In my on-going attempts to be green, I am inspired by one family in particular: The Johnsons of Mill Valley, California. This family 
of four has slowly eliminated almost all of their trash generating habits and now produces about one handful of trash every six months. Thanks to the bloggers at Earth911 for the synopsis of the Johnson Family’s Zero Waste Success Story.
Here are some of their tricks:
Grocery Shopping:
Mrs. Johnson brings cloth bags to the grocery store and buys as much as she possibly can in bulk. She also brings cloth bags for produce and glass jars for things like meat, fish and cheese. She brings her own re-fillable plastic containers and buys shampoos and soaps that can be bought in bulk. If she has to buy plastic, she makes sure it can be recycled but if possible, she’ll avoid buying it in the first place.
Around the House:
The Johnson family uses baking soda to brush their teeth (with a few drops of Tea Tree Oil) and her husband uses a real razor to shave, which he keeps sharpened and oiled. She says one razor lasts him about five years. Mrs. Johnson also makes her own condiments (a big batch about once a year) and uses vinegar to make her own cleaning products. Her two sons are allowed have as many toys as will fit into four bins. (Wow, imagine the lack of clutter–I may be encouraging the girls to donate some toys tomorrow!) She has also gone to certain websites to opt of receiving junk mail. This is also on my To Do List: ASAP. If you want to do this go to dmachoice.org and/or catalogchoice.org. And of course, the Johnsons compost all of their food waste.
Organization is the Answer:
This may sound like it would take a major over-haul to do and do well but Mrs. Johnson makes it sound simple. They’ve got their system down to an organized science and now it’s second nature. She says a good place to start is with re-usable produce sacks and to go from there. And she also says that in addition to the three R’s (Reduce, Re-use and Recycle) she has added two more R’s–and first in the order–Refuse, and another at the end: Rot. Her first choice is to refuse to buy things that are packaged in plastic or worse, non-recyclable trash material.
For more on this amazing and inspirational family check out their blog at zerowastehome.blogspot.com
Related articles
- What We Really Save By Recycling (huffingtonpost.com)
Thanks for sharing this, this is something that has been on my mind lately so its awesome when a resource appears in my newsfeed!
Love that she has limited the toys by the storage, I totally need to do this!
Wow! This seems insanely hard! Imagine if a family member already has dietary restrictions, and now you would also have to avoid most products because of their packaging! I am proud that my family produces a lot more recycling than trash!
I think that what they are doing is great. Can you imagine a world where everyone did what they could to reduce, reuse, recycle, and refuse? It reminds me of No Impact Man: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/ We have many of the same habits in our household: using cloth grocery and produce bags from Reusit.com, composting, recycling, reusing, and every time our kids get a new toy, an old one gets donated. We try to buy organic and natural toys. I try to only buy used or organic. It is more difficult than going to Walmart, but it makes us feel good.
I saw an article about them about a year ago and I was pretty fascinated. We are far from being able to achieve that but I feel pretty good about the amount of garbage we produce. We’re probably the largest household in the neighborhood and yet our garbage fits in fewer cans then most of our neighbors. We certainly have room for improvement though!
Wow, this is really inspiring! I might have to step up my game.
This is absolutely amazing. For all my attempts at being green, I’m seriously disgusted about the amount of waste we put weekly.
this is an awesome effort. impressive!
Wow, a handful of trash every 6 months! That sounds so crazy, but it is truly amazing!!
Wow that is something to aspire to!
Wow this is truly called dedication. We recycle all the plastic we can, we use cloth wipes and diapers and recently started using cloth grocery bags. Definitely feels good. Ill be checking out that website to stop all this junk that comes to my mail.
i wanna get better about being less wasteful and more Green
When we moved about a year ago, we were told that there were 3 garbage/recycling pickup options: weekly, every other week, or as needed. As it turned out, the “as needed” option was no longer available, but when I see how little waste we produce in 2 weeks, I think of how much money such an option might save us — and how much of an incentive it would be to improve even further!
This sounds great! Now I’m inspired to do some of these things!
Love this idea!!
Wow! I do some of these things already but I can’t imagine not having to take out trash every day! We are in an area that has very limited recycling so it’s a challenge!
I commend these people but I could never do that!
this is amazing!
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