12 zero waste ideas working so far!

I haven’t put trash out in almost two months. As requested by Mary Ann who asked, “But don’t you have one single post showing how you’ve done that?” Twelve things that are working to keep the trash out of the bin (and therefore the landfill) since we started this blog:

Every day is a new journey, and another chance...

Aughh….the pressure!

I found this in one of my old journals written back in May of 2004.
“When you finally realize no matter how hard you try, how good you are, how much you work—the insignificant difference you make won’t save the world; there is both an empty, helpless hopelessness and a great relief.”

I still feel this way most of the time.

The very beginning

This is our attempt as a traveling military family to live the zero waste lifestyle.

This isn’t a recent idea, but it is an improved one. Brought up in a recycling family, I started my first recycling program in high school. I placed plastic-lined boxes beside each trashcan with a homemade sign that read, “Please place all cans, cardboard and plastic in this box. I’ll recycle it.” Each Friday my dad picked me up from school and emptied them with me. They were almost always full of trash.

In the military, I was the only cook in the missile field who recycled. The other cooks and facility managers made fun, telling me I was making my life difficult. Difficult was the word they used. To me, it was normal. The guilt of throwing recyclables in the trash kept me from sleeping at night.