Recycling Projects

I'm obsessed with not throwing things away. I always look to pass unwanted items on to others, repair the damaged ones, and re-purpose the things that don't fit into the first two. Here are a few recent projects:

Worn Out Socks

When we wear a hole in a sock, I simply tie a knot in it and throw it to the dogs. They love to play tug with it and throw it around. Not only do you get to keep your spent sock out of the landfill, but you also bypass having to buy faraway-made toys for your dogs! If you wear natural fibered socks (pure cotton, wool, or bamboo), you're in extra luck. After your dogs have demolished the sock, you can just throw it in the compost pile!  If you don't have a dog, simply cut the sock into pieces for easier decomposition by your hard-working microbes.

Nappy Pot Holders

So I've had the same pot holders for about 7 years. They had a ridiculous amount of stains and burn holes. Most First World people would have thrown them in a landfill long ago and purchased new ones. Most Third World people would be grateful to simply have pot holders, ratty or not . At my place in the Fourth World, I can use a few scraps of fabric to revamp the old into new:

 1.  Wash potholders, measure dimensions, cut fabric, and make a pouch.

 2. Add loop of ribbon, sew pouch shut with old potholder inside. Quilt stitch an X across the square. Voila!

This one is made from an old wool sweater. I used the bottom of the body to make a couple of potholders, the top of the body to make a purse, and the arms to make some awesome volcano leg warmers. Scraps went into the compost. 

The result of some old potholders, a few cotton scraps of cloth, a holey sweater, some ribbon, a sewing machine, and 30 minutes of my day. What can you save from the landfill with a simple upcycle?

The Nutrient Cycle is your Friend

Acknowledging nature's wisdom is key in just about anything--especially gardening. Nature is the original and best recycler. Where do all those fall leaves go? Shed animal antlers and winter coats? Spawned salmon carcasses? They all get recycled into the system. Nutrient cycling is amazing and ever-present, even in urban settings. Think of all the rotting pine needles in your gutter that support a growth of moss and tiny hemlock trees. An alder rooting through the asphalt, an algal bloom in a shallow pond, the greenest grass above your sewer. Just about every living thing eats and produces waste, and in the beauty of nature one thing's waste is another thing's food. Without the waste there is no food. Acknowledging that waste is a necessary and valuable part of the nutrient cycle is key in gardening.

You can't constantly take away from the nutrient cycle without adding to it. If I harvest nutrient-laden produce year after year in my garden, will I always have nutritious produce or any produce at all? Nutrients have to come from somewhere. As they are extracted from the soil in the form of food, their availability in my garden decreases. Something's got to give--I need to add fertilizer or buy all my food. Buy fertilizer or buy food? Most people will see that buying food is cheaper and easier than buying commercial fertilizer and proceed from there. Here's where tapping into the wisdom of nature will lead you to find free fertilizer to make almost-free food.

The thing that excites me so much about composting is that it literally transports nutrients for free. We all eat and have food scraps. Those scraps contain nutrients from their native soil--whether it be from the mountainside, the sea, or the agricultural lands of the Americas....or elsewhere. By composting we extract nutrients from foreign soil and put it into our own. In a place where soil is scarce, this is a dream come true!

Nature has a cycle for producing that involves the changing of forms. We all know the basic buffalo scenario of yesteryear--they ate the grass, pooped on the grass, and the prairie was fertile and bountiful. The buffalo always had food because they always gave the prairie food. By globalizing our diets we've severely altered this cycle. We take nutrients from a Midwestern corn field and throw them into the landfill via a cob.  We take nutrients from Ecuador and throw them into the landfill in the form of peels. We excrete nutrients into "waste water" facilities and into the ocean. It goes on and on--all this "throwing away" of soil-building materials--every minute, every day, and what we have to show for it is the growing mountain of Lemon Creek, our local landfill. I prefer plate tectonics for my mountain builder.

