Zero Waste Home Inspiration

January always arrives with a ridiculous pile of garbage from the Christmas season. And while I think we did exercise some self control with Caia's gifts (choosing toys she can use for a number of years, making a puppet theatre partially from what we already have, and a few additions to her room like a night light), it still filled 5 foot wall in the storage room. Kevin dishearteningly filled the back of our Golf with the Xmas papers and a number of month's recycling and took it to the transfer station.

I am now stuck with a dilemma. I want to simplify what we have stored in the basement and garage. I am tired of keeping things we no longer use. But I am not a big fan of donating items. You probably think this is strange. But you see I believe that all these bins for use to donate used books and clothing too just encourage our consumerist behaviour. We some how feel vindicated through the process of recycling and all we end up doing is buy more things to fill the space. We have this impression that our trash is another person's treasure. This is often not the case. For example, the second hand clothing business all but destroyed the tailoring business in Africa and now the donated clothing racket is destroying the second hand clothing economy.

So here is the thing. I have 2 goals right now. One is to simply declutter and I will reuse and recycle to the very best of my ability. This means tracking down recycling and donating opportunities for as much as possible. And it means repurposing for other uses (rags etc). The other goal is to move forward with refuse and reduce.

Outside chores:

1) damaged rain catchment- I tracked down the Delta company that made them and found out the white plastic pieces are faulty. I will take it in to have it retrofitted.

2) damaged compost- Unfortunately it seems unrepairable. I contacted Urban Gardener. They told me why it is damaged so I don't make the same mistake in the future (must aerate regularly and empty 2x per year). And they gave me the contact information for a recycling company. I have contacted this company to find out the cost of getting rid of it. Update: very reasonable cost to do this. And they collect various types of plastics etc once a month.

3) plywood- I found a wood recycler but they are expensive so I have emailed them to find out if there is a cheaper price for a smaller amount or if there is somewhere else I can take the plywood. Update: was told wood can be recycled for a fee in the garden trimmings at the transfer station but when I arrived there I was told to put the plywood in the regular garbage...