Recyclable =/= sustainable

Late last year, I subscribed to the One5C newsletter, which drops tidbits of climate news and tips for lowering my carbon footprint in my email inbox twice a week. Some of this info is useful, but occasionally the editors make silly mistakes about things that would have been easy to check. One recent newsletter called "natural gas" a misleading term invented by fossil fuel companies "to confuse consumers" when it's actually been used since the 1820s to refer to methane gas that's naturally occurring, as opposed to synthetic. (Consumers may indeed be confused because they mistakenly assume "natural" means "wholesome," but that doesn't mean the term itself is inaccurate.) Another touted a proposed law it said would require schools to provide nondairy milk "for any child that wants it—no note required," when the bill in question actually would require students to provide a note identifying the "disability" that prevents them from drinking cow's milk. And a third recommended bidets on the grounds that they save water, a claim I debunked last year.

Having run across problems like these before, I was a bit wary of One5C's recommendation for Ball's new aluminum party cups. I didn't doubt the editors were technically right in claiming that these aluminum cups are "infinitely recyclable," while "Classic red Solo cups...are #6 plastic, which few facilities recycle." But I wasn't prepared to assume this automatically made the aluminum ones the more ecofrugal choice. After all, the widely demonized single-use plastic bag actually does a lot less damage to the environment than a single-use paper bag or even an organic cotton tote bag. How could I be sure these new aluminum cups were really the most sustainable choice—both economically and environmentally?

To tackle these questions, I started out by shopping around in the "disposable tableware" section on Target.com. There I found several alternatives, some marketed as green and some not. First, as a baseline, I looked at the 18-ounce red Solo cups the One5C editors alluded to. These cost $8.99 for 72, or 12.5 cents each. Target also has its own brand of plastic cups that cost only $5.89 for 72, or 8.2 cents each. Both brands are made of polystyrene (#6 plastic), which isn't typically recyclable, just as One5C claims.

One product marketed as a greener alternative is Repurpose compostable cups. These clear plastic cups hold 12.2 ounces and cost $7.99 for 20 (40 cents each). That's more than three times the cost of the Solo cup and nearly five times the cost of the store brand in exchange for a questionable environmental benefit. The bioplastic these cups are made from has a lower carbon footprint than petroleum-based plastic, but it also uses more land, produces more pollution, and depletes the ozone layer more. Even the cups' claim to be "compostable" is dubious; bioplastics will break down in a commercial composting facility, but not in a home compost bin.

Compared to the Repurpose cups, the new Ball aluminum cups seem at first glance like a more legitimately sustainable alternative. Unlike most plastics, aluminum really can be recycled indefinitely, and aluminum recycling really does save significant resources and energy. Unfortunately, the cups themselves are not recycled; they're made from virgin aluminum, which has a significantly higher environmental footprint. In fact, a life-cycle analysis by Upstream found that these single-use aluminum cups are much worse for the environment than plastic ones, using 47% more energy and producing 86% more emissions. They also have by far the largest footprint in terms of cost. At $5.29 for 10, each cup costs 52.9 cents, more than four times as much as that "classic red Solo cup" and more than six times as much as the store brand.

Clearly, there's no good reason to recommend the Ball aluminum cups over traditional plastic ones. It only took me a few minutes of research to figure that out, and I'm a bit annoyed at the editors of One5C for not doing even that minimal amount of due diligence before recommending them. But what annoys me much more is that they're recommending a single-use product at all. Surely we all know by now that the slogan "reduce, reuse, recycle" puts recycle last for a reason, and that there's almost always more environmental benefit to reducing and reusing when you can.

And in this particular case, there's a very obvious reusable alternative that doesn't cost a cent. If you're having a gathering at your home, using your own cups and glasses costs nothing and creates no waste, aside from a little bit of water and energy for washing. In fact, I went to a potluck this weekend, and the host did exactly that. She served the meal with reusable glasses, reusable plates, and metal utensils, all of which worked much better than flimsy disposable equivalents.

