No Impact Day 2: Trash

To be honest, in order to prep for today’s challenge, I did two things over the weekend:

1. I cleaned my office (to collect a typical bagful of my work-related garbage), and 
2. went through the half full garbage bag in my kitchen at home. 

Here's what I learned. In addition to errant food scraps and miscellaneous non-recyclables, there was an extreme amount of used paper towels, tea bags, and plastic zipper bags…the shame of it all.

The changes I've made may mean that this case of paper
towels could last me a year…fingers crossed.

Paper Towels

A year ago when I first decided to start using them, I made a personal pact to use them sparingly and responsibly. However, the evidence of the garbage proves me wrong.

Honestly, I can’t give up disposable paper towels. I can’t! Reusing fabric is an affront to all of my senses! This is coming from the person who notices the flecks of other people’s skin and hair dancing in beams of light in a room (and then beats a hasty retreat). It's the germs.

Just to give a bit more perspective, hubby came home last weekend with a special present for me, a case of my favorite brand of paper towels. I kissed him heartily when I saw it!

To mitigate the mountains of trash I've made a few changes. As for the paper towels, they now live on a high shelf in my kitchen, the recycled dish sponges is much easier to get to for quick spills.

Some of you might think that’s not good enough, but I have a further plan: instead of trashing any of my used paper towels, I’ll blend and compost them—along with the bits of food waste from my soup making. This way, they’ll be twice as useful to me, as a quick cleaning supply and then in the spring to feed next year’s herb garden.

I’ve ditched (figure of speech) the zipper bags for lunch in favor of these dusty Pyrex travel bowls that I bought years ago to curb my lunch buying habit. These things are awesome!

The guidelines of this day's challenge dictate that the participant collect daily refuse and try different ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle more of my trash. Can't wait to make my trash update on Sunday!

Want to know about the tea? I've hit up a friend who has a huge tin of loose black tea in her kitchen and she's bringing over a few scoops to keep me going for the remainder of No Impact Week.
I suppose I should do something really sustainable and trade her something for the (otherwise) free tea.