24/24 - Week 8

 Welcome to week 8 of the 24/24 Challenge!

Acquisitions

• I acquired some cloth drawstring bags from my local Buy Nothing Group in Kansas City South that I will use for bulk shopping, as we slowly become more and more Zero-Waste with our groceries (or, more realistically, Less Waste, for now... It is nigh impossible to find totally plastic-free food. Even the glass jar of peanut butter with the metal lid that I purchased has a plastic ring around the jar opening... Ug.)

• I popped into Soap Refill Station to refill an empty honey bottle with conditioner, plus grab a new kitchen scrub brush, a sisal soap saver (say that 5 times fast) and a Japanese konjac face sponge (the black item). I learned that sisal is derived from the agave plant, and the konjac sponge is from a porous root vegetable native to Asia. The sisal and konjac items are 100% compostable! So is the scrub brush, minus the metal. I simply added our last wooden scrub brush to our fire pit earlier this week since it's clean, untreated wood. I will recycle the metal bits at Blessings Abound, which has a scrap metal recycling program.

            I admit that I get a little thrill every time I use up a toiletry and get to go refill. I have only 2 items left in my shower that are not refills/first generation plastic. I used up both my shampoo and conditioner this week, see below... On the left are the used up bottles (the shampoo container and conditioner lid will be TerraCycle'd, the conditioner bottle will go in regular recycling), on the right are the bottles I have refilled at Soap Refill Station- a repurposed dish soap bottle now holds my new shampoo, and our old honey bottle now contains conditioner.

Out with the old, in with the refilled!

A fun adventure this week

Our TerraCycle all-in-one box down in the basement is almost full... Which on the one hand is exciting (all those items diverted from the landfill!), and on the other hand is both stressful (these boxes are so expensive, and we are on a tight budget this year) and sad (sad because it's crazy how much plastic and other garbage we humans generate, and I identify as a minimalist).

However I found some relief because I discovered that Nordstrom has a beauty product version of TerraCycle! So I dumped out my entire TerraCycle box, pulled out the beauty items and took those to Nordstrom. Boom... More space in our box at home!

All the contents of our small all-in-one TerraCycle box since December 1!

All toiletries from our box- mostly ours, but some from my clients

            At Nordstrom, I located the drop box, which looked like this (and yes, every store has one!)

It felt good and satisfying, knowing that these once thought impossible-to-recycle items are going on to get a second life.

What does TerraCycle do with these items? Best details here, but a lot of it becomes outdoor furniture and decking, plastic shipping pallets, watering cans, storage containers and bins, tubes for construction applications, flooring tiles, playground surface covers, athletic fields, and more.

Another adventure this week

My Prius had to get inspected on Friday so I dropped it off, then Derrick picked me up and we went to a nearby bakery/coffee shop, Fox & Bull, to cowork until my car was ready. Delicious donuts and chicken salad sandwiches! Anyway. I remembered to bring our reusable cups for our coffee and tea, respectively. I also brought an old plastic takeout container in case we had leftover pastries but um... We didn't need
it.

Both reusable cups were donated items that my Simplicana clients had given me their blessing to have, and we've been using them for years.

Zero Waste coworking!

Hey, if you've been following these entries, thanks for reading. I appreciate it! See ya next week.

xo eliza