Good Economic/Ecological Practices for Consumers

  Take out food containers are mostly trash and cannot be recycled due to mixed materials and contamination. The good news is that it is legal and super easy to  get zero waste takeout from most ANY restaurant in California  that can serve onto its own reusable plates!! This way you can get your food to eat at home on real plates with real cutlery and not create any trash. Read on to learn how! In the picture above I am picking up a pizza in as Zero Waste way as possible from Jake's of Sunnyvale -- the pizza goes into an aluminum pizza container I made from two 20" pizza pans. The paired set of aluminum pans then goes into a reusable pizza bag that keeps the pizza warm -- watch out, a fresh pizza makes the aluminum pans very hot (and sterile)!  I bike it all home in my covered all purpose bike trailer. I use a clean sheet to line the inside when carrying food. Here is a sequence of pictures I took at a different pizzeria that show off the pans I use. I tried to find ...

Bicycling is inexpensive, healthy, and the most efficient form of transportation around. Please write to California Governor Gavin Newsom and encourage him to make all California DMV offices truly friendly to bicyclists. Below is the email I sent him at https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/ . Alas I could not send along pictures in the form based email submission but here are some pictures from my recent DMV visit.  At the DMV in Santa Clara: Their lonely and isolated wheel bender rack is flush against a wall so the center section that bends your wheel cannot even be used: Luckily with COVID there are lots of guards and staff outside at their entrance so they watched my bike next to the front door while I was inside: Locking my commuter/shopping bike to an outdoor bike rack is a big pain and risky -- it is much easier to roll it inside with me. I tend to only shop where I can bring my bike inside because I bike everywhere and use my bike as my shopping cart. Most places do not have...

How would you like to be a millionaire? One way to help you get there is to save money. If you are a couple who is thinking of having 2 kids and 2 cars here are two big ways to reduce your costs. The USDA recently calculated that the average child in the US would cost $233,610 to raise from 0 to age 17. This does not include college costs. College costs can vary widely (community colleges are a great deal) but if you send your kid to a private college this can easily cost $50,000 to $70.000 a year or $200,000 to $280,000 for 4 years. So if a young couple chooses NOT to have two children, they could save roughly $1 million! Now on the car front, AAA recently calculated that the average cost of car ownership in the US is $9282 per year . That comes to $557,000 per car over a lifetime of car ownership (say about 60 years). So if a young couple decides to forgo owning two cars and use bicycles to get around instead they will save about $1.1 million! Combine the savings from deciding not t...

We all like to accomplish more for less thus the popularity of “Kill 2 Birds With One Stone”. What if there was a simple action you could take to accomplish 34 things all at the same time  (and save dozens of birds)? Would you jump at the chance? I hope so! You can accomplish 34 beneficial things just by bicycling (instead of using a motor vehicle): Increase happiness - it’s fun! Reduce climate change from fossil fuel C02 AND fossil methane. Reduce road congestion. Reduce road repair. Reduce space needed for roads. Reduce space needed for parking. Reduce your taxes.  Reduce other people’s taxes. Reduce insurance costs. Reduce transportation purchase costs. Reduce transportation maintenance costs. Reduce transportation fuel costs. Reduce registration & licensing costs. Reduce obesity & waistlines. Reduce health care costs. Reduce health insurance costs. Reduce people dying from motor vehicle crashes. Reduce animals (and birds!) dying from motor v...

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “ Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster. " Enemy #1 these days is COVID-19. While it is very contagious, we know quite a bit about COVID-19 and this can help us determine zero waste ways to defeat it in the thousands of battles we face over the coming months and possibly years. What we know about our enemy : Soap and water kill it in ~20 seconds and this works better than hand sanitizers. Sitting on porous surfaces for 1 day at room temperature kills it. Sitting on plastic or stainless steel for 3 days at room temperature kills it. It can last in the air for a few hours but then it dies. Dilution works against COVID-19 as the number of viruses (“troops”) landing on you matters. That is why being outside is so safe if we maintain distance - our huge atmosphere blows it away and dilutes it so it dies off before it can land on anyone else. Indoors near others is much more dangerous. Higher tem...

