in the crisper, the wrap is already showing a hint of its biodegradability compared to the plastic wrap, which I could often reuse. This is only a small problem because we usually have to slice off the end of the cut cucumber anyway, and I can toss the used wrap with the old slice (and a clear conscience) and get a new piece.

Also unfortunately, our roll has been gouged by something about 5cm in from the edge.  This hasn't impacted us much as we haven't needed large pieces yet, but I wish I'd saved my receipt.

Update: the cool people at FriendlyPak are sending me a complimentary roll!

Recommendation

Absolutely! It works, and it's biodegradable. While I have to treat this wrap a bit differently to ordinary plastic, it is worth it. And when more people buy these choices, the price will come down, so...

What earth-friendly products do you invest in?

Happy Vegan Hunting - 9 Frugal Secondhand Investments

I'm an avid secondhand shopper. Here are some winning vegan goodies that you can always find in the secondhand shops. For similar reasons, these are also items you might score from Freecycle - if you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for?!?!??

See how the jam looks like a cat?

1. Yoghurt makers

Yes, you can make your own soy yoghurt even more easily than dairy yoghurt. Soy yoghurt is so expensive to buy and so easy to make.  Since making your own is faddish for many, there are usually several varied yoghurt makers on the shelf.

I have had consistent success in my secondhand EasiYo by adding about 3 Tbsp of soy starter to 1 box of room-temperature original VitaSoy. Methods, tips, and tricks abound on the internet - search on making soy yoghurt.

2. Quality cookware

People used to cook more, and they needed great quality cookware.

Often, the younger generation doesn't know and doesn't care about those nested stacks of Corningware and cast iron, and off they go to the secondhand shop for you to find.

3. Quality storage

Lots of us frugal vegans buy and cook in bulk, and you need to keep your supplies safe.

I reuse some of the plastic containers I get from food (eg, Anathoth jam containers are BPA-free), but a quick look at the secondhand store will show you loads of great old-fashioned Tupperware at prices your Tupperware lady can't match. (Apologies to my Tupperware lady friends, mwah!)

Click-clack containers also roam wild on the secondhand shelves, as well as older-style glass or terracotta containers.

4. Popsicle moulds

Summer will arrive soon! If you didn't inherit your family's popsicle moulds like I did, it won't take long for you to find a set on the secondhand shelves.

Super cheap popsicle recipes:

• flavoured nondairy milk (flavour your own with cocoa, vanilla, fruit, or jam)
• fruit juice or puree (hint: tinned fruit comes in fruit juice or syrup)
• a banana (dipped in nuts or chocolate)
• ...or search the internet for cheap vegan popsicles

5. Chocolate moulds

We thrifty are just as gifty as the next person. But vegan gift chocolate has a hefty price tag. People love getting hand crafted chocolate and it's fun for the kids to help make! If the specialty chocolate moulds at the homewares stores are too pricey, look for secondhand flexible novelty ice-cube trays among the piles.

I just scored this cute orange-slice shaped tray - now I can make my own vegan chocolate oranges.   

6. Juicers

Want to try juicing, but don't know where to start? Don't splash out; these babies cycle through the shelves on a regular basis.

7. Pressure cookers

The best way to cook dry beans, pots of potatoes and free soup quickly. Watch your grocery totals shrink as you serve these super budget savers.

8. Sushi mats

This vegan takeaway standby is expensive to buy because it's fiddly to make compared to curry and chips, but you'll be rolling your own in style before long.

Making sushi

9. Gardening gear

Goodbye Garden World and Kings, because secondhand shops are blooming with planting pots of all sizes.

You can also find good garden tools if you keep hunting.

You could be overflowing with vegan goodness in your very own ground or container garden before you know it.

And more!

Of course you don't want to spend money and fill up your life with a lot of extra stuff you don't use. But making or growing your own is a backbone of frugality.

I want to hear about your best secondhand vegan finds...

Free eco-friendly planter - from the trash!

