Enviromom's Challenge

This is going to be a tough one for my family!

Enviromom is challenging us to produce no more than one can of trash per month (see banner on the sidebar for a link). Wow, that is REALLY a challenge.

I am guessing right now we make about 6-7 cans of trash a month. Maybe 5 at the best. So how can we possibly get the trash to be that much less? Here's my plan:

BUYING/NOT BUYING
I think it starts with buying. My family needs to buy food with less packaging. This can be done by buying in bulk (more food, less waste), choosing a better packaged product over another, or just NOT buying. We no longer buy individual yogurts because nowhere around here recycles anything above a #3. One of the big obstacles is going to be Jack's fruit snacks. I'm not a big fan of small packages inside bigger packages because that's extra trash, but he LOVES them. Anyone have any ideas for tasty, easy, little kid snacks that I can replace the fruit snacks with?

RECYCLING
We're a real recycling family but I have to admit, there are some things that might not make it to the recycling bins. For some reason, toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls always seem to end up in the trash instead of paper recycling. Why? Who knows...maybe some kind of mental block because they aren't flat like paper? So I'll be on the lookout for any recyclable paper products that may have been preciously overlooked.

REUSING
The packaging we haven't yet eliminated (like the large yogurt containers) we wash and reuse for storage of little doodads. I also have given some away on freecycle. And I am eventually going to get around to making yogurt so we don't have those containers.

COMPOSTING
After watching the composting video on youtube, I'm excited to do it. I need to find red wiggler worms, though. Any Harford County readers out there who know where I can get some? So when I get the worms, we're going to start this. For some reason I am kind of nervous about it...I hope it works!

So we do have room for a lot of improvement. I am fairly sure we will NOT reduce to 1 can a month, but we can improve...that's an important thing to note: you don't have to be the perfect, all or nothing green person. Anything you do, as small as it may be, helps!