Tag: recycling

Sustainable Dave limits trash to almost zero

What would it take for you to really reduce your trash impact? Could you reduce your waste to less than 30.5 pounds of non-recyclable trash in a week? How about a month? Or a year?

Dave Chameides did just that — creating less trash in all of 2008 than an average American family throws out in a week. And more impressively, he did this without changing his eating or lifestyle habits to drastically.

“I didn’t want to change the way that I was living my life,” Dave told Sustainablog. “If I wanted to drink beer, I wasn’t going to say, well, I can’t find a way to drink beer without creating packaging, so therefore I’m not going to. Instead, what I’m going to do is look at the packaging in beer and pick the most ‘eco-friendly’ way to do it.”

He’s got several cool videos on Vimeo, including how he composts food and junk mail with 6-7k worms in his basement (and it only takes up roughly 1’x1′ of floor space), as well as what he carries in his bag each day to help reduce his trash impact.

In the end, Dave amassed just 30.5 pounds of non-recyclable trash. However, that wasn’t the only stuff he piled up in his garage though — Dave decided to keep his recyclables for the year too, to show that “recycling isn’t the answer.”

“If you look at the majority of the waste that I put out there, it’s recycling,” Dave says. “That’s gonna take energy, it’s going to take resources, it’s going to take all sorts of things. I think we’ve been trained in the U.S. to think that recycling is the answer. But statistically, only 10% of everything that can be recycled is recycled.”

Check out his Vimeo stream or his blog sustainabledave.org for more ideas.

re: Simply living simply

Suzanne at Adventures in Daily Living shared some thoughts and ideas on how to live simply. She shares the following list from A Vision Splendid:

1. Living within our means in a small house with no debt
2. No commercial TV
3. Cooking from scratch
4. Finding old ‘sturdy’ items second hand rather than a constant supply of cheap ‘made in china’ items that need replacing every 12 months
5. Spending quality family time together
6. Baking our own bread
7. Brewing our own beer
8. Fixing things ourselves
9. Growing what we can
10. Doing our own renovations
11. Using the town library as a resource
12. Buying local produce
13. Composting our food scraps
14. Minimising plastic packaging on foods
15. Avoiding petrochemicals in products
16. Work on a completely cash budget
17. Changing all lights to CFLs
18. Line dry the washing
19. Menu planning
20. Buying Australian grocery items where local not available
21. Stockpiling
22. Managing my home in a single binder
23. Getting ahead by applying the 6P principle
24. Having a planning day once a week
25. Having a cooking day once a week
26. Work hard at ‘saving’ through the year for an annual holiday
27. Using old fashioned items and remedies – e.g. washup with sunlight soap, put eucalyptus oil on your hankie if you feel a cold coming.
28. Wear an apron to keep your clothes clean
29. Turn the TV off and read out loud to my children
30. Wear hand me downs
31. Avoiding food additives and chemicals

The original list also contains some ideas for a “family eco-challenge.” Are you and your family doing any of these things? Anything you would add to the list?

Related ::
Adventures in Daily Living :: Stay Home Day
A Vision Splendid :: Our Simple Life
SSL :: Simply living simply pt 1
SSL :: Simply living simply pt 2
Shaun Groves :: Simplicity

simply living simply

Kevin has shared some thoughts on living simply.

I think everyone wanting to live simply has different reasons for doing so, Kevin says, “Part of my motivation is money: Spending less on stuff makes our adoption more affordable. It also makes it easier to help others and be more generous.”

Kevin points to two recent posts by Shaun Groves who writes that his desire for living simply is: “To free up resources which should be spent on those presently in need. To prevent need. To invest in personal health – mental, spiritual, relational and physical.”

These things resonate with me deep in my soul. Yet I struggle with simply giving up my wants and desires in order to simply live a simple life. Things like having my own car (truck) to take me where I want when I want, having the AC/heater on at the exact temperature I want it at, eating what I want, when I want or even living in a “suburb” away from the big city. These are things (along with others) that I want control over – but seem to go against the idea of living simply.

Some other things I think are important to living simply (that Kevin and Shaun didn’t specifically mention) are taking full advantage of technology when and where its affordable and practical. Probably one reason I’m a big fan of sites like Lifehacker.com and even social networking sites. I’ve always sent prayer requests to people via txt messaging and e-mails but now with Twitter and my BlackCrackBerry those processes are even faster and easier. There is some additional cost along the way – but to me, for what I do its well worth it for some of the technology (but maybe these are areas I should work on as well). Of course when and where I can use open source – I’m all for it.

I think ultimately I have several reasons for wanting to live simply and both Kevin and Shaun have included them in their reasons – but off the cuff here are some of mine…

  • Investing more in others rather than myself. The more I spend on myself, the less I have to give away. God may choose to bless me and Laurie, but I believe he blesses people so that we in turn can be a blessing to others. I also think this carries over into investing personal time and such with people as well. If I share my dinner with friends and family, not only am I giving to them financially, it offers opportunity to give and share relationally.
  • Being a good steward of ALL that God has given us. We hear this a lot in our churches, but I think we tend to only apply it to our tithe and finances we give back to the church or other causes. I think this also includes being a good steward of the world around us – i.e. living green, recycling, etc.
  • Living simply = less stress. Let’s face it, the less you have, the less opportunity you have for things to go wrong. Sure some of those things may happen and stress may still occur but if I become dependent on things – it becomes a lot more stressful when those things don’t work like they should.

Well those are the basics. Be sure and read Kevin’s post as well as Shaun’s to see what they’re doing. Maybe a little later I’ll share some of the simple things Laurie and I have started doing to try to simply live simply.

In the meantime, how, why and where do you live simply?

Does our waste say something about our view of God?

December 31st 2007: Canterbury: In his annual televised New Year Message the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams reflects on how a ‘disposable’ attitude to living can affect other areas of life and that ‘God does not do waste’. Filmed in Canterbury Cathedral and at a nearby recycling centre.