And if you don't have enough glasses for that many guests? Well, if you plan on throwing parties often, it could be worth investing in a dozen 16-ounce mason jars, sold elsewhere on the Target website for $13.49, or $1.12 each. They'd be a better deal than the Ball aluminum cups after just three uses. Even compared to the cheapest plastic ones, they'd pay for themselves after 14 uses. They can accommodate both hot drinks and cold ones. And while the Upstream life-cycle analysis didn't look specifically at glass cups, a separate one by the UN's Life Cycle Initiative found that they're one of the greenest alternatives in just about every situation.

The moral of the story? It's not simply that reuse trumps recycling, although that is the case more often than not. It's that it's worth doing your homework rather than just assuming a product is ecofrugal, or even eco-conscious, just because it's recyclable. If there's an existing life cycle analysis out there, it will only take you a few minutes to find it, and it could save you from a costly mistake—for you and for the earth.

The gift of less stuff

We're in the middle of a busy couple of months. Between events with Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL), Morris dance performances, and stuff we're doing with family and friends, we don't have a single free weekend until June. And some weekends, including this one, are crammed full of events on both days. Today, I was "tabling" (staffing a table at a street fair) for CCL in the afternoon, and we're going to the opening of our local outdoor movie series tonight; tomorrow, we have a Morris performance down in South Jersey during the day and a CCL get-together in exactly the opposite direction in the evening. With all that going on, this hour before dinner is about the only time I've got to update my blog, so you're only getting a quickie post this week.

One of the things that kept us busy last weekend was Mother's Day. My mom is a difficult person to buy gifts for, because her house is so full already that she doesn't need any more stuff. On the contrary, she's always saying she wants to get rid of the stuff she has. So, last year, I had a brainwave: I offered, as my Mother's Day gift to her, to come to her house and spend the day helping her clean out one room of her choice. I didn't suggest this because she had any heavy boxes to move, nor because I thought I could do a better job than she could deciding what to throw away, what to keep, and where to put it. The main advantage of having me there all day was that it would force her to sit down and do the work of going through things, instead of wanting to do it and never finding the time. And it seemed to work pretty well. She chose her office, and by the end of the day we'd cleared away all the piles of paper in there, removed some old things of mine that had been sitting in that room since it was my bedroom, and put all her computer equipment in places where she could easily find it.

Since that was such a success, I decided to give her the same "gift" this year. This time around, she decided to get a bit more ambitious and tackle the sun porch, which is a repository of all kinds of miscellany: decades-old toys, plants and garden supplies, old sporting equipment, a big bookshelf full of board games and puzzles, and a huge stack of my old notebooks from high school and college. Mom seemed to think we could go through this stuff quickly and maybe have time to move on to another room, but I suspected we wouldn't even make a dent in the contents of the the porch itself. 

It turns out the answer was somewhere in the middle. We didn't clean out the whole porch, but we did get through a lot more of it than I expected. I spent a large portion of the day going through my old notebooks, pulling out the few things I wanted to keep (mostly stories and poems that I didn't have digital copies of), then breaking down the notebooks themselves so the contents could be recycled. I discarded so much paper that I had to split it between two separate bins so they wouldn't be too heavy for my dad to haul to the curb. But I also found time to review the contents of several bins and shelves with my mom. She opted to keep a lot more of the games and puzzles than I would have in her place, but we still set aside quite a lot of them to give away. We also cleared out things from the bins I'd had no idea were in there: a couple of giant "magic bubble wands," several old tennis rackets, a baseball bat and a few balls, multiple Frisbees, an old model airplane kit, and even an old jump rope of mine that I hadn't seen in decades.

All that stuff went downstairs into the storage room, where it will sit until Hopewell holds its next town-wide yard sale. My parents aren't planning to host an official sale, but they'll haul out a folding table, set it up on the lawn, and put out all their unwanted items with a big sign saying that everything (barring the table itself) is free. They hope that the yard-sale shoppers, always eager for a bargain, will snap up most of it, leaving them with only a few items to either Freecycle or discard.