Eating locally isn't enough to call our food production sustainable. Soils have to be fertilized, and as long as that fertilizer comes in a box or bag from somewhere else we're still dependent on a global diet. I had a goat dairy for 8 months, and while the milk and yogurt were phenomenally delicious, all I was doing was a trade. Instead of buying milk I was buying alfalfa. And to top it off, I wasn't saving any money or cutting out any shipping transportation, and I was certainly eating up a lot of my time. I accepted the fact that I don't live in a place where a dairy makes sense economically or sustainably. I'd rather buy milk from a place where cows eat grass and poop on it and spend my time catching a fish. At least that way I can throw the fish head overboard and feed a crab that might find it's way into my pot. 

    (Huck was super-stoked on his new skiing helmet 

                               and wanted to wear it fishing.....)

Composting News

Wha-hoo for the first full month of composting for the Fourth World Living Composting Co-Op! I thought I'd post some notes on the project.

First off, I'd like to say THANKS SO MUCH to those participating! This is really going as smoothly as I optimistically expected it would!

Great News! All the yucky scraps have livened up my compost pile and I now have Hot Composting! Cold composting works but takes a long time. Hot composting is quick and happens when you have plenty of greens to keep the microorganisms working hard. They produce heat, so the more heat you have the more breakdown you know is happening, and it's all at a rapid rate. There is steam coming off the pile, and the center of it is 150 degrees F!

 

Wonderful News!

We've kept 463 pounds of food out of the landfill!

....and there's going to be fertilizer in return!

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I keep a logbook of everything, partly from my own curiosity and partly because I think there might be some useful data that can be extrapolated from it all. I note how many buckets I collect, the volume and weight of actual material collected, and the temperature of the pile. I also keep track of all my time.

Based on what's going on now, I anticipate the decomposition rate to be exceptionally fast. This is good because quick results are always welcome, but also because I won't need as many composting bins as I thought. I was expecting to have many bins slowing composting at once, but now I think I'll be harvesting one bin while the second is aging and the third is being added to. If this is in fact the case I will be able to add quite a few more members to the Co-op this summer!

I'm also finding that it doesn't take that much time. In just over two hours a week I'm collecting, weighing, dumping, and covering material; washing buckets; and recording data. If I wanted to become an entrepreneur about all this I could charge each member a few dollars a month and I'd make a decent wage for the time put in. The thing that really excites me about this is that it shows promise for being a feasible neighborhood model. If someone on each street, subdivision, or neighborhood did what I'm doing, we could create part-time jobs, keep food out of the waste stream, and create fertile soils for Juneau!

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So far so good is all I'll say to avoid being jinxed!

No Garbage in Schools

 I recently wrote this proposal as a challenge to the Juneau Montessori School, where I worked for 5 years and my son attends school. I'm hoping it will inspire a turning of the trash-conscious corner and bring families, staff, and students into a more intimate contact with and contemplation of their garbage. I think this is all a very important part of taking care of our community and the Earth, and it also teaches the children respect and responsibility. A big part of Montessori is fostering compassion for and taking care of people and the Earth, and my garbage solution is something that is very applicable to that end. My hope is that JMS will take this challenge seriously--to its fullest extent--then serve as a model for other schools. Juneau has 12 public schools with about 5,000 children; there's a lot trash to debunk! 

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What if our school had no garbage? It seems like major impossibility, I know, but it's really not too far-fetched. Let's think about what typically goes into a classroom trash can.

I believe the number one culprit is paper, and that is actually the easiest thing to remove from the trash can. Recycling has come a long way at JMS, but there's still some work to be done. Each and every scrap of paper needs to be recycled. I could even see Paper Shredding and Recycling as a work for the shelves, which could even lead to paper making. Ultimately, what our children put in the trash is product of the adult world. After all, we give them everything they ever "throw out" anyway. It is up to adults to educate children on waste management through accurate phrasing and precise actions. I am always very careful to term things "garbage." Paper isn't garbage; it's an ingredient in making more paper, and it needs to be sorted and saved. If we as adults throw just one piece of paper into the trash, however small, we are telling the children that recycling is an option, not the way things are; then the paper starts to pile up as garbage. 

