Closing the Loop on Single-Use Packaging

 "10 01 2013 Lonely milkbottles" by Kikishua is licensed
under CC BY-NC 2.0

Do you remember when everything came in glass bottles? Things like pop and ketchup and HP sauce. And milk! Apparently, so I've been told, there was a time when a milkman would deliver glass bottles of milk door-to-door. Dropping off the new full ones and picking up the old empty ones.

Oooh... and remember the Poppe-Shoppe? Where you'd bring your empty Poppe-Shoppe bottles back and then pick up full bottles? Well, strap on your seat-belt because the future is going to look a lot like the past in a few years.

In case you missed the memo, recycling plastic containers is not the solution. You've likely heard that China has stopped accepting all of our recycling containers, mostly cause a lot of them are contaminated with other stuff. You also may have heard that in a few decades, there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish. Which begs the question... where do our empty yogurt or laundry bottles go?? There are some rather alarming statistics about how much plastic we are sending off in the recycling stream. We think we are doing the right thing by tossing it all into our blue bin but... the truth is that in today's world, single-use anything has hit a brick wall. We can't keep living this way.

Rock Cycle
(from Santa Fe College)

The earth is NOT a single-use system where things are born, used, and then tossed away. The entire earth is a circular system... from the rock cycle (ejected out of a volcano as molten lava, solidifies as rock, gets eroded into sand, cemented into new rock, etc, etc, until it finally gets remelted into lava) to the carbon cycle (we've heard a lot about that) and the water cycle (ocean, evaporation, rain/snow, streams, lakes, rivers, oceans, etc.). And let's not even talk about the biological cycle... we are born, eat all sorts of things that come from the earth (plants, animals, mushrooms) and then, when we die... we go back to the earth, which will feed more plants and animals...

Plastics are most definitely not a circular system. Oh yes, some plastics can get recycled and turned into new plastics but a lot of them are given new life farther down the plastics food chain. Food-grade plastic might get recycled into a park bench or a fleece jacket. Until, eventually, it runs out of lives (it only has one or two to begin with) and ends up in the garbage. Plastic is most definitely not infinitely recyclable.

Unlike stainless steel (and other metals), aluminum or glass which can be used, collected, melted down and reformed into new tins, pop cans or jars/bottles an infinite number of times. Glass is, after all, just quartz sand melted at high temperatures and cooled quickly. In many ways, very similar to a simple rock cycle. And it's similar with aluminum and stainless steel... which is nice to know.

The future is refillable
(From LoopCanada site)

So, if plastic is not all that it's cracked up to be... is there a solution? Well, funny you should ask, yes there is!! It's called Loop. They are a company with a vision. They are partnering with different retailers around the globe (and most recently, Loblaws in Canada) and TerraCycle (of the ZeroWaste Box fame) to bring refillable/reusable containers to a store and/or delivery service near you.

The basic gist is this: you pay a deposit when you buy an item, say a bottle of ketchup. You use the bottle of ketchup and then bring it back to the store (or put it in the delivery bag) and either (a) get your deposit back (in case you don't want ketchup anymore) or (b) get another bottle of ketchup. And your original bottle gets cleaned and refilled with new ketchup for the next person. Loop has deposits on everything from ketchup bottles to laundry detergent containers to diapers and menstrual pads. Mind you... the deposit on a ketchup bottle might be $0.25 while the deposit on a diaper might be $47. That will keep a few diapers out of the landfill! And yes, they take back the used diapers and menstrual pads and recycle them via TerraCycle.

This is not a small thing. Kraft Heinz Canada commissioned a survey which found that 83 per cent of Canadians want less packaging on their groceries, and 78 per cent want grocery products with zero-waste packaging.

Some of the items for sale on the LoopCanada site

Now, in Canada, the Loop service is just starting out in Toronto (only) and will also be online via the Loop Store. Loblaws will be selling some of their bestselling President's Choice products with Loop. And apparently they are also looking at developing a reusable cookie tin for its PC Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies. I almost want to say... aren't "cookie tins" already a thing?? I think the trick here is actually getting the cookie tins back via Loop so that they can be cleaned and reused for more cookies... instead of ending up holding buttons in someone's sewing room... or loitering for months in the local thrift stores. 

Chipits from the LoopCanada site

I had a look at the LoopCanada site and they already have some products up for sale: olive oil in glass bottles, pasta sauce in jars (nothing new there) but... how about chocolate chips in a little tub instead of a plastic bag! Now, that's different! And there are a whole suite of things in refillable metal cans/tins, like coffee and ice cream and cranberry sauce. Cool...

Which brings me to this... not all of the Loop items are packaged in glass or aluminum. Some items come in stainless steel and some items still come in plastic containers. But the key is... those plastic containers are not being used once and then tossed in recycling. They are being collected and reused for the same product, like cat litter or laundry detergent or Chipits chocolate chips!

I don't know about you, but I would dearly welcome the day where we have less of that plastic bag packaging that houses everything from chocolate chips to walnuts to cheese to toilet paper. A LOT of our waste, when we start looking at it in more detail is packaging. And that is just sad.

