Dispatches from Dufferin Street

Trash

Steps to take today

• Empty trash bag from yesterday and discuss what waste we can reduce/eliminate (we did this last night)
• Put together a no-trash travel kit for the week with a reusable drinking receptacle for hot and cold liquids, a handkerchief/old t-shirt, Tupperware®, utensils, and reusable produce bags.
• Stop making trash. Reduce it. Reuse it. Recycle it. Just don’t throw it away.
• Keep a special bag at home or the office to collect trash you make by mistake or necessity throughout the week.
• Don’t buy anything new!

7:12 am, -3°C outside, 16°C inside

Leo and I are sitting here drinking our lattes (OK, I’m the only one drinking a latte…), getting ready for No Trash Day. Leo thinks we will do a good job today at making as little garbage as possible. He is ready to use his new handkerchief today, and he’s a good candidate for one – we’ve all been passing the sniffles around for a few weeks, thanks to the new germs that always seem to find us in the fall term of elementary school.

We had a little debate last night about whether or not renting videos constituted buying something. At first I thought no, then I thought yes, then I thought no, but realistically I wasn’t going to walk down to the video store at 9 in the cold, dark evening, and the car trip down would fill me with too much guilt, even though we are still “allowed” to drive for another day, then I thought yes, but couldn’t it be mitigated by the fact that we would be supporting a local business? By this point, I was annoying myself, so we decided to watch a trashy movie on cable to keep my eyes occupied while I was knitting (very non-consumerist of me, huh? Don’t I deserve a little TV while saving the world by not shopping?). But, we didn’t actually get the channel the movie was on. After being bored stiff by a show on tiny ants for a few minutes, we unfortunately (for our brain cells) stumbled on Desperate Housewives, which fit the bill for 45 minutes worth of knitting. Will hope to do better for the next few nights of knitting time… maybe find something somewhere between boring insects and inane barbies?

8:27 am, -3°C outside, 16.5°C inside

Well, No Impact Man, I’m afraid I’m gonna let you down… right… now. It’s that time of the month (explains a few things about the number of cookies I needed to eat yesterday), and I’m just not up for going no-waste on this one. I’m an open-minded kind of person (I teach doctors how to give pelvic exams, for crying out loud), and definitely cringe at the amount of feminine garbage that I create each month, but… this particular challenge just isn’t on. ‘Kay? ‘Kay. Moving on.

9:33 am, 1°C outside, 16.5°C inside

Just finished intense negotiations with Leo about whether gummy bears were a necessary purchase. I was hoping to have a nice walk downtown in the sunshine and refill some of our containers with wholesome bulk goods, but in reality, the walk there may be nice, but would surely be followed by a public “discussion” about why we really don’t need gummy bears, and then we’d be faced with a gummy bearless walk home, no doubt tinged with regret on both of our parts (and only one of us would be able to keep that regret quietly to herself). Think I’ll hold off on the bulk food buying until tomorrow, when both kids are in school, and perhaps we’ll hit the library today, where everything is free, and I can pick up a DVD or two for knitting time.

12:32 pm, 10°C outside, 16.5°C inside (why isn’t it warmer in here?!)

After a brief, hushed discussion (well, hushed on one side) about why we don’t walk shirtless around the library, the following conversation ensued:

LEO: Because it’s public?

KATE: Yes.

LEO: Why is it public?

KATE: So that everyone has a nice, warm, dry place to come where they can learn things and borrow books to take home.

LEO: What if someone was a Nazi?

KATE [totally ducking the question]: Um, well, I don’t think there are too many Nazis around these days.

So, yeah. Leo and I may have different reasons for vilifying the Nazis (one based on a series of archaeological adventure movies from the ’80s, one based on knowledge of actual history), but the question ended up stumping both of us, and leaving me with an unsettling mental image of creepy, hate-filled people lurking in the stacks. Then we had some cookies.

Leo’s quote of the day: “Why don’t we buy it in bulk?” He honestly has no real sense of what this involves, or rather, he does get the concept, but doesn’t understand why everything isn’t available in bulk for us to gather in our own containers (join the club!). He pictures a store with spigots for cow milk and soy milk, along with grains and honey and gummy bears. Where is the bulk milk store? Maybe it exists and I just don’t know about it…

End of day report

6:22 pm, 11°C outside, 18°C inside

Meals, drinks, snacks

Coffee, soy milk, water

Breakfast: bagels with butter and honey; homemade granola with yogurt (Leo), soy (Matt) and cow (Kate) milk.

Snacks: cookies, apples

Lunch: leftover fajitas

Supper: potato skins with salsa, cheese, sour cream, mixed vegetables with sesame/garlic/dijon sauce

Garbage

• 1 2L milk carton (Recyclable. Switch to glass or bags. Our recent switch to lattes in the morning has decreased our spending on and consumption of 1L cream cartons, but now we’re blazing through the milk. But maybe we’re using less coffee? Hmm.)
• 2 coffee bags (Garbage. Unavoidable? We buy the coffee in 5 lb bags which reduces the number of bags we go through, but we do order it from another city and have it delivered – probably not ideal.)
• 1 butter wrapper (Garbage. See yesterday)
• 1 potato bag top (Recyclable. Unavoidable.)
• 1 lottery ticket (Recyclable. Unfortunately. Didn’t win.)
• 1 plastic strip from top of a resealable plastic freezer bag (Recyclable. Unavoidable.)
• 6 tiny yarn ends from finishing a glove
• late-breaking, surprise addition! Matt, desperate for a coffee at school today, used a disposable coffee cup. It’s now in the bag. (Recyclable. One-time purchase.)

The garbage bag looked fuller today than yesterday’s, but there are actually fewer items in it, and the biggest ones (coffee bags) are very occasional items. Tomorrow, I am going to shop around for some food and drinks (milk, in particular) that come with minimal packaging.

MAX: Hot gazubies, we did well!

Purchases

$1.33, coffee – Matt

Tomorrow

Eliminate the car…. yikes.