Mission Statement

The mission of Zero Waste Lancaster:

To educate ourselves about our use of natural resources, including land, water, and energy;
To reduce consumption of scarce or non-renewable resources;
To develop structural systems that enable and encourage our neighbors and our cit to use resources more wisely.

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Minutes of the September 17, 2019 Meeting

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....

Zero Waste Gifts: Minutes of the November 19, 2019 Meeting

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...

Next Meetings, spring 2020

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.

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