It's nice to know that there are alternatives coming down the pipeline towards us. I would imagine that our first shot at Loop will come via their online store but... who knows, maybe Loblaws will start introducing the concept into their stores. That would be super cool.

The Mad Puzzler - Flipping Puzzles for a Profit

My family calls me the "mad puzzler". Set a puzzle in front of me and get out of the way. I'll have a 500 piece done in an hour and a half and a 1000 piece done in three hours. Growing up, my Mom would do puzzles with my sister and I and we had a very specific way of doing puzzles. Sorting things of course... sky pieces here, water pieces here, edge pieces here (duh), house pieces here, horse pieces here, etc. Once it was all sorted, then the puzzling would begin in earnest. Usually the edge first and then various components with sky and water left for last because those are often brutally hard!

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster from StockSnap

My Dad and partner were/are not "mad puzzlers". I would try to engage them in doing a puzzle and give them the edge to do while I would work on some of the "guts". Alas, I'd have the guts done before they even completed the edge. It was no fun for them!

But even I can run aground on some puzzles. I don't like anything bigger than 1000 pieces as it just gets too big and unwieldy to work on. Did you know there are 18,000 piece puzzles??? Good grief... No, wait... Ravensburger makes a 40,000 piece puzzle but it has 10 distinct zones in it... No thank you.

Anyhow, what with Covid-19, I've been doing a fair few puzzles, mostly my stash of ten puzzles that I keep in the cupboard. Just a nice little 500 piece to while a way a bit of time in these long, dark winter evenings. I like to redo puzzles over and over again, they never seem to get old. But, I always look in the thrift stores to see what new puzzles they might have in stock.

The other day, I found a Cobble Hill Puzzle in Sally Ann. There's a little community near Victoria, BC, called Cobble Hill... Hmm... related? As it turns out, Cobble Hill Puzzles is a Canadian company! Based in Victoria. They have a very good reputation, scoring a 9/10 on some puzzler sites. They come in sturdy, well-designed boxes, have a nice thickness and a random cut with good variety. They fit together snugly and have an anti-glare finish. Quite nice. And... the puzzles are not manufactured in China but in Canada or the USA . If that's not enough, they are made from recycled cardboard and are printed with vegetable-based inks. Nice!

Anyhow, I bought this puzzle... Nice little candy puzzle, I thought.

Hah!! It was hideous and I eventually gave up on it. Waaayyyyy too many red and green jelly beans. I had bought it for $4 and, what with my recent discovery of Facebook Marketplace, thought I would sell it onwards. I checked prices and while some people try to sell Cobble Hill puzzles for $20... generally speaking a 1000 piece puzzle goes for $10 and a 500 piece goes for $5. I toyed with the idea of trying to get $15 or $20 for it but... these puzzles sell new for $24, so that seemed a bit ridiculous. Plus, the people selling the 1000 piece puzzle for $20 were still sitting on it a week later with no takers.

So, I posted the puzzle online and... within two hours it was sold. Huh. Go figure. Bought for $4... sold for $10. That's not a bad little profit. And... the lady who bought it later turned around and re-listed it on FB Marketplace for $10.  A nice little circular economy! All of the mad puzzlers know what the going rate is for puzzles and stick to that. It's only the entrepreneurs who are trying to make a killing in the puzzle marketplace. Although... the lady who bought the candy puzzle didn't post a picture of it completed (to show that there are no pieces missing) sooo... I'm wondering if she actually gave up on it too! Like I said... it was fiendishly hideously difficult.

Now, any time I go into a thrift store, I head straight for the puzzle section. They are a hot commodity you know... what with Covid and all. I scored big time in a couple of thrift stores a few weekends ago. I found another Cobble Hill Puzzle. Hooray! It was actually not bad and I managed to finish this one!

But... the pièce de résistance was finding three Ravensburger puzzles. They are the highest quality puzzles out there, manufactured in Germany. Excellent box, nice thickness, beautiful fit, nice image reproduction and anti-glare finish.

This puzzle wasn't actually all that bad to work on. Finished it... posted it on FB Marketplace... sold within a few hours. I had a look and some people are selling Ravensburger puzzles on eBay for $30 or more... But that involves a whole extra layer of complexity... Although turning a $4 puzzle into a $30 sale isn't a bad return on investment.

Then there was this one of Times Square in NY... it was also brutal, but it got done...

There are a tonne of puzzles out in the thrift stores on some days but a lot of them are the cheap dollar store puzzles... or ridiculously difficult ones. I'm aiming for the sweet spot of good quality and good do-ability. I get to enjoy them and then turn around and sell them for $10 (or $5 for a 500 piece). So far they've all been snapped up within a day of posting, which is nice.

I like the high quality ones because I know that they can go through many hands and be enjoyed many times before they finally die a sad puzzle death. Kudos to Cobble Hill and Ravensburger for sticking with quality!

Paper or Plastic? Reusable or Cotton? Which Shopping Bags are Better for the Environment?