Here are some recipes for some basic staples we use frequently. These recipes were adapted and customized from many different sources and our own experience. You may copy and adopt these freely, no license or permission required. You may credit me only if you wish. I'm posting these recipes all at once because I'm about to undertake a 3 month bicycle journey across the US to talk with people from coast to coast from San Francisco to Boston about oceans, plastic, climate change, and kids. For more about this ride please see ZeroW.org . My wife was not up for this long a ride and needed these recipes while I'm traveling :-) Super Easy Syrup We use this basic syrup on pancakes, waffles, and to make granola. Ingredients: 1 cup water 2 cups granulated sugar (white or unrefined) 1 tablespoon molasses 1 tablespoon maple flavored extract Directions: Bring the water, sugar, and molasses to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Take off heat and stir in the ...

I've tried many toilet paper options to minimize waste and harmful impacts to our environment and the best compromise I've found are the toilet papers from Who Gives A Crap - a good balance of quality, affordability, and environmental  friendliness.  Plus their toilet paper rolls are very entertaining! It's great to get a smile or a laugh or 2 in unexpected places. If you would like to try them, here is a referral link  https://www.talkable.com/x/MruQEZ Thanks and enjoy!

Yes dogs are welcome to poop in front of our house as long as the owner scoops the poop and leaves it at our dog poop station. No need to carry the smelly poop with you. :-) We empty the scoop as needed into our zero waste dog poop handling facility as documented at: https://ecopractice.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-best-way-to-handle-dog-poop.html Happy New Year!

Halloween is quite a challenge for zero wasters with many unhealthy treats packaged in wrappers that are difficult to reuse or recycle. So instead our household prepares our own treats in compostable/recyclable food grade wax envelopes. We also staple a note to each one so the recipient knows exactly what they are getting, where it came from, and how to properly reuse/recycle the note and packaging. And we have a nonfood option as well for kids who have food allergies. Here is the note we gave out this year with our treats: Dear Trick-or-Treater, Thanks for stopping at our house! This year we are giving out non-food treats (worry stone and $1 for your college fund)  or organic food treats for you to savor (cashews, dark chocolate almonds, or raisins) all packaged in compostable wax paper bags. Reduce, reuse, recycle! Reduce -- We need to conserve our world’s limited resources. Treats are extra special when you get just a little. So take it slow and easy and savor ev...

This is the face of great "can do" customer service as well as sustainability. This is Vince the meat manager of the Safeway at 20620 W Homestead Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014. Vince can tare your container (so you only pay for the contents) and put any of their meats into it that otherwise would go into their store packaging. Please bring your own clean container and say hi to him at the butcher counter and thank him for reducing disposable plastic waste. Thanks! BTW, ​in case you get someone not as experienced as Vince at the butcher counter, here is what they need to do to enter the tare for your container (the order here is important): Weigh container first to establish its weight Take container off scale Enter product code Hit tare button twice in upper left corner of keypad and then enter the tare weight obtained in step 1 Put container on scale Notice correct tare and net total weight at or very near zero Put product in container Print label and apply to co...

This is the new healthy and tasty chocolate chip cookie recipe I use. It is an updated Olive Oil version of the Canola oil version I did back in 2008. I've determined that olive oil is better than canola oil for a variety of reasons (local, sustainable, healthy). It now also includes making your own brown sugar instead of buying pre-made brown sugar. Ingredients 1 cup - Organic Unrefined Sugar (instead of brown sugar) 1 tbsp - Organic Molasses (instead of brown sugar) 1 cup - Olive Oil (instead of butter, my current favorite is California Olive Ranch Extra Virgin) 2 tbsp -Water (instead of butter) (Alternatively use 1 cup of softened organic butter) 2 tsp - Vanilla Extract (either natural or artificial) 2 - Large Organic Eggs 2 cups - Organic Rolled Oats 1 1/2 cups - Organic Whole Wheat Flour 1 tsp - Baking Powder, Double-acting, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate 1 tsp - Ground Cinnamon 1/2 tsp - Salt 12 ounces (0.75 lbs) - Organic Chocolate Chips, Semi-Sweet Optional:...

