{"id":2647,"date":"2013-02-13T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2013-02-13T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2014-09-29T12:29:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T16:29:57","slug":"waste-less-lent-ash-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/waste-less-lent-ash-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"Waste-Less Lent: Ash Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Days<\/a>I interrupt this story of giving-away “S’s” because Lent has just started again and I have a new plan. In 2010 and 2011, I was giving things away. In 2012, I ate on $4.50\/day. This Lent I\u2019ve decided to waste less. It\u2019s my attempt to create less trash as a way to honor God\u2019s creation and decrease how much garbage I heap on the earth. I\u2019ve been thinking about this for awhile and am not sure how well I will do or if it will made any difference. After all, Jim and I are just two people in a world of \u00a07 billion (give or take a couple people). Besides, we already recycle glass, plastic, cans and a whole bunch of stuff that we give away. We take reusable cloth bags when shopping and do a simplified form of composting. We\u2019ve even downsized our garbage can. Can we do much more? We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

My plan is twofold:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Recycle more vigilantly by learning what additional things might be recycled and where to take them.<\/li>\n
  2. Pre-cycle by trying to buy less packaging that would need to later be discarded.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Each week I will measure how much garbage I\u2019ve created and see how low I can go.<\/p>\n

    In thinking this through I thought I\u2019d need some rules to avoid becoming overly compulsive or stinking up the house. Therefore:<\/p>\n

    I won\u2019t count as garbage:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Anything that I will recycle (paper, plastic bags, plastic containers, glass, cans\u2026)<\/li>\n
    2. Anything that goes into the compost pile or down the disposal.<\/li>\n
    3. Anything that goes down the toilet. (Although when I spent time in Southeast Asia and Africa\u00a0I learned that some cultures don\u2019t use toilet paper, I\u2019m not going to that degree of \u201cpurity.\u201d)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I will count:<\/strong><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. \u00a0Anything that I would normally put in the weekly garbage collection (Although I plan to save my treasured waste in see-through containers, at least for the first few weeks, so I can measure it.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        I suspect that the hardest part<\/strong> of this will be grocery shopping where it\u2019s hard to avoid pre-packaged food. What will we do about milk? The organic milk we usually buy only comes in waxed cartons. Can those be recycled? I\u2019ll have to find out. Anybody know?<\/p>\n

        Cheating:<\/strong> I\u2019ve already caught myself cheating. Since I knew I was going to start on Ash Wednesday, I made sure that I put several larger non-recyclables in last Monday\u2019s pick-up so it wouldn\u2019t count. I\u2019m justifying this as sort of a Mardi Gras splurge before Lent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        I interrupt this story of giving-away “S’s” because Lent has just started again and I have a new plan. In 2010 and 2011, I was giving things away. In 2012, I ate on $4.50\/day. This Lent I\u2019ve decided to waste less. It\u2019s my attempt to create less trash as a way to honor God\u2019s creation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-2647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-waste-less-lent","tag-recycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3718,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/3718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}