The one with the zero waste grocery store

I am so lucky to live in a city that has a zero waste grocery store. The Mighty Bin is the amazing labor of love from, Isabelle DeMillan. This is a storefront grocery store in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego. 

The idea is that shoppers bring their own clean containers and refill from hundreds of items sold in bulk. When I arrive, they weigh my containers and either write the weight on the bottom, or use an elastic band to add a tag that electronically holds the information about the weight. As I fill each container they add the item to my tab until I am ready to check out. 

BYO Containers:

Unlike other grocery places, where bringing my own containers makes me an unusual customer, at the Mighty Bin it is totally normal, accepted, and encouraged to for me to walk in with a collection of bottles, canisters, and canvas bags to fill with my groceries. They even accept donations of bottles and jars to give to people who don't have containers, or need an extra one. These get cleaned and sterilized at the store before becoming available to customers. (I donate bottles to reduce our recycling, and so they get reused.)

The reason I love The Mighty Bin is because they have items I can not find in bulk anywhere else. Yes, I live within a mile of a Sprouts, and they have great bulk bins for many of my regular items, salt, sugar, flour, rice, oats etc. The Mighty Bin has all those things too, but there are specific things I can't find in the bulk section of other stores that are available there. Plus The Mighty Bin has liquid things that I can not buy in bulk anywhere else. 

Bulk items I can find there that I can't find elsewhere: 

Arborio rice, baking soda, roasted garbanzo beans, dried blueberries, pretzels, spaghetti and other pasta shapes. 

Liquid items that are hard to find in bulk elsewhere: 

Olive oil, vinegars, sesame oil, maple syrup, honey, dish soap. (I love being able to buy vinegar this way for cleaning, cooking, and laundry.)

They also have a rotating variety of frozen items, which I really appreciate. 

And there is a peanut butter machine we are eager to try once we use up our back stock of peanut butter in jars. 

Here is their full list of products they carry. 

The Best Grocery Store:

The Mighty Bin also partners with lots of local businesses organizations to recycle plastic, collect e-waste, offer classes, order flowers or subscribe to a community supported agriculture box. Check out their Instagram feed for the latest events and ongoing initiatives. 

If you live in the San Diego area a trip to the Mighty Bin is a fun adventure in shopping without packaging. It's a great way to reuse containers you already have. I encourage you to make it a regular part of your grocery rotation. 

Oh, and they were recently voted Best Grocery Store by San Diego Magazine's Reader's Picks. Yay!

The one with the local gifting economy

In July of 2022 I joined the local buy nothing group on Facebook and began gifting items that were no longer serving a purpose in my home. Since then I have gifted nearly two hundred things out of my house. That sounds like a lot right? It's not. I bet many of you likely have just as many things to gift. Of course the trick to this is giving far more than I receive from the group.

Here are some gift examples: 

I cleaned out my closet and gifted 19 tops. 

Supplies from a pet we no longer have, plus several fish tanks. 

A small appliance I was gifted, but never used. 

Kids DVDs my children had outgrown

Clothes my children had outgrown

Photo paper we were never going to print on

A large shelf we replaced with a smaller one

An alarm clock, a lamp, a muffin pan I never used. 

Some vegan food items a guest left behind at my mother in law's house.

Somewhere in the gifting group rules I read the phrase "gift from your own abundance" and I realized that I had an abundance to give. Spares, extras, sets that came with more than I needed, gifts that we weren't using, items from other phases of our lives. All around there was abundance, and I could let it go. 

I know what you're thinking, "Jen, this blog is about making less trash. How is that related to giving stuff away?"

Well, I see these things as connected in a few ways. 

1. Packaging: When I give someone something they need or were about to buy, I spare them the acquisition of the packing materials a new item would have used. If I give away curtains I'm not using, then someone else gets curtains without having to buy them in a plastic bag. The same is true when I need something. I can often receive it free of packaging. 

2. The item itself stays out of the landfill: I found an unopened package of outlet covers in a drawer. My children have long passed the age at which they might stick things in electrical outlets, so this was an instantly gift-able item. I posted them to the group and the response was tremendous. So many young families wanted these. I found myself digging through drawers looking for loose used outlet covers to give more of them away. The thing is, these are tiny pieces of plastic that feel entirely disposable. I'm sure many people throw them away. But why? They are still perfectly useful to a person who needs them.  