My winter parsley and kale are rapidly going to seed as the sunshine hits the garden.  I cleared the kale and made a whole crock pot of soup. 

If I want juicy tomatoes, tender squash, lettuces, a cucumber or two - then there's no time to waste.  I need to get the summer seedlings going. (Luckily, the strawberries are doing what strawberries do all by themselves.)

I could always use small plastic pots, but the kids and I really enjoyed the clever Peat Pellet (used at a Small Poppies session) for planting.

It was fun to watch it grow with added water, and satisfying to plant the healthy seedling straight into the garden with no root disturbance and no plastic container.

I don't need to check the price to know they're not frugal enough for me.  What to do?

It's easy.

Make your own free biodegradable seed planter  

• Take one empty toilet paper tube.
• From one end, fold the circular edge down (4 folds) to roughly close off the hole.

        

• Press the folded end as flat as possible, using your fingers both inside and outside of the tube.
• Fill with moist soil.
• Repeat with as many tubes as you have.  If you run out, another one will be ready soon.
• Plant and enjoy!

Hints

• Use promptly after making.
• Use a containing box (the planters may not stand up well on their own).
• Before planting, open the bottom end of the tube and wet the whole tube thoroughly so the roots can get out to the soil.

Here's a lineup of my hopeful planted seeds along with a couple of baby lemon trees (I really want a lemon tree) and beans...

Good luck to us all!

Reduce your rubbish (and take out the trash!)

Ask yourself: Why not make the Grand Canyon a landfill?

Now that I've covered outer space exploration, why not look at space on Earth?

As an aspiring minimalist in a world of excess and extremes, I know that empty spaces represent both conscious choices and hard work.  Without attention, empty spaces fill up fast.
 
Like fractal geometry, at any scale, empty space has impact.

I value the space I have reclaimed in our house by removing objects that are not useful enough to stay.  And I'm quite frankly excited about our rubbish bin.


To our neighbours, on trash day

To you, the empty space in our trash bin is not worth a thought - except when you put your overflow into it.

Sometimes the empty space is our missing bin, because we only put our trash every other week.  Even our recycling bin stays echoingly empty for long periods of time.

I'm proud of that empty space.  It's no accident but a result of hundreds of individual choices we make.
Would you like to take out the rubbish less often?

Avoiding waste

• Vegan - you can buy vegan foods with a whole range of packaging options, but we don't have meat-contaminated plastic packaging to deal with.  Or bones, which must be disposed of in even more packaging...or perhaps Photoshopped out.

• Natural foods - less processed foods have less packaging
• Home cooking - we do sometimes indulge in takeaway food and it excites the whole family, but for health and cost reasons, I keep a conscious tally of how often
• Bulk buying - several kilos of cashews or raisins come freshly packed in a large ziploc bag instead of multiple disposable bags, and after we have used up the food, the ziploc bag can protect other foods (like bulk flour or oats)  or even a kid's puzzle.
• Secondhand buying - the retail packaging is long gone and you often don't even need a bag to get it home.
• No buying - keep items like soda and bottled water off your shopping list entirely and you are already ahead of the game.

Waste not destined for the rubbish

• Composting - no food scraps go into our rubbish and almost none down the waste disposal.  The Auckland City Council runs free composting classes and perhaps your area does too.
• Recycling - Auckland has made this trivial by providing bigger wheelie bins for recycling of all types than for rubbish.  Again due to our purchasing choices, it is usually put out every other collection period.
• Burning - in the winter, we turn waste papers and paper packaging into heat.  The ashes go into the compost.

Why worry?  The council supplies these bins, and if we have space in ours, why not fill it with yours?  Well, the Grand Canyon is still empty, I suppose, so fill 'er up!
Now is also a great time to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining.

