Today, Bret and I cleaned. We both start new jobs in 2 weeks and we know that cleaning will be the first thing to go as we try to make time in our busy lives. My job will be a part-time job in addition to my current full-time job. Bret's will be a new position with a new county. I hope we have not bitten off more than we can chew with this massive resolution on top of our new jobs.
I told my sister today of our plan to be trash-free in 2013. Her response was predictable--"that's impossible." We _know_ it's impossible. We are not planning on living a nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering. We still must function in American society. We are just planning on being really weird--carrying our own "to go" containers, using handkerchiefs, carrying a bucket on dog walks instead of plastic bags (more on this in a minute) . If we set our standard as "trash-free", then we will aim for that and fall a little short. We will learn each day about ourselves as consumers and make better choices in the future.
We have made a few more decisions about how we are going to go about doing this trash-free thingy. As we cleaned today, we realized we have a lot of things that will eventually be trash. The mac and cheese comes in a plastic bag, the scrubbing bubbles container is not recyclable, we have bottles of water and our curbside recycling will not take the little plastic lids.
We are not going to make this "trash passover" and rid our house of anything that is not trash-free kosher before we begin on this journey. It just doesn't make sense. This resolution isn't about being perfect from the get go. It's about getting better over time; it's about learning alternative ways to live our daily lives to make less/no trash. It is about proving you can be extremely environmental without being extremely crazy. Hopefully.
That being said, we are going to try to have different trash heaps. One for trash purposely made through purchases and personal choices after Jan 1st and one for trash created by items already in our possession. We also pick up trash around the neighborhood as we walk the dogs. We don't want that to count against us.
Now on to the poop. We have 2 dogs. They poop a lot. Bret is in charge of researching how to best dispose of poop without sending it to the landfill. Our MO right now is to pick it up in little plastic bags and put it in the trash can. There must be a more environmental way. But we live in the river city-- so we need to make sure we do not contaminate the James. Whatever he finds out, we know we need to pick up poop and bring it back to our home base without the use of plastic bags. Thus the aforementioned bucket. ew.
I am in charge of researching where we can recycle various forms of plastic. Our curbside only takes #1 and #2 plastic and only if they are narrow-neck bottles. Bret was operating under the assumption that WMVA did not really care about the latter stipulation. For the past 2 years, I have been picking his non-conformist plastic out of the bin before Blue Thursday (our recycling day) and putting it in the trash. He has agreed to follow the curbside rules, but this narrow-neck business has him realizing this resolution will be very tricky.
One day of trash left. I am nervous.
1 comment:
What's your new job?
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