I have noticed that the majority of the trash that I have is coming from the bathroom. I am thankfully not talking about toilet paper or any type of waste connected with a toilet. Although I did some research on past alternatives to toilet paper and they are not pretty. The methods described in that article (leaves, stones, and mussel shells) are of course more environmentally friendly than toilet paper itself because toilet paper has to be manufactured from a natural resource (trees). However, I also did some research on how wastewater and septic systems work and the paper that is flushed down the toilet essentially dissolves.

On that note, my bathroom trash bag is full of other things like tissues and q-tips. I guess after four months only having one bag of tissues is not so bad. But how do we elimite the need for tissues? Go back in the day, when people used to use snot rag. The thought of it makes me cringe a little. But you can’t knock it until you try it so, from this day on, I will no longer use tissues. I am going to buy myself a snot rag.

More on tissues…Kimberly-Clark is cutting down ancient forests to create their tissue products. There has been a lot of controversy over what Kimberly-Clark is doing and GREENPEACE has acknowledged it and is trying to take action as well. Read up! The website also tells you what tissue brands in the US and Canada are “Ancient Forest Friendly”.

Accomplishments:

+ A composting system is established! I put my food waste into a bin and then periodically put it in Johan’s garden compost pile. But, if i didn’t have a nearby friend with land property… and just lived in a single apartment.. what would I do?

Upcoming:

+ A follow up with the trash-burning company, SYSAV. I have contacted them with a few questions I had mentioned in the trash burning video.

+ A follow up with Maria Wall, part of the environmental engineering faculty at LTH. She is currently working on a project dealing with sustainability in homes as well. I contacted her wanting to meet up and get the specific information on what kind of work she does (and maybe how it relates to my research).

Some Pictures:

Garbage pile on the corner of my kitchen counter…

lots and lots of soft plastic packaging

some melon peels drying by the window sill

you gotta love the kitchen

I heart frozen pizza

The wall mosaic that is not growing very fast after all.

You have to use your imagination a little bit because it is winter, but this is Johan’s wonderful garden.

Here is Johan explaining how the leave/stick compost pile works. He was saying how in the winter it is harder to compost because it is so cold, but come spring time the materials will start to decompose faster and he will be able to use them then for his garden.

Here are the two bins side by side in the corner of the garden covered by all the snow that fell in the past couple days here in Lund.

So here is the organic compost bin. Johan said there should be worms in there… maybe they died because of the cold weather though… right now it is mostly soil and hay and things like that, but this is the bin where I will be putting my leftover food, onion skins, fingernail clippings… etc.