Not making garbage

In February, I made an extra effort to pay attention to the trash I produce at home. I took photos of all the garbage I accumulated and wondered if there are more things I could do to reduce the trash I leave behind. 

Not making garbage was also the first phase in the experiment of Colin Beavan when he decided to live one year trying to cause as little harm to the environment as possible. He describes this experiment in his book "No Impact Man - Saving the Planet One Family at a Time" (2009) (also a blog). It's an inspiring book, though the starting point is horrendously American. I say horrendous, because if you think of the trash the Beavans created with their New York life style (including loads of take away food in plastic packaging), around 30 litres in 4 days, it is lightyears away from my consumption and trash habits. 

Beavan presumed that not making waste would be the easiest part in his "no impact" project. I have to say that it necessitates quite a lot of effort to live a completely trashless life. I haven't managed but I also realised that there are more things I could do. An example how to succeed in such a way of living - because it truly becomes a way of living - can be found in this blog Zero Waste Home. I'm far from making my own make-ups or cleaning products but I find the main ideology of this blog very compelling "refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, rot". The next step for me is to buy some glass jars or other containers to take to the grocery store with me. Still, I need to find the stores that sell flour, grains etc. not packed (this was actually easy in Italy).

Thanks to recycling, there's not much waste going into the basic waste category. Actually, I only take non-recyclable trash out every two months or so. However, there's a big pile of plastic waiting to get to the collection point of plastic (there are awfully few of them in downtown Helsinki). 

Once I bought an iPad, I have tremendously reduced the paper waste I produce as I no longer subscribe to the paper version of my daily newspaper. Thus, my paper waste mainly contains receipts, envelopes and some magazines.

I also try to not to waste any food. February was a good month, I only had to throw away an orange and some almond milk. I have stopped buying cheese as it often goes bad in a single person's household. According to some studies, single women waste more food than other households. I can believe this because you have to plan carefully your weekly meals in order to avoid finding some unused and  rotten veggies in the back of the fridge. I decided that from now on I will always plan my meals for the coming week. This way I will also make better and healthier food with more variation as I don't to make easy solutions in the grocery store ("oh, some bread will be fine, or some pasta with tomato sauce").

Take Part web site offers some good ideas for reducing wasted food.

1) Freeze lemon/lime as a juice in an ice cube tray. (A good idea, I often have half a lemon lying around for days.)

2) Isolate the trouble fruit so that it doesn't contaminate the other fruits.

3) Put some paper towels at the bottom of the veggie section in the fridge, they absorb moisture that makes veggies go bad.

4) However, don't forget the veggies in the somewhat "hidden" veggie section of the fridge.

5) Learn how to conserve food in a correct place. Not all the veggies belong to fridge, like peppers or avocados.

6) Freeze the herbs you don't use with drops of olive oil. (A very good tip, my herbs never survive for very long in their pots.)

7) Only wash what you are eating, extra moisture is bad for veggies.

So, in one month, I took out my decomposable waste twice. I make the bags out of old newspapers I have saved from times that I still subscribed to the paper version. There was quite a lot of bio waste as I threw away the soil from my dead herbs (look point 6 above...). 

Then I had some paper and carton packaging of food. Mostly I had plastic from food products that can also be recycled (it will be burnt as energy waste). Beavan tells us in his book that in the US, food packaging makes up 20 percent of the nation's solid waste. It's unfortunate that many vegetables are wrapped in plastic in the shops. I need to go to farmers' markets more often to avoid this. 

Lastly, I had been accumulating metal waste for around six months because there is not so much of it. It will also be recycled. This time, I had no glass to recycle except for some wine bottles that I take back to the liquor store.

Below in the photo one thing I encountered in February when I stayed in a hotel in Brussels. I can't understand how hotels can pretend to be eco-conscious with all the not washing linen/towel things (I think they actually just want to save money with that) and then they have plastic cups packed in plastic.  It's just purely ridiculous! And the miniature soaps and shampoos are completely idiotic. Why can't they just have refilled bottles attached to the walls (as some hotels actually do have)?