Photo by Evie Calder on Unsplash

I've killed a few reusable grocery bags in the last few weeks. Not intentionally of course, it was accidental. I was hauling them along and one of them got caught on a sharp edge of something or other and... boom... there's a tear in it now. It's still good... for a while but... at some point it will fail entirely. On another one, the seam has gone. A third one has a handle that is coming undone from the stitching. The last two I could theoretically fix if we had a sewing machine... but we don't... so I'm not sure what will become of them. Save them until I can visit someone with a sewing machine maybe...

But, this mass mortality of reusable grocery bags annoyed me. Don't these things need to last for more than a few dozen uses before they fall apart?? If we're really trying to help the environment by ditching plastic bags, don't we have to use the typical fold-up reusable grocery bag 100 times or more? Some of these dying bags are only a year old!

I decided to do some digging... and what I found is fascinating and insanely complicated. In terms of environmental impact, you've got two basic factors to consider: (1) what goes into making and transporting the bag and (2) what happens to the bag after it dies. So some bags have really bag environmental impacts at the front end (e.g. paper bags) but have really good back end environmental impacts (e.g. paper bags). Sooo... are paper bags good or bad? It's complicated.

There have been a number of studies (Denmark and UK) that measure the environmental impact of different types of grocery bag options. I'm going to synthesize that information here.

1. Virgin Plastic Bag
This is the standard against which all other bags are measured, because these virgin bags are the ones we are trying to get rid of. Plastic bags are made from petroleum products (bad) but they are light weight and easy to transport (good) and they can be recycled (good) but if they aren't recycled (and only 5% are recycled), plastic bags can blow around and end up in waterways (e.g. rivers, lakes oceans) where they either break down into micro-plastics (very bad) and/or end up in the stomachs of whales and dolphins and turtles (very bad). If they are landfilled, they last a very, very, very long time (bad).

You'll see that the numbers below vary widely. It is, as I mentioned above, a complicated issue. It depends on whether we are just looking at climate change impacts or whether we are considering the entire environmental impact of a bag from creation until destruction. Most of the studies also use a baseline virgin plastic bag that has been used twice - once to go grocery shopping and once as a garbage bag. If a plastic bag is only used once and then ends up in the ditch... that is a whole other kettle of fish. Sooo... These numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, but they all trend in roughly the same direction and some of them might just surprise you.

2. Recycled Plastic Bag - Use 2 to 4 times
A recycled plastic bag can have various percentages of recycled plastic and this is obviously better than a virgin plastic bag. But, if you use it to haul your groceries and then use it to bring library books back to the library and then use it to take pop cans to the recycling depot and then use it for some garbage in your car, you're having less of an environmental impact than using a virgin plastic bag. 

3. Paper Bag - Use 4 to 43 times

If you are diligent about recycling your plastic bags, then a paper bag would need to be used 43 times before it's environmental impact is less than your plastic bags. If the plastic bags are not recycled, then paper bags only need to be reused 4 times to beat plastic's environmental impact. These numbers can also be influenced by the amount of recycled content in the paper bag. Like I said, it's complicated!

But using a paper bag 4 to 43 times seems a big ridiculous. Paper bags are not that sturdy and I don't know that I'd be able to even eke out four grocery store runs out of one paper bag. I'm not even sure I could make a paper bag last that long at home. Our Fresh Prep meals come in medium-sized paper bags and I save those and then use them for picking mushrooms, at which point they are pretty much toast and that's only two uses... I suppose paper bags from some high-end store (like The Bay?) could be reused for gift bags... but then what?

So paper bags are not really a solution in my mind. The look and sound eco-friendly, but they really don't seem to be... particularly when you think about the forests that are being cut down to make a bag that will only be used twice and then discarded. Although paper bags made from recycled content are obviously better...

4. Typical Fold-up Reusable Bag (NWPP)- Use 6 to 52 times

Right then, this is the number I'm looking for! These are the reusable bags made from non-woven polypropylene (NWPP) and are sometimes called "Bag for Life". These are the bags that kind of look and feel like fabric but can stand up on their own with a bit  of help. They usually fold into a nice, neat rectangle and sometimes have a plastic insert in the bottom.

These are not the same as the old Superstore (Loblaws) bags which look and feel like fabric and are quite floppy. Those bags are apparently made from PET plastic (recycled pop bottles) and need to be used anywhere from 8 to 84 times.

Then there are woven polypropylene bags which I like to call tarp bags, because they kind of look like they are made from plastic tarp material. They need to be used 5 to 45 times to have a lower environmental impact than a virgin plastic bag.

There are soooo many different options out there. But for our purposes, the only comparisons I could find were to the typical non-wove PP bag. So these need to be used anywhere from 6 to 52 times before they are better (environmentally) than a virgin plastic bag.

Well, that makes me feel slightly better. Because if I use them every week to go grocery shopping then, after a year of weekly use, I've come out ahead in the environmental department! It's just... there are some of these bags that I don't use all that often. Like the non-woven PP bag from the funeral home that handled my Dad's cremation. It's a black bag with the name of the funeral home on it. They gave it to me to carry my Dad's box of ashes but... it seems kind of macabre to use it for grocery shopping. Not to mention it's smaller than a typical grocery bag. Hmmm...

