How to be a Guru: Mason Jars!

Mason jars are the backbone to zero waste living.

Although mason jars have been around for a very long time, in recent years we have seen them be used in many new ways. Originally, mason jars were only used for canning foods. Mason jars could preserve foods for up to a year and a half, which worked well in the late 1800s-early 1900s when people were growing their own foods and refrigerators didn’t exist. Mason jars were also used for pickling. This use for them has carried on today with the same popularity as back then. But with the rise of DIY projects in recent years (you can thank websites like Pinterest), mason jars have new uses.

In the realm of zero waste living, mason jars are essential. These multi-use products are durable, reliable, and generic. They are cheap to buy in bulk and easy to use. All over the internet, we see the “Zero waste jar”. People putting all their trash from months, sometimes over years, into a mason jar. Do they throw this trash away? No! They keep it as a makeshift shrine to pride themselves on how little waste they are producing. Although this often times doesn’t showcase all the waste an individual is producing (hint: externalities!), it gives a pretty good idea, and pretty good motivation as well. Although these zero waste jars can seem intimidating, they also harbor hope. The fact that people living in the 21st century, in a first world country, are producing this little waste and not absolutely hating it shows that our society has a lot of promise.  The zero waste jar is the face of the zero waste movement, but it might not be the most practical use for the mason jar. The zero waste gurus of the internet have found a plethora of ways to utilize the transparent 72 cent jar!

Bulk Shopping 

If you are lucky enough to have visited a grocery store with bulk, you often times see that they have snacks and dry foods in these huge containers that you take yourself. Think of it as a candy shop on steroids, these bulk shops are the cornerstone to zero waste living. Grocery shopping can get very tricky without this bulk option, and for many people, mitigating their waste seems impossible. When you shop in bulk, you bring a mason jar (or another reusable container) and fill it with the bulk product of your choice. Then, when you check out, you tare the weight of the mason jar to get the weight of the product, and viola! You just shopped in bulk. Bulk shopping is how zero waste gurus survive, literally. But these mason jars are not only helpful to buy the food, but also to store it! You can keep these jars in your pantry and label them with a cute sticky note (stickers are not recyclable- but sticky notes are!). If you are not sure what grocery stores are zero waste around you, you can type in where you live here and find the closest bulk shop. Amazing!

DIY

Another way zero waste gurus use mason jars is for DIY projects. Household products, like toothpaste and mouthwash, that don’t come in bulk can also be made at home. These products are often times fun and easy to make, using simple cheap products rather than harmful chemicals. You can find zero waste DIY project here.
There are many more ways you can use mason jars: as water bottles, candles, containers for products, storage, and even to cook. But you don’t have to live zero waste to enjoy these benefits.

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“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” -Eleanor Roosevelt. 

Composting

Food scraps make up 13.9% of trash in the United States. For many people, reducing, reusing and recycling works perfectly well- with the exception of food scraps. There is a solution to this! It is called composting. You can’t compost everything, but you can compost a lot of the fresh produce that you use while cooking. The soil that you make from composting can then be used to create or add to your own garden. The best part of composting is that it mitigates the waste you are sending to landfills, and it creates nutrient rich soil.

How do you start composting, is it hard, and is it expensive?

There are a ton of tutorials of step-by-step how to compost, which I will link at the end of the post, but it really all depends on how you want it to work. I’ll first start by giving a lost of what you can compost. I’ve said this before, but you can’t compost everything! If you put something into your compost that isn’t biodegradable then it will look the exact same a year after as it did when you first put it there.

Items you can Compost

• Fruit and vegetable scraps
• Eggshells
• Coffee grinds
• Coffee filters
• Tea bags / tea leaves
• Non-dairy milk
• Cardboard pizza boxes
• Paper bags
• Crumbs
• Cooked pasta
• Cooked rice
• Leaves
• Grass clippings
• Lawn and garden weeds
• Straw or hay
• Pine needles
• Wood ash
• Animal manure
• Newspaper
• Shredded paper
• Corn cobs
• Dryer lint
• Stale bread, chips
• Tomato sauce / paste
• Paper towel rolls
• Crackers, cereal
• Tofu, tempeh
• Seaweed
• Popcorn kernels
• Cardboard egg cartons
• Avocado pits

 

To simplify this, you can memorize three kinds of ingredients. Browns: Dead, leaves, branches, and twigs. Greens: Grass clippings, vegetable and fruit waste, other food waste. Water: Having the right amount of water is important. Too little water, and the soil won’t be nutrient dense. Too much water, plants don’t get enough oxygen they need, and they can die similarly to having too little water.

Be sure that the material you are composting is organic and all-natural, so that no preservatives or additives were added to it. It will change the chemistry of your soil and may affect your plants that you use the composted soil to help grow.

Now, how do we start to compost?

