Five Easy Ways to Reduce Waste This Holiday Season

Hello Sew Greeners! I'm sure you're all in the midst of your busy holiday preparations. I know I am.

We all know this season can be stressful in a whole slew of different ways. One of the things about the season that stresses me out is trying not to lose touch with my sustainable living goals as the madness of the holiday season ramps up. My husband always reminds me to go easy on myself because the world doesn't necessarily make it easy for us all to do the right thing. Nevertheless, here's my list of five easy ways I've reduced the amount of waste my festive season generates. Please feel free to post your own tips in the comments!

1. Give the Gift of Nothing.



Nothing tangible, that is. One of the best gifts my best friend Kat ever gave to me was agreeing to read one book of my choosing. She put no other limits on it, saying I could choose fiction or non-fiction, heavy or light, trashy or deep. Whatever I chose, she promised to read from cover to cover. After much thought I asked her to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. That book changed the way I felt about food and inspired me to make small changes in how I ate every day, and I thought it might do the same for her. It did! Seeing her start to patronize local farmers' markets and even can her own spaghetti sauce and apple sauce in the fall, was amazing and exciting for me. The gift lasted for months! And if you choose a book that's available through the local library system, no one needs to buy anything!

2. Give To Someone Who Really Needs It.



This year my brother, sister-in-law, husband and I all agreed to give to charity instead of giving each other gifts. I'd initially suggested that we all donate to one charity, but my brother had the genius idea of choosing a different charity for each person, so we could have the fun of picking something uniquely suited to each of us. And it keeps up the all-important surprise factor.

One word of advice about this kind of gift giving. If you're going to pitch this to family members or friends, I'd encourage you to do it as early in the season as possible. Some people buy gifts early, and nothing breeds resentment like you swooping in with your awesome non-gift gift ideas when they have something wrapped up and stowed away for yo already.

3. If You Do Give a Gift, Use Reusable Wrappings.



I've been an enemy of wrapping paper for years, and this has led to me sewing my own fabric gift bags. These are the easiest things to sew, and a great beginner project. All you need is a rectangle of fabric. Hem one side and then fold the wrong sides together and sew up the other three sides. Turn it right side out and pop your gift in there. You can tie it closed with reusable ribbon or twine and attach a gift card to the ribbon. It takes almost no time and the bags can be used over and over again. I always buy Christmassy fabric when I see it in the fabric section at second hand stores, regardless of the time of year (you'd be surprised what shows up in July!) I take it home and wash it and stash it away for gift giving season. I also try to keep some of my bags every year so I don't have to make all new ones the following year. but people seem to like to keep them to give their own gifts in, which is fine too!

(My aforementioned friend Kat posted my more detailed fabric gift bag tutorial on her blog if you need a bit more coaching!)


4. Buy Local Everything.



Most people have to buy holiday specific things this time of year, whether they're giving piles of gifts or not. As tempting as it is to order everything off the internet, buying from a local store or local craft sales or local artists or local farmers, means that you control how much packaging your gift comes wrapped in. You can also ask questions about how things are made and shipped, and as a bonus you're supporting your local economy and the people in your community who depend on it. One of our local farmers' markets has a special Christmas market every year where you can buy both gifts (soap, jewelry, quilts etc) and food. I came home this year with a big bag of locally grown carrots, beets, Jerusalem artichokes, honey, and cranberries.

5. Clean Out Your Pantry.



This one only really occurred to me the other day. I had done a hurried, frazzled grocery shopping trip and came home feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff I still need to do as the holidays approach. When I started putting my purchases in the fridge and pantry, I realized that not only did I have minimal space in the fridge and pantry, I also had no idea what was taking up all that space in the first place. I got so agitated my husband had to put everything away for me.

The following day I got up early and went to work a few hours before I normally begin my days. This, plus skipping my lunch, allowed me to come home three hours earlier than normal. I spent those three hours cleaning out the fridge and pantry cupboard. I dug deep and found that I had bulk items in the pantry that I'd forgotten about. Everything got organized and put into my collection of glass jars. Now I am completely aware of what's available to me as I start my holiday food prep. There will be no over-buying and wasting of food. Plus I know what I need to use up and I can do that before it goes stale. And it had the added bonus of making me feel so much calmer about my kitchen in general. Win, win.

J.

Green your party season, and Happy Thanksgiving!

I'd like to begin by saying Happy Thanksgiving to you guys across the pond! But I have a couple of confessions.

The first is, I nearly forgot to write this post because I'm so busy (in a good way!).

And the second is that up until a few days ago, all I knew about Thanksgiving was that it is a day when lots of Americans eat lots of turkey. And on TV programmes everyone sits around the table listing what they're thankful for.

Well, I couldn't possibly list all the things I'm thankful for. But I think it's interesting how the idea of thankfulness is, I think, part of the core of the green movement -- thankfulness for the life we've been given and the planet we have to live it on. And what better thought to start what, for many of us, can be the most wasteful time of year?

So I thought I'd leave you with a few top-tips for reducing your rubbish this holiday season without spoiling your fun as you go partying, giving, shopping and feasting. And if it all seems a bit overwhelming, just do what you can. A little effort can go a long way ...