All in all, I'd say this was a pretty ecofrugal present. It was something my mom actually wanted, and it cost nothing and used no natural resources to produce. Better still, it helped get all this unwanted stuff out of the house and, hopefully, into the homes of people who can use it—people who might otherwise have spent their own money, and the planet's resources, on new products. In fact, it worked so well I'm thinking of offering the same gift to my dad for Father's Day next month. (That will result in one more rather full weekend in June, but at least it will be only one weekend out of an otherwise quiet month.)

More ecofrugal episodes

Once again, we've been having some ups and downs in our ecofrugal life this week. Rather than recount these ecofrugal episodes in chronological order, I think I'll arrange them from most disappointing to most satisfying. That way I'll be able to end the post on a nice positive note. 

Thus, we'll start at the bottom, with:

Ecofrugal Episode 1: The Earth Fair Washout

I spent most of this afternoon "tabling"—that is, setting up a table and talking to people—for Citizens' Climate Lobby at a street fair in town. Unfortunately, the event was a bit of a washout—literally. The weather was chilly and wet, progressing from clouds and drizzle in the morning to steady, soaking rain in the afternoon. Fortunately we had a canopy to keep us dry while we were actually at the table, but we got pretty wet whenever we ventured away from it. By the time we finished putting away all our gear at the end of the event—including the canopy itself—we were all pretty well soaked.

Furthermore, there were fewer people to talk to than there would usually be, since many people were sensibly staying home and keeping dry. All in all, we had about 30 conversations over the course of four hours—five if you count the time we spent setting up and putting away all our gear—and only a few of those could be considered enthusiastic. It's not a lot to show for the amount of effort we put in. 

On top of that, we had to put up with a lot of other annoyances unrelated to the weather. The organizers of the Earth Fair put our booth into a slot right next to the music stage, so we couldn't converse at normal volumes. The parking lot they told us to use for unloading our gear was completely filled up five minutes before the time they told us to arrive, and we weren't allowed to use the nearby bank parking lot—not even for the few minutes required to unload—because it was reserved for an EV car show. (Fortunately, we'd already unloaded our car by the time they told us this; otherwise we would have had to find a parking spot on the street and then haul all our gear several blocks to the site.) Given how much hassle we went to for such a small benefit, I'm inclined to think it's not even worth signing up for this event next year.

Ecofrugal Episode 2: The Case of the Compacted Soil

Yesterday was our big spring planting day in the garden. We put in seeds for twelve squares of beans, four of cucumbers, six of basil, and two of herbs, and we transplanted eight tomato seedlings and four peppers. This proved to be a much harder job than I expected—literally. I'd expected to just poke some holes in the dirt and put the seeds in, but the soil was so dense and compacted that I could barely get the blade of a trowel into it, much less my fingers. I had to spend several minutes hacking at the soil in each square to break up the clods of clay before I could put the seeds into it.

This is both puzzling and frustrating, because we've had these raised garden beds for about fifteen years at this point, and we've spent that whole time following the advice in all our garden books about building healthy soil. We double-dug the beds when we first built them, turning over all the soil twice to break it up, and we haven't tilled it or walked on it since then. We add compost to it every year during spring planting and mulch the beds with leaves in the winter. And we've never once used any sort of harsh synthetic fertilizer or pesticide. By now, our soil ought to be so rich and soft we could plunge our hands right into it, not packed so hard we can barely dig in it.

Based on all the sources I've consulted, the best explanation I can find is that we're not adding enough organic matter to the beds. Our little home compost bin only provides enough compost to add a thin layer—less than one inch—to each of the beds each year, and we should be piling on at least a couple of inches. Bagged compost isn't an ideal solution either, since we would need to buy several bags and then test every one of them to make sure the contents weren't herbicide-laden "killer compost" that would kill our plants. If any of the bags failed the test, we'd have to buy new ones and test them too, repeating the process until we got only clean results. But that would seriously delay our planting schedule, so to avoid the problem, we'd have to buy a lot more compost than we thought we needed—at least twice as much—in the hope that at least one bag in two would be usable. 

