Some holiday tips to reduce waste

If you’re trying to reduce your waste, holiday shopping can be a challenge. You don’t want to buy someone one more thing they absolutely don’t need but you still want to get them something. And then there’s the wrapping and cards Oy vey! Every year about 540,000 tons of wrapping paper is thrown out and ends up in landfills. So. Much. Waste.

I’ll share with you a few things I’ve done this past year. For Valentine’s Day I sent my kid’s Chipotle gift cards, but instead of mailing them a card with a gift card in it, I sent them e-gift cards with a note saying I love you, here’s lunch on me. Most sites that offer e-gift cards have a place for a personal message. For our anniversary instead of gifts we went out for breakfast and went whale watching. We’d never been and it was a beautiful day out on the water. Of course there’s good old cash, I forgot to get (or make) my niece a graduation card so I used Zelle through my bank and transferred her gift right there at the dinner table. Easy peasy.

Our daily choices can make a huge impact, it may not feel like much but trust me it matters. Here are some other ideas:

• Support small businesses, there’s lots of cool hand made things at the local farmers markets and usually they don’t have packaging. Think soaps, lip balms, bath bombs etc. Buying things at local businesses cuts down on transportation pollution.

• Get your coffee or tea loving friend or family member a reusable coffee cup and an e gift card to their favorite coffee place (preferably a small business).

• Give the gift of quality time, especially to your aging grandparents and parents. Take them for lunch, dinner, a movie, a pedicure. Go to a concert, bake cookies, watch a football game. Whatever it is actually doesn’t matter much, they just want your time. They get lonely and need to know that they’re still important amidst our busy lives.

• Shop secondhand. I have found some incredible deals at thrift stores, like $200+ premium denim jeans for $15!!! And I LOVE Poshmark, I have found amazing things with the tags still on for less than half of the retail price..

• As for wrapping, use unexpected things like old paper shopping bags, news paper, cloth scraps, magazine pages. Bulk food, grocery bags or pillow cases work they and serve a dual purpose. Bows made from fabric or twine. Pine cones, cinnamon sticks, dried citrus fruit are all cute and compostable. Or you can use stuff that’s been in your Christmas box for years like I am.

Composting is good for your garden and for climate change

This is a picture of my compost bin, after putting a bunch and brown matter on top and before adding water. It’s normally disgusting looking! I started composting spring of 2018, and I had no idea what I was doing, I kind of still don’t.

I just started throwing all of my produce scraps in a trash can and went from there. I know last year I didn’t add nearly enough brown matter but it still did it’s magic. After a year of composting I added it to my soil and it turned into super soil, my garden went crazy this year. As you can see from previous pictures and zucchini and cucumber recipes. Somehow I ended up with black soldier fly larvae, which according to the internet is one of the best things you could possibly have in your compost bin, again disgusting.

Composting is actually a very important part of combating climate change. Here’s a video done by our daughter about how composting is a part of the solution. Composting can not only remove existing greenhouse gases from our atmosphere, but stop the production of methane, a GHG that is 36x more potent than carbon dioxide!

(Fun fact: Sage was filming this video when I showed up in Berkeley to surprise her for her 21st birthday)

Quick pickled cucumbers

Just like my zucchini this year, my cucumbers have gone crazy, which is nice since last year we literally had 2 before ash from a fire wiped them out. I’ve had so many all at once that I’m now making pickles! Sandwich pickles, dill pickles, spicy pickles, sweet pickles, you get the picture, lots of pickles.

I use a mandolin slicer to get the cucumbers all the same thickness, just be very very careful….I’ve cut myself too many times to count. White vinegar is what’s traditional for pickling, you can use apple cider or rice wine vinegar they are also good. Want to add a little spice? Try 1/2 a jalapeno and some sliced garlic. Want sweet pickles? Add 1 tablespoon of sugar and reduce the salt. You can just put these in the frig and they’ll be ready in a few hours. But what I’ve been doing it putting them outside for a few hours to start the fermenting process and then putting them in the refrigerator, so you get some of the benefits of fermentation. So 1/2 fermented 1/2 pickled….fickled? Haha.

You really can’t mess these up, they’re so easy, just adjust to your taste and enjoy. You can also reuse the brine just add more cucumbers, dill, garlic etc. You can use this to make Giardiniera, I made some and it came out great. The sky’s the limit with pickling!

Quick pickled cucumbers

1 1/2 cups water

1/3-1/2 cup vinegar

1 tsp sugar (optional)

1 Tbsp pink salt

1 tsp pepper corns

pinch of turmeric (optional)

4-5 sprig of fresh dill

sliced garden cucumbers

Fill a large mason jar with cucumbers and whatever other vegetables, peppercorns or herbs you’re using. Add salt, sugar and turmeric to vinegar, sit and let it slightly dissolve, add water, pour over cucumbers, put the lid on and patiently wait. Easier said than done! Enjoy.

What is zero waste?

Miriam Webster defines zero waste as:

generating little or no waste  

zero waste

 noun

• The creative waste management strategy of "zero waste" is a combination of community and industrial responsibility that includes deconstruction in spite of demolition, composting to keep odorous organic waste out of landfills, recycling, and a screening facility to allow more separation and reuse of waste rather than incineration. —Aimee Dolloff

We were first introduced to the zero waste idea back in 2014 when I was watching a segment on Raechal Ray with Lauren Singer. Lauren writes a blog called Trash is for Tossers, she also opened a package free shop. Our daughter took off with the idea and did a bunch of research, which led her to the book Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, which was Lauren Singer’s inspiration. 

We’ve always sort of recycled, at least the obvious stuff. I haven’t reused as much as I could because when I was a kid my nana’s house was cluttered (think hoarders!) with different food containers she’d cleaned and saved and it drove me nuts. 

What we’ve come to learn is not as many things are recyclable as you’d think, including the packages that have the symbol on them. That is mostly to tell you which kind of plastic it is....very confusing. 

As a household that eats plant based, it’s a little more difficult to go completely package free. For example I can’t buy vegan cheese at the deli and put it in my own container (a least not yet!) but for me that’s a trade off I’m willing to make. We have vastly reduced our trash, we compost and have a garden so at least in my mind we’re doing pretty well.

Now what does all this have to do with you? And what are small steps you can take? 

We’ve all heard “reduce, recycle, reuse” well it’s actually now “refuse, reduce, reuse”. You’ve probably heard about the ban on plastic straws, even before that actually goes into effect, you can simply say you don’t need straws at a restaurant. You can bring your reusable coffe cup for your morning java, a lot of places will give you a small discount for it. In California we’re charged 10 cents for a bag at the grocery store so most of us bring our own, well what about the produce and bulk bags? Some stores sell packs of reusable bags, or they are available online. 

I know it’s a lot! But one thing, one step, one bite at a time. Chunk things down to something that’s manageable for you.