Simplicity, minimalism and homesteading all share a common thread, and that’s zero waste! Living a zero waste lifestyle doesn’t need to be burdensome! On the contrary, with a few new tips and tricks that can be implemented at your own pace, you can be a zero waste rock star in no time! Here are “19 Zero Waste Lifestyle Tips”!
When we implement zero waste principles in our lives, we save money!
1. Zero Waste Feasting
The amount of waste created by fast-food/take-out is mind-blowing!
Did you know that 45% of materials in landfills today are generated from fast food?
American fast-food restaurants generate more than 32 billion pounds of food waste every year!
Those are discouraging numbers!
Not only does preparing our own food at home save money, build a zero waste lifestyle, improve health and build relationships, but it also eliminates almost half of the garbage in landfills!
13 Simple Ways to Reduce Food Waste
2. Reject Plastic and Excess Packaging
If you should find yourself eating at a restaurant, there are still ways to stay within your zero-waste lifestyle.
First of all, ask for your beverage to be in a reusable cup or glass, instead of a paper/plastic/Styrofoam cup.
You could also offer up your personal “to-go” for them to fill, although I’ll say that not all restaurants are down with that idea.
Second, reject any plastic silverware. If the restaurant you’re dining in doesn’t have an alternative to plastic ware, consider purchasing your own little set to keep in your purse. This is what I did and I love it!
Third, and perhaps most important here, reject plastic straws!!!
Who could have foreseen all the carnage in our oceans from a simple plastic straw, but the evidence is clear…hundreds of thousands of fish, turtles and whales die every year from ingesting plastic that’s floating in and through our oceans. They wash up on beaches worldwide, dead with stomachs full of plastic. So tragic.
3. Zero-Waste Cleaning Products that You Make at Home
Now that I do this, it absolutely nauseates me to see isles of “promise-making cleaning products” at the grocery, toting toxins and plastic to clean our homes with!
There are only a few items needed to make all the cleaning products any home might need.
I order these glass spray bottles and make a general household cleaner, dusting spray, shower and toilet bowl cleaner and window cleaner.
That’s all I need to clean my home!
How to Make Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products
Here’s one of my staple household cleaning recipes:
Zero-Waste Household Cleaner
1 part water
1 part vinegar
1 squirt dish soap
10-20 drops of either tea tree, lavender or Thieves essential oil
Pour into a spray bottle and enjoy!
I save a boatload of money doing this, and I don’t have to bring more plastic spray bottles into my home! PLUS, it’s a lot healthier for my family and the environment!
How to Make Your Own Laundry Detergent and Pre-Treat
How to Make Homemade Deodorant that Works
4. Create a Zero-Waste Kitchen
Our kitchens are probably the greatest producers of waste in our lives if we allow them to be.
Kitchens are often full of pre-packaged foods that leave us with plastic wrapping to deal with, long after the food is gone.
Cooking from scratch leaves very little, if any packaging that can’t be composted! This is what a zero waste lifestyle looks like!
If you’ve never cooked or baked anything in your life, you’re in good company. I didn’t open a cookbook until I was 31 years of age. When I did, it was like reading Greek.
It’s ok, you’re not stupid, you’ve just never been taught.
I would recommend that you get a basic Betty Crocker cookbook from the library and start with a simple quick bread recipe, like Pumpkin Bread.
Become familiar with baking ingredients, the same ones are used frequently. Or, Pinterest offers plenty of recipe choices, but if you’ve never baked before, just keep it simple.
YouTube offers more “beginning cooking” videos than you can imagine, check them out!
See if you can find someone who would be willing to help you to make some simple recipes and give you the “ins and outs” of baking.
Or watch cooking shows, but I really think it helps to have a live human being to show you how it’s done.
Just ask around, offer to clean another mom’s house for her if she’ll take some time out of her day to show you how to make a few things.
Or ask an empty-nester mom for some tips in exchange for something she needs!
Learning cooking skills is not only critical to your health long-term, but to your ability to be less wasteful overall.
5. Start Composting
Composting is so crazy easy and necessary for the zero-waste lifestyle.
If you have a corner in your backyard, just start with a pile of dry brown rubbish, like dead leaves or straw, then add your food scraps in layers (alternating 75% dry with 25% moist food scraps), mixing occasionally.
A good compost pile needs sun and oxygen to break down.
There is plenty of information out there about composting, but don’t make it harder than it is.
You can’t add meat or dairy, and you can’t add cat, dog or human feces. However, you can add other manures, like rabbits, goats, horses, etc.
Virtually anything that will break down can be composted, I compost lint from the dryer, cardboard toilet paper rolls and cotton socks with far too many holes to repair.
Now, for you apartment dwellers, I have a story to tell you.
Years ago, I knew another mom at our pool who was very serious about what she ate, consuming only organic fruits and vegetables. She was telling me about how much rubbish she created but couldn’t compost where she lived.