To prevent the pile-up from even being possible, having a ridiculously small trash can is key.  A few summers ago I actually experimented with this in the classroom. I removed the 2 five-gallon trash cans from the classroom and replaced them with two 5 gallon recycle bins and a beautiful 2 quart crock for the trash. I was vigilant and diligent about the matter, and soon the children were too. Putting a piece of actual trash in the crock became something they were really conscious of, a stark contrast to their former haphazard tosses into the bottomless trash can pit.

So what was in that crock? Packaging. Ziploc bags abound. Some make it home with left-overs, but I can't help but think they're just getting trashed there. While these bags might seem miniscule when crumpled, they add up in surprising ways. Some children have more and some have fewer, but I'd say it averages to each child having two bags to throw away each day. 60 children, 120 bags a day, 600 bags a week, and so forth extrapolated through the years. This should make you gasp. And the thing that's so astonishing is that all this trash is for absolutely nothing. Reusable containers of all sorts can replace these throw-aways. An empty spice jar can hold nuts, a Tupperware can hold grapes. I use cloth pouches with a velcro closure to hold all dry goods. In addition to being beautiful, reusable packaging, even the tiniest child can open the pouch, leading to the "I did it all by myself" triumph that every child enjoys.

Beyond the plastic baggies, there are yogurt containers and fruit cups that are made of non-recyclable plastic. The question to ask here is, are these items necessary? Yes, drastic, but not unreasonable. If adults base their purchases on packaging, producers will have to change their packages. It's a cycle that needs to start with us, now. Skip all packaging and buy fresh fruit! Bulk dried fruit (in your own cloth bags), or fruit in a recyclable tin can or glass jar also work. Then pack the fruit for a lunch in your own re-usable containers. It actually doesn't take any extra time besides washing the containers afterward, and even then you'll be rewarded when you don't have to buy plastic bags or pay to throw them away. Yogurt is a little more tricky. Not many brands have #2 plastic containers, but some do. Be scrupulous. Better yet, buy a recyclable jug of milk and make your own yogurt. It's comically easy and once you try it you'll wonder why you ever wasted your time with the store-bought stuff. You seriously heat the milk up, add culture, and let it sit for 3 hours in a water bath. Add fruit, jam, or honey to make it flavored.

This brings us to the third, and final thing in the trash: food. If we remind our adult selves of the ever-important accurate phrasing and precise actions, the problem here will be solved instantly. Food isn't garbage; it's an ingredient in compost. I encourage families to have their own compost pile or worm bin. They are relatively easy, especially for the benefits they reap.  The Co-operative Extension Service has bulletins on both, and I can also provide guidance. The school actually has a compost bin in the garden, but it hasn‘t been utilized yet this school year. I recently dug through it and it was full of luscious, finished compost and active worms. I harvested it all just before the winter break and used it to set up the worm bin and build new raised beds in the upper JMS parking lot. The kids can resume composting in both ways at school anytime--all they need is adult guidance to get started. Even before the composting, though, should come portion control. Can your child really eat 5 different items at lunch or a whole lid-less Yoplait? Remember, children are responsible for unpacking and packing up their own lunches. If a child has to spend a good part of lunch unpacking items, chances are they will not have time to finish eating them all. And when the lunch bell rings, chances are pretty good that the food will get tossed rather than repacked and saved for another day. Even if it does get repacked, who wants to eat pretzels that have been mixed with pineapple? Being realistic about what we put in our childrens’ lunches can go a long way, both in terms of food waste and waste management.

What else is in the trash?? Not much. The office and kitchen trash fall into the same categories. If we can religiously recycle paper, eliminate plastic packaging, and compost our food, I guarantee the trash load (and bill) will drop dramatically. I'd challenge the parents and staff to this radical waste management scheme, but I know that it won't be challenging! Rather, I ask that you'll make a no-trash resolution and give this all a try! I am available for assistance, advice, or whatever else is needed to get this venture underway. If you'd like more information about reducing trash at school, home, or in the workplace, feel free to contact me. Thanks for reading!