The one with the green bin

This is not a drill. The city crew delivered a green bin to our house yesterday. I've looked forward to this for months now. So much of our trash was food waste. Yes, I am working on making less of that, but when I juice lemons for lemonade I still end up with lemon rinds to throw away. 

Now all food waste, rinds, leftovers goes in the green bin. We also get to include all yard trimmings, leaves, and untreated wood like that weird short log we've had in a corner for a long time. It also turns out we produce a lot of compostable materials in the bathroom: hair, q-tips, and biodegradable dental floss, so I'm going to need a compost container in there. 

But, as tempting as it is to buy some new compost bins, I'm going to take a deep breath and start with containers we already have. The city delivered a "small" food scraps bucket with the green bin, but it is ugly and flimsy. I don't want to see it on the counter and I think it may fall apart quickly with heavy use. 

Yesterday, I gave a good scrubbing to the OXO compost bin we used to use when I pretended I was composting in the back yard. It had some suspicious brown stains on the inside, but vinegar and baking soda were remarkably effective. It's cute and functional, but when it came time to make lemonade and dinner I remembered I had a white three gallon bucket in the garage. I called it the dinner bucket. It was easy to throw food scraps into, and scrape plates into, and after dinner it got dumped in the green bin without hassle. For ease of use, you just can't beat a short term compost bucket without a lid to get in the way.

The challenge now will be adapting my family and myself to these new habits. We have to find a way to store and move food scraps on a daily basis. We have to get used to making a trip to the green bin after dinner, and maybe more often than that. We have to re-evaluate how much non-organic trash we make and adjust the sizes of containers we need for food scraps, trash and recycling. 

You know you're a #zerowaste geek when the arrival of the green bin in the highlight of your week.

The one with the cloth napkins

 One obvious, and relatively easy, trash reduction change my family could make was to stop using paper napkins and switch to cloth. I heard cloth napkins were easy to find at local thrift stores, so I intended to go do some shopping. I really did intend to do that. Like any day now. 

The napkins I already owned

I wanted to buy some cloth napkins that were not "special." Something my family could use every day. Something I wouldn't worry about getting stains on etc. 

I do own some cloth napkins. I bought them over ten years ago when I bought the table cloths I use most of the time. To be clear one of these table cloths has been on our table every day for years. They've been washed many times and had all kinds of things spilled on them. But somehow I thought the matching napkins would be more vulnerable to damage? And by matching, I mean they are made of the exact same fabric. 

Finally, I decided we should use some of the matching cloth napkins. I knew exactly where they were, in a cupboard close at hand. I could have easily reached for them anytime.  I took them out of the open box they were carefully arranged in on the shelf. I pulled out four to add to the table. This felt good. We were not going to be throwing away any paper napkins tonight!

And that's when I saw it, the little green label still stuck to the napkin I had bought more than ten years ago. Wow, I've really never used this napkin before?  Spoiler, it wasn't just that one. All of them still had their original stickers. They were so "special" I had never used them at all. Total #facepalm moment. 

Now, instead of a napkin holder full of paper napkins in the middle of the table, we have a stack of folded, clean, fabric napkins, that just happen to exactly match the table cloth. Full disclosure, often they are clean enough to use for multiple meals before getting tossed in the wash basket. 

I've removed the labels (and price tags) from all of the cloth napkins we own, and they are all in full use rotation on the dining table. Some day, I may find myself at a thrift store buying more,  but I have reason to believe these napkins should be good for at least a decade.