ways to take out trash without plastic bag

My plastic, as you know, ends up in my plastic collection for display on this blog. Michael recycles any plastic containers he ends up with. We recycle clean paper, glass jars, metal cans. Recycling paper, glass, & metalĬomposting takes care of the wet stuff. A quick search shows programs in New York City, Massachusetts, Thurston County WA, and many others. Other cities may offer subsidized compost bins too. Here in Oakland, the city offers residents discounted composters and worm bins. Back in 2007, I explained why we chose our composting method. Tumblers, traditional bins, worm bins, bokashi are all methods of converting bio waste into soil. There are plenty of other options for home composting besides the one we chose. We chose a tumbler because we didn’t have the yard space for a traditional composter, and a tumbler could be set up right on our back deck. In fact, for several years, Michael and I used our own Compost Tumbler to make beautiful compost for our front yard. So what about those of us without city-wide composting? In fact, according to a new San Francisco recycling law, putting food waste in a compost bin is not an option it’s mandatory. With very little effort, those of us in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and other areas with city-wide composting can simply empty our food scraps (including animal products) and food-soiled paper directly into our green bins, from which it will be picked up by the same company that hauls our garbage and processed at a commercial compost facility. Here in the SF Bay Area, many of us have several options for composting. Originally, we didn’t bother with any liner at all, but eventually I found the aluminum bucket too hard to clean without it.

We used to line it with BioBags (more info on those below), but these days we opt for sheets of old newspaper that can be composted along with the food scraps. We collect all of our food scraps in a metal bucket that we keep near the sink. Composting Wet GarbageĬomposting takes care of anything wet and icky. The longer answer is that since we make almost zero trash, and the trash we do make is dry, we don’t have any need for bags to collect it. Here’s my short answer: We don’t line our trash can with any plastic bags at all. And the second most common question is what to line our waste cans with if plastic grocery bags are banned. One of the most common questions I get about plastic-free living is what I do for garbage bags. It’s a new week, and I’m ready to talk trash.

Ways to take out trash without plastic bag