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Zero-Waste Basics

Is Recycling a Scam?

Posted on November 13, 2019November 13, 2019by Mary Katherine Glen

Metal and cardboard bales ready for recycling

If you’re into the zero waste movement, you may have heard that recycling is a scam.

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Ordinarily, I wouldn't be too thrilled by a hole i

🍉 Did you know? Watermelon rinds are edible 🍉

After making watermelon gazpacho on the weekend, I started a batch of watermelon rind “pickles.” Peel the rinds, cut them into bite-size pieces, submerge in brine in a clean jar and wait. Of, if you have leftover brine from another ferment, submerge the rinds in that.

The jar on the right is made of new brine. I also added fresh dill and the jalapeño top and ribs left over from making my soup. (That small amount of jalapeño added a nice spicy kick and put those bits to good use.) The jar on the left is made with pickle brine left over from a jar of fermented dill pickles.

These pickles taste yummy, provide gut-friendly probiotics practically free and keep watermelon rinds out of landfills.

Swipe for the full recipe and pics of how I weigh these down. And save this post so you'll have the recipe cards for your next watermelon! 🍉🍉🍉

Dehydrated tomatoes take up little cupboard space,

Dehydrated tomatoes take up little cupboard space, preparing them requires minimal hands-on work and, like other food preservation techniques, dehydration prevents food from going bad and going to a landfill where it would emit planet-heating methane gas.

I dehydrated these in a car parked in full sun. You could also use a dehydrator, a solar dehydrator, the oven or an air fryer with a dehydrator setting.

After saving up and freezing my fruit scraps all s

After saving up and freezing my fruit scraps all summer, I made a vat of fruit scrap soda, a carbonated fermented drink that costs almost nothing to make. Essentially, you put fruit scraps, sugar and water in a jar, cover and stir a few times a day. Drink once it becomes bubbly—after 2 to 3 days—or bottle it to increase the carbonation.

This batch contained a generous 4 cups of frozen fruit scraps—strawberry tops and scraps; whole peach and cherry pits with a bit of fruit clinging to them and even date pits; 8 cups water and 1/2 cup of sucanat. Any sugar will work however. Sucanat is a bit less processed. (TIP: Pour the water into the fruit jars before adding it to the vat in order to get every last bit of fruit out.)

The scoop of sugar looks like a shockingly large amount but it feeds the lactic-acid bacteria present on the fruit scraps. You don’t consume much sugar (unless you want to add more for a sweeter drink). These good bacteria need it for fuel to enable them to reproduce and ferment the drink. This batch was no longer sweet after two days of fermenting at room temperature when I bottled it. It was fairly boozy—not as boozy as a beer, more like 2 percent or so. (I didn’t measure but as a lightweight, I can detect low levels of alcohol.) As I bottled the drink, I also added a bit of lemon juice.

Usually, I make a second, more concentrated infusion but because these spent scraps had zero sweetness or flavor left in them, I composted them.

See my recipe index for the full instructions.

I scored a deal on organic, local nectarines yeste

I scored a deal on organic, local nectarines yesterday at the farmers’ market. The end-of-the-day price was $2 per pound compared to the wake-up-early-price of $5.50 per pound. (Sometimes arriving late pays off.) I also bought discounted blueberries and pastries.

I bought more than we can eat but none will go to waste! I sliced up several, spread them across a bare baking sheet and froze them. After a couple of hours in the freezer, they easily pop off the baking sheet. At that point, transfer the frozen wedges to containers and put the fruit back in the freezer. This one tray filled three large jars. Most of the nectarines will go into galettes, some will find their way into smoothies.

Freezing food extends its shelf life and keeps food out of landfill where it would emit methane, a planet-heating greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. And freezing is easy! You don't need special equipment. Just do a little prep and squirrel it away in the freezer to enjoy later.

Thank you @latimes for the interview! ‘But even

Thank you @latimes for the interview!

‘But even though Bonneau has been plastic-free since 2011, she doesn’t want anyone to “get hung up on ‘zero waste.' " It is, she says, "just a goal.” ‘

Link @zerowastechef for the article.

After visiting the repair café at our library thi

After visiting the repair café at our library this past Saturday, I once again have a working bedside lamp.

Repair cafés help build community and resiliency while giving useful items a second life and keeping them out of landfills. Rather than dropping your item off and returning to pick it up at a later date, in a repair café, you sit with the volunteer repairing it, you explain the problem, you learn a bit about the repair process and you have a social interaction.

About 20 volunteers fixed broken items at Saturday’s repair café. Some of them fixed electronics, some clothing, some small appliances. Every time a volunteer repaired an item, we’d hear the sound of a metal handbell ringing. It rang several times during my lamp’s straightforward repair (it needed a new socket and some tightening up of the base).

If your city doesn’t have a repair café and you’d like to start one, read the book Repair Revolution: How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, written by John Wackman, founder of the first repair cafe in New York, and Elizabeth Knight, a community sustainability activist and organizer. It outlines the history of the repair movement and provides the practical nuts and bolts for launching and operating successful repair cafés.

Thank you volunteers for all the repairs you executed and @sunnyvalelibrary for hosting the event!

When searching for solutions to our waste crisis,

When searching for solutions to our waste crisis, whether dealing with wasted food, plastic pollution or random clutter, source reduction works best. When source reduction isn't possible, secondary solutions include donating food and unwanted goods, reusing whatever can be reused and implementing policies such as forcing polluters to pay for the waste they create. Ideally though, businesses, institutions and individuals would stop waste before it happens—at the source—rather than having to manage mounds of waste after the fact.

A sunflower jungle is growing where cement had cov

A sunflower jungle is growing where cement had covered the soil for decades. We had this and another section torn out last year and plan on removing more this year. The concrete is recycled at a facility in San Jose.

Bees buzz around the flowers all day long. Birds make pit stops on the plants. And I’m looking forward to watching critters feast on the mature seeds. Witnessing the transformation brings so much joy.

We buy so much stuff that an entire ecosystem—th

We buy so much stuff that an entire ecosystem—the un-supply chain—has sprung up to help us manage it: stores filled with stuff to organize our stuff, storage units to park stuff we will never again use but can’t bear to part with and professional organizers excavating us from beneath mountains of stuff, for example.

When taking a break from managing our stuff, we might watch others struggle with theirs in an episode of Hoarders, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo or Home Edit, just some selections from the reality TV genre, I-own-too-much-stuff.

Yet we keep buying more.

The National Retail Federation predicts that retail sales in the US will reach between $5.13 trillion and $5.23 trillion this year. Some of those sales include services. But still. Where will we store everything? And what do we do with it at its end of life?

Some questions to ask before buying:

💫 Do I need it or can I make do?
💫 Can I find it secondhand?
💫 Can I dispose of it in a circular fashion at its end of useful life?
💫 What material is it made of?
💫 What resources went into manufacturing it? (labor, water, energy)
💫 What are the working conditions in its country of origin?
💫 How far does it travel to reach me?
💫 Will it last?
💫 Can I buy it locally from a small business?
💫 Is it packaged excessively and with what material?
💫 How much money and time will this cost me, including future responsible disposal?
💫 Would I be willing to pack it up someday should I move?

See my newsletter for more on the un-supply chain, including ideas for getting rid of stuff responsibly. See my Linktree thingamajig.

(In the background pic is a free wheelbarrow I found on the street.)

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