Christmas tree furoshiki, GreenerFrog on Etsy (also, click here to visit Hop Frog Pond for excellent furoshiki information and instructions!)

1. Furoshiki -- gift wrapping with fabric. Traditionally, the Japanese giver would unwrap the gift in front of, and then present it to, the recipient and take the wrapping cloth home with them. This isn't necessarily a practical solution in many cases, but it would be easy to keep a set of cloths for wrapping your family's presents. Make them part of your holiday tradition, re-loving them year on year along with the baubles!

2. Aim to only send cards to those you can't see in person during the season, and choose recycled or sustainably sourced cards where you can. Save the cards you receive to make new cards or gift tags next year!

3. Try to plan ahead, and if you want to give someone a gift but don't know what they'd like, ask! That way, you can avoid panic-buying that over-packaged gift set -- and if all else fails, get a gift voucher.

4. And when I say gift voucher, make sure you check out Etsy, DaWanda and other handmade venues for sellers who might offer them. :)

Vintage comet rhinestone brooch, ThePeacockFeather on Etsy

5. Make your new party dress a vintage gem, or check second-hand venues for a treasure somebody else got tired of. Then alter it to fit you like a glove! Admiring those sparkly embellished bandos that are everywhere at the moment? Grab a plain bando, and pin a vintage brooch and some trim to it for a covetable party hairpiece.

6. Avoid leaving a bad taste by buying local food; avoiding over-packaged food in the supermarket; choosing organic and free-range; and making full use of your fridge and compost bin for leftovers :)

Above all, remember to relax and enjoy yourself, and the company of your loved ones!

And this is my final contribution to Sew Green this year, so I'd like to wish you all a (very universal) Happy Holidays and my best wishes for the new year!

Maimy x

Island SummeRRR

my girls and i are blessed with the opportunity to spend our summers up at our family cottage. my husband comes for as long as work allows - and my mom joins us when she can. the cottage is located on galiano island, part of the gulf islands, off the west coast of Canada. it is a summer we spend as a tight family unit. a summer without television, reliable cel phone reception, sporadic internet access (only when we go into "town"), and living with the idea of creating as little trash as possible.

galiano island (roughly the size of the island of manhattan, with a permanent population of 1200 people, that blooms in the summer with tourists and cottage dwellers) does not have a landfill. any trash must be taken off island - whether through a service, or (as we do) by your own hand. the first time we visited the island - when my eldest was barely one - we rented a small cottage without laundry facilities, and with no laundromat on the island (water conservation is another big issue here)we were stuck with disposable diapers. i will never forget driving off island with a trash bag of diapers tied to the top of our minivan. (it felt like a drive of shame.)  now we have laundry access and work hard not to use anything disposable. cloth napkins, handkerchiefs and rags abound. my diva cup is ready when that time arrives. and the compost pile accepts all of our food waste. (we are lucky there are no real predators on the island, so do not have to concern ourselves with inviting unwelcome visitors with meat scraps.)



what we do produce can usually be recycled and the island's innovative, and extensive recycling facility. GIRR (Galiano Island Recycling Resources) operates as a non-profit and includes the recycling center and a "free store", as well as a rental service for plastic dish and cutlery sets for large scale entertaining.  Over 100 tonnes of waste are diverted from off-island landfill by the facility each year.  It is reborn as road construction materials, plastics, manufacturing components, tin cans, drink bottles/cans/containers, paper, newspaper and cardboard boxes




knowing what we can recycle guides our shopping as well. milk is purchased in glass bottles. bulk items loaded into paper bags. farm-stands and the saturday farmer's market are frequented.  fish is purchased right off the boat.

this year we left with one small shopping bag of trash in the car.

the girls have turned into 3R detectives. they know which plastics can be recycled and which cannot. they know which materials bring the depot money, and which are simply sent off. they love to sort things and navigate the system with ease. it is a skill i believe strongly in, and a big part of developing environmental stewardship.



these are ideals we are trying to bring home to the city - where it is so much easier to not think about it. we are hoping to establish a more extensive recycling program at our neighbourhood school. i wish LA would get on board. i hear my friends tell of exciting advances in other cities, and think of the impact a change in LA waste management would make. hopefully it will happen before my little stewards of change grow up.

does your school have an innovative recycling program? i would love to learn more...

Shopping baggage

Late last year I read about a study that made me start to think a lot more about our use of shopping bags. We’ve been using the ubiquitous (in Australia, at any rate) green polypropylene shopping bags for our grocery shopping for years now, but the Woolworths Shopping Bag study, by RMIT’s Centre for Design, made me start thinking about all the bags we consume when we buy or receive goods.  The study looked at the whole life cycle environmental cost of a number of different types of retail shopping bags (paper and several different plastics), taking into account the production of the raw materials and manufacturing of bags from those raw materials, transport, use and ultimate disposal of the bags.

The study concluded that reusable bags had lower impacts than single use bags, but these benefits were highly sensitive to the number of times a bag was re-used. Not a surprising discovery, but more surprising was the fact that despite having the lowest impact on litter, and being made of renewable resources, paper bags had the highest environmental impact due to the energy embodied in their production. You can read more about the study and conclusions here and here. Since reading that, I’ve been carefully hoarding any bags (especially paper) we receive for re-use, and giving a bit more thought to the kind of bags we do use, or perhaps could use.

