The trash strike was a breeze for Philly’s zero-waste enthusiasts

Kim Paymaster was a tad stressed over the Fourth of July weekend She had family with small children staying over her water heater was broken and the local city pool was closed so her daughter and the other kids couldn t take a dip to get a break from the heat But one thing she didn t spend much time worrying about was trash unlike plenty of of her neighbors in Fairmount While they struggled to manage mounting piles of increasingly noxious rubbish during the eight-day strike by sanitation crews and other city workers and debated whether to use the city s waste dropoff sites she could focus on entertaining her guests and getting that heater fixed We ve got a group chat for our block here and everyone was chatting about like Where can we take our trash It s overfilled all of these things Paymaster recalled It s nice not to have to deal with that Trash didn t even enter my mind she noted because her family generates so little of it We usually take our trash out about every three to four weeks I get upset when it s three she reported with a laugh Instead they ve adjusted their daily lives to keep their household waste from ending up bagged at the curb or from even being created in the first place she mentioned Paymaster is one of a number of zero-waste enthusiasts and sustainability-minded city residents who have figured out how to maximize their composting recycling and reuse of products to avoid accumulating much trash A great number of also take added measures like bringing their own mugs to coffee shops buying pasta and shampoo in reuseable containers and getting clothes at stores rather than having them delivered in packaging that then demands to be thrown out It takes a little extra effort and particular relatively modest added costs they say But the product is ultimately gratifying for the environmental benefits and the lack of mess in the house and for the unexpected perk of not minding too much when a once-in-a-generation trash strike comes along It s very easy to look at your trash situation and just get very discouraged by it and just be like Oh my goodness this is so overwhelming commented Kristin Skyrm a sustainability specialist for a nonprofit organization who lives with her husband in Fishtown I ve implemented little things over a long period of time and now it s paying off for the eight days that we had this trash strike which is great It s about the waste you don t create The Philly residents who minimize their waste often describe having a transformative experience that galvanized them to start making changes in their lives For Paymaster who works as a grant activity manager at the Conservation Alliance the turning point was a kind of meltdown she had during the pandemic she commented People stuck at home generated large amounts of residential waste and the city s trash collection and recycling programs broke down I saw a few story about how horrible the recycling system was and how nothing was getting recycled and a lot of it was getting shipped to Asia and elsewhere she disclosed I went down this rabbit hole of trying to figure things out and got connected to a plastic reduction group at the Weavers Way Co-op and eventually to Circular Philadelphia Kim Paymaster and her daughter Ziya sort through hard-to-recycle items they ll put in their Rabbit Recycling bin at their home in Philadelphia Kimberly Paynter WHYY Scott Kelly an architect who lives in Chestnut Hill and is also a Circular Philadelphia member noted he adopted a low-waste life after a long trip across the country in a Volkswagen van and backpacking in the U S and Europe You become very conscious of all the information you use not just the materials If you re out in the woods hiking for two weeks carrying everything you have on your back you may take the paper off the tea bag he disclosed That gets ingrained in you and you don t fall back to the waste that you see around you Circular Philadelphia is a membership organization that promotes measures like recycling product reuse and reduction of packaging Various members work in sustainability-related jobs and they re passionate about taking advantage of businesses and programs in the city that help them avoid accumulating and throwing out all kinds of stuff commented Nic Esposito the group s director of program and engagement I like to go down to Ray s Reusables and fill up glass jars full of my soap and things of that nature Ray s has a lot of very low-packaging products like toilet paper and paper towels So it s about the waste you don t create explained Esposito who was previously the city s Zero Waste and Litter Director Esposito started a company called Unless Kids that reuses toys essentially renting them to member families until their kids are done with them and ready to get a new batch He and the others also heaped praise on Rabbit Recycling an East Kensington company that takes a huge variety of different items far more than the city accepts in curbside blue bins and ensures that they re really reused in specific way The company s pickup amenity starts at per month for one bin up to a limited hundred dollars for households who need multiple pickups per week I love using Rabbit Recycling They do the hard-to-recycle items Esposito stated The tube of toothpaste you can recycle it through them Light bulbs batteries I don t have to run all over town trying to figure out oh where do my batteries go Where do my light bulbs go They ll take everything from electronics that don t work anymore to clothes that you don t know where to take if they re stained or whatever A lot of plastic goes in there and then other random things that they figure out Paymaster stated So it s lovely Composting for the win The strategy that was perhaps preponderance impactful during the trash strike was composting whether in a patio bin or through a pickup organization like Bennett Compost or Circle Compost zero-waste practitioners announced Bennett s basic plan is per month or slightly less on an annual plan That definitely reduces our waste a lot Just based on what I put in my five-gallon bucket every single week it s a sizable amount explained Skyrm who uses Bennett We ve been getting corn on the cob especially with the Fourth of July and that takes up a lot of space in the trash bin I ve just really noticed that that s been a really big way to avoid putting things in the trash that s going to go to the landfill Not having biodegradables like banana peels coffee grounds and moldy leftovers hanging around made it a snap to get through the strike she noted People can also grind up small food scraps in their garbage disposal and let them wash down the drain Esposito commented BigBelly garbage bins overflow outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center while waiting for trash pickup to resume following the end of the AFSCME DC strike Heather Chin Billy Penn It s not just about feeling good about yourself and saying I m a zero-waster he noted It also is really nice not to have smelly gross trash sitting in my trash can all week Kelly s office uses Bennett and at home he has a simple backyard composter basically an upside-down trash can on the ground where he combines food waste and yard clippings with wood chips and lets the mix gradually break down over several months he explained It s a small thing but I just compost so much stuff there that stays out of the landfill That s good material that s good nutrients that I want back in my soil so I can grow food in my backyard versus letting it go into a landfill where it will no longer be accessible to nature he mentioned Zero-wasters acknowledge that changing habits may be harder for a few people like cat owners who have litter boxes or parents who throw out lots of diapers although expected solutions are available they note such as using washable cloth diapers and having your cat poop outdoors The costs of composting and recycling services may also be a barrier But these practices could have major advantages for plenty of people and for the city as a whole if they are more widely adopted advocates say Esposito a longtime critic of the city s waste management strategy disclosed the strike exhibited residents that just depending on conventional curbside pickup and street sweeping key priorities in Mayor Cherelle Parker s Clean and Green initiative doesn t work and those must be augmented with innovative efforts to reduce the creation of waste in the first place When they really see all that trash piled up it s not out of sight out of mind anymore the whole it goes away in this magic blue bin or your trash can he explained All the litter that you see preponderance of it results from our trash days It s not just people throwing stuff on the ground It s how we pick up our trash because it s still stuck in the th century Kelly the architect called for better development about how to recycle properly and for people to seize the opportunity to change the way they live This trash strike could be a really good thing because we re going to become more aware of our trash he noted This was an opportunity for Philadelphians to understand how to reduce what they consume reuse what they can recycle what is recyclable and learn from this I want us all to get smarter The post The trash strike was a breeze for Philly s zero-waste enthusiasts appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY