It was great seeing everyone and chatting with some of you at the Challenge conclusion event. Your efforts are appreciated and do make a difference. I encourage you to continue, as well as share & inspire others.

Feel free to use this blog to continue the dialog and share updates. Check out the yogurt recipe if you haven't yet! Share YOUR ideas and discoveries!

Finally, if you'd like to be inspired by one of our former colleagues, Courtney, and her friend Robin, check out their amazing blog posts that celebrate living fully and creatively with less!
http://domesticwormhole.wordpress.com/

- Compost Guru

It was great to see so many families at the STEM Academy Challenge event last night at Randall. Everyone seemed to have a good time. County staff enjoyed meeting all of you and talking with you about your experience with the Challenge. We hope you will continue to visit the website and blog and share more thoughts about your ongoing efforts to keep reducing, reusing and recycling.

If you have not done so already, you can still pick up a discounted compost bin at Retzer Nature Center through this weekend (they are open Saturday and Sunday from 8 am-4:30pm) and you can take a nice hike as well.

Thanks again for participating- and helping to spread the word to friends and family.
Here are a couple photos from last night.

- Karen Fiedler, Waukesha County Recycling

As a new family of five (our youngest son is 7 weeks old), we weren't sure what changes we could make at this time. The biggest change we ended up making was switching from disposable to cloth diapers for our little one. Of course, when you add up the weight of throwing away all that "waste", it can really make a difference! Another change, albeit quite a bit smaller, was buying washable breast pads in place of the disposable ones. We also have ramped up our composting a bit, even composting our facial tissues.

One of our big recycling "passions" is the recycling of plastic bags, and not just plastic grocery bags. Unless I'm mistaken (and someone please tell me if I am), all those little dry bean, rice, cereal, frozen vegetable, and toilet paper bags can be put in with the plastic grocery bags and brought to most grocery and big box stores for recycling. Spread the word!

Our last week! I thought we were doing pretty good since the last challenge and told Dustin there wouldn't be much progress because we were practicing what we learned during this past year. I was wrong. We realized from our weights each week that somewhere in the last 365 days we had gotten lazy. Now we're back on track doing those little things that make a difference. I think we just need a reminder now and then of the importance of Reducing Reusing and Recycling. We thank you all at the WRF for doing just that with all the things you do for the community- informing, educating, equipping and reminding us all to do better!! The Rajnicek family

You'll never catch us throwing our egg shells in the garbage! They are a GREAT source of calcium for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant etc. Attached is a picture of the process. After using the eggs, save the shells in an open container ( we keep ours in the pantry. ) Then crush them and sprinkle around your tomato family in the springtime after planting. You could also sprinkle around plants that attract slugs ( celery etc.) to deter them. Pictured from left to right, Carsen, Sugar, Pepper, Tayler, Silly, Bonita and Jayden : )

We have made progress! We purchased a composting bin (that has yet to be put together) and we still reduced our waste! We have however, been keeping a bucket of compostable items in our freezer. This has kept them out of our garbage :) This has been a great challenge, we have learned lots and will continue moving forward to encourage others to reduce their waste. Thank you Waukesha County Recycling for this opportunity to prove to you and ourselves that our future can be less - which is a great thing.

I've just submitted our final numbers for the challenge. Our garbage weight had gone down as expected. What I didn't expect was that our recycling weight went down slightly as well. The major change in our behavior was composting, so the change in recycling weight must be from newspapers that would have ended up in the recycling bin, but got shredded into the compost bin instead. Making the changes wasn't difficult and I plan to continue what we have started. Hopefully by this time next year, we will all remember to compost and I won't find banana peels in the garbage anymore!

We had a birthday party here with 10 little ones and I thought we would be in big trouble with how much garbage weight we would have. But really, the weight was not the problem, it was the space the plastic packaging that is not recyclable takes up in our landfills. We used paper plates that we composted and with the kids making their own pizzas there was very little thrown away as far as food. We reuse the gift bags and flatten out the tissue paper and recycle the card envelopes, but the plastic was the sad part. We are thankful for all of the gifts given to our son and I do not want to seem ungrateful. I just couldn't believe how much space it took up in the garbage and wish toy companies could use less. The middle school STEM kids took a trip to Discovery World and they were taught how to make plastic using corn starch and vinegar. We all were taught about new plastics being made from corn and potatoes. This is revolutionary for the plastic industry. I just wonder about the cost of these plastics.

Earth 911 has posted some fun suggestions for reusing and reducing waste just in time for Halloween. One idea I plan to try is making cans into jack-0-lanterns. I like to make my pumpkins into puree for pies and pumpkin soup, so I don't like to carve them. But I want some extra lighting effects when the trick-or-treaters come to the door. Also, rather than purchasing a ready-made costume for you or your kids, try creating one from clothing purchased at a reuse shop like Goodwill. See- reusing and reducing can be fun!
http://www.goodwillnj.org/halloween/make-costume.html

http://earth911.com/news/2011/10/26/guide-to-greening-your-halloween/?ut...

This week our garbage output went up. Try as we might there are just some times and circumstances that are out of our control and so our garbage pile is larger. Kleenex consumption due to colds being one of them. We also cleaned out our shed and threw out a rug that was used up and had become a haven for mice. No donating that item! We have always been avid recyclers and so it frustrates us to have a larger garbage output. It also frustrates us that there are so many #5, 6, and 7 plastic containers and that they aren't recycled in Waukesha. But I think what frustrates us the most are people we know who don't recycle. Some say it's too much extra work or they don't like it that the city changed recycling pickup to once every two weeks. Maybe the city should go back to picking up recycling every week and make garbage pickup once every two weeks. I wonder if more people would recycle. Just a thought.

