Easy Sustainable Waste Management Tips for Your Home
Share
Author
david
Share
Waste management doesn’t sound like the most fascinating topic under the sun. But it really is interesting if you take a moment to think about it. Our culture is used to thinking about waste as what comes out of the pipeline after the fun stuff has petered out, and dealt with best as “out of sight, out of mind.” But in the sustainable practices revolution we’re going through, nothing ever actually disappears. It’s a cycle of life. Waste may not be fun for us, but it’s fun for bacteria—and bacteria keep us alive.
So how might we think about the waste process of the home? We can break down domestic waste into four categories: food, materials, animal, and human. Here are some quick waste-management tips for approaching the back end of the life cycle in your home in a sustainable way.
Food Waste
The basic sustainable practice here is composting. Minneapolis and many other cities in the area have composting programs. You can simply call the city to send an organic waste receptacle to your home or building and you can keep a compost can or bin in your kitchen for food scraps. For the extra bang, be sure to use compostable liner bags for your compost bin.
Materials Waste
Most things that come into your home for the first time come in packages of course. And much of that packaging is plastic. This is an unfortunate fact of our as-yet less than fully sustainable cultural mindset. But we have progressed to the point that recycling regularly accepts plastics. So this one is easy. With packaging—including cardboard—all you have to do is break things down and cart it out to the recycling.
But two other sustainable practices require a little more intention. First, the cycle of life benefits from slowing down the rate of decay. We can help this by being proactive about using less stuff: less stuff, less waste. We should all think about what we really need before our next shopping binge.
Second, when items in the home have lost their purpose, re-purpose. Take those read books to the nearby Free Library and cloths to the Goodwill.
Animal Waste
Lots of sustainable practices here. First, you should know what your city requires in terms of animal waste itself. Minneapolis prefers that animal waste be flushed rather than thrown out. Next, check that your kitty litter is the most sustainable variety. For instance, wood pellets are better than clay. And for dogs, be sure your poop bags are compostable.
Human Waste
Seems straightforward. But here too there are things to do to improve sustainability. One key area is fussing with your toilet so that it uses less water per flush. In California, they put bricks in their toilet tanks to accomplish this. Another tried and true practice is to simply flush pee less through the day (brown waste needs to be flushed down).
These are straightforward waste-management tips. The point, though, is not only for the practical sustainability benefits but that being proactive about the waste stream in our homes can help us reconfigure our whole view of life. It’s a continuing rhythm of decay and generation and our small part—aside from being part of it ourselves—is to tend it and help it along in our own everyday kind of way!
Here are some further helpful resources on getting more sustainable with waste:
