Showing posts with label green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green. Show all posts

Friday, February 27, 2009

Thinking Green

In my most recent quest to reduce our family's landfill waste, I have decided to discontinue (mostly) the use of beloved ziplock bags, or "baggies". We are a long time lover of these flexible plastic containers we've used for lunches, leftovers and backpacking. So versatile and functional, but I have come to the realization that they are wreaking havoc on our landfills.

I have also been taking our vegetable leftovers/cuttings and saving them in a container to be dumped into our yard waste trash container. We don't have a place for a compost bin, so I think this is a very good alternative to either using the disposal or throwing in the regular trash bin. Our roll away trash bin is usually 1/3 to 1/4 full most weeks, so I think we are doing a good job. Of course, we can always be better recyclers!




My latest project is a sandwich "wrapper". I used fabric remnants from my local fabric store. The outside is a colorful cotton fabric, inside is plastic coated tablecoth material. Although it is commonly used for covering a table, I'm not sure if it's "food grade", so I use a sheet of wax paper to separate it from the sandwich. The wax paper can be used several times before it can be recycled, it breaks down easily in a compost bin.


The sandwich can be easily wrapped up like a burrito and then it's fastened by a simple velcro "dot". The entire wrap also acts like an insulator and keeps the sandwich fresh for a few hours. I've also used this wrap for pretzels, chips and other snack foods.