Where to recycle foil-lined coffee bags

Drink that holiday coffee and then recycle the bag. I finally found where to recycle those suckers. Someone who wants them!

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8 green ideas for baby working so far

I thought the baby would add all sorts of environmental things to write about. Not so. She’s made relatively little difference in our green lifestyle.

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.

What does your city recycle? Not what you may think…

To my surprise, and after a year and a half of putting yogurt cups and styrofoam into the recycling bin, I discover Norfolk doesn’t recycle styrofoam or yogurt cups. Well, what do you know? I had to visit their website to find out what I COULD and COULD NOT recycle.
So what to do with all these pieces?

So many pieces to recycle for a bit of yogurt!

Buying Organic

Buying Organic

Honestly, I have a difficult time buying fruits that are twice as expensive just because it says “organic” on the labeling. Is it really organic? How do I know? Is it an investment in my health or a marketing ploy to get my money?

Making your own food

Making your own food

What we recycle and how to reduce it.

Trying to rid ourselves of the glass jars and cans that we bring into the house, I’m attempting to make as much food as possible rather than purchase it. I’m now making my own peanut butter, bread, hummus, soups, juices, Greek yogurt, muffins, pesto, cappuccino, beans, nut mix, and salsa. I shall next attempt marinara sauce. If I could figure out how to make my own cheese, I would. I’d like to figure out how to make crackers! Besides cutting back on packaging, we’re getting less preservatives, sugar and other goop in our systems we don’t  need.

My man wants to learn how to brew his own beer. Think of the glass bottles we’d save! A friend of his gave us a tour of a self-brewery in his basement and showed us how it was done. The beer, however, hmmm…how could I say it in a nice way? It tasted like lukewarm yeast. But that was years ago. I’m sure he’s perfected it by now!

Gardening

Gardening.

Zucchini for zucchini bread!

Our first garden together was last year. As children we watched our parents garden, but neither of us had ever tried a garden ourselves.

When you rent, you must ask permission. Some owners are more open than others. We’ve been lucky. Not wanting to destroy the yard, however, we took up only a small space. We bought two raised bed sets  so that we could break them down and take them with us when we moved. We didn’t harvest much food. The cherry tomatoes did okay. We had cucumbers out our ears. We had one tiny cantaloupe and a few jalapeno peppers. We planted the seedlings in the peat pots, which didn’t break down and caused the plants to grow root bound. And apparently, you need two of most plants to cross-pollinate. Now we know.

Composting

Composting.

Grubs from last summer!

We compost absolutely everything—food scrapes, grass clippings, leaves and yard waste, coffee grinds, dust and dirt from the vacuum, fingernail clippings, my husband’s hair from his haircuts. We shred all paper in the house and dump it in, and recently learned entire pizza boxes can be added. You don’t even need to break them down! After dinner this week, we looked at our plates and my man asked, “We can’t compost fish remains?” I jumped online and though some advised against it, others said to bury them deep within the middle of the bin. So it looks like fish heads, scales, fish skin and bones are compostable too. So far, it doesn’t smell bad. This is only recommended, however, if you have an enclosed bin because it can attract animals. If you know of anything we’re missing, by all means, comment on the post and let us know!

My husband’s all-time favorite line is, “Throw it in the compost.” His hobby and passion is making dirt. He’s had a compost pile every place he’s ever lived.