One thing very cool about this food experiment (can I still call it that going on our second year?) is the marked decrease in garbage we generate. Even our recycling bin has slowed down significantly and that is saying something.
All those boxes of frozen foods, macaroni and cheese, bottles and cans that grocery store food come in are now noticeably absent. Junk mail and Dungeness Creamery plastic milk jugs comprise the bulk of the recycling these days, as well as boxes from my online infant reflux and colic store.
The bulk of our garbage? Dog poop. And while I keep stewing on an idea for an outdoor above ground composting toilet to dispose of that it hasn’t happened yet. And given it doesn’t work in heavy clay it won’t be happening, either since my yard is clay.
In the meantime it’s made taking out the trash a much easier job. And just in case we don’t get the can out to the curb in time, no biggie. It might be full in another week and we’ll probably remember then.
It really is amazing how much our consumer life style has contributed to excess waste. I am always amazed how much we compost each week from just normal food prep trimmings. Buying in bulk and reusing the buckets etc that the items come in also really reduces our waste products. I still purchase various items from the store though and the composition of the weekly garbage is more than 85% related to that portion of our food supply (which it is actually a small proportion of what we eat on a daily basis!).
I’ve also noticed a difference in the amount of waste my household generates, and I’m not even close to being as far along with my experiment as you are. I keep pestering my garbage company to create an every-other-week pickup plan, but so far they’re not listening to me.
And I vote that you can definitely call it an experiment after two years, but I think life in general is one big experiment.
KFG – isn’t it amazing how much packaging there is on everything now? Individual portions shrink wrapped in larger bags inside boxes sometimes. It’s amazing the chemicals manufactured just for packaging let alone that go into the products and then the huge system to recycle the packaging. What a waste of resources!
Jess, there was a group of folks in Seattle who started a thread about doing that and actually impacted that change this year. It just went into effect this month. Keep bugging them!
We were able to cut our trash pickup in half. This is a huge savings for us, which we immediately put back into our food budget, so we can afford more local, grassfed goodness!
I just stumbled on your site and love it! I too have been trying to go the local, organic route since having my son 18 months ago. It is harder than I thought and am so inspired by your recipes. I can’t wait to try them.
Thanks!
I’ve seen these “dog poop digesters” in catalogs and have always wondered about them.
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=570
It sits below ground, and you add the poop and “digester.” You’re supposed to buy more of the digester when you run out, but I wonder if you could substitute something else that would work well too .
Oh hey, here’s a site to make your own dog poop digester. Hmm..maybe I should give this a try.
Uh, oops. Here’s the website to make your own dog poop digester.
http://www.cityfarmer.org/petwaste.html
Peggy – what an awesome story! I wish decreasing our garbage translated into $ savings for us. But enough other things are that I’m ok with just helping the planet for help’s sake.
Debbie- isn’t it amazing how they spur you to action? I wrote an article once on how having a baby turned me from yuppy to hippy. It’s amazing how it can cost so much more in the beginning to eat this way, until you figure out your local farmers and learn to make things from what you’ve got around you.
Rebecca, there is another link on the green living tips site as well. My problem here is complete clay soil with no top soil and it rains a heck of a lot here so we regularly have standing water on the lawn already. I need to come up with an above ground solution somehow, or build up a section so that I can use one of those. It will happen though. I’m tired of filling my trash can with dog poop. The poor garbage man! And then it’s all in plastic bags of course…which I get from friends since I don’t get them at the store anymore!
I agree. Normally now I only put the garbage out for collection once every 3 weeks or so, if not 4. I’m only one person at home (albeit with frequent family visiters), so I’m sure that makes a difference, but not having tins, paper dinner containers, etc is noticable.
MC that is great! I’m just glad to be out of diapers now. We did cloth as frequently as possible but by the end of the second kid it was becoming drudgery to lug a poopy cloth diaper home since we were never home. Now that my oldest started kindergarten we are home more frequently.
Yeah, I know what you mean about the plastic jugs. (Wish I had my own dairy goats!) I know that Golden Glen Creamery uses glass bottles with a refundable deposit system. They do however pasteurize, and I now strictly use raw. If enough of us asked Dungeness or Jackie’s Jersey, etc, they may swap, but I know it would be an expensive conversion going from one bottling method to another. Plus, I have to admit to wasting a whole bottle when I was shaking it and it slipped out of my hand to shatter on the floor. Not a problem that occurs with plastic, but I’d still rather not have my food absorbing odors from plastic.
As for dog poop, you can reduce a lot of that through what you feed (I apologize if you already know all of this). Many foods have lots of filler. Moving up the quality ladder can mean feeding only half as much food. For instance, my 50 lb dog would eat 5 cups a day on a grocery store brand like Pedigree. 3 cups a day on a cheap independent store brand like Canidae. 1 1/2 cups a day on a high quality grain free food like Evo. There’s even more of a reduction when you move from kibble to a less processed food like raw or freeze-dried (there are lots of these premade on the market that are easy to feed). On raw food, my guys have small, firm, nearly odorless stools.
Not only that, but on days when they eat chicken necks for dental health (raw bones only for safety), etc with a fair amount of bone content, the stool is mostly white powder due to the calcium content and my chickens like to go after it just as they would egg shells, and it’s a far more likely natural source for a bird than oyster shells.
I’m pretty passionate about my dogs not just surviving, but thriving (if I hadn’t started with one with a lot of health problems, I may never have learned about nutrition for them, and later for myself and still be a clueless person who never reads labels). Still, every little step helps. Just strive for more whole, less processed foods, just like for yourself. If you don’t want to pay for premade but don’t want to grind, Thundering Hooves sells some pre-ground stuff. This local blogger covers a lot of her dogs’ food using family leftovers, but you may be more efficient at using your food up with those boys to feed!
http://colliefarm.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/dog-food/
http://colliefarm.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/more-thoughts-on-homemade-dog-food/
Still, that’s all just reduction. There are compostable corn based bags you can pick the poop up with, but it would still need a separate compost heap from your veggie one, and I’m not even sure how that would work unless you tried a vermiculture bin. I’m actually still researching options on this myself for my cat litter boxes since the dogs scatter theirs rather nicely over our acreage for more naturally replenishing nutrients lost from the soil, but the cats are indoor only (though we’re building a cat enclosure off one side of the house for them to safely enjoy fresh air, sunny grass, and catnip). Given that a wild carnivore would roam over a fair range though, you may have no choice in such a small space but placing it in your garbage for off-site disposal.
You’re right though; it is rather nice having so much less garbage, recycled or otherwise. Imagine the impact if our entire culture moved back to using less processed foods. =)
Dana, I just found this in the spam folder – I’m so sorry. Thanks so much for all this info. I keep thinking if I lived on a farm my dog would get leftover parts of animals that we wouldn’t otherwise consume mixed with extra food as well as find and hunt her own mice or whatever it is wild dogs eat (rabbit?). I would have outdoor cats that would help keep the mice and rat population down. But I don’t live in the country so I am creating an ever widening carbon footprint for myself simply by living in the city. I plan to seriously rethink dog food and poop disposal this year since I would never not want a dog. I feel she is good raccoon protection for the chickens and has a particularly viscous sounding bark from behind a closed door. That’s nice given the recent rise in burglaries in our neighborhood.