Why buy frozen waffles when you can make your own fresh ones or freeze them yourself? Plus in addition to these being zero-waste, they are healthier for you too. Here is my favorite easy whole wheat waffle recipe: Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 1 large egg 1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk 1/3 cup vegetable oil Directions: Preheat waffle iron while making the waffle batter. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and oil. Mix together the wet and dry ingredients, stirring just until combined. The batter may be a bit lumpy. Cook the waffles as directed in the instructions that came with your waffle iron. For my Cuisinart waffle maker I cook until the steam mostly stops. Yield: 6 round standard 6.5" waffles or 3 round deep-pocket Belgian-style 7" waffles. I get my whole wheat flour, sugar, and salt in bulk in my own reusa...

Here is a super easy and tasty syrup recipe. I use this syrup on pancakes and waffles and as an ingredient to my favorite granola recipe. It is much cheaper than store bought commercial syrup and has zero high fructose corn syrup. While I love natural maple syrup, it is extremely expensive and uses a lot of fossil fuel to ship it to where I live. Ingredients: 1 cup water 2 cups granulated sugar (white or unrefined) 1 tablespoon molasses 1 tablespoon maple flavored extract Directions: Bring the water, sugar, and molasses to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Take off heat and stir in the maple extract.  Let cool until no longer hot. Store in a sealed glass mason jar in refrigerator (since it does not contain preservatives like store purchased varieties). I buy my sugar in bulk in my own reusable container from Whole Foods. However, even from a regular grocery store, white sugar is usually packaged in paper. This greatly reduces the disposable plastic from b...

2016 was busy, hectic, and I ran out of time to post on this blog. However, after working at  Harvard University ,  Bank of Boston ,  Fidelity Investments ,   Apple Computer ,  Sun Microsystems ,  Adobe Systems   and  Silver Spring Networks  (all world class companies), I decided to retire early at the end of 2016. To spend more time with my wife, family,  friends,  dogs, reading, writing, and outdoor activities.  We'll rarely remember how great it was to work late, but we'll always remember the great times we had with family and friends. To do more to make our world a better place by helping: Community:  City of Sunnyvale ,  Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum ,  Sunnyvale Community Services ,  Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church , my neighborhood association, politicians who prioritize science, environment, health, education, children, housing, equal rights, truth, and justice . Kids:  American Youth Socce...

I'm maintaining a resource list of good books, websites, and blogs on my website at  http://www.timoey.com/articles/zero-waste .

While I have not posted in a while, we have made excellent progress overall and it really has not been all that difficult to achieve either -- mainly forming new habits. Currently we take our black 35 gallon trash toter to the curb once every three months. In 2015 it was usually once every two weeks. Our current goal is once per year. Our green yard waste container goes out about once every two months (same as in 2015). We take our green/blue recycling split cart toter (mixed paper on one side, glass/metal/plastic containers on the other) to the curb about once every two months -- used to be every two weeks like the trash toter but we have reduced our recycling as well as our trash stream since we are very focused on Reduce and Reuse.

One of the best ways to reduce waste is to bring your own clean reusable containers to stores.  This post expands on my previous one  No More Disposable Plastic! Some places like farmers markets, butchers,  Whole Foods , Sprouts, Zanotto's, and  Starbucks  understand the value of reusable containers (saves both them and you money, reduces waste, helps environment) but others do not yet. If we all keep pushing, this will become increasingly accepted. While cardboard ice cream containers are compostable in some municipal composting programs (but not in home composting),  composting them is still more waste than using a reusable container. Plus the cardboard ice cream containers do have some plastic in them. I am currently waiting for responses from  Baskin Robbins  and  Cold Stone Creamery  to see if they will allow me to bring my own quart containers to their stores to get fresh packed ice cream. Cold Stone also makes its ice cream ...