Waste elimination progress

(The 12-year old boy who lives inside me is giggling about the double meaning of the title. And just in case you don't have an immature child living inside you, I had to point that out so you don't miss it.)

My journey to eliminate/reduce plastic has sent me down many related rabbit holes, and I'm really enjoying the process as well as the ensuing lifestyle changes.

My initial effort to identify the big plastic offenders and eliminate the products that I could and find substitutes for those that couldn't be eliminated.  Food-related items are a big source of plastic (even metal cans are plastic lined, as are the paper packets that contain food and spices), and so I've focused a lot of my time and effort there.

Though I have dried beans/legumes/lentils, etc. stored in glass jars, I use them typically on weekends when I have the extra time to pressure cook them.  I have lazily relied on canned products for weekday cooking, as an extra hour to pressure cook the chickpeas, followed by another hour to make the meal, is just not a feasible option on work nights.  I also use a lot of canned tomato products--just convenience and laziness again.  Other offenders included spice packets (taco seasoning, etc.).  Not only were these bad habits I had acquired generating unnecessary plastic waste but non-plastic waste as well as the resources used to make these containers.  

This was a whole genre of waste I could eliminate with establishing better habits.  It is simple to pressure cook a large batch of chickpeas, black beans, etc., portion into 15.5 ounce servings (about two cups--the size of a can) and freeze them.  I now have several "cans" of chickpeas, black beans, adzuki beans, and kidney beans in the freezer for weekday meals.  I keep them replenished by cooking up a batch every couple of weeks.  I let these cook while doing other household chores on the weekends, and the only time expenditure is about a total of ten minutes (filling the pressure cooker, then scooping the finished food into containers).  I'm using plastic containers right now, as I have a ton of them, and it makes no sense to throw them away.  I'll use those until they fall apart and then switch to glass storage.

I've also done something similar with tomatoes.  It takes a total of 15 minutes or so to boil water, drop the tomatoes in for a minute or two, remove from water, and remove the skin.  The tomatoes can then be frozen whole or diced and frozen.  I have several jars of whole and diced tomatoes in the freezer ready to go.  

As I finish my nut butter jars, I've been washing, saving, and reusing those very nice 16-oz glass jars for my frozen food storage.  Of course I could go out and buy a nice matching set of mason jars and be all set, but there's no challenge in that. I'm also working very hard to reduce consumerism and buy only what's absolutely necessary.  Eventually, I'll have quite a nice collection, thanks to my nut butter habit (my favorite bedtime snack is some kind of fruit with either almond butter, cashew butter, or both.

Since I was on a roll, I also sliced up some red peppers (we use a lot of those, too) and froze a couple of jars of those.

The next step was to replace the various spice packets with my own mixes, made from the spices that I buy in bulk and store in glass jars.  This was so simple and quick, that I'm horribly embarrassed that I was too lazy to have thought of/done this before!

Another product that I we use a ton of is hummus.  I have been unable to find this in non-plastic containers and this is definitely not a product that we can eliminate.  I've made hummus before and knew how easy it was, so there really isn't a justification for why I've been lazy and just purchased it rather than making my own.  I'm now making my own (my favorite flavor is roasted-red pepper), and it's ridiculously easy and so much tastier than my favorite brand of roasted-red pepper hummus.  It took me about five minutes--probably less--to measure the ingredients, throw them in the blender and push the button.  I did clean-up and put-away while the hummus was blending.  When it finished, I dumped it into a container, stuck it in the 'fridge, and that was it.  The only time expenditure here was for the roasted red peppers.  I let the peppers roast while I was doing other cleaning chores, and threw the hummus together when the peppers finished.

I am definitely spending more time in the kitchen than I was before. I do not love kitchen work, but I don't hate it as badly as I used to. I'm making almost everything from scratch, and it is delicious!  I am loving food so much more this way, and the family is pretty happy with it also. I feel so much better about living this way--both for the Earth/environment and for my family's health, but I'm feeling horrible guilt about all the years I knew better and took the easy way instead.

Other smaller changes include trying to fix things when possible instead of replacing or tossing.  One of the cats' favorite toys is this little cat that hangs on our closet door.  The elastic band rotates, dropping the colorful string which they try to catch.  When they catch it, they pull it, and this finally stretched the white elastic band so much that it wouldn't rotate anymore.  I actually took it off the door with  the idea that I would toss it and replace next time I went to MadCats.  Then I happened to think that even though they really love that toy, the same thing would happen if I got another.  I decided to fix it instead.  It was a 10-15 minute process (probably less for someone with working hands).  All I had to do was cut about 1.5 inches of the white elastic out and sew it back together.   The cats are thrilled to have their toy back, I saved a $20 replacement cost, and there is one less piece of plastic in the landfill.


I also tried to fix my blender when it died a few weeks ago.  I took it apart and didn't see anything burned or broken, so I assumed that I could just get and replace the motor.  I found that while a handful of parts could be ordered to repair the blender, I could not find a replacement motor.  I found a blueprint of the blender components online and thought perhaps I could figure it out on my own, but I could not.  I haven't yet tossed it. It's in a box in my basement, because maybe if I look at it again over the summer, it will make more sense to me.  Probably not, but I'm giving it one more try.  