This is also true for food items. I see a lot of perfectly good food items posted in our local group, and I've even posted some food items myself. You can't donate an open bottle of fancy ketchup that you just don't like the taste of, but a neighbor is perfectly happy to come get it and it stays out of the landfill. 

3. Trash: My stuff has to go somewhere eventually. Everything I own will go somewhere. Either I can gift it now or someone else will clean out my house later. In the latter scenario there is a much greater chance that things will get trashed, even if they could still be useful to someone. If I can find that person who can use it now, then eventually less ends up in the trash. 

4. Try before I buy: Through the group I'm finding many neighbors are willing to lend tools, and other items on a short term basis. I don't need to buy a circular cutter for that fabric project, a neighbor will lend it to me first to see if it really works the way I hope it will. Many things can be borrowed instead of bought. 

5. I buy less: The process of clearing my house of things we no longer need is a really good reminder to buy less stuff to begin with. Also, I am more aware of what I have, so I am less likely to go out and buy duplicates of things I already own enough of. 

My local gifting group has another name now. Something about copyright issues. So you may need to do some searching to find your local gifting group, probably on Facebook, but there are other apps where you can give away free items to people nearby. 

Safety: Of course consider your personal safety. Never post your address publicly. Our gifting group requires us to post an item, see who is interested, and then privately message the chosen recipient with pick up information. I typically look at what other things the person has posted in the group to make sure I am dealing with a legit group member, who is also gifting their abundance into the neighborhood. Someone who has never gifted any items of their own is unlikely to be my choice to receive an item. 

Other options: 

Sell it: I've done that. It's challenging to make sure the items are really nice enough to sell, photographed well, stored until they actually sell etc. Then packaged, mailed, etc. I still have a box of items that are listed on Poshmark. I lowered the prices a lot and those items are still sitting in that box. Letting go of that hope is the project of another day for now. 

Donate it: I still use this option when an item does not attract attention in our gifting group within 48 hours, I add it to the donate bag. 

The one with the Veggie Box: Getting Produce from my local CSA

In 2009 I started getting fruits and veggies from a CSA (community supported agriculture). This is a farm in my county that puts out a weekly or bi-weekly box of produce. I get one every other week. For about $30 I get a box with a dozen or so different kinds of items. I'm lucky enough to live in Southern California, so the variety and quality of this locally grown and organic produce is wonderful. 

My February 2023 CSA Box Contents

Before I got a box, I sometimes frequented farmers markets. I know many people enjoy that experience, but I didn't. I struggled to make on the spot decisions about which produce to buy, and I didn't like that I had to remember to go there weekly, within a pretty narrow time window. And it was a time consuming process. It din't fit in my life well when I had two small kids. So, I was thrilled when my friend told me we had a local CSA delivering to our neighborhood. 

I still need to remember to pick up my bi-weekly veggie box. (In all honesty, my husband is usually the one who picks it up from a neighbor's porch a few blocks away.) And I still spend time unpacking and processing the contents. But I like the serendipity of discovering that I like things I would never have chosen to buy. I like to consistency of knowing I will have produce. I like having a selection of seasonal items chosen for me. And when there is something in the box we don't like (looking at you fennel) we drop it in the swap box and another neighbor will pick it up. 

There are several advantages of having one local pick up spot for all the CSA customers in our neighborhood. One is the aforementioned swap box. People leave items they don't want and others take them. Another is the simplicity for the farm in having one drop off point. A third is that if someone doesn't pick up their box, it gets gifted by the drop off host to another friend. (Way better than leaving produce rotting on your porch because you forgot to cancel a delivery.) The food comes in large waxed boxes. We just open our box on the porch, transfer the produce to our own bags and then collapse the boxes for the farm to reuse.

It's prepaid, but I can skip a box if we will be traveling. The farm publishes a list weekly of what to expect to find in the next box. This helps me plan my weekend shopping trip. My son likes broccoli, but I won't buy it at the store if I'm expecting some in our CSA box. 

Every CSA is different, some include eggs, some drop off at your door. Some offer more variety, some less. The important thing is to find one that is local to you, fits your time constraints, budget etc. And when considering the budget part, remember that joining a CSA will reduce your grocery store bill, and maybe even make it possible for you to go shopping for food less often. With the perishables coming through the CSA, I make fewer trips to the store now.