Zero Waste

Pictured: three glass bottles in a row. On the left, it's a full bottle of soy sauce. In the middle, it's an empty bottle with the label removed. On the right, it's another empty bottle with a rooted pothos cutting in it.

My workplace provides snacks and some condiments for folks. When the soy sauce runs out, I do my best to snag the bottle. It looks like it ought to have a potion in it. A plant is the next best thing!

!zerowaste@slrpnk.net seems more active, for people interested

That's basically it

An article in french about how the act of maintenance become invisible in the consumerism society and the consequence it has on the way we see our self independent.

Feel free to use a translator (but I think it will struggle a bit with this article)

The article is in french. Fell free to use a translator.

Is there a active visible mending community on the fediverse ?

I'm have a ceramic cup with broken handle. I want to sand it down or do something to make the broken part look pretty and less sharp? It is not so sharp to begin with but still.

Do you have experience with such a material ?

#VisibleMending #cup

I saw this use of pineapple skins and it made me curious. What other use of fruit and veg skins do y'all have? Composting, making stock I know of. Any others?

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/14223949

> Making my first tepache! Using TheBruSho 's recipe. https://youtu.be/dRlPG-9Y9aw

I don't know if this topic is appropriate for this community but there is a lot of waste generated with the clothing industry so I hope it fits.

The only resource I know of to find ethically sourced clothes is https://goodonyou.eco/. However, those can be pretty expensive so lately, I've been looking for more alternatives that are more affordable. What do you guys think of Salvation Army, Goodwill, Thrift stores? I've been hesitant on going there because I fear not having a good selection of clothes. If you guys have any experiences with these that would be amazing

I few months ago I asked advice to preserve the many heads of garlic I had : https://jlai.lu/post/253034

The reponses included to freeze it, to make confit or to preserved it in salted water or oil.

I've tried every methods, but confit that's on my list for next time I have garlic, and I've been consuming fermented garlic. I'm very proud of that first attempt at salt fermentation (\^_\)

More recently I've decided to taste my garlicky oil and I've open one of the jars. The bubbling oil was so active it splash a bit around. So I close it wondering what I have done wrong : 3 months ago, I've peel the skin that was on the older garlic heads, cut any bad looking part, place the garlic with some fresh thyme, fill the jar with olive oil and store it lip tight on a dark shelf.

So first : Thank you for all the idea. It was fun, tasty and avoid plenty of waste.

Second : Do you know what is wrong with the garlic preserved in oil ? Is it simply carbonic gaz from the fermentation that build up ? Should I have blanch my garlic or dried my thyme before hand ?

Thank you again for you precious help

I want to let you all know about what I think is one of the coolest yet most under-appreciated ways to reduce waste and improve one's impact on the world.

A bit of background first: Every watt of electricity you use in your house turns into heat. A blender is just as efficient at turning electricity into heat as a space heater. It sounds counter-intuitive, but ask your grade school physics teacher and you'll find that the conservation of energy is not a controversial topic in physics. If you have electric heat such as electric baseboards or space heaters (NOT heat pumps since they are >100% efficient), you can heat your house with computers and spend the exact same amount as your normal heat bill but also get some useful computational work done in the process. If you are spending 50W on a space heater, you could instead dump that 50W into your computer. You pay for and get 50W of heat either way, but only the computer does some work along the way.

So really, if you are pouring electricity into a space heater or electric baseboard heater, it's a waste, because that same electricity could be doing some useful work.

What kind of work? Well, I donate my computer's time to BOINC. BOINC lemmy at !boinc@sopuli.xyz . (The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is a free and open-source program that has been around for decades and has delivered teraflops of computing to scientists on a daily basis for absolutely free. It runs on Windows, MacOS, Linux, even Android (just be careful about heat on Android!). You don't need to be computer-savvy to run it.

BOINC has been used to map the universe, detect asteroids, search for aliens (remember seti@home?), fight cancer, and publish hundreds of scientific papers. The world's largest particle accelerator (large hadron collider at CERN) even has a project you can compute for, who knows, you may find a new subatomic particle! Anybody with a computer, raspberry pi, or android can contribute their CPU or GPU to the cause and pick which projects they want to contribute to.