5. Cotton Tote Bag - Use 7100 to 20,000 times

I don't know about you, but this surprised the heck out of me! You'd think that cotton bags would be far better than any of the other options but... no. A lot of it has to do with the environmental impact of growing cotton (water use, fertilizer, pesticides, etc) and then processing the cotton into fabric which then needs to get sewed and shipped, etc.

And... organic cotton is actually worse than regular cotton! That's where the 20,000 times comes in... So, while "organic cotton" might sound like it's good for the environment (no pesticides or fertilizer), it's actually far, far worse (mostly due to lower crop yields).

You'd have to use a regular cotton bag every week for almost 12 years (7100 times) to come out ahead against a virgin plastic bag. And an organic cotton bag would need to be used every week for more than 32 years...

Chart showing Life Cycle Assessment of grocery bags (from EuroNews site)

Conclusion

Of course, you'll find that the plastics industry will be touting the environmental benefits of the thin and filmy plastic bag. They will argue that human behaviour is key and that if people would just recycle their plastic bags, then that would be far better than any of the other options. Which might be true "IF" plastic bags were actually recycled. But given their flimsy, fly away nature, even if they end up at a recycling facility, some invariable blow away or get caught in machinery. I know that in our city, plastic bags can NOT go in the blue bin but need to be bagged up and dropped off at the recycling depot. Or taken back to the grocery store from whence they came. And how many people are going to do that?

So, what's a regular person to do? As it turns out, what really matters is human behaviour. All of the studies and articles gave several key recommendations:

1. Whatever bags you already have (plastic, paper, reusable, cotton), keep reusing them (for all sorts of things) until they fall apart, and then use them to bag up your garbage (or compost in the case of paper bags). Single-use anything is bad...

This was actually a helpful tidbit for me because I've been wondering what to do with the falling apart bags... should I be recycling them or not? But it would appear that none of the reusable bags are currently recyclable in Canada. sigh.

Obviously, I would still try to repair the damaged ones. I'm thinking a piece of Gorilla tape might help the one that has the puncture/tear in it. The ones with burst seams, I'll save until I can visit my sister again and we can sew them back together.

2. Do not buy new bags.

There are an overabundance of reusable bags already out there. And for goodness sake, do NOT buy organic cotton bags... or even just regular cotton bags. They are the worst. Check out your local thrift store and you'll likely find all sorts of bags waiting to be adopted.

Maybe even try making your own. I was already wondering what to do with my old, dying t-shirts. Turns out, they can be repurposed into tote bags as well (no sewing required)! That'll be in an upcoming blog post... and I really like the idea of being able to reuse something like an old t-shirt... Not a still wearable t-shirt. That would be just silly...

3. Wash your reusable bags on a regular (weekly) basis. Particularly if you buy meat. 

You don't want bacteria growing on your plastic bags... or viruses... particularly in the age of Covid-19.

British Columbia is going to introduce a single-use plastics ban this year, which will include single-use plastic bags. But... do you see the loop hole in there? Yup... plastic producers see it too. In some jurisdictions, all they've done is produce thicker plastic bags which are theoretically "multi-use" and... voila... they do an end run around the legislation. Time will tell how this plays out in B.C.

Sources

National Geographic - Sustainable Shopping—Which Bag Is Best?

The Atlantic - Are Tote Bags Really Good for the Environment?

Quartz - Your cotton tote is pretty much the worst replacement for a plastic bag

The Conversation - Here’s how many times you actually need to reuse your shopping bags

Columbia University -  Plastic, Paper or Cotton: Which Shopping Bag is Best?

Danish study (opens as pdf) - Lifecycle Assessment of Grocery Carrier Bags (2018)

UK study (opens as pdf) - Life cycle assessment of supermarket carrier bags (2006)

The Conversation - Here’s how many times you actually need to reuse your shopping bags

Millions of Animal Lives Wasted due to Brexit and Covid

One meat exporter from the UK said last month that he had 30 tonnes of pork rotting in Rotterdam, held up by paperwork. All thanks to Brexit. And he's not the only one. Another exporter said he had five containers held up with 23 tonnes of meat in each container (115 tonnes in total). But all they're really concerned about is their bottom line... their profits.

It all sounds so clinical... pork, meat, produce, goods... although the word "rotting" should wake us up to the fact that this isn't just a waste of food. It's a waste of lives.

Your average 300 lb hog will generally produce 130 lbs of usable pork. So let's do some math:

• 1 tonne = 2204 lbs

• 30 tonnes = 68,138 lbs
  
• 115 tonnes = 253,532 lbs

• 30 tonnes or 68,138 lbs divided by 120 lbs of meat/pig = 525 pigs
• 115 tonnes = 253,532 lbs divided by 120 lbs of meat/pig = 1950 pigs
  

Soooo... just two British meat exporters have raised and killed roughly 2500 pigs for nothing. What a hideous, horrible waste of lives. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many more meat exporters (chickens, pigs, lamb) as well as seafood exporters who have had to dump thousands of tonnes of meat/seafood because of paperwork issues with the new Brexit export/import regulations.

One official from the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) said that more than 120 lorries carrying British meat were stuck at Rotterdam. Let's say 23 tonnes/lorry (according to one news article) =  2760 tonnes. More than 50,000 animal lives wasted. And some of those lorries might have pork... but some might have lamb or even chicken. Which would mean many, many more lives/tonne since chickens weigh a lot less than pigs...

