Every little helps – baby steps to being sustainable-ish or zero-waste-ish

You may have read about Bea Johnson and her family who managed to reduce their annual household rubbish to fit into a single glass jar, and a small one at that.

Bea, who is the author of “Zero Waste Home”, is really inspiring and says that “Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot (and only in that order)” is the method she’s been using to reduce her family’s waste since 2008. However, I felt very overwhelmed at the idea of trying to be zero waste. When I feel overwhelmed, my natural reaction is to give up, to run the other way, so I decided to take it a step at a time, baby steps.

My husband and I were already recycling plastics, paper and cardboard, and metal and glass, and I was using soapnuts for coloured or mildly soiled laundry washes and using re-usable nappies (diapers) for our disabled dog in the daytime. It was a great start, but we both felt we could do more.

I started reading books on zero-waste and sustainability. These included “The Zero Waste Chef” by Anne-Marie Bonneau, “The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide” by Jen Gale, “Six Weeks to Zero Waste” by Kate Arnell, and “Fresh Clean Home” by Wendy Graham. I then made a list of things I could easily change without overwhelm, baby steps our family could make:

• Compost food scraps – Where we are in rural Spain, there is no food waste recycling or collective composting initiative, and I was conscious that we threw a lot of scraps and food that was past its best in the rubbish bin. We don’t have anywhere suitable for a compost pile, so I decided to look into Bokashi composting and vermicomposting.
• Use re-usable menstrual products – I already used period pants, a menstrual cup and washable pads and panty liners alongside tampons and normal disposable pads, but I wanted to get rid of the disposable products entirely and find something better than a menstrual cup as it made me sore.
• Cut down on single use plastic – We already tended to use reusable bags when doing a big shop, but quite often would let shops give us plastic bags when buying other bits and bobs. I wanted to reduce this and look at alternatives to the usual plastic-wrapped products.
• Make my own cleaning and personal care products – I wanted to experiment with recipes for laundry detergent that would get soiled clothes and nappies clean, dishwasher detergent, cleaning sprays, toothpaste etc.
• Replace things as they run out with better choices – e.g. soap instead of shower gel in a plastic bottle.
• Make my own bread – We go through so much bread, and it’s always the cheap white bread we buy, which, of course, comes in a plastic bag. I’m going to get the breadmaker out of the cupboard and find some recipes online.
• Try to repair things rather than replacing them.

As you can see, they aren’t major changes, but I feel that they are do-able, and we will be doing our bit to make a difference.