Good Economic/Ecological Practices for Consumers

Unfortunately the future is plastic because plastic lives just about forever and will be the death of much of our environment, and maybe us. If you have not already, please see Wall-E  for what our earth may eventually look like. We must do as much as possible to greatly reduce the use of plastic! Here is a seagoing bird that died from ingestion of plastic in the middle of the Pacific: From:  http://ecowatch.com/2013/05/28/california-plastic-pollution-policy-tangled-up-committee/ See also  http://www.nrdc.org/oceans/plastic-ocean/ and many other sources you can find by googling. And read the fantastic book  Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too . So my household is eliminating our need for plastic bags and other disposable plastic. No more hard copy newspaper with its plastic bag (see my separate post about my newspaper ). No more disposable plastic grocery bags (thank you for the local plastic bag ban -- now we must m...

I'm a strong supporter of local news organizations -- they are critical for a community. However after a lifetime of enjoying a printed newspaper, I've kicked the paper habit. We no longer have a paper newspaper delivered along with its rubber band and (often) plastic bag. Instead I now get an electronic edition on my Apple iPad each morning. The delivery interface has improved tremendously from the early days of e-publishing, it was a surprisingly pleasant switch.  I really like the interface to the newspaper on my iPad: I: can still skim/see the whole page and its context (the resolution on the iPad is much better than the picture above), tap on an article to read it in a bigger/easier/clearer font, can zoom into pictures, navigate easily and quickly to links, quickly get to past editions as well as other Bay Area Newsgroup papers, no longer need to worry about non-delivery of papers (happens a few times a year), can now have the computer search for me instea...

I've found an even better way to dispose of dog poop than the one I documented in 2008 at  http://ecopractice.blogspot.com/2008/03/best-way-to-dispose-of-dog-poop.html It works by using a funnel-like attachment on your sewer cleanout so you can drop the dog poop directly into your sewer line without necessarily using any water! Here is a picture of me doing this: This is neater and easier than putting the dog poop in a toilet to flush. Saves water too. The sewer cleanout accessory we use is the Doggie Doo Drain Dog Waste Sewer Line Attachment . The reusable device we now use to pick up poop on walks (instead of using a plastic bag) is  Nature's Miracle Jaw Scoop . It is easy to carry and holds the poop in the little bucket its jaws create. The medium size model can hold dozens of small poops or a couple of big poops from a big dog (we have little dogs). There is also a jumbo size if you need it. If the poop is solid and not sticky, no water is needed as the poop...

We are a month into 2016 now and rather than leave out our trash every week or two for pickup, it looks like we will only need our trash picked up at the curb once every 2-3 months. We currently have the smallest trash service possible in Sunnyvale. We've made some huge leaps in waste efficiency (many of which I still need to blog about).  Again our goal is to get as close to to zero waste as possible for our household by the end of 2016. We now have a small 2 quart black bucket that collects the trash for our entire house. Here is a picture of it next to our 2 little dogs: And a picture of it next to our indoor kitchen compost and recycling collection bins: The liners in the compost and recycling bins you see are certified compostable. The one used for recycling is rotated and becomes the one for compost after we empty the recycling into our outdoor recycling bin. The compost one makes it easier to toss the collected compost into a larger commercial composting facility an...

After reading a number of recycling and composting sites that said paper ice cream containers could not be composted because of the plastic lining they use, I was very bummed. My wife and I like ice cream and I really wanted to enjoy it waste free. Thankfully it looks like some local composting facilities are able to handle them in San Mateo and San Francisco. Apparently this small amount of plastic can be handled ok. Yay! See: http://www.recologysanmateo.com/index.php/for-businesses/recology-compost-recycling-garbage#compost And: http://recyclewhere.org/item/ice-cream-containers?search=Ice%20Cream%20Containers&serv_aud=92&lz_nid=540&dz_id=985&latitude=37.779329&longitude=-122.419150&distance=7.5&city=San%20Francisco&zip=94102 Please note that Sunnyvale handles paper milk, juice, and soup cartons as part of its recycling program.  Recycling of these is more efficient than composting at this time and these often have some aluminum met...

While the City of Sunnyvale offers many recycling options (mixed paper, batteries, electronics, glass/metal/plastic containers, scrap metal) as well as yard trimmings composting, it does not yet offer food scrap and food soiled paper composting. My friends at Sunnyvale Waste and Recycling ( http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Departments/EnvironmentalServices/Garbage,RecyclingandWasteReduction.aspx ) assure me it is coming and they have completed a pilot, but it still seems to be a year or two or more away for most residents. Several years ago I did maintain a compost pile, but it was a bit of work and I could not compost lots of things that commercial composting facilities could handle. After all the “reduce” we’ve done to avoid disposables and diligently recycling most everything else, food scraps and food soiled paper was until recently about 90% of the trash we were throwing out. Luckily, on my way to work and without going out of my way, starting this year I am able to drop off my f...

My household has already done quite a lot to conserve electricity and natural gas. So while we are not likely to improve much on this in 2016, here is a recap of where my household currently is. Lighting: Many years ago we went mostly to compact fluorescents. In 2015 with LED prices falling substantially and many compact fluorescents reaching their life limit, we converted these as well as most remaining incandescent and halogen lights to LEDs. The only incandescents that remain are special service bulbs in our oven and refrigerator. The only halogens that remain are some special hall ceiling lights and some micro spot lights in cabinets and bathrooms. These remaining halogens are all hard to convert to LED until some new specialty bulbs are developed and/or we are able to replace these built in fixtures. I really wish such fixtures used more common connectors. Replacing the fixtures would force these to be trashed/recycled and involve considerable money so I’ve settled on using t...

In this endeavor to reach “zero waste” I intend to stretch, change, and learn yet be practical. I’m not a monk and do not expect the rest of my family, or you the reader, to be such either. Zero waste does not mean zero resource use. To achieve zero resource use would mean not to be born in the first place (and I’ll probably write a post about this subject later in this series). Rather zero waste is to use resources wisely to accomplish a reasonable objective -- using only what is really needed. The resources I’ll focus on in the pursuit of zero waste are: Matter (material) Energy Time Space Money Environment/Health/Life Caveat: What I share here is the best I have been able to find/do based on my own research and testing. I’ll include reference links to support my conclusions as much as I can. Yet getting to the truth of a subject is very, very challenging. What we think to be true one day, often turns out to be incomplete or even wrong the next. We ar...

Hi all, I'm in the process of reading a few books about greatly reducing waste -- "No Impact Man" by Colin Beavan, "Plastic Free" by Beth Terry, and "Zero Waste Home" by Bea Johnson. Colin lives in New York City, Beth in Oakland, and Bea Johnson in Mill Valley  -- so some great role models with the last 2 in the SF Bay area!  My goal for 2016 is to reduce waste/pollution/trash for my household as much as I can. We already do a lot to reduce trash/waste in our typical 3 bedroom 2 bath home, but we are going to try to do much, much more this year to see how close to zero waste we can get. It's hard to be green, but hopefully it will get easier in the future. The books above have lots of good tips but I'll probably discover more along the way. I'll share my progress on https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SunnyvaleCafe/info  and on this blog. I look forward to hearing from more of you about how you are getting better at ...