A note on the Final Frontier
We've already made serious inroads into depositing unwanted junk in space:

"There is no federal restriction on the dumping of garbage into space.  In the absence of this regulation, space missions will continue to risk their longevity to suddenly significant pieces of scrap as small as a centimeter in length.   Based on the gathered evidence, dumping trash into space would, be and is, an unintelligent decision that causes many more problems than it could ever possibly solve.  Before further contaminating Earth’s orbit, more thought has to go into creating an efficient trash collection service or other means of improving the situation instead of continuing to add to it."

In other words, just like on Earth.

Yes, you make a difference!

Nobody would ask you to do all these things, all at once.  It has taken me all my life to become this odd.

@miniMum, is there just one waste habit you are not comfortable with today, that you could commit to change tomorrow?

A utility closet you can use...

There's one nice thing in this picture!

One great improvement

I'm remembering to take Before pictures when the decluttering bug strikes!

Both DH and I hesitate to throw away big bottles... a big case of the Just In Cases.

Would you believe there is a rubbish bin in this laundry room and the recycling bin is but a few steps out door #1 behind the little lady?


























The transformation didn't actually take long and DS and I even wiped down the shelves.

Yes, that's more like the number of items that we need for washing our clothes.  Isn't it astonishing how long we can live with a ridiculous situation?

The recycling bin got several armloads.

Homes for the homeless
I can now store our chilly bins (US translation: ice chests) on that tall bottom shelf instead of stacked next to the spare freezer.

More success for my digging deep method:  target hidden spaces because that's where you hide unused items.  Visible clutter is more often useful things without homes.  Get rid of stored junk and voila!  homes for the visible clutter.

Even extra laundry can be more fun with this sense of accomplishment!

What do you cling to Just In Case?  What busy corners of your house have gotten a bit too busy?

Yo-yo day - say chocolate!

• Help mothers beat the Booby Traps and vote for BestForBabes!

OK, this is one of our toughest and most interesting yo-yos.  And a very valuable (and expensive lesson for me).

This is our lovely IXY 910IS digital camera - this picture was taken with our slightly newer but just as lovely IXY 910IS digital camera.  Confused?  Just wait.

The camera in the picture (let's call it #2, which is ironic if you happen to be into toilet humour) was our replacement camera that we bought after our perfectly good previous Canon digital camera (#1) went AWOL during our house move in 2007.  We kept assuming it would show up somewhere after the chaos of the move, but it never did (and neither did the pictures on it!)  So we got to upgrade as a reward for our carelessness.

We moved in August.  Fast forward a few months - Alex was 2 and a half and just loves cameras (and remotes and DVD players and anything at all that has buttons than make something light up or go whirr).  In a moment of madness, I let him have the precious new replacement camera (#2), thinking "he's got the strap round his wrist, he's not much more than 1/2 metre tall and he's on carpet so what harm could he possibly do?"

Well, now we know one significant answer to that question.  (Let's face it, there are probably more.)  What he can do is grasp the extended lens in his surprisingly strong grip and twist it hard enough to break the automatic mechanism.  Look closely at the photo and you may note that the lens is out... sort of....twisted 90 degrees from its originally designed stopping point.

Shocked and appalled but being the the frugal and savvy consumer that I am (if not so savvy childminder :-) we investigated repairs.  'Twas something like the week before Christmas and I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that estimated repairs (for the known damage) would at least be a large proportion of the cost of a new camera, plus several weeks' waiting time.  We just couldn't be without the camera for Christmas with a deal like that.  Thus, we winced again, and camera #3 has been doing fine duty ever since.

And yet we still have the other camera which is now literally just #2, and I think the mistake that we are making financially is called valuing sunk costs.  Is there any chance that someone else would take the risk and hassle of getting it fixed to save a small amount on the purchase of a new camera?  We've waited so long that now it's not even attractive as a latest model.  Yet it is still on our shelf  - even if it's DH's office junk shelf.

I am open to imaginative suggestions for this yo-yo that beat just throwing it in the rubbish.  Feel free also to share stories that make me feel not so alone in my poor judgements about children's capabilities :-)

Leftovers - minimise waste!

