Thursday, February 1, 2007

Husband on Board!

My husband is totally into this reduction of waste effort. He just came from the grocery store, a trip he combined with a business meeting and other errands. We live far, far away from everything so we are the king and queen of combining trips. As we were unpacking groceries, he said that he was so aware of the packaging that everything comes in that he didn't want to buy anything and chose to leave the store without some of our regular purchases. This is a big step for him. He checked out the bulk tea department today and the bulk cereal department and has already purchased granola in bulk and pointed out that we can buy flour from the bulk section for the home-made oatmeal cookies that we have been making the past couple of weeks to get us off of our organic fig newmans.

He's agreed to cut meat consumption to once every week or every couple of weeks. We haven't bought any meat in over a month! I was a total veg until I met him and now since I've stopped nursing, I can go back to it.

I've learned a lot and am completely convinced that humans don't need/shouldn't eat meat anyway. Cutting out meet will greatly reduce the waste/garbage in our house. Our goal is one bag every two weeks instead of every week.

For February:

  • Stop buying Tea in packaging.
  • eliminate feminine paper products
  • eliminate diapers and pull-ups--yeah potty training
  • Eliminate yogurt containers(these can be recycled if you return them to Stoneyfield Farms, but then there's the cardboard box and postage)
  • Eat more oatmeal to cut down on cereal.
  • Stop buying juices and squeeze our own.
  • No personal care products;
    • baking soda for toothbrushing
    • soap for body/hair
    • no styling products
    • bar soap for shaving
    • no lotion for face/body- make own from Vit E and Olive Oil and essential oils using washable glass container
    • Using radius recyclable toothbrushes(these have replacement heads so you don't have to toss the entire toothbrush)
    • Finish all packaged cleaning products and use only baking soda, vinegar, salt, lemon, etc for all cleaning.
  • Trying to think of more ways.
Happy reducing!

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