The shopping bags we use are polypropylene, which is recyclable when they reach the end of their useful life. In theory that is. In practice, I was surprised to learn here that because the thread used to make them isn’t recyclable they have to be unpicked by hand, they need to be shipped from Australia to China, where labor is cheaper, to make recycling economically viable. This is a great example of the fact that even though something may be recyclable, the process of recycling (if and when it is disposed of in a way that enables recycling) is not without environmental cost (and may well have some ethical issues too).

Perhaps I’m a tad cynical, but I do feel that recyclability is increasingly becoming an easy green-washing feature for advertisers, with a whole heap of ifs and maybes being swept under the carpet, out of the consumer’s sight. I guess it’s up to each one of us to consider why we choose the purchases we choose, and to be satisfied in our own minds that they are worthy justifications based on the best information we could access.

But back to bags- there are certainly some opportunities in the shopping bag arena for some environmentally beneficial creativity. First up, if you are lacking reusable shopping bags, make yourself some shopping totes that suit your needs- perhaps something that folds up nice and compact, a big roomy bag, a retro crochet bag (link to .pdf), or whichever size and shape you might need, perhaps re-purposing materials you have on hand (ideally natural materials such as cotton that will decompose at the end of their useful life). Second up, make sure you have them on hand when you go shopping, and use and re-use them for as long as possible.


Our household already has a useful stash of shopping bags, and are in the routine of using them, but I realized we could do with some reusable produce bags. Although we re-use them a lot of the time, I found that we were always coming home with a few more plastic produce bags every time we bought our fruit and veg. Inspired by some handmade mesh produce bags I saw on flickr, and this tutorial from Wisdom of the Moon, I hit our local second hand shops and found a sheer mesh curtain to re-purpose. One evening with my overlocker (aka serger) later I had a set of 10 mesh bags.

I sized them to minimize wastage from the materials I had, and to keep them similar to the plastic produce bags I’m used to, using some cotton yarn for drawstrings. I’ve been trialling them for a couple of weeks now and am really pleased. Responses from cashiers has varied, from the ditzy supermarket checkout chick who wondered if I wanted her to take the produce out to weigh it (Umm, no- that’s fine, they weigh next to nothing), to the ladies at our regular market vendor who remarked how nice they were (Oh thank you!). The only drawback is that we are now dependant on plastic containers to keep our veggies fresh in the fridge. At least they're re-usable, but I do wonder if there is a bag I could make for this purpose... Any suggestions?

leftover soup

This time of year, the leftovers abound. Around the holidays, I tend to stuff myself silly, but the overabundance is so great that even with overeaters everywhere, lots of food still gets thrown away. My partner and I are trying to get smarter about our budget these days - particularly our food budget - which has meant getting smarter about leftovers, and hopefully a little less waste.

Last week was Thanksgiving, and I decided to take responsibility for the leftovers this year, since I wasn't cooking much. By the time we left on Saturday there was a freezer full of turkey stock and big containers of turkey noodle soup for everyone to take home.

Being a vegetarian, I don't know much about what to do with meat, but I do know that you're not supposed to throw away that big old fatty, meaty turkey carcass after the meal. What a waste! Instead, we made turkey stock.

I had my partner's father pick off all the good-looking meat, and then I stuck the detritus (skin, bones, fatty stuff, neck and jiblets) into a huge big stock pot with a cut-up onion and a few bay leaves, and then filled up the pot with water. I brought the pot to a boil and then simmered the whole thing for the rest of the evening, about 3 hours. Then we pulled out the now-clean bones and all the other solid stuff and tossed it, let the stock cool, skimmed off the fat and then strained out everything else and put the stock into repurposed quart yogurt containers in the freezer. Turkey stock is a good replacement for chicken stock (except richer and tastier, I'm told), and will keep in the freezer for at least six months.

That's how we used about half the stock. The other half we used to make turkey-noodle soup. All we did was par-boil a bag of whole wheat egg noodles, drain them and then put them into the big soup pot with the turkey stock. Since this family likes to eat turkey sandwiches with the leftovers, I left the big slices of breast meat for that purpose, but took all the little funny bits, cut them up smaller, and threw them into the pot. Finally, we dumped in the leftover peas and carrots from the Thanksgiving meal and added some salt and pepper - voila! Turkey-noodle soup.

As I've said, I'm a vegetarian, so the soup was not really on my menu. But I did have a tiny cupful just to try, and now I see why they say that chicken noodle soup cures a cold. I think that soup could have cured much worse - it was about as warm, wholesome and comforting as anything I've ever eaten. Maybe next year I'll have two cupfuls.

There are also lots of opportunities for vegetarian soup from your holiday leftovers. You can make a big pot of veggie stock and then make delicious soup with pureed pumpkin, squash or carrot, or toss in lots of noodles, beans and leftover veggies for a scrumptious vegetable soup with dumplings on top. Just the thing for a simple supper when you've been overdoing it at the holiday parties.