Look at the recycling numbers on the Culvers ice cream cups and shake cups - they are #1's!

Welcome to the final week of the STEM Academy Reduce Your Waste Stream Challenge. Our competition is coming to a close, but we hope the reducing and recycling will last long after this Challenge!

Here are some questions to think about as you compose your final blog posts:

1) Did reducing waste, recycling more and composting benefit your household in ways other than cutting your trash (such as saving time or money or adding quality of life)?
2) What are the changes you hope will stick?
3) What do you say to your friends about your Challenge experience?
4) The holidays are coming - a time that brings a trash surge across the USA! What’s going to be different in your house? (A zero waste party? Composters for everyone on your gift list?)

- Waukesha County Recycling

So, our garbage went down considerably. In part it is because we experimented with one means that the Composting Guru had recommended for getting rid of dog waste, without putting it out with the trash. The practice is flushing the dog waste down the toilet. It is certainly not a practice for everyone, and we haven't truly committed to whether or not it is for us. While it works, I think we still may be in search of other, hopefully more appealing, options.

The other part that contributed to our reduced garbage this week is that we simply weren't preparing food for a crowd - we weren't entertaining or readying food for a group for camping as we were in other weeks. And, we did a MUCH better job this week repurposing our various leftovers.

We continue to be disappointed in all of the products that we buy that are not recyclable because of the grade of plastic they are. Nearly all of the dairy products (except milk) come in 5s, which we are forced to throw in the trash. (We can only save so many yogurt containers for painting projects). And we have begun to take note of the grade of plastic BEFORE buying to try to see if we have an alternative to the same product in a grade of plastic that can be recycled. For example, of the two types of packaged hummus we buy, one is packaged in a #1 container, and the other in a #5. We'll make more of an effort to buy things packaged in #1 and #2 recylceable plastic, but what ultimately drives our purchases more than what is it recycleable, is which one is easier on the budget.

We were already pretty good about giving away, selling, or otherwise donating objects so that they could avoid residency at the dump.

Into the final stretch, we will make the final leap at improvement (because we haven't made time to do it YET), we will pick up the composting bin at Retzer and with adding the composting be about low-waste as we can be at with our current consumption practices.

And, identifiably, we can make make even more effort to reduce by just consuming less in general, and re-embracing a mantra. We'll share a quote - some sources say it was a quote from the Great Depression, and others say it is a WWII quote. Regardless where it originated, it is good, frugal, sustainable, and healthy practice,

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

It's interesting each week to see our trash totals going down. It makes it very exciting to know that we are making changes that are positive for our environment. We have begun to make many changes at our house. I canceled the newspaper. I realized it was silly to continue getting the newspaper when my husband and I both subscribe to online newspapers. These papers were coming to the house and no one was even reading them. Another change we made is collecting all the plastic bags (regardless of type) and taking them weekly to the plastic bag collection bins at the grocery store. This has greatly reduced the amount of "stuff" going into our garbage. It's amazing how many things are packaged in plastic bags.

I also took a look at how I purchase food. Many of the things I buy for the kids' lunches is packaged in individual cup sizes. (i.e. fruit cups). I have decided that I can buy a can of fruit and cut it up into bite size pieces and use a reusable Tupperware cup. This is also a cheaper way to buy fruit. Same goes for the kids sandwich's. I have started to put those into my Tupperware sandwich containers. No more plastic bags going into the trash. (No I don't sell Tupperware--just have lots of it.)

We continue to use our compost bin and have really enjoyed being able to put our scraps into it. Freezing the food works great. Then I don't have to constantly make trips to the bin. It does seem to be working great. Can't wait to use the compost in the garden next spring.

A little late on our blog from the 10/13 garbage day.
Bought the compost bin, but did not put it together and get started right way, amazed that our garbage waste is still going down. Looking forward to composting and using it on our garden in the spring (we also need a rain barrel after reading other posts!) I am so excited to see all we can add to the compost bin - the lb of broccoli stalks alone should help! Using the bucket idea and adding to the freezer our scraps so we can dump it all at once - I was also thrilled to hear that freezing it then adding it to the bin works so well.
Learning more on stopping the junk mail rather than recycling all of it. Amazed how long it takes to stop the process, but we are moving forward. Trash numbers were down this week while recycling is hovering around the same, determined to get this down!!

Well, this week our garbage was up at 20 pounds after we'd gotten it down to 15 last week. I suspect part of the 15 pound week was that we were out of town that weekend. Still making trash, but not having to count it at home! Either way, we are down 5 pounds from our baseline week of 25 pounds.

We are definitely making sure to compost everything we can. We are excited to pick up our compost bin from the Retzer and add it to the homemade one we have. Also, we are recycling more because of what we learned at the recycling facility tour. I didn't know you could recycle orange juice containers, for example. So, now we make sure we are doing that! And we are thinking harder about what we buy and trying to stay away from single use things in containers that can't be recycled.

We also learned that wrapping paper is not recyclable. So that means we are going to try to avoid it from here on out. We'll have to get a little more creative this Christmas!

We are enjoying the challenge and will hopefully get our garbage number back down to 15 pounds this coming week! It's great how this makes you stop and think about the waste you are creating.