Family Living Zero Waste Shares Tips to Live Sustainably

Over the years I’ve heard from hundreds of families that they have realized they are living a consumeristic and wasteful life but just don’t know where to start to make changes. I often hear that they want to create less trash and are tired of filling up garbage bag after garbage bag.

In this video, Jessica at Baby Steps to Zero Waste, shares her journey of going zero waste as a family and what you can do as well.

I stayed with Jessica and her family in Montreal this winter and it was a really wonderful experience to see all that she and her family are doing to live a more environmentally friendly life. Jessica shares a lot of valuable information for raising a family zero waste.

Follow Jessica and learn more: babystepstozerowaste.wordpress.com – Facebook – Instagram @babystepstozerowaste

Transcript: The following is a transcription of Family Living Zero Waste Shares Tips to Live Sustainably.

Many families are looking at their garbage cans and realizing they are filling up way too many bags of trash. But they don’t know where to start. I’m excited to introduce you to my friend Jessica at Baby Steps to Zero Waste. She is going to share her journey of turning her family into a zero waste family and what you can do as well.

[Jess:] Hi, my name’s Jess. I’m the creator behind the Instagram page babystepstozerowaste. I live in Montreal, Canada with my husband and my two small children. Today we’re going to share some of our tips for going zero waste as a family. We’ve been living a zero waste lifestyle for about three years now. Before hearing about the zero waste movement, we were dragging a big trash can to the curb every week. After seeing several documentaries, we were worried about what kind of world we were leaving for our kids and wanted to do better. We made a New Year’s resolution and by slowly incorporating small changes into our lifestyle, we were able to go from having that big garbage can each week to this little can each week. These days, most weeks the amount of garbage that our family of four generates can fit into this small can.

Zero waste will look different for every family depending on their situation or their location, but today we are going to share some of the things that work for us. When we first began, we did a trash audit, which is a fancy way of saying we looked in our trash can to see what was in there. We realized that most of our garbage was food waste and food packaging. We stopped buying pre-packaged meals and snacks and now we buy loose fruits and vegetables and we also opt for bulk things, things that we can find easily available in bulk, like seeds, nuts, raisins, things like that to snack on. Instead of buying packaged meals we cook a lot of our stuff from scratch.

This change is a little overwhelming at first. But we try to get our kids involved. We are always in the kitchen baking and cooking together. It can be really messy and annoying at times, but I try to look at it as quality family time that we are spending together and also a great opportunity for my kids to learn how to cook.

We also stopped buying disposable plastic like Ziplock baggies or cling wrap. Now when we are out on the go, or for school lunches, we pack up all of our food into cloth bags like these, or containers. I use these for lunches for my daughter. I love them because they have lots of different compartments, and then it’s one dish to wash at the end. These types of things can be washed and reused over and over again.

Another tip is, if the weather allows it, try to grow your own food. Kids love to dig in the dirt and learn and watch to see how things grow. We live in the city so we don’t have any land, but we are able to grow things like cherry tomatoes, herbs, things like that, in pots on our balcony. We also joined a community garden. During the summer we can grow some of our own fresh produce and it’s package free.

Like I mentioned, the next most popular item in our garbage can was food waste. We started composting. Our compost is nothing fancy, it’s our old garbage can with holes drilled into it. Eventually our city started a curbside compost collection as well. This very simple change of composting helped us reduce our waste by about 40 percent.

One thing we noticed was perfectly good food ending up in our compost bin. I’m going to blame that on my picky eaters. We started serving our kids smaller portions and we allowed them to go back for seconds or thirds, or even fourths, if they were still hungry. We also offered a variety of healthy options during the day so that they could pick and choose what they wanted to eat. Doing those two little things, we were able to reduce the amount of edible food waste ending up in our compost bin.

My next tip for families who wish to reduce their carbon footprint is to buy second hand. Nearly all of the toys … everything in the house, and all the clothes that we get for the kids are either bought or given to us second hand. Not only does this reduce the demand for new goods, it also saves things from ending up in the landfill and it saves us a lot of money. If we do buy new, we opt for ethically made clothing in natural fibers. For toys, we try to favour plastic free, open-ended toys that will provide many years of fun for our children.