One of the awesome things about BOINC is that any scientists with interesting research can instantly access massive amounts of computational power for free. They don't need time on a supercomputer or institutional backing, all they need is an interesting research concept and a spare laptop to run the server on.

I have been running BOINC for many years and find it very gratifying, I love getting to see the results. In winter, 100% of my indoor heat comes from computing for science.

2nd time I've made this recipe. Adjusted the recipe from 3 to 2.5 tbsp wax. https://youtu.be/3lt3FO2x1qI?si=AGRViSkCDTyZi2qP

Any other communities who might like this kind of post?

Hi all! So, first thing's first - I know Lomi isn't actually good for composting. I bought mine secondhand for a fraction of the price because there's no food scrap drop off near me, and I am not interested in doing a proper home compost. I don't have any plants; I'm only interested in reducing my food waste.

One question that I keep coming back to, and that I've had a lot of trouble getting the answer to, is does Lomi actually reduce methane emissions? The website says yes: "With Lomi, food waste undergoes aerobic break down (in the presence of oxygen), meaning methane isn't produced. Then, when Lomi fertilizer is used in plants, carbon is sequestered in soil and plant matter." However... I'm not using it for fertilizing plants. I just use it to process food waste so I'm not just throwing it directly into the trash.

Does it compact the trash? 100%. We usually throw out the output after maybe 6 cycles; that's the equivalent of 5 freezer bags full of food scraps (mostly banana peels tbh). One thing I am 100% sure of is the fact that it reduces the frequency of my household taking out the trash, since it's not full of smelly food or attracting pests, and it weighs a ton less. But... is it actually reducing methane emissions? If my trash bag ends up in the landfill, will that aerobically-processed compacted food still release the same exact amount of methane emissions now that it's trapped in a bag with tons of trash above it?

Any help on this is appreciated. Thanks!

UPDATE: I have found someone willing to help with the project. The internet is beautiful!

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I am seeking someone who knows a thing about 3D modeling and wants to help me in a #ZeroWaste project.

Years ago, IKEA sold a lunchbox/bento box they called the Flottig. https://web.archive.org/web/20170602055712/http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20294860/ & https://redd.it/6i67i8 (It was discontinued in 2017.)

They make great child lunchboxes except for one flaw. The white clasps on the side are detachable and with even one missing, the box becomes unusable. Children, as they are wont to do, are great at detaching the white clasps and losing them. (The flatware is also easy to lose and children lose that, but the box is still functional without those items.)

One Flottig that has suffered such fate has made its way into my possession. I have meticulously measured all the measurements necessary to create a 3D model of the clasp in hopes of uploading it to Thingiverse and allowing parents to 3D print replacement pieces to keep their Flottigs in rotation until their child becomes an adult and takes the Flottig with them to their new adult home to pass down to their children. And so on and so forth. That I'll benefit, too, is the motivation I needed to actually take the measurements.

So, if this sounds like a project you would like to be involved in where you take my measurements and create a 3D model and we upload it to Thingiverse as a free gift to the world, with your name as primary author for full credit, let me know! While I was planning on doing this as a free project as a labor of love (so there is no payment for any of us involved), I will happily treat my co-author of the 3D model to a Flottig of their own from the second-hand market.> prusa

The article is in german. Feel free to use a translator to read it.

And remember : The best waste is the waste we don't produce.

Collecting laces from worn shoes help personalised new ones without buying new laces. But at one point they will be more laces than need. What else can you do with shoe laces ?

Say no to ketchup packet. Refuse them

In the comment section of the original post, lots of idea of thing to refuse.

publication croisée depuis : https://lemmy.ml/post/3800869

> The grams of waste per teaspoon of ketchup seems high. > > What else has a super high packaging waste per consumable volume?

I've had wheat bran sitting in my pantry for quite a while now. I've tried it in yogurt or with milk but I don't like it. Could I put some in my pizza dought without changing my recipe too much ? Any other ideas about how to eat it ?

