Holidays Archives - Page 9 of 9 - Life of an Earth Muffin

How to Have a “Zero Waste” Thanksgiving 🦃

Posted on November 26, 2019October 22, 2024

Hey earth muffins! I am officially home to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family – and I am so excited! 🎉 Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays as I get to do two of my fave things: hang with my family and eat all day. 😂 Ever since starting my journey towards living zero waste, I have been writing posts about how to reduce waste on holidays (check out my Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day posts!)… In honor of this Thursday, I thought I would share some tips on how you can reduce waste this Thanksgiving!

~Avoid unnecessary packaging at the grocery store when you do your holiday shopping. I suggest checking out the bulk bins for some great savings or buying loose produce for your meal! You could even challenge yourself to make everything from scratch like the pumpkin puree for your pumpkin pie! If you have to buy something in packaging, choose glass or metal containers that can be easily recycled. 👍

~Have a vegetarian dinner. Turkey is such a classic for Thanksgiving, but you could always try having a meatless holiday feast! The meat industry is pretty terrible in terms of both sustainability and ethical practices, so avoiding turkey is a great way to share these beliefs. This is obviously not for everyone as I know my own family would never not have a bird, but maybe your family would be okay with it!

~Know how many people you are cooking for! While having some leftovers is a good thing, you don’t want to have so many leftovers that you end up throwing a lot away after a few days. 👎 Keeping serving sizes in mind is a great way to reduce food waste this Thanksgiving.

~Set up a designated compost bin and keep it nearby when cooking. When you are cooking this holiday, make sure to put all of the food scraps into a compost bin! This is especially great if you are preparing food for a good amount of people, as you will be shocked to see how much compost you have been throwing away all these years. After dinner you can put the compost into your own compost bin or have someone take it to theirs (or to drop off at a local composting company).

~Use “fancy” table settings. I’m talking the whole nine yards: fancy dishes, cloth tablecloths and napkins, nice silverware, etc. If you are hosting and don’t have enough supplies, ask you family and friends to bring some along! While you will then have to wash everything at the end of the night, you will be saving a ton of waste from heading to the landfill. Worth it!

~Plan what to do with the leftovers! After a couple of days after Thanksgiving my family definitely gets tired of the same leftovers… So make a plan on what you are going to do with the leftovers! You could freeze some turkey to put in soups, turn vegetable dishes into a casserole, etc. etc. By having a plan you will be less likely to just throw away the food after a few days. 🙂

How do you reduce waste on Thanksgiving?

Love,
Jenna ♥

Plastic Free July Wrap Up – My Waste Audit

Posted on July 31, 2019June 18, 2024

Today is the last day of July, which means the Plastic Free July challenge officially ends tomorrow. 🎉 While the month long endeavor might be coming to a close, I will (obviously) continue to avoid plastic as part of my journey towards living a sustainable low-waste lifestyle. As a wrap up for this month, I wanted to share with you all today the plastic waste that I created. 😊 Let’s dive right into it!

All of the plastic used in July:

Along with these plastic items, there were a few other things that I was unable to collect:

-Hot dog container from work event

-Approx. 12 pads and their wrappers from my period

-Two trash bags

Overall, I think that I did a nice job… But there are definitely areas I need to improve on! First, I really want to strive towards making my period zero waste. As I knew it was going to start the second week of July, I wanted to try out a menstrual cup. I bought the Lena cup off of Amazon and instead of a cardboard box they shipped it in a bubble mailer. 😑 That was a fail and then I also just could not get the menstrual cup to work for me (hence why there are 12ish pads in my total plastic haul). As I mentioned in my Should I Get a Menstrual Cup? post, cups are “easy to use” in theory… But it was just a huge struggle for me. While I haven’t given up on the Lena cup yet, it just didn’t pan out for Plastic Free July.

I think the second area of improvement would be making my work office more sustainable. Not only did I attend a baseball game event where it was expected of us to eat the food that was provided by the firm (resulting in the hot dog container and Gatorade bottle), but they also only have individually packaged snacks and candy in the office building (which resulted in me indulging in some Hershey Nuggets without thinking about the challenge). 🤷‍♀️ As an intern, I felt uncomfortable going against the norm especially at the baseball event… But when I start full-time with the company next year, I will definitely be having a sustainability chat with my supervisors!

What can be recycled or reused:

Not all of the plastic that I collected will be going to the landfill however. 🥳 My local recycling pick up will be able to recycle all of these things, and I will be re-using the Amazon bubble mailer when I move out of this apartment and into my school apartment in August.

What is going to landfill:

Even though I grocery shop locally and use my own bags, it seems like a majority of the waste I created was related to food. For the whole month of July I collected 17 stickers from various fruits and vegetables as well as a rubber band holding broccoli stems together at the farmer’s market. I was able to find a local health food store that sells milk in glass bottles, but the lid was still plastic. However, I am proud to say that I avoided a lot of plastic packaging by not purchasing any meat, getting bread from a local bakery (and having them put the bread in my own bag), and shopping from the bulk bins. 😃

Overall, I definitely learned a lot of the same lessons as last summer from participating in Plastic Free July. However, I avoided a lot more plastic this year because I held myself accountable to the goals I created at the end of June. 💚 I look forward to this challenge again next summer!!!

How did your Plastic Free July go??

Love,
Jenna ♥

6 EASY Ways to Participate in Plastic Free July!

Posted on June 28, 2019June 25, 2024

Hey earth muffins! For those of you who don’t know, Plastic Free July is almost here!!! 😮 To raise awareness for the plastic pollution epidemic that our world is currently facing, this global movement aims to inspire people to reduce their plastic usage. I learned a lot by participating in the challenge last summer, so I am super excited to take part in it again! If you are interested in trying to reduce your use of plastic in July, here are my top suggestions. 🥳

An image that links to the Plastic Free July website will be on the sidebar of my blog throughout July! 😁

1. Avoid all fruits and vegetables wrapped in unnecessary plastic. Why do cucumbers (or any produce item) need to be shrink wrapped when they have a skin that protects them? Put loose fruit and veg into a reusable bag instead!

PC: link

2. Refuse all plastic water bottles. This can be difficult at first, but you will get the hang of carrying around a reusable water bottle wherever you go! It is one of my top ten ways to reduce plastic consumption, making it a perfect thing to focus on for Plastic Free July 😊

3. Find an alternative to plastic wrap. You can purchase or DIY beeswax wrap or use mason jars/other containers instead! 🐝 Such an easy switch!

Purchase this set on Amazon!

4. Be conscious of what food is packaged in and make the switch! If you can find a similar item with less or no plastic, I’d say it’s a no-brainer.

5. NO STRAWS. “I’d like a water with no straw please.” -Me when ordering a drink at a restaurant

PC: link

6. Figure out the single-use plastic you use the most and try to avoid it! Plastic Free July has a great Pesky Plastics Quiz that will tell you exactly what items you use the most… So really try to cut back on them this month (or cut them out completely!). 🎉