Perhaps it's time to rethink the whole meat industry thing... after all, a shipment of dried lentils or beans can sit for days or weeks and be no worse for it. Just saying. Eating meat is a luxury...

Covid

And I don't even want to think about the 17,000,000 (million!) mink that were "culled"... exterminated? slaughtered? Let's just say killed... in Denmark because of Covid. Not all of those mink were sick with a Covid variant, they decided to exterminate/eliminate/execute their entire mink farm populations just to be on the safe side. That's an unfathomable number of animals.

How do you even kill that many animals within the space of a few days? Gassing them with carbon dioxide apparently... but it can be problematic because mink are semi-aquatic animals and can hold their breath for long periods which means that after 30 seconds of gassing... they might not all be dead.

Why the heck does Denmark even have so many mink? Because they are the world's largest producer of mink pelts, producing over 19,000,000 pelts every year (over a billion dollars). Who buys that many mink pelts?? China. It's a luxury item, see. Wearing a mink fur coat denotes status and wealth. I tend to lean more towards the idea that it denotes cruelty, inhumanity and sheer horror. But hey, that's just me.

Of course, European fur farms are better regulated than fur farms in China, which should perhaps make us feel a bit better. At least in Denmark, the animals are killed by gassing before being stripped of their skins. In China, they simply stun the animals with blows to the head (or grab them by the hide legs and whack their heads on the ground), hang them upside down and then skin them starting at the hind legs. They then pull the pelt down the body and off the head. And yes, the animals are still alive during this process and some wake up while being skinned. Some still have beating hearts and eye movements five to ten minutes after being skinned alive. All that suffering so some rich person, or wanna-be-rich person, can have the luxury status-symbol of a fur coat.

Every once in a while, when I think about having a steak or some garlic prawns... I just have to remind myself of how that steak was raised... and of how the prawns are harvested... and I don't really want steak or prawns anymore.

Turning Tissues and Toilet Paper Rolls into Life-Giving Compst

Ever since I realized that I shouldn't be throwing tissues into the toilet, I've been tossing them into the various garbage containers around the house - bathroom, office, kitchen. I know that this is bad. And I feel vaguely guilty every time I toss one away. Should I be moving towards using cloth handkerchiefs?? I don't know about that... I know old men who use those and, well, it just grosses me out a bit when they haul their used handkerchief out of their pocket to wipe their nose again. And let's not even talk about doing this during a time of Covid... ick!

Tossing Tissues

So is there an alternative? I know that I shouldn't be tossing anything other than TP into the toilet but what to do with the tissues? I did a bit of research and tissues are imminently compostable, either in our city green bin (except during Covid) or even in our own garden compost. In fact, the tissues, composed as they are of wood-fibre/paper products, are a very good source of brown matter (carbon-rich) which is needed to balance out all the green matter (nitrogen-rich). This could actually kill two birds with one stone, because we've run out of brown matter for our garden compost (sawdust, straw, fallen leave). Sooo... tossing my kleenex into the garden compost container instead of the garbage bin would tick two boxes at once.

There are of course, a few caveats in order... only toss kleenex into the compost bin if it hasn't been used to wipe up anything icky: no chemical cleaners, no poop (pet or human), no snot from sick people, no cooking oil. Other than that, we can go to town in tossing our used tissues into our garden compost bin.

Except... fore me, it's a convenience issue. With a garbage can in every room that I frequent, it's easy to just toss the used tissues into the nearest bin. So I'm going to have to figure out a system for collecting used tissues in each room, specifically the office and bathroom. In the past, we've sometimes left an empty tissue box out in the living room and stuffed our used tissues into it. When it was full, it got emptied into the container used to gather our green bin stuff. While we don't have any empty tissue boxes on hand, any little box would actually do the trick. So, that's one small step I can take to keep some stuff out of the landfill and help our composting process at the same time.

Paper Towels

I was then wondering about paper towels... can they go into the compost bin too? There is a bit of debate about the bleaching process used to turn the paper pulp from its normal brown colour to that pristine white colour but... apparently, as long as the paper towels are not advertised as having disinfectant  properties or fragrance, they are compostable. Excellent, another potential source of brown matter. Obviously non-bleached, recycled paper towels would be the best. I'm almost wondering if getting those commercial-grade paper towels (the brown ones) might be a better option than an oh-so-puffy Bounty paper towels. Either way, composting paper towels carries the same caveats as the tissues: no chemical cleaners (so no paper towels with Windex on them), no poop, no sick mess and no cooking oil. A paper towel with cooked food residue (including cooking oil) can, however, be tossed into our city green bin which can handle those sorts of things.

Ideally, of course, we'd like to get away from paper towels entirely and just use rags to wipe up messes. It's a convenience thing again, sigh. Maybe I need a sticky note on the paper towel dispenser - "Do you REALLY need to use a paper towel for this mess?" Or maybe, "Could you use a rag instead?" Just as a reminder. 

This realization that we might have some potentially easy sources of brown matter within our household got me thinking and... I found a few more household sources.