And finally, my ways to reduce trash:

1) Always carrying a cloth bag with me. Even when buying clothes, I use my own bag.

2) Instead of sanitary pads or tampons, using a menstrual cup. 

Sometimes ecological innovations can really make life easier. Even if I didn't care at all about the environment, I wouldn't give up my Lunette cup, a Finnish eco-invention. It makes periods cleaner, cheaper and easier! The silicon cup can be washed and used for more than a year.

3) Never buying take-away coffee if I don't carry my own cup with me. 

With this new trend adopted from the US that everyone is carrying a take-away coffee in the trams and the streets, I'm constantly stressed about the waste it creates. People, buy a re-useble cup instead if you don't have the time to relax and enjoy a coffee break in a café! Also, in the streets, most of the litter is either cigarettes or disposable coffee cups, very nasty trend. I also keep a spoon with me (this was really necessary in the US) as sometimes only plastic spoons are available in cafés.

Beavan writes about a study according to which some 80 percent of our products are made to be only used once. Shocking! 

4) Always keeping my own water bottle with me and only drinking tapwater. Exceptions are allowed in Africa or other developing countries :) 

5) Trying to reuse all the paper bags that come with bread in the bakeries where I can get bread without packaging. Buying nuts, croissants etc. in my own reused bags (there are always these little paper bags coming from somewhere). 

6) Doing my own reusable bags and taking them with me to the grocery store. 

I have crocheted produce bags that are truly fantastic and handy. They are very easy to make as well, for instructions check this blog. It is a wonderful gift idea as well!

7) At work, I have my own towel in the office so I don't need to use paper towels in the toilet. Not using paper napkins. Using cloth handkerchiefs.

Beavan writes: "The paper towel began to represent my throwaway lifestyle." I have been avoiding that kind of lifestyle and will continue to do so with more vigour.

8) Refilling my washing and fairy liquid bottles in Ruohonjuuri shop where this is possible with Ecover and Ole Hyvä eco-products.

9) Printing only things that I really need.

What I try to do in the future:

1) Make sure that I follow the "rules" above.

2) Farmers' market and bakeries more often and using/reusing my old bags.

3) Choosing grocery stores with less plastic wraps around produces.

4) Planning my meals for a week in advance and going to a store with this shopping list.

5) Buying more second hand clothes instead of new ones. Thinking twice before buying any clothes at all.

Culture lover gets emotional

Culture spring is warming up even though the weather is not. In this week's programme: ballet. I'm not a huge fan of traditional ballet with colourful costumes and too much happening on the stage. This time, the National Ballet of Finland was offering something very different and exactly for my taste.

The evening was composed of three diverse pieces. First, George Balanchine's "Four Temperaments" was a dream-like beautiful ballet that was considered ahead of its time when it was made in the 1940s and it still seemed modern.

The second piece was William Forsythe's ballet "In the middle, somewhat elevated" that he made in the end of 1980s. At this point, Balanchine seemed already a bit traditional, but I wasn't greatly moved by this fast-moving and almost rough dance.

The last piece was extraordinary. It was Jirí Kilián's "Bella Figura" (watch the whole thing below) and I loved it, completely loved it. Beautiful baroque music (a new discovery was Pergolesi's wonderful "Stabat Mater Dolorosa") combined with amazing choreography. Even though I'm normally more amazed by humans' capacity to destroy our planet and act like idiots, watching the ballet dancers on stage, I felt that the human potential for creating something beautiful is truly unlimited. 

Not only the choreography was fantastic, but also the fact that the human body can move in such amazing ways and, at the same time, translate to the audience in body movements some very human feelings and our insecurity and vulnerability. The dancers were like broken dolls on stage helping one another to feel better or survive. Maybe the message was that we are dependent on others and that we should care more about them. At one point it is me who needs help and, at the next one, it is the other. I felt that there was a beautiful connection and solidarity between the dancers on stage or the roles they were playing. 

I had tears in my eyes at the end and I wished that the dance would have continued and continued. My friends agreed!