My dad was telling me about growing up in the Chinese countryside, where the concept of "garbage" didn't exist. Everything was either reused or fed to the pigs. He told me of how, to buy soy sauce, you had to take the empty old soy sauce bottle to the store and have it filled up.
So Toronto's city workers have been on strike for 3 weeks, which means, among other things, no garbage collection for us. The city's been sitting under a haze of its own stinky filth for 3 weeks. Instead of grumbling along with everybody else, we took to interpret this strike as an opportunity to convert to a garbage-free household. Not that we were producing much garbage to begin with -- when two hippies live together, it's generally a stretch to have even one small container each of garbage and recycling in one week.
Garbage-free is a pretty simple concept -- nothing gets brought into the house that can't be reused or turned into something else. But our culture is centered on consuming and then throwing away, and then consuming some more. It's been interesting trying to figure out how to break out of that cycle.
Grains, vegetables, and fruits are fairly easy -- you buy in bulk and bring your own bags and containers. We don't have pigs, but organic waste can get turned into compost, thanks to the simple two-bin system we designed to harness the digestive power of hundreds of worms. The composter also gets rid of things like tissues and small amounts of cardboard.
Harmony Organics sells milk in glass bottles that you bring back to the store for them to reuse -- but what about cream, butter, or cheese ? Back in France I used to buy butter (delicious, salty beurre d'Isigny) in bulk, but they don't seem to have that here. And the cheese shops seem to like giving out silly plastics to wrap their cheese in.
For toiletries, we're making most of our own. Our toothpaste, for example, is in a lidded cup sitting on the bathroom shelf. I haven't thought about what to do when I have to replace my toothbrush yet, though. For things like menstrual products, my years of being a pseudo-hippie have put me way ahead : I haven't used a tampon for my period since I was 18.
A huge part of it is also just buying less. If I want to buy new clothes, I have to figure out what to do with the tags. The paper bit can be composted, but what about the plastic ? Last month, I bought a fan that came in a box, and every single piece was individually wrapped in plastic. We weren't garbage free then, but the packaging from that fan made up about 70% of our garbage that week. Obviously if we want to be entirely garbage-free, then we can't buy anything that has packaging or tags on it.
Some things, I have no solutions for. Like the boxes and blister packs I buy my birth control pills in. I'm not ready to give up 99% effective synthetic hormones just yet, although I probably will pay for an IUD at some point.
We'll see how this goes. We might have to compromise and allow one small bag of garbage a month. It's still a very worthwhile experiment.