Toilet Paper and Paper Towel Rolls

Here's some unbleached paper products that are perfect for the compost bin! No bleach, no cleaning products, no ink or toner or anything. Just pure paper product. It does help to tear them up a bit before tossing them into the compost bin.

Paperboard and Cardboard

Mmm... these are slightly trickier. There's concern about the glue holding corrugated cardboard together since it contains boron which, while good for the garden, can be detrimental if there's too much. Then there's the ink and dyes used on the paperboard, things like cereal boxes, tissue boxes and such. For us, using the compost  we create for our veggie garden, we're going to assess these on a case by case basis. Some paperboard (e.g. shoe boxes) have very little ink on them... they might make the cut. And, of course, anything that is glossy (like a glossy cardboard box) should not end up in the garden compost, but go to recycling.

Egg Cartons

These are apparently very compostable in a garden compost although... they can harbour traces of salmonella which makes me think they might not be the greatest for a veggie garden. But if it's just for a flower garden, then it's probably good to go.

Brown Paper Bags

We don't get as many brown paper bags as we used to but... they are perfect for the compost as well, which is nice to know.

Office Paper & Newspaper 

On my hunt for brown matter for the compost, I thought of shredded office paper and newspaper. One is good, one not so much. Most newspapers nowadays are made with vegetable-based inks so are perfect for the garden compost bin, as long as they are shredded first. Newspaper inserts (like flyers) are not so good - way too much dye, so we'll keep tossing those in the recycle bin. As for office paper... it's been bleached within an inch of its life usually and the ink toner is most definitely not good for the compost. So that too will continue to be tossed into the recycle bin and/or shredded.

Next Small Step

Sooo... in light of the above, I went around the house, sifting through various garbage bins (not the kitchen one) with gloves on, pulling out various brown matter objects destined for our garden compost bin.

The one other thing to consider is that cardboard and paperboard, tissues, paper towel, etc. don't have any real nutrients, as compared to dead leaves or straw or other natural sources of brown matter. So we likely don't want to go too over the top with synthetic brown matter but... any port in a storm at this point.

("Typical household carbon stuff for compost" by kisforkateatkins is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Could Four Simple Questions really put an end to my Procrastination?

I'll do it later.

Man, if I had a loonie, or even a quarter, for every time that phrase passed my lips, I'd be set for life!

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the pandemic. Maybe it's middle-age. Maybe it's the alignment of the planets. But procrastination has been rearing its ugly head with a vengeance. Sometimes it's as simple as "I don't feel like it right now. Maybe later." There's really no rhyme or reason to it and it happens with big things and with little things. I know that some things will only take a minute or two and yet... I still default to "I'll do it later."

I'm always on the hunt for an antidote to this procrastination; reading news articles and blogs to see if there is something, anything, that can make me procrastination-proof. I came across a BBC article from late last year which touted Four Keys that could help me Unlock Procrastination. Excellent! Fire away.

Sooo... the gist of the article centres on the idea of asking yourself four simple questions when you find yourself sliding down the slippery slope of procrastination:

1. How could someone successful complete the goal?
2. How would you feel if you don't do the required task?
3. What is the next immediate step you need to do?
4. If you could do one thing to achieve the goal on time, what would it be?
   

I think I'm going to have to print out these questions at some point... no wait... right now! ... OK, I'm back, that took like a minute to copy and paste into a Word doc and fill a page with five sets of the questions. I'm going to tape them to various strategic locations in the house. The bathroom mirror seems like a good place given that the sink and toilet need ongoing cleaning... and showering has become a less than daily ritual. On my office desk is another good place and on my computer monitor, because not filing papers or replying to emails immediately is a pet procrastination peeve. Maybe one in the kitchen by the patio door too, for encouraging a myriad of outdoor tasks. And one by the front door to encourage me to climb Beast Hill in the morning!

Will these four questions make a difference? Well, I already like the first question. How could someone successful complete the goal? For exercise and general fitness, I only have to think about our sports medicine guy who is an avid runner and super lean and trim. He's definitely successful in the fitness/health category. I know what he would do... he'd go up Beast Hill in the mornings, come rain or snow. I know the question says "how could someone" as opposed to "how would someone" but I'll try it this way and see where it gets me.

The second question... How would you feel if you don't do the required task?... hmmm... I know how I feel when I don't do the task... it niggles at me and sucks up brain space. I think about it at various odd moments during the day and feel guilty. Yucky feeling.

The third question could be helpful too... What is the next immediate step you need to do? When I'm standing, brushing my teeth, looking at the bathroom sink which could really use a quick wipe, I always think, "I'll do it later". Because I'll have more time later? Or I think cleaning the sink is going to take too long? Argh. But... ask the question... what is the next immediate step that I need to do? Just get out the rag from under the sink... and then the spray bottle of cleaner.. and a scrappy old tooth brush to clean around the drain. I'm sure I could give the sink and counter a quick once-over in just a couple of minutes. So focusing on the next immediate step might be just the ticket.

As for the fourth question... If you could do one thing to achieve the goal on time, what would it be?... I think the answer to that will usually be "Just get started! On something! Anything!" But... who knows, as I work with this, other things may appear.

