One Month Mason Jar Challenge (Garbage Audit)
To prepare for this one month mason jar challenge, in which I collected my garbage for the month of February, I made a few key decisions:
Go meatless in February
Do a fast food “no-buy” for February
Try to use cloth diapers, but not collect diapers in the mason jar
I was just getting over a cold at the beginning of February but I haven’t switched to using a handkerchief yet. I looked up whether klneenex is compostable and determined that it is. It’s still not the zero waste option, but it was helpful for my mason jar challenge.
Week 1: I noticed myself wanting to put off getting started on the first day. This happened during my last mason jar challenge. But… I just did it!
The jar filled up quickly over week one. Some unexpected areas of garbage were: gift of packaged food and dryer lint.
Week 2: I decided to finally try buying bread with a bread bag rather than the regular plastic wrapped option. During my one week mason jar challenge in 2019, I identified bread bags as a major source of waste. Check out my experience bringing my own bread bag in this post. On Valentine’s Day I received a rose that was wrapped in plastic. I was thrilled to find out I could return the plastic to Paulina’s Flower Shoppe and it would be reused!
Week 3: I identified cheese bags as a major source of trash. I haven’t found a good solution for this, yet. I’m glad it’s come to my attention, though.
On a positive note, I tried making some things from scratch rather than buying packages and that helped save on garbage/recycling. We often buy the bags of pre-made salads as well as packaged salsa. I started buying heads of lettuce and salad dressing to make DIY salad, and even chopped up a bunch of tomatoes, onions ++ to make salsa.
Week 4: I was happy to be on the home stretch of this challenge. It’s hard holding onto garbage, especially as the pile grows. We had family visit, and everyone wanted to order indian food. This resulted in a lot of garbage. A source of garbage I’ve become more aware of is flyers. My next steps include making a “no flyers” sign for our mailbox.
Take-Aways
To sum things up, my garbage for the month of February did not fit in a mason jar. It was still an incredibly eye opening experience and I’m glad I did it. You should try it, too! Let me know how it goes or if you need any tips/encouragement via contact page.
I am closer to being zero waste than when I did the one week mason jar challenge two years ago (woohoo) but there are many swaps I still need to make in order to achieve my goal of zero waste in 2023.
