Taking Simplifying to the Next Level

Posted by On Filed under Money, Voluntary Simplicity / Minimalism

Some minimalism bloggers go beyond the superficial, and I so appreciate their writing. Some published authors really satisfy, such as Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez (Your Money or Your Life) and Duane Elgin (Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich). I’ve also found myself looking to religious texts for another level of simplifying.

But I’ve been simplifying, really, for most of my adult life. Now I’m wondering, what’s next? How do I level-up, go beyond “things” and dive deeper?

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Review: Carbon Footprint Calculators

Posted by On Filed under Pause for Reflection 2 Comments
Review: Carbon Footprint Calculators

Tracking your carbon footprint isn’t the easiest thing to do. There are several online calculators, but a footprint is a moving target, changing with each meal, each type of mile driven and each time we turn up the heat or air conditioning.

In this post, I’ll review some of the biggest or best online carbon footprint calculators I could find. This will be eye-opening for me personally, but I hope it will help you determine which calculator might best serve your needs.

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Getting to Zero Waste: Q4 Results and Year 1 Summary

Posted by On Filed under Voluntary Simplicity / Minimalism
Getting to Zero Waste: Q4 Results and Year 1 Summary

For the past year, I’ve been trying to minimize the amount of garbage, paper, plastic and glass leaving my home and heading for the landfill or recycling center.  While I’ve long been a re-user and recycler further down the waste stream, this has been my attempt at reducing my footprint from the point of consumption.

In the first quarter of the year (January-March), I realized I was a long way from zero waste. Although, at an average of 0.79 lbs of trash per day, I was also a long way off from the average American household, which disposes of 4.4 lbs of trash per day!

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Getting to Zero Waste: Q3 Results

Posted by On Filed under Voluntary Simplicity / Minimalism 1 Comment
Getting to Zero Waste: Q3 Results

I rushed home from work today to weigh my trash. I know, I’m weird like that: driven by results, a bit of environmentalism, and in love with personal experiments. It’s the end of the third quarter and the weigh-in must be done, as I attempt to get myself closer and closer to zero waste.

Without further ado, in the third quarter of 2013 (July-September), I tossed out:

  • 20 lbs of paper
  • 21 lbs of trash
  • 12.5 lbs of plastic & glass
  • 53.5 total lbs of trash = 0.48 lbs / day

To compare the quarters, it looks like this:

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Getting to Zero Waste: Q2 Results

Posted by On Filed under Voluntary Simplicity / Minimalism 3 Comments
Getting to Zero Waste: Q2 Results

I’ve been chronicling my attempts to get down to zero waste this year and it’s been an eye-opening experience. In the first quarter of the year (January-March), I averaged 0.79 lbs of trash per day. This included food scraps, plastic, paper, glass, and anything else I took down to the garbage cans. You can see the details and category breakdown here.

Fortunately, this is much lower than the American 4.4 lbs per day average, but still much more than I’d like to be responsible for. So I continue to keep track.

In the second quarter of the year (April-June), I averaged:

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A Long Way from Zero Waste

Posted by On Filed under Voluntary Simplicity / Minimalism 2 Comments
A Long Way from Zero Waste

As I’ve simplified my life in many areas (by getting rid of 800 things, crawling out of debt, and living a voluntarily simple life), I’ve started thinking about trash. Garbage, plastic, glass, food scraps, paper, and so much more.

The complexity of my trash situation hit me as I was cleaning out and organizing my kitchen cabinets for the Reverse 100 Thing Challenge. Under the sink, I have my regular trash. In two other cupboards, I have recyclable soda bottles and cans and another bag of recyclable plastic and glass. Another cupboard holds only a paper grocery bag with paper and cardboard in it and then there’s the plastic bag full of plastic bags. There’s another small bin for garbage in the bathroom.

As I was trying to organize and minimize this mess, I wondered how much trash I actually create.

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