Right then, I'm taking my printed sheet, cutting it up into strips and taping these around the house... I'll report back in a few weeks if this has made any difference to my procrastination.

Photo by Brett Jordan from Pexels

How to Make Money while Decluttering AND Keeping Things out of the Landfill

Have you noticed how challenging it can be to get rid of your decluttered items? Well, first, kudos to you for actually decluttering! It takes quite a bit to go through all of our things and pick out the ones with which we are ready to party ways. But then what? The organizing mavens all tell you to have four (maybe five) boxes on hand into which you place the decluttered items: Keep, Sell/Donate, Recycle, Trash. Three of those boxes are pretty clear... keep it, recycle it or trash it. It's that second box that's the tricky one... at least for me. In part because I need to make a decision... should I sell... or should I donate?

Let's say we have a mortar and pestle that we bought at a garbage sale for $5 because we thought we'd use it for crushing herbs and what not. It's quite a nice mortar and pestle, heavy and solid out of some black stone. But... since the day we bought it, it has just sat on a shelf, gathering dust. I think my partner used it once to break up some almonds into smaller pieces. So we decided to let it go. Hooray!! One less non-used item cluttering up our space. So, let's see... which box does it go into... obviously the donate or sell box...

In the past, we've defaulted to the donate box... just packaged everything up willy nilly into boxes and bags and schlepped it off to one of the local thrift stores - Hospice Thrift Shoppe, Salvation Army Thrift Store or... (gasp)... Value Village. It's simple and easy and requires virtually zero time commitment. Just pack it up, put it in the truck and the next time I pass by one of those places, stop and donate. Feels good and is good for the environment too, keeping things out of the landfill.

Or is it.

You see, when we just pack things up willy nilly, we don't really give any thought to what we're packing up. Is it saleable? Or are we just offloading the discarding of our items onto someone else? I've read some articles that opened my eyes to how many donated items actually end up being landfilled because they can't be sold! Maybe that little nic-nac we put in the donation box should have gone into the trash box instead? But... wait... we don't really know if it's saleable or not... so let's err on the side of caution and assume that it is. We'll just toss it in the box and let the thrift store staff deal with it. Hmmm... should I feel guilty or not?

In my latest decluttering purge, a lot of the stuff was paper... so that was easy. It just went into recycling. But what about something like that mortar and pestle? Or the wooden lazy susan from IKEA. Or that stack of Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way) books. Some things just seem... too nice... to donate willy nilly.

We could host a garage sale... in the spring... when the pandemic is over... That would mean that we would have to store all of that stuff somewhere until we get together enough of it to host a garage sale. Or until garage sales are allowed again. And let's not even mention that garage sales are a tonne of work: getting everything out there, setting up tables, pricing things, haggling with customers, packing everything up at the end of the weekend and then what... still left with a bunch of stuff.

For some of our things, particularly bigger items like furniture and kayaks, we've tried selling them on Kijiji. While we've had success in previous years, stuff listed on Kijiji in the last few months has just gone nowhere. My sister, over in Vancouver, said she listed all of her stuff on Facebook Marketplace and my partner echoed her sentiments saying that lots of our friends were selling stuff on Marketplace. So, with a heavy sigh, I took my photos and moved some items over to Marketplace.

Well... wouldn't ya know... stuff moved! And fast! A dresser... gone. An IKEA hutch... gone. Those Julia Cameron books that had languished for weeks on Kijiji... two people interested within two hours of posting on Marketplace! What the heck? I think I've been fishing in the wrong pond, cause in the Marketplace pond, the fish are biting! And, it's not a heck of a lot of work or time either. People now pay via e-transfer and you just leave whatever it is in a bag or box out in the carport and the buyer comes by to pick it up. Nifty.

So, I've started pulling things out of the thrift store donate pile and am now flogging them on Marketplace. I've also gotten a bit more savvy and now search for whatever it is I plan on selling, just to get a sense of the going price for things. Because that dresser, which we sold for $25, was re-listed on Marketplace the very next day for waaaayyyy more than that! Hmph... seller beware... do your research first!

Anyhow... that black mortar and pestle... going rate seemed to be about $30-35 on Marketplace. So I posted it for $50 and within a couple of hours, got an offer for $35. Sold. That lazy susan... going rate was about $12... listed it for $10. Sold. Wowzers... In the last few days, we've sold $140 worth of stuff... not too shabby. The house feels lighter and our piggy bank is a little plumper.

Money... Moola... Cashola...
Photo by Michelle Spollen on Unsplash

I have to admit to being a bit torn... on the one hand... I feel like I'm taking money away from the thrift stores who could sell our stuff and pocket the money for good causes. Except Value Village of course... where only a very small percentage of the proceeds goes to their "partner charity". They are, after all, a for-profit company! Anyhow... I know that a lot of our donated items would be listed for cheap in a thrift store, nowhere near what we could get by selling them on Marketplace. So perhaps the solution is to peel away 10% of our net sale proceeds and make a donation to the organization once a year.