L & I just finished The Scarlet Letter tonight.  It's been so long since I had read it that I couldn't remember how it ended anymore.  We've had some really good discussions throughout the book about history (in general), American-British relations during that time period versus now, attitudes and values of the Puritans toward women, sex, children, Native Americans, marriage/adultery, witches, etc.  I wasn't sure if she would be into it when we started and mentally resolved that if she didn't seem engaged within the first five chapters I would give it up, but it turned out to be a good read and a great educational opportunity.  Now I have to come up with another bedtime book.  Hmmmm...

Am I blue?

L has really wanted to paint her room for nearly a year.  The color has been a bright pink since it was Dej’s room and she painted it.  Dej and I still love that color (Dej painted her bedroom at her house the exact same color) and really didn’t want her to paint over it, but since it’s her room now, the beautiful color is gone.  It is now almost completely this light blue color.  It’s a beautiful color, and she’s very happy with it, but we still miss the pink.  Dej’s birthday present to L was that she would help prime and paint it.  My dad came and helped for a bit, too.  It will require one more coat, which they will finish soon, I hope.  When they paint, the rats get moved into my workout room, and it’s incredibly difficult and inconvenient to haul everything I need downstairs and set up.  L is very much enjoying having her sister to herself for the painting, and it’s been fun to hear them giggle and chatter through the closed door.

Sophie entered the room with me, just long enough for me to take a couple of pictures.  In that brief time period, she managed to get blue paint on her little face.

Second week of classes has finished, and that usually means I’ve reached the end of the add/drop chaos of the first two weeks.  I was not able to accommodate everyone on the waitlist this time, but I did get a few in.  I over-enrolled my classes again, being ever the optimist (realist?), that there is almost always some attrition throughout the semester—especially in these classes, which are required gen-eds for business majors.  Even without attrition, the odds are that there is at least one student absent per class.  Perfect attendance is rare (in non-major specific classes).

While I enjoy teaching all of my classes, I admit preference for my programming classes.  I love programming and talking about programming, and the students are much more invested and passionate about the material, too.  One of my Java class mornings, the roads were an absolute nightmare.  It took me 35 minutes to make my usual 10-12 minute trip to campus, so instead of arriving early as I usually do.  I walked in one minute after class was supposed to start.  As I was making the long, harrowing drive, I kept thinking I was going through all of this and would probably arrive to see a handful of students, if that many.  If it had been a different class, it would have gone that way, but not with Java.  All but one student was there, and when I walked in, they cheered.  They were so worried I wasn’t going to make it in and they wouldn’t have class.  How could I not love teaching such enthusiastic learners?!

I’m already behind on grading, due to an unexpected animal rescue situation that took up most of the day yesterday.  I’m hoping to get caught up tonight, but tonight is family night, so that doesn’t leave me too much time to grade.  This rescue situation didn’t go well and left me more depressed than usual (and I tend to be pretty bad after the rescues—seems counter intuitive, but regardless of how they turn out, it’s always emotionally traumatic to see the things that one has to see).  Even a ferocious workout didn’t burn off the emotional mess I hoped it would.  It’s hard to head into a Monday, knowing I have to be “up” and performing well for my Java class in the morning, when I’m so horribly despondent about being stuck living in this mess of a world.  Though I’ve maintained my caffeine-free status religiously for over ten days now, I’m reserving the right to have some before class if I can’t get in the right frame of mind by class time.  I cannot shortchange the students.

I finished reading Plastic Free and would be happy to loan out my Kindle version to anyone who is interested.  I don’t have a Kindle but can buy/borrow and read Kindle books on my laptop or phone.  I read a portion of it and got so bummed out about the gravity of the situation that I had to take a few weeks off.  The remainder of the book, however, was quite empowering with so many good resources and ideas for making changes in my own life, that I felt much more encouraged when I finished the book.  I wish I had just read straight through—I would have gotten to the “happier” parts quicker.  I appreciated the author’s reminder to make incremental changes as well as her honest depiction of her depression and struggles with despondency when learning the full scope of the problem.  I will be talking more about some of the specific changes we are working on in severely reducing our plastic consumption. 

One of the first things I did was track down a new source for coconut oil, which I use tons of  (cooking, body lotion, lip balm, hair smoother, eye makeup remover).  I love the Nutiva brand and have always used this, but I found that they only sell their coconut oil in plastic jars.  I ordered from a new company (fingers crossed that I like the product as well) that sells it in glass jars.  We go through a lot of it, so I can get one nice, large, bulk-sized glass jar of it and then distribute it to the various locations of usage in smaller jars.

The other item I rely on that I’m trying to track down in glass (or at least a refill-your-own-container system) is white vinegar.  We go through gallons of this, as I use it for cleaning almost everything (vinegar, baking soda, and tea tree oil or lavender take care of 95% of our cleaning needs, which are immense), and we have to do a lot of cleaning in this household.  There are smaller-sized glass bottles available, but it would take a LOT of those to match the quantities we use, and that isn’t a convenient or practical solution.  I’m working on tracking down a good solution to this.