Rubbish Removal Tips: Take Two Baby Steps Before You Can Walk

If you take a good look at rubbish removal piles, one thing becomes abundantly clear about our society. We have become a throwaway culture! Most humans in “well developed” countries seem oblivious to the hardships this will create for future generations. It’s really time we pay more attention to what visionaries like Daniel Long at Clearabee have to say about reducing the rubbish piling up in our landfills.

Unfortunately, modern day people can become overwhelmed when they hear or read about sustainability and how to lower our rubbish removal needs. They are sometimes daunted by the sheer number of ideas presented to them. Therefore, it may be best to just make a few changes at first. As they say, a journal of a thousand miles begins with one step…. or in this case, let’s take two steps! Let’s accomplish two relatively easy baby steps, that you can also teach to others, to lower your carbon footprint.

Baby Step #1: Pack Your Picnics, Lunches, and Snacks Differently

If you’ve ever watched historical dramas like “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman” or “Little House On the Prairie,” set in the 1800s, you may have noticed something. There were no plastic baggies for storing sandwiches, carrot sticks, or some of Mum’s famous fried chicken for a school lunch or a picnic! There weren’t any Rubbermaid plastic containers either! No, Laura and Mary’s school sandwiches were proudly wrapped up in a linen handkerchief and carried in a non-disposable tin food pail.

These handkerchiefs were never tossed in the trash can. They were folded up, dutifully taken home, washed, and reused hundreds, maybe even thousands of times. When they got ragged, they’d go in the scrap box to become part of a quilt, a rag doll, or perhaps a pin cushion. Nothing was ever wasted or put in a rubbish removal pile, at least not on purpose.

There’s really no reason we can’t wrap our sandwiches and snacks in a linen handkerchief today, just like Dr. Quinn did for her family, and carry these food items in some sort of non-disposable lunch pail. Perhaps a wicker basket, lined with linen, or a hemp canvass tote bag that can be thrown in the washer once a week would work well. However, if you want to see the modern day solutions, you can search for “reusable sandwich bags” on Google. You will find hundreds of choices for snack bags made from various materials, including some vibrant designs, such as colourful hoot owls, that will definitely appeal to kids. Some options even double as a placemat and or napkin!

Okay, that first baby step was relatively painless, right? The next one is a bit more complicated but still not hard.

Baby Step #2: Quit Using Aluminum Foil

Every stage of aluminium foil production has significant environmental impacts, the most egregious being the greenhouse gases produced during smelting and refinement. These include perfluorocarbons (PFC), carbon dioxide (CO2),  fluoride gas, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), and sulphur dioxide (S02). Furthermore, most recycling centres will not accept aluminium foil. For those that do, it must be thoroughly washed first, which is near impossible if you use it to cover a dish in the oven or use on the barbecue grill. This is why it is more often found in the rubbish removal pile than the recycle bin.

Back in the 1970s, working mums were looking for a delicious yet easy to prepare home cooked meal. One dish that became popular was wrapping chicken in a aluminium foil, adding tomato sauce and veggies like green bell peppers, onions, and cabbage and then throwing it in the oven. While it cooked in this packet, mums could do other things so it was exceedingly convenient. Besides the fact the dish was delicious, one of the biggest advantages touted by the aluminium foil companies was the fact there was no clean up. You simply opened up the aluminium (kids thought this was cool), ate right out of the foil packet, and then tipped the aluminium wrapping into the rubbish removal pile.

The truth is that food wrapped in aluminium foil cooks by steaming, a method perfected across many cultures for centuries using various types of leaves! The most popular leaves used to wrap food are banana leaves as they are big and sturdy. They are also fairly neutral in flavour and are abundant in many warm regions. Today, you can buy banana leaves in most places. If you have trouble finding banana leaves in your local area, you can buy them online. Just like aluminium foil, you can wrap vegetables for the grill in banana leaves to prevent charring or steam any meat or vegetable dish.

Other types leaves, used like aluminium foil and popular in cooking, include perilla leaves, also called sesame leaves. They give meat and rice dishes a unique and very delicious flavour. Of course, the best tamales are those cooked in corn shucks! Grape leaves are often used in Middle Eastern cultures. In fact, many of the Lebanese diasporas raise grape leaves in their backyards, no matter where they live!

There are other ways to stop using aluminium foil and keeping it out of your rubbish removal pile as well. Instead of covering a casserole with aluminium foil, you can get a casserole dish that has a glass cover. You may also be surprised at how much better your food tastes using a glass lid. For grilled vegetables, you can get a stainless steel grilling basket if you don’t have banana leaves handy. When roasting a bird, simply be sure to baste it a lot.

Next: Advance To the Toddler Stage

Once you’ve taken these two baby steps, you can keep adding more and more sustainable tips to your everyday living. Before you know it, you’ll be off and running, making Clearabee’s Daniel Long, and all other sustainability advocates, proud as punch. Future generations will appreciate your efforts too!