I'm not sure if anyone is here from the reddit community, or remembers my tiny post about trying to find a way to package my dog food without using ziplock bags.

But basically, I said I make my dog food in bulk, using vegetables that where dumpsterd, home grown, etc. At the time I had a 150 lb cane Corso, only. So portions where already pretty large, I would process and freeze vegetables as needed and make a batch of dog food all at once in a 30 ish gallon stock pot, then freeze them in flat packs of ziplocks. Since then I also have an incredibly high energy rescue pit mix puppy in my family.

I was given allot of advice, all of which I tried out. The one that I thought would be the most promising was freezing them in sheet pan trays, scoring them. And separating them with wax paper. No lie. This worked horrible. I tried many iterations of that. Nothing worked out. I did end up finding a solution. I found large plastic Tupperware containers. They're about the size of casserole dishes. Just twice as deep. I fill those and pull 2 out at a time one to defrost on the porch and the other one to throw in the fridge for a few days. By the time the first one thaws out, the one in the fridge is about kicked. These containers are pretty cheap. And I don't expect them to last forever. But I'm very careful with them and so far it works great! I should also say they seem to hold up longer than the reusable vinyl/silicone bags I tried. Tbh for most applications, I would recommend using Mason jars over them for pretty much everything. I was so hesitant to buy plastic Tupperware that I ended up creating more waste in the long term.

The link to the report It's in english.

publication croisée depuis : https://jlai.lu/post/349985

> En 2021, l'Union européenne a importé près de 138 millions de tonnes de produits agricoles et gaspillé plus de 150 millions de tonnes de nourriture. C'est le constat dressé par l'organisation environnementale Feedback EU, dans un rapport dévoilé ce mardi.

When I first began zero waste, I would either use mesh produce bags or no bag to store my produce in my refrigerator. For the most part I was able to use everything before any of it would spoil.

Since moving in with my partner, she prefers to store our produce in thick, reusable plastic bags. She likes to keep a large variety of produce on hand to encourage more variety in our diets. And so it is not as easy to consume everything before some of the produce begins to spoil. She is under the impression that plastic bags extend the shelf life of certain produce. Unfortunately the frequent cleaning & drying required to keep these plastic bags fresh can be time consuming. I’d like to simplify these processes.

appreciate any input regarding convenient ZeroWaste methods for improving produce shelf life. Do most get by fine without use of produce bags?

We going back to school in a little bit and I was looking for idea to reduce my waste on that part. There is so many one use items there, usually sell wrapped in a lot of paper and plastic.

One question I have is about fountain pen : Is it better than ball pen given the plastic ink reservoirs that are discarded. I'm open to any suggestion on the back-to-school topic.

Here are mine :

• Always check what is not use or not finish for the past year before starting your shopping list
• Trade with family, friend and neighbour what your didn't need last year for something they didn't use
• Buy single unwrapped pen, felt pen and alike in stationery store. Bonus, buying the one or two felt pens or highlighters color you saves a lot
• Use a small white/black-board instade of a draftbook.

I have more head of garlic that I could consume. I wish to freeze some. Can I keep it this way ? Will it change or become somehow damage ?

I just don't get how people spend +$500 on a PS5 or an *Xbox to play games that barely work, and the friggin' thing constantly wasting 500 Watts of power. 🔥⚡

While i spent the same amount of money on a used laptop from 2019, where i can replay my favorite games from the PS2 era (and discovering some hidden gems along the way) using only 45W. 🔌💡🔋🍃

*At least the Series S does makes sense to me, since it's a lot cheaper and efficent, and it's mainly targeted for lightweight or previous gen titles.

Non-paywall link

"Fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash [within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch], with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets."

If you still eat seafood, please consider cutting it out completely.

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It builds character! I wanted to see if it would be a practical fix. It is unnoticeable when I am actually wearing it. It is not a forever fix, so I will keep an eye out for used watches to see if I can snag a replacement 18mm band.