Zero Waste Lancaster

Gratitude and Generosity:   February 18, 2020 It's easy to think of a Zero Waste approach to life as one of intense effort combined with deprivation.  But people who start to move in the Zero Waste direction often find that -- in contrast to expectations --there's an incredible amount of joy involved. At February's meeting, we'll shift our focus from the mechanics of going Zero Waste toward the philosophy and psychology of doing so.  In particular, we'll share our experiences with the twins of gratitude and generosity, two virtues that not only make Zero Waste easier to achieve, but also become the rewards that flow out of using our resources more mindfully. Commercial and community-level composting:  March 17, 2020 Eve Bratman, Professor of Environmental Studies at F&M, will discuss a project she and her students did in 2018, in particular assessing the viability of commercial/community composting for Lancaster.

There was a largely new set of faces this month, and it was good to get to meet even more people interested in supporting each other on our low-waste journey. The conversation was so engaging I didn't take copious notes, so these minutes recreated from memory. We talked about reducing food waste mainly in these four categories: 1. Composting food scraps and other organic materials.   Sending food to the landfill is apparently a major source of methane generation, whereas food in compost piles produces hardly any methane and lots of good soil additives. Sometimes, it also produces rodents and we chatted a bit about that side of it, too. Lancaster doesn't have curbside compost collection, and we lamented this lack. I'm thankful to Eve for forwarding me this NYTimes article on the subject: One thing your city can do: reduce food waste. 2. Wasting less food in the first place. It just so happens that Consumer Reports emailed me about 15 minutes before the ZWL meeting with...

Zero-Waste recipes December 17, 2019,  7:00-8:30 p.m. Do you have a recipe that's really efficient as far as time goes?  That uses almost no energy?  That is easy to purchase trash-free ingredients for?  Come share! Do you have a recipe that you love, but that you haven't yet found a low-waste version to prepare?  (Like, for me: where can I buy tofu or noodles with no packaging around here?)  Come bring your problems, and we'll brainstorm together. Lancaster City Public Works Climate Action Plan January 21, 2020,  7:00-8:30 p.m. Doug Smith, Senior Planner for the City of Lancaster, will talk with us about the city's bold Climate Action plan.  

This meeting was dedicated to Zero Waste (or low waste) Gifts.   We swapped some of our favorite ideas.    Wrapping gifts: Some of us make our own reusable (and highly festive) gift bags from fabric; we had a sample from Sara G on display.   Others of us have followed easy origami patterns to make small gift boxes from calendar pages or holiday cards. My daughter reminded me of one of my favorite past gift-wrap techniques:  decorating the bare box to look like something else (a book box that became a dinner table; an oatmeal container, with some sun glasses and a small hat became a "dude").  I think I'm going to try that technique again this year. Giving gifts I myself tend to go for very practical gifts.  Two years ago, I gave all my adult kids "emergency preparedness kits" (with maps, radiation sickness pills, emergency contact numbers, first aid kits, etc).  What can I say? It's not for ev...

The meeting of the Zero Waste Lancaster group on October 22nd began with eggplant parmesan, because that's what I happened to have a lot of at the time. The topic for the meeting was  "How to get things out of the house".    We talked about this in two parts:  first, sharing things that "could be useful someday" (and getting them to be useful now); and secondly, getting rid of things that nobody wants anymore (that is, trash).   We had a bit of a show on the computer, and added to it as we went along.  The notes are below. Our next meetings will be  November 19 (with luck, we'll get to talk about Lancaster's Climate Action plan and our city's water use) December 17 (how to avoid bringing stuff into our home in the first place). If you know someone who'd like to be on the Zero Waste Lancaster mailing list (getting two emails each month!), please have them send their email addresses my way! - Annalisa Notes:...

Here are the minutes of our first meeting. Participants noshed on fresh baked bread, baba ganoush, and sun-dried zucchini chips.  The conversation range widely, from the Backstreet Boys to bus routes. We shared our interest and experience -- and lack of experience -- with reducing waste.  Here two of the successful experiences people related (the ones I remember most): One participant described a dry well she's had installed in the front of her house in her front lawn to significantly reduce rain runoff.   She noted that it turned out to be harder to get contractors and she thought;  there were enough questions about this topic (both how to go about reducing rain run off, and about how to engage the city "Save It Lancaster" program, that we thought this would make a good topic for a future meeting.  Another participant shared a particularly clever technique for reducing mis-sorted trash in her six-child household....