Our kids are older now, but when we first started going zero waste, they were babies and they were going through a ton of diapers. Disposable diapers usually end up in landfills where they can take hundreds of years to break down. We opted for cloth diapers.

[Child:] Mmm hmm. (Laughs)

[Jess:] Not only did this reduce our waste but it saved us a lot of money. At diaper changes, we would rinse them under the sink or tap or we would use a cloth wipe. That eliminated the need for disposable wipes. If you are thinking about cloth diapering your baby, I would suggest finding a good wash routine and to hang your diapers in the sun to dry. The sun is like a magic stain reducer. If washing your diapers is not your cup of tea, there are cloth diaper services that will deliver clean diapers to your doorstep and take away the dirty ones. They take care of all the washing for you.

While cloth diapering our babies, we also stumbled upon a technique called elimination communication. I’m not going to go into all the details about that because it’s a whole other video, but when we noticed our babies had to go pee or poop, we would hold them over a toilet or bowl and let them go in there instead. Whether or not you choose disposable diapers or cloth diapers, this can reduce your amount of waste and dirty diapers.

We found a tricky time to be low waste, as parents, was during birthdays and holidays. To prevent us from accumulating unnecessary things, we asked our family members to give experience gifts or activities or simply to give the gift of their time. For Christmas this year, our kids got snowboarding lessons, and they went bowling for the first time with their auntie. They loved it. For their birthdays, they got swimming lessons and dance lessons. We find these types of gifts enrich our children’s lives: they create memories and also long-lasting skills.

Whenever we attend these types of celebrations we always grab our party pack. This is our party pack. Inside it has plates, cups, cutlery, cloth napkins for sticky hands, and this allows us to reduce waste, not only at home but when we are outside on the go, and skip any disposables which might be used at our friends’ or families’ events.

Another challenging area for us, as low waste parents, was crafting and art supplies. Kids need to create. It’s essential for their development, but when you are using things like pom poms and glitter, it creates a lot of waste. We turned to nature for our art supplies. We use things like pine cones and flower petals. We make our art project with that and then we can return it back to nature. Another great place to search for art supplies is your recycling bin. We use scrap papers for cutting and drawing, boxes and toilet rolls to create all sorts of things.

When our kids were babies, we would fill a bin full of lentils, rice, or even plain water, throw in a couple of spoons and it made a great sensory activity for them. Now that our kids are older, we’re teaching them to crochet, sew, build and repair. Not only are these useful skills to have, it provides them a creative outlet as well.

My last tip for families wanting to go zero waste is to get outside and get involved. Whether you live in the city, like us, or in the country, nature is all around us full of wonders for us to enjoy. I truly believe that kids who are outside experiencing nature fall in love with our planet and will want to protect her. I think it’s important for kids to realize that they’re part of a bigger picture. We are all connected and our individual efforts can only go so far. It’s going to take all of us working together to bring about big changes. Get involved in your community. Organize a cleanup. Get the kids participating. Explain to them why garbage and plastic is a problem. This also helps them explain to others why their family might be doing some things differently.

When we first heard about zero waste, the lifestyle seemed impossible and intimidating for us to do as a family. When we first started we had a seven-month-old baby, and a two-year-old girl, and life was already pretty hectic. But we found by slowly incorporating changes, taking one baby step at a time, we were able to get pretty far. I hope this inspires some other families.

[Child:] “Okay?” (Laughter)

[Jess:] I hope this inspires some other families to incorporate some eco-friendly changes in their own lives. If you’re curious about our journey, you can follow us on Instagram at babystepstozerowaste. Thanks so much to all for having us and thanks to all of you for watching!

[Robin:] I hope you got a lot of education and inspiration out of that video. If you did, check out our blog Baby Steps to Zero Waste, which is in the description, and make sure to subscribe to this channel where there is a lot more great information to come. Also, comment and Jessica will answer some of the questions. Like this video to help it reach more families. I love you all very much, and see you again real soon.