I offered to take it for her and compost it!
She kept the scraps from her fruits and vegetables in old plastic bags and gave them to me at the pool. If we missed each other, she just put them in the refrigerator and I picked them up later.
If you live in an apartment, I absolutely KNOW that someone would love to have your food scraps, to either compost or even to feed livestock with!
My chickens love food scraps and I love being able to offer them because it lowers my food bill and produces still more manure to use in the garden. Win/win!
Maybe that person will even bring you fresh produce from their garden in exchange!
6. Reduce Your Food Waste
If you truly want to learn how to live a zero-waste lifestyle, then you must get serious about reducing food waste!
I’m convinced that this is not only the most challenging part of eliminating waste, but also the most impactful if you can get your arms around it!
Did you know that over 40% of the food grown here in the US is wasted!!??? 40%!
There are several keys to lowering food waste, but the number one thing is to not bring any more food home than you can eat before it goes bad!
Overbuying is the number one reason we waste food.
Most of us overpack our refrigerators and never eat what we just spent our hard-earned money on.
New stuff only allows last week’s “old stuff” to get shoved to the back of the frig, never to be seen again.
That is until it grows something green and smelly, and then we pitch it.
It takes a little forethought to make sure that you’re only buying what you need at the grocery.
Before you shop, slow down and open the refrigerator.
Examine your leftovers as well as any food purchased last week.
*What needs to be eaten soon?
*What can you make another meal out of?
*What can be taken for someone’s lunch today?
“Just Eat It‘ is an excellent documentary about a couple who set out to eliminate food waste by eating only discarded food for 6 months, I can’t recommend it enough!
Having a Plan B for food that is going bad is another critical piece in abolishing food waste.
In our house, when bananas get too brown, they either go into the freezer for smoothies or get made into banana bread.
Then the peels go directly into the compost jar.
Leftovers get eaten for lunch and the following evening for dinner, or put in the freezer for another time.
After meal plates are scraped in our “chicken bucket” and taken out to the hens. Nothing goes to waste.
There is an “Eat Me First” bowl on the counter of food that needs to be eaten before it goes bad, and family members know that they are to eat from there first when they’re hungry.
Make a commitment to eat what needs to be eaten, NOT what you’re in the mood for. That’s where we get into trouble and find ourselves with food that’s gone bad, simply because we didn’t eat it soon enough.
13 Easy Ways to Deal with Leftovers
It’s really all about having a plan, just that simple. It will vary from family to family, but just give some thought to what you are throwing away and ask yourself the question “What else can I do with this besides throwing it away?”
When you make a commitment to eat leftovers, you’ll be shocked at how much food you really have in the house.
There are times when my freezer is just full of leftovers in all shapes and sizes. Some nights, I just pull everything out, heat it up and there’s dinner! My freezer gets emptied out, everyone is fed and I didn’t have to open anything new.
8. Zero-Waste Grocery Stores
Zero-waste and bulk shopping has become much more mainstream as of late!
Many grocery stores, online and “bricks and mortar” stores are beginning to do much more to provide bulk options. In Ohio, stores like Kroger, Whole Foods and Fresh Thyme are offering zero-waste grocery options. You may bring your own mason jars or mesh bags to put your bulk goods in.
Don’t forget your cloth market bags!
If you’re having trouble finding a grocery store in your area with bulk foods, check out the list below.
9. Zero-Waste Food Co-ops and Farmer’s Markets
Rather than trying to shop “zero-waste” solo, why not check into a food co-op?
Local Harvest Co-op List
These may or may not be less expensive, but it’s worth it to check them out. You could even form your own group with like-minded friends!
Your group of friends could divide up #25 or #50 bags of oats, wheat berries, sugar, flour, etc.!
I love this because there’s virtually no waste!
Look for local ethnic food stores as well – some of them offer bulk buying options!
Of course, there are Farmer’s Markets to consider! Get to know the vendors and find out if they would be willing to sell fruit or vegetables in bulk!
If you live near an Amish community, it’s very inexpensive to buy bulk foods there! It could totally be worth the trip.
10. Don’t Buy Food with Excessive Packaging
I’m always blown away when I’m at a grocery store, only to see produce in big plastic clamshell packages.
What the heck? Why is that necessary??
Are we to the point where we can’t even touch our produce and choose for ourselves which ones we want? That’s just crazy.
I just will not buy that product, or anything else for that matter, that is packaged that way.
I don’t want to have the burden of dealing with the plastic afterward! Recycling is all well and good, but refusing this kind of packaging is much more effective long term.
Remember the whales?
Yes, I am “one of those people” who will go over to the service desk and fill out a form for the suggestion box, using kind words. Letting stores know how you feel about the overuse of plastic packaging, again in a kind and respectful way, impacts the way the company makes decisions in the future.
