We are a little over halfway through February already and I wanted to give you guys an update on how we're doing with the Futuristic February Challenge.
If you aren't familiar with Futuristic February, I encourage you to check out the Sustainable Duo, Carly and Brenden, to learn more about it.
Carly and Brenden created the challenge to promote awareness about the amount of waste we produce as a society in one month. They then share the vision of what that accumulation of waste would look like in one year. If you were to look in your garbage bin right now, would you be shocked at how much you throw away?
My husband and I are normally pretty good about how much waste we produce as a household. I would only have to take the trash and recycling out once a month if we weren't also using our bins for business waste. The hardest part for me is with the business that we have, we don't get to choose where we get our products from (or how they are packaged) and we end up with a BUNCH of cardboard boxes and plastic bubble wrap. The best thing we can do is reuse it and recycle as much as our city allows. That contributes to having to put the bins out for pickup more often.
Recently, we went on a business trip and that was a real eye opener for me. It's a lot harder to produce minimum amounts of waste at an airport (and while traveling) if you don't pack your own food or reusable items. I did pack my travel mug, a water bottle, and snacks for the first part of the trip. After that it was hard to find snacks that weren't wrapped in plastic to refill my snack containers. Even the uncut fruit was wrapped, you know, with the skin still on (nature's own way of protecting the fruit!). Any time we went to eat, they gave us plastic silverware and a stack of napkins or the to go containers were foam or plastic. It made me wish that I had purchased some travel utensils (like this one) before we left. And I managed to only be given one straw because I forgot to tell them I didn't need or want one. Sometimes it's hard to remember that not everyone is conscious about minimizing waste.
I had one experience during the trip that really stood out to me. We were at a bakery/coffee shop getting breakfast the first day and I asked if I could get my drink made in my travel mug and they refused, even with my cup being clean and having removed the lid for them. I have NEVER had that happen before. Needless to say I decided not to get my drink there (they looked at me like I was nuts) and went somewhere else that would. Yes, it took a little bit more time but we were walking by the second coffee shop on the way to our destination so it wasn't that big of a deal.
The rest of the month has been going pretty well. When we're at home we're already in the habit of using reusable containers and rags to clean up spills (instead of paper towels) and taking our travel mugs and water bottles everywhere. One thing that has come from this month is the need to see what else we can replace or do differently. I am so ready to start trying new sustainability options. The next thing I want to try is making "wax" paper so we can store things that way. I also found plastic snack bags shoved to the back of a drawer, so we've been treating them as reusable bags and cleaning them after each use. Once those are gone we'll replace them with these Stasher bags. I also want to get a compost pile started in our back yard, since we have the space for it. That will reduce our monthly waste even more!
The key part of Futuristic February is to go about life as you normally do, but instead of having the garbage man pick up your trash every week, you keep the non perishables and recyclables and take a photo at the end of the month to see how much you accumulate. As of this moment, halfway through the month, we only have half of a trash bag filled. Had we brought our non perishable waste back from our trip, I think we'd be at three quarters of the way full, which is normally where we would be this time of the month. I'm interested to see what we end up with at the end of the month!
Are you participating in #FuturisticFebruary? I would love to hear how its going! Let me know in the comments!
And remember to post a photo of your non perishable waste and recyclables on February 28th, use the hashtag #FuturisticFebruary, and tag @sustainable_duo on Instagram!
** Futuristic February media, as well as the photo of Carly and Brenden, is from Sustainable_Duo and I asked permission to use them.