 I'm proud to say my refrigerator rarely surprises me with a Nobel-prize-winning science experiment.   
I'd like it to look like this fridge too, but it doesn't quite :-)

More like

And here's some more harsh reality:  the average American family throws away 14 percent of their food (according to a USDA funded study in 2004). That's almost US$600 every year!  Can you think of something nice to do with $600?  Me neither.  Good thing.  (Apparently in total 25 to 50 percent of the country's food is thrown away, so commercial food producers are at least as guilty and you can't solve the problem by leaving the leftovers to them.)
 
Dinners
There are so many reasons to have a meal plan for your dinners, and leftover usage is just one.  Design your meal plan around tasty leftovers and you are so far ahead of the game, you might as well be brushing that winners' tape off your midsection already.  As an example from our meal plan, a simple (vegan) Italian tomato pasta sauce over your kid-friendly spirals or macaroni also makes a wonderful dish reheated with big chunks of steamed potato stirred in.  Or the original could be a thick pizza sauce, modified to be pourable for another meal.   
When I make lots of sauce at a time, I have to guess how many containers to refrigerate for use this week and how many to freeze.  As a rule, twice in one week is the limit - after that it doesn't matter what shape the pasta is underneath, I will get complaints!  Also see Cooking and freezing.

Extra rice refreshes pretty well, and any other fine restaurant would also agree that Chinese veggie stirfry over rice (with cashews) is a different meal from Rice with Lentil Curry Sauce and fresh green salad.  

Plan your produce purchases based on your known favourite meals, and keep it simple!  We vary (if you can call it that) between hot vegies: broccoli, cauliflower, courgettes, mushrooms and salad: lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, gherkins and olives.  Perhaps not exciting, but relatively cheap and I know my family will, between us, eat all those and we won't have green slime from more adventurous vegetables puddling in the crisper.  More on keeping it simple:  Minimalist guide to eating.

Don't cook a full and separate meal every night of the week - that is the surefire way to join the queue (holding their noses and losing their money) from the fridge to the compost bin.
 
Leftovers for lunch

How can I be sure to have a nutritious homecooked lunch every day?  Eat yesterday's dinner leftovers.  If possible, feed them to the kids and husband as well.  Let me know your secret, if you succeed with that.  In any case, this solves your lunch menu problem while clearing your fridge too. 

Lunch leftovers and  scrapping it up
Now that I have two children in various levels of outside care, I regularly face the dreaded rattling lunchbox. It's a true potluck - at what point has DS lost interest in the available options except to mix them together?  We also have a snack bag habit for car trips.  In most cases, I'm more generous with loading than our appetites require.  For that investment in peace and contentment, I must pay the price of seeing sedimentary layers of stale biscuit and pretzel crumbs mixed with cashew bits and squashed raisins.

And like everyone, my family is prone to having more on their plates than they can handle at a sitting.  Food is love, after all.  While the compost bin is always an option, it's still a shame to waste food just because it is now unsightly.  

So savoury scraps get scooped into the "everything soup" freezer container and sweet scraps generally add a few extra spoonfuls of sugar to help my morning porridge go down.   

Knowing this food has a future purpose curbs my habit of eating the last leftovers off a plate just because they are there.  Some of you will understand this one already, and the rest of you might never understand.  But we can all understand that it isn't a good habit.

Over the top
Being too particular is the enemy!  Tonight's dinner was a surprisingly pleasing melange of pasta sauce and stirfry sauce.  That and some quick-cooking rice vermicelli saved us from dropping $20 at the takeaways (and adding cold to our colds at the same time).

• Not all my leftover experiments are as successful.  OK, DH?  I am sorry...and no doubt will be again.

I save  the salt from bulk bags of cashews and pretzels for cooking rice or soup, and I win popularity contests with iceblocks from juice poured from tinned fruit. 
Here's some extra help for Your refrigerator


Now please share your cleverest leftovers secret!