no waste, man.

One of the more ambitious experiments we will be attempting on this yearlong mama of a roadtrip is How to create only one shoebox' worth of waste per month, between the three of us. I know. Seems preposterous for a roadtrip of ANY length, much less a year. We even considered the possibility of going waste-free for the entire trip but then we all said, "Uhhh. It's a ROADTRIP...and it's a year." So, when we embarked on a week-long prep trip in Albuquerque last month, we decided that we should do a trial run: In one week, we would fill up no more than one small bag of waste for the week. We thought we could do it, actually. We thought it would be easy! One week? One bag? Piece of cake.
Our enthusiastic efforts were met with some raised eyebrows but most people seemed genuinely interested and we were totally excited to share our experiment with anyone who would listen. Several cashiers gave us a guilty look upon printing out the receipt for our meal, saying , "Uh-oh." Mark always replied, "No, we NEED that." Unfortunately, despite our best intentions we were underprepared and, little by little, the plastic grocery bag, which we had expected to remain empty, began filling with the evidence of our failure. At week's-end, I grimly surveyed the contents: 13 crumpled napkins, 2 frozen pizza boxes, 5 empty water bottles, 2 foil and paper take-away containers and 4 plastic ones, 4 pieces of chewed gum w/papers, 3 candy wrappers, 7 Odwalla bar wrappers, 4 banana peels and 5 apple cores, one giant piece of butcherpaper that was put down as tablecloth at the Italian restaurant where our hosts treated us to dinner (and on which we all spilled salad dressing, etc and Ted doodled on), 2 toothpicks (from sandwiches), 3 celebratory beer bottles (drunk after Ben and Mark met a serious deadline), 12 coffee creamers (the first evidence of failure bc one of us is addicted and not every establishment has cream in a carton) and one styrofoam coffee cup (ouch! same addict - guess who)!!! (To our credit, I reused that heinous styrofoam coffee cup the entire week before i let it become landfill, and I saved a pair of used chopsticks from the same fate by using them as knitting needles) (i cleaned them first). But AAACK!!!
So, the idea of making ZERO waste is decidedly NOT a piece of cake. But, while our trial run was admittedly less than perfect, we truly believe that with some careful planning, we can succeed in generating no more than one shoebox worth of waste per month. And those boxes will stay in the car with us - whatever car we end up driving - for the entire trip. That's the new goal. 12 months = 12 shoeboxes' worth of waste...or less!
We learned some ways to prepare ourselves that will surely prove invaluable on the long journey:
1. Always ask restaurant employees BEFORE they prepare your food not to present with paper or plastic products - no straws, no napkins, no paper-wrapped sandwiches, NO TOOTHPICKS! (and no garnishes that they would not suggest eating).
2. Always carry on us:
a. bandanna or handkerchief
b. some form of cutlery (i think we may choose chopsticks for our trip since we have exactly enough nice pairs for one each and they take up little space)
c. tupperware of some kind
d. refillable waterbottle or thermos
3. Try not to order more than we will eat (sharing portions is fun!) or drink (water comes from somewhere too and takes processing)
4. Always have our own cloth bags handy for carrying (i got mine as handmedowns)
5. Have a giant jug of water in the car to refill our bottles, (hopefully can be refilled along the road).
6. Ben and Mark plan to buy straightedge razor blades and trim it old school! I haven't decided what to do about my legs but am going to be supersad not to be able to waste those wax strips they use at the salon - anybody know of a waste-free waxing salon? Post me!)
7. I am scouring the internet for homemade beauty products made from organic...things
(ie: baking soda toothpaste, avocado face mask, lemon juice for hair highlights)
8. Obviously (but incredibly difficult to achieve) buy nothing in packaging (WHA...?)
9. Purchase only refillable drink bottles bought on deposit and then returned (they will apparently be reused an average of 25 times before they are broken down and recycled)
10. Buy at Farmer's Markets!!! Hooray! So nice and meet nice farmers!

And I am sure that once we get on the road, we will discover much more...

Some questions arose that we think are worth finding answers to:
1. Does toilet paper waste get easily "digested" in the sewer system? (See NYTimes article on the REAL "No Waste Man," who is not waiting to find out, and who REALLY IS walking the walk:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/garden/22impact.html?ex=1332216000&en=e77725051fe1a853&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss )
2. What to do about feminine...items? I am not going into the river for seven days a month on this trip, and storing this waste "stream" for a year in the car is NOT an option so this is definitely an issue. (See www.thekeeperstore.com for an environmentally friendly product that i will most likely NOT be using).
3. Can we simply bury our organic food waste? Seems logical. One of us thinks we can only do that if we cut it up superfine, and prefers that we save it up and find people on the road who have compost piles. Maybe we should have a box of dirt and earthworms in the car. uggh. Maybe i will just bury my apple cores when noone is looking.
4. Why can't we recycle on the trip? Isn't that avoiding the landfill? Maybe, but I guess its not avoiding waste bc recycling uses a lot of energy and create wastes in the manufacture of the new product.
CRAP! Why can't living simply be more simple????