I also have to admit, this success at selling almost makes me want to go trolling through Hospice and Sally Ann (Value Village is too expensive) and hunt out items that they are selling for cheap (like on 30% Off Thursdays) and then turn around and resell those items on Marketplace. Hmmm... could be a budding little side business.

There are, of course, some things that don't sell all that well on Marketplace, like nic-nacs. I also don't know that I'd want to go to the hassle of listing every single item of clothing. Although... my sister has done really well with selling batches of kids clothing or toys.

We'll have to see how this goes. Perhaps our early success is just due to the fact that we are selling our best, plumpest items... time will tell.

In the meantime, I need to take advantage of the sunshine coming through the window to take some better photos of our next lot of items!

Online Grocery Shopping - Love it or Leave it?

We've been trying online grocery shopping at Loblaws' Superstore these last few months. I have a love/hate relationship with it.

Here are some of the things I love:

• I don't have to go into the store at all and do the Covid-avoidance-tango with other shoppers. This was more of an issue before the mandatory mask mandate came into effect.
  
• ordering via the PC Express app is pretty seamless and effortless - it keeps a list of a my regularly ordered items and I just have to scroll and tap and... voila, instant list
• they often have promos - buy $100 of groceries and get $20 worth of PC Optimum Points - what's not to love?!

Here are some of the things I hate:

• not everything is listed on the PC Express app - particularly things down the Asian/International aisle. For instance, I want Ground Ginger (ginger powder) - all it shows me is the small 150 g bags of NoName ginger and yet... I know that there are bigger (cheaper) bags of ground ginger down the international aisle... and yet I can't order them
• hiccups with the ordering process - for the last two weeks, I have put an item into my virtual shopping cart (a package of mixed organic greens) and... for two weeks in a row, that item has magically vanished from the cart... unbeknownst to me... I only notice when I get home and there is no package of mixed greens. I go back to the online order and... it's not there either. I'm going to have to pay extra special attention to my ordering process to see at what point it disappears
• getting the wrong price/weight - one week, we ordered Lo Bok (daikon radish) and it was rung through at a ridiculous price - 600 g of daikon was incorrectly weighed at over 1 kg. So, a $1 chunk of daikon ended up costing us $17. Yes, I phoned it in and they refunded the money in full but...
• I have to hound them for getting refunds. With the incorrectly weighed daikon, I phoned it in the same day and was told it would be a couple of weeks. Nothing. I phoned again. They had no record of my earlier call. I was told it would be a couple of weeks. Nothing. I phoned again and finally got someone who made sure that the refund was processed.
• getting the wrong thing - there was one week, we had ordered Lo Bok and received Bok Choy. Clearly the picker just saw "Bok" and ran with it. After the fiasco with the incorrectly weighted daikon, we just sucked up our ire and cooked the Bok Choy in some stir fry. I now have an added note to our Lo Bok item that describes it as a big long white root, not Bok Choy!
• getting more expensive substitutions - there was one week, we had ordered a 4 kg jug of epsom salts for $8. They substituted with two 2 kg jugs of shea butter epsom salts for $20. Ummm... not what we wanted AND more than double the cost! I now have a bunch of my items marked with "do not substitute".
  
• the waiting... Superstore has designated parking stalls for picking up PC Express orders. Pull into a stall, dial the number and tell them your stall number. The other week, I dialed in at 9 am for my order (my time window for pick-up was 9 am to 10 am). The lady told me there were several people ahead of me. I waited 45 minutes for my order to be brought out. I coulda been in and out twice if I had gone inside to do my own shopping! That was the worst wait. The fastest was 10 minutes and it generally averages around 20 minutes. Which means, again, I could do my own shopping in the same amount of time.
• the plastic bags - naturally, when they bring out my order, it's all in plastic grocery bags and oftentimes, only one or two heavier items per bag. I'm not sure how they're going to manage this when plastic bags are banned but... I feel a twinge of guilt over all of these plastic bags.
• items not available - If an item isn't available, and I'm doing the shopping, I can check out other items and decide if I want something else. With online shopping, I can't do that and so often, I say "no substitutions" because I have no idea what we'll be getting or how much more expensive it will be. Which means we often have gaps in our order. It's usually not the end of the world but... it often means I have to run to another store to get something.
• forgetting an item - sigh... This usually means I have to run into Superstore to get the missing item which feels kind of counter-productive given I'm also there picking up my online order!

Hmm... the cons clearly outweight the pros by a lot. The question becomes are all those cons worth the convenience that comes with online shopping? If they delivered, it would be a different matter maybe. That whole 20-45 minute waiting thing would be gone, and that is one of my biggest peeves.

Our behind-neighbour has been using Instacart (which services Superstore) but... some quirk in the Instacart system means our postal code is not included in their database. I enter our postal code and it tells me Instacart  is not in our area. Our behind-neighbour whose postal code is one digit off from ours can order... but we can't. All the surrounding postal codes can order... but we can't. I've been back and forth with Instacart several times and while they have finallyacknowledged that there is a glitch, we still can't order from them.

And so... this week (early December), I'll be doing an in-person shopping  run to Superstore. We have some odd, infrequently bought items on the list and it just seems like an in-person visit might be a good idea.

Have you tried online grocery shopping? Love it? Hate it?