I will link some tutorials on how to compost, because there are many different ways to. The best part of composting is that you can do it to your own convenience, meaning that you can keep a little compost bin in your kitchen, and every few days bring it out to your compost in your yard, or you can just put all your food scraps directly into your compost as soon as you make them. You can make it however you want.

Composting is the best way to get rid of food scraps. We are sending so many food scraps to landfills that don’t have to be there. They breakdown and decompose much slower in landfills as well, because the lack of oxygen makes it hard for them to. It also releases methane gas and other dangers that I talked about in my “What is Zero Waste?” tab.

Links:

Composting at Home- EPA

What is Composting?- Recycleworks

Composting Guru- Planet Natural

Guide to Compost- Earth Easy

“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” -Eleanor Roosevelt. 

 

Kathryn Kellogg Discusses the Small Stuff

I received the opportunity to reach out to Kathryn Kellogg of goingzerowaste.com. Kellogg has been blogging since 2015, and uses her website to talk about all aspects of zero waste living- from cooking and grocery shopping to sustainable DIYs, as well as her personal thoughts and experiences. She has a weekly newsletter for her subscribers and also authored her own e-book. With over 25 thousand followers on Instagram, Kellogg has given the movement an inspirational voice attracting a large audience. I asked her questions that many have when they first start going zero waste, especially young people.

Have you ever missed out on anything because of your lifestyle? For example, going out to eat, etc. 

“No. I don’t find living zero waste to be inhibitive. Being allergic to dairy is much more of a hindrance than being zero waste. I still go out with friends when they want to get ice cream. I just don’t get anything. Unless they have a vegan cone, then I’m totally down!”

Has your lifestyle impacted anyone around you? Have any of your loved ones become zero waste and been inspired by you?

“It’s definitely a ripple effect. When people realize it’s easy and they see all of the benefits like saving money, most people are on board. Some immediately make changes and others take their time.”

Do you have any advice for young people (teenagers, college kids) to try zero waste?

“I wrote a couple of blog posts on those topics: https://www.goingzerowaste.com/blog/10-tips-to-go-zero-waste-when-you-live-with-your-parents and https://www.goingzerowaste.com/blog/2015/11/12/10-tips-for-going-zero-waste-in-college“

Kellogg’s blog is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn more about zero waste, minimal living, or DIY and lifestyle projects. She works hard to make zero waste easily understandable, and gives her subscribers resources to get a head start. She is an inspiration to many who want to help the environment, but not sacrifice their comfort in day-to-day living. You can visit her blog here!

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“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” -Eleanor Roosevelt. 

Welcome!

Welcome to the Zero Waste Experiment!

My name is Nina, and I’m going to be using this blog to document my experience going “zero waste” or producing as little waste as I can. Zero waste living has become very trendy- gaining popularity online through modes of social media, YouTube videos, and blogs.

I was introduced to the idea of zero waste living through watching a YouTube video that was interviewing Lauren Singer of Trash is for Tossers. She was showing the interviewer a mason jar that she had filled with all of her trash from the past four years. Everything in the mason jar was plastic that was not recyclable where she lives. Singer described how she recycles everything that she can, she composts food scraps, and reuses items such as plastic bags and water bottles.

Watching this video, I thought to myself “I could never do that.” I try to recycle as much as I can, I use a reusable water bottle, and sure, I watch a ton of climate change documentaries on the side as well. I’ve heard about islands of trash floating in the middle of the ocean, I once attended a campus cleanup at my school, and although all these things are positive- being aware of what is going on and doing something about it- reading more and more facts and statistics made me realize that what I’m doing just isn’t good enough. What I was doing, and what so many I know are doing, was being passive in my efforts to help the environment. I did just enough to have a clean conscience in what I was doing, but I wasn’t going far enough to see what I was doing impacting others. I’ve decided that my quest towards becoming more environmentally friendly (for a lack of a better word) will start with experimenting with zero waste living.

On this blog I will document my experience with zero waste living, my preparation leading up to it, and how I feel about it. I will discuss the difficulty, cost-effectiveness, effort, and sustainability of zero waste living. I will also discuss the social aspect and externalities associated with zero waste living, that I may not be able to prevent. I will document all 14 days of my experiment, starting June 1, 2017, and at the end of the 14 days have a final verdict on if the zero waste lifestyle really is effective and if it is easy. The problem with why so many people still aren’t doing things for our environment is because it isn’t as readily available as they would like. For example, going vegan is humane and greatly reduces an individual’s environmental impact, but it is expensive, it is hard nutrition-wise, and it is difficult to go out for dinner in public or even go to events such as barbeques, etc. I will be assessing whether going zero waste is easy and effective, because if it is, this trend could catch on and forever change our society.

You can find more information on zero waste living and facts about waste and why this is necessary in the pages bar.

Thank you for joining me on this environmental journey!

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“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.