Today my part of the fridge is almost completely empty, leaving the mustard, salad dressings, and jelly very lonely. Instead of going my normal way and grocery shopping without a list, I am going to make a list. This way there will be no food items that are forgotten at the grocery store or in the fridge. I have also planned two steps ahead and have specific recipes for certain nights, with certain people. For example tonight I am cooking chicken alfredo for my roomies and me. For pay back they also will make one dinner, such as a casserole and Mexican food (for example). We have three planned dinners, which also makes up for 3 days of leftovers…making one night do whatever you want for yourself.

It is possible, to make “almost trash” into dinner. I put my plan into action by first gathering a few other people. I could call this event, not yet trash dinners… but I thought waste less dinner would be more appealing. I started if off by contributing a beef roast, one that has honestly been sitting in the freezer for about 4 months. One of my friends brought her potatoes and carrots as well as soup to put into the slow cooker. The only thing we had to buy for the slow cooker was the broth and spices. Our Waste Less Dinner party was accompanied by three of my friends. The two others brought the salad, dressing, and juice. (All items of which were almost taken to the trash, by the wrath of freezer burn). Apparently their fridge is really cold?

To see if my roommates and I had a food waste problem I took on the duty of cleaning the refrigerator, and what I found amazed me. Jars of old salsa, jars of old marinara and alfredo sauce, pudding, grape fruits, an old rotisserie chicken, an entire bag of pre cut veggies, and lastly a half loaf of bread. At one point all this food had dreams of being eaten, either being in a recipe or just plainly by itself. But there were no dreams where they were all put, the trash bag. As I tied the trash bag together I could not help but see the trash bag as a collection of dollar signs. How much money did I lose to wasting food? How could I plan to not waste food? Was there an easy fix?

In Milwaukee, recycling is available at little or no cost with a simple request that can be made via phone call. In spite of this, there are still many households that don’t recycle. In the UWM neighborhoods around campus, cans, bottles, trash, furniture etc. are all consistently left out as garbage scattered around the neighborhood. This is inefficient on many levels. The cans and bottles that students leave around UWM clutter the neighborhoods and create hazards for the elderly and the youth who also share the East Side Milwaukee community. These bottles, cans and red party cups are left outside leaving the neighborhoods trashed and denounced.

In this post, I am sharing the notes for the final presentation about the department store waste reduction and recycling project created by Erin Kruizenga. The slides for the presentation are in the attachment below.

For my project I am working with the agency “Waste Less Wisconsin”. Waste Less Wisconsin lets their student participants create their own project or new idea to help Wisconsin “waste less”. For my project I decided to start a new reuse and recycle project at the retail store I work for. (My store wished to go unnamed for the sake of my presentation).

Day 1
September 8th, 2010
Today is the first day I have started brain storming what to do with my chosen service learning group; Waste Less Wisconsin. The first thing I thought of was something that caught on in stores all around about two years ago; reusable bags. I purchased 4 at my local grocery store for $1.00 a piece and have taken them to malls, grocery stores, and on various errands. Some places like Pick N’ Save also reward you $0.05 for bringing in your own bags. This seems like a small amount at a time but I figured, I use my 4 bags once a week. That’s $0.20 a week times 52 weeks in a year, equaling $10.40 a year just from the grocery store alone. I’ve now started taking it to malls, Walgreens and plenty of other places that are beginning rewarding me for reusing bags.

For my final project, I plan to take part in the environments I spend most of my time; my car, school, and home environment. Before I took part in this service agency I noticed a lot a misused, desecrated resources that were being wasted due to negligence, disregard, and casualness. Being said, pollution and unconstructive lifestyle habits have been formed from the population.

Journal 1
As the first journal of the project, I want to first brainstorm of ways to implement a waste less strategy:
1. Re-using household products
2. Energy efficient light bulbs
3. Composting food scraps
4. Recycling car battery
5. Refined motor oil
6. Used tires

My partner and I are coming up with ways to save supplies, energy, and overall "green" objectives. One of our bigger focuses involve the art students from our old high school. We want to help them come up with ways to be efficient with supplies and other creative ideas that could save money and help with their creative ideas. We're also coming up with ways to help teachers be more efficient with supplies (such as paper handouts).

I decided to focus on recycling in my home. My whole family is big water drinkers, especially myself. We go through many plastic bottles of water a day and over the weeks and months they add up. Also, we have gatorade in plastic bottles in our house a lot. While we have recycling at my house, we don't always use it and just throw plastic bottles in the trash. I am going to focus on recycling these plastic bottles in our house instead of throwing them in the trash. I am also going to focus on the gatorade bottles. Instead of buying multiple 8-packs of gatorade bottles, I am going to have my mom buy the powder mix that comes in a can that can be made in a pitcher that can be reused to reduce the amount of plastic bottles in my house.

Over the last few weeks I did a little research of what my store is wasting the most of and what policies I can put in place to reduce this waste. A few things I will take on based on the amount of these specific items being wasted are cups used by employees, and napkins and tray liners given out to the guests. I feel like reducing the amount of paper goods we use in our daily routines will be highly beneficial to our store but also possibly the company as a whole.

Alright...First blog ever! =) Ok so I am in Geog 100 & I chose Waste Less Wisconsin for my service learning agency. My idea is with the reusable water bottles. I have a ton of them and love them! No more spending money on water & its good for the environment. I want to get people to use these bottles and hopefully love them as much as I do! But I also like flavored water and I know I m not the only out there so the second part of this would be to flavor your own water. Yes they do make those little packets you can put in your water but you can also slice up an orange, lime, lemon, cucumber or whatever you like and put into your water. Let the slices sit in the water, the longer it sits the stronger the flavor will be.

Hey All!

Hello, my name is Autumn Siudzinski and for my service project I’m going to attempt to have Cambridge Commons at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee create a compost pile. When I lived at home we always used one, since I’ve moved here I noticed how much we throw away that could be composted. It then caused me to think about how much Cambridge Commons wastes as garbage, when it could be used as natural fertilizer. Not only would the waste be reused instead of thrown out, but also it could help reduce the risk of run off into the river from the use of other fertilizers. I’m hoping to at least create a compost pile here, and have a possibility of other dorms following the example. Hopefully it turns out for the best!

By Adriana Chessman