Two things we've started doing is using old newspapers as bags for biowaste. It's very easy to fold them into bags, you save money by not havig to buy the biowaste bags and those "biodegradable" bags aren't actually as biodegrable as they say. They're basically just bad plastic that breaks a bit quicker than a black bin bag.

The other thing which we've had for quite a while now is Dubia (Argentinian) cockroaches. If it's plant matter, they'll eat it. Old banana, pepper stems, cucumber ends, oranges that have gone bad, celerey ends, carrot ends, etc. they'll eat them all. I've actually set them up in a bioactive tub with soil, springtails, woodlice and various tiny beasties so there is no mould, no smell and the cockroaches are doing VERY well. We started with about 50-60 last year and we now have hundreds. I already had to sell some off because we had so many and I've now had to seperate off a load into a seperate tub to be sold off. So it's all well and good that they are eating the scraps but what benefit do they bring? They are basically high quality fertilizer factories. I haven't made use of their abilities quite yet (been wanting to ensure they have a strong stable population before messing around too much) but my plan is to have them helping with the vegetable patch

I highly recommend them as they are so easy to look after and breed faster than rabbits, the extras being readily bought up by people looking to feed their pet reptiles. Gestation is just 28 days and each female will have 20-40 babies at a time, nympths will mature in 4 to 6 months and the adults live for up to 2 years. All this means a population explosion in no time.

   I reuse pieces of aluminum foil to wrap food until they're either dirty or too mangled to be of use.  I've also been known to reuse plastic storage bags that were in good shape.
    To save electricity I have just a small, dorm type refrigerator. "How can you get by with a dorm frige?"  Easy.  A lot of what many people keep in their frige doesn't need to be there.  Eggs, potatoes, bread, sweet potatoes, turnips, margarine, onions, and garlic, don't need to be refrigerated.  I'm sure there are other things I'm not thinking of right now. In that I drink just skim milk I by powdered so that also saves space. It took a little getting used to but a dorm sized refrigerator suits me just fine.

We've been saving every plastic bag we have for trash bags. If it can conceivably hold something without completely falling apart, we'll use it. Bread bags, plastic toilet roll bags, the bags from frozen vegetables...

perpetualstudent wrote on Apr 12^th, 2019 at 10:28am:


This is true. We actually picked up hundreds of plastic bags and a few of the canvas shopping bags one time from the bin shed that all the student houses use and it was obviously someone's "collection" that they dumped before they moved. We've been slowly getting through them and we still use the canvas bags for own shopping. They obviously didn't use them and just needlessly stored them.

In Finland they have a "buy back" scheme for cans and bottles, much like in other European countries. Because of this you rarely see cans and bottles as litter.

  Like Jauke I also buy from thrift stores and thrift supermarkets.  The one I go to the most is Save A Lot.  Their prices are about half of what you'd pay in a normal supermarket.  One of the many ways they cut costs is that they don't provide free bags.  You bring your own.  They sell a lot of off brands but the quality is good. I also like to shop at Goodwill stores and such.  They have quality used clothing, appliances, and other items at very reasonable prices.
   I like Kick's idea about folding up newspapers into bags for biowaste. I'll have to learn how to do that.
     With three dogs I am always in need of poopy bags so I do use all of the plastic bags I save.

At least in New York City they actually make it really hard to return the jars/bottles to get the deposit back. They try hard not to take bottles they didn't sell. Because if the bottles they sell don't get returned the stores get to pocket the deposit. If this seems bassackwards, it is! It's also exactly what I expect out NYC.