Just an Ordinary Person Trying To Reduce Trash

Have you read some of the blogs on how to live a life in today’s society and produce no trash? They’re writing about a style of life that I don’t have or even long to have. Three blogs that I looked at were: mindbodygreen.com, zerowastehome.com and trashisfortossers.com. As I read about the travels of the lady who wrote the zero waste blog, I wondered how she eats as she travels long distance to discuss her style of life. Airline food comes in containers and I know of no restaurant that doesn’t make trash; does she consider this their trash rather than her garbage? She does say “home”. Perhaps garbage created while elsewhere isn’t a concern. And, do the other bloggers that make zero trash stay at home rather than eating out in order to not make trash? These aren’t questions meant to criticize the person who strives to put next to nothing in our city dumps, they’re my thoughts about how one would do normal things like traveling and maintain such a strict goal. I admire anyone who strives to live a lifestyle that creates very little waste.

As for me, I live in an area with food stores that stock little, or nothing, in the way of bulk items.  I’m not even going to look into the possibility of getting everything I would substitute for items in plastic containers sent to me from online purchases. And, how would they send items to me without a plastic or box container? My choice: I’ve decided to do the best I can with picking up roadside trash and cutting back on items like the amount of paper and plastic products I use. Until we meet again in my next blog, I’ll resolve to make less paper and plastic waste.

Before and After Trash Time

These are before and after pictures of my last roadside trash pick up.


I took along my phone to get a picture of the trashed roadside.

This was from a different angle but it's the same area after the trash was picked up.  Some people will never understand this, but the clean roadside, even if it's only for a short while, is why I continue as "trash lady" once a month.



And, here's the bag of trash after I finished my job. The area was a little cleaner than usual. The second month in a row!

Being a Good Citizen Takes Time

I just finished doing some painting in my garage. While checking out what paint to buy, I got a surprise. The previous painter of my garage used oil-based paint for the job! The bucket of very watery paint in my garage was oil-based but I didn’t know that until the paint store manager pointed this out to me. I don’t like oil-based but he told me that if I wanted to use water-based paint on the walls I would have to sand them and apply a primer coat on first.

Rather than going through all the extra work, it’s now painted with a second coat of oil-based paint.

Warning to anyone considering this option…use water-based. It will take less time in the long run. Cleaning up the brushes and drips off the floor and myself took at least twice as much time. And now I’m looking for some local business that will take the mineral spirits/paint mixture and dispose of it in a safe manner. Life isn’t simple when we become concerned about our environment and don’t do things like pouring mineral spirits in a sink and rinsing out the sink or putting it in a container in the trash. (It is a poisonous substance that shouldn’t get in our ground water.)

What happens to poisonous stuff like the paint brush cleaner I plan to dispose of after I leave it at hazardous waste recycling center? That’s on my list of things to learn about. The mixture is in a sealed container in my garage. When I recycle it, I hope to find a worker at the center who can answer my question.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho. With a Trash Bag I Will Go

Yes, this is a happy song. It was trash pick up day for me as I jotted down these notes after I found about half the garbage I usually find along my normal route. I could have gone further but, frankly, it was later in the day than usual and I was ready to go home. There were hardly any beer cans in my bag–and no booze bottles–and there was less plastic garbage.

I haven’t seen anyone else cleaning the roadside. This new month will tell me if the trend is continuing…

(I imagine most folks are familiar with the term “senior moment”–it was a “senior week” for me. I thought I published this blog last week & just found out it wasn’t published.)