18 Things I Refuse to Buy Anymore
11. Ditch Paper Products
Paper and paper products kill over 68 million trees in the United States alone each year.
Further, the price of paper products has not only sky-rocketed, but they continue to rise with the supply chain issues we are experiencing.
I’m not a fan of paper products.
When I was growing up, every home had a drawer full of clean kitchen towels that we dried our hands on. Our mothers washed dishes with dish clothes and we ate our meals on stoneware plates.
And yes, we used toilet paper.
My point is that, with the exception of toilet paper, other household paper products like paper towels, paper napkins, paper plates, etc. just aren’t necessary!
Look for more sustainable products like kitchen towels that you wash and re-use and re-usable dish clothes (I use and LOVE these)! Use regular dinner plates for meals.
You’ll save a ton of money!
12. Make Homemade Zero-Waste Pet food
Total budget killer, here. Read my post about “Healthy and Homemade Dog Food Recipes” and think about making your own dog food. It is really pretty simple, saves money and trips to the store. PLUS, I’m convinced that homemade is healthier for my dogs.
13. Grow Food
This is another fabulous way to avoid food waste and food packaging.
We grow a big garden every year as well as forage on our property.
This allows us to grow our own tomatoes, green beans, broccoli, melons, strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, apples, cherries, pears, almonds, peaches, black raspberries, red raspberries and mulberries.
Not to mention all of the wild herbs we forage and dry for cooking and natural healing.
You don’t have to live on a farm to grow a significant amount of your own food!
When we lived in the suburbs, I dug up all of the landscaping and planted tomatoes and peppers all around the house, not to mention a salad bed where it was shady.
Most towns have “community garden plots” that are available through your county’s extension office for a nominal fee.
You can even grow your own salad with pots on a balcony! Wherever you live, there are ways to grow food!
How to Start an Easy Vegetable Container Garden
14. Preserve your Own Food
Keep in mind that when you can and preserve your own food, there is very little waste because you use the same mason jars over and over again!
Home-canned food lasts for decades. Once again, your local extension office likely offers classes on canning and preserving food. Start small, like making jam, and gain confidence before moving forward.
Dehydrating food is very simple and doable for busy people, check out all the ways you can use a dehydrator!
15. Learn to Make Your Own Bread
There is nothing in the world that says “home” like fresh bread!
By learning to make your own bread, you’ll save not only on the trip to the store (gas and time) but you’ll have one less plastic bag to dispose of!
16. Re-Use and Re-Purpose
So many items in our lives can be used over and over again, and yet so many folks just throw these things in the trash after one use!
17. Decorate Sustainably
When the holidays come around, instead of using a lot of plastic and/or toxic decorations around the home, I prefer to use natural elements! Clipping from pine trees, collecting pinecones and branches with berries on them all help to perpetuate the zero waste lifestyle!
How to Make a Christmas Wreath from Cuttings
Natural Fall Decorating Ideas for Your Home
They smell wonderful and are different from year to year! When the season is over, it all goes to the compost pile and I don’t have to store it!
You can also make your own fabric gift bags to cut down on toxic wrapping paper!
18. Use Water Twice
There are so many ways to re-use gray water around the home! We’re talking about gray water, and not brown water.
Some very simple ways I do this daily is to water my plants with the dog’s water from the previous day, before I give them fresh water.
Another thing I do is the “mellow yellow” method of dealing with toilet waste. This is simply letting urine sit in the toilet (as opposed to flushing every time!) until you’ve “gone” a few times, then flush. If it’s “brown, flush it down”.
Stepping it up a bit, you can collect rinse water from your washing machine in a 5-gallon bucket and use it to water your plants outdoors. You can also collect water from your shower, with a 5-gallon bucket as well.
If you want to go all out, then consider harvesting water with a simple water barrel. These are pretty inexpensive and simple to hook up.
19. Always Take Leftovers Home
When you do eat out, and we all do from time to time, bring some small containers with lids to put your leftovers in and take them home.
Don’t ask the waiter to do it for you, you’ll wind up with a Styrofoam container to dispose of…that stuff never breaks down.
But DO take the leftovers home, you paid for them after all!
Have a plan to manage leftovers, help is right here!
Restaurants produce such large amounts of waste, simply from the food that people leave on their plates. This just makes no sense to me when there are so many hungry people. We don’t have a food shortage problem, we have a distribution problem. Sometimes the best we can do is to not be part of the problem!
I would love to hear what your zero-waste lifestyle ideas and habits are in the comments!
This Post Has 2 Comments
That produce is broken down and in clamshells for people who need the convenience, often people with disabilities. It’s shockingly difficult to cut vegetables or peel and orange when one can’t hold a knife. I learned that from experience and ate every nasty word and eyeroll I gave prewashed greens and clam shelled veg and fruit.
Summer, Thank you for pointing that out, I’ve never considered how hard that must be!