Probably the best solution is to go to the Belle Mead Co-Op every year and load up with half a yard of bulk leaf mold. We haven't been using this stuff regularly because we learned that it's not actually a great source of soil nutrients, but it should be effective as an amendment to loosen up the soil, hold moisture, and attract earthworms. The only problem with this plan is that we can't do this at the same time we buy mulch because there isn't room in our car, or our garden shed, for both at once. So probably we should either buy a load of mulch every spring and a load of leaf mold every fall or vice versa.

Ecofrugal Episode 3: The Case of the Disappearing Eggs

One of the things that made Lidl an instant hit with Brian and me was its prices on Certified Humane (CH) eggs. We used to buy these at H-Mart, where sale prices ranged from $2 to $4 per dozen. But at Lidl, we consistently found them for $2.40 a dozen. Even during the pandemic, when most food prices soared, this price held steady. We did encounter occasional shortages, during which we'd go in and find the CH-egg shelf empty, but we figured these were due to temporary blockages in the supply chain. The eggs were always back a week or so later, so we didn't worry too much about it.

But in the past month or two, Lidl's CH eggs seem to have disappeared entirely. The case where they live is still there, with the price on it marked at $2.40 a dozen, but every time we show up, it's empty. Brian guessed this could mean that the store's delivery cycle has changed, so that the eggs now arrive on Friday morning, and consequently they're always gone when we show up on Thursday evening. (We found a little support for this theory last week, when we showed up a little earlier on Thursday and found exactly one carton of eggs in the case, with one of them smashed. Clearly it hadn't been sitting there all week, so it was most likely the last one left, passed over on account of the damage.) But given how full our schedule is this spring, we haven't found an opportunity to go to Lidl at some other time and check.

For a while, this problem left us stranded without a good source of CH eggs. The $8 per dozen at the farmers' market was much too rich for our blood; we hunted around at other local food stores, but none of them—not even our once-trusty H-Mart—could do much better than $5 per dozen. (Trader Joe's, we discovered, didn't carry them at all; it had only "cage free" eggs, a much wimpier standard.) And then it occurred to us to check the refrigerated case at Rite Aid, which carries a small selection of dairy products. To our astonishment, not only did the store carry CH eggs, they were only $3.20 per dozen—about 35 percent less than their nearest competitor.

We don't know how a drugstore chain, of all places, manages to offer humanely farmed eggs at better prices than any local supermarket. But we're pleased to have a new source of eggs so close to home. We'll still keep checking the Lidl when we visit to see if our cheaper eggs have returned, but we won't need to rearrange our whole shopping schedule in the hopes of catching them there.

Ecofrugal Episode 4: A Reusable Replacement

My favorite way to brew coffee, hands-down, is the Aeropress. It's much faster than a drip machine, uses much less ground coffee to brew the same volume, and produces excellent coffee from fairly cheap beans. It's also much easier to clean than the French press so beloved by coffee snobs. All the grounds get compacted into a dense little puck that you can shoot directly out into the compost bin, so all you have to do is rinse off the plunger. 

The Aeropress has only two downsides. First, it takes a lot of effort to depress the plunger; I often have to put my full weight on it for a minute or so before it finally sinks. And second, it's not completely zero-waste. The paper filters it uses are fairly tiny and cost only a couple of cents each, and they can go straight into the compost bin with the coffee grounds, so the waste it produces is fairly minimal. But still, I have thought from time to time that it would be still more ecofrugal to replace those paper filters with a resusable one.

So, when I noticed that I was running low on paper filters, I decided this was my chance to give it a try. This was an easier decision to make since the paper filters had gone up in price, from $6 for a pack of 350 to between $8 and $10, not counting shipping. By contrast, a set of two reusable metal filters from a site called Mason Jar Lifestyle was only $10 ($14 with shipping). The price was barely any higher, and I'd have two filters to experiment with and see which I preferred. And if it turned out they were both unacceptable, I'd still have time to switch back to the paper ones.

Having now tried both filters, I can say they have both advantages and disadvantages compared to the paper ones. Most obviously, they're more ecofrugal; they produce no waste and should last for years, making them much cheaper on a per-cup basis. They also let more air through than the paper ones, which reduces the amount of muscle needed to depress the plunger. This is particularly noticeable with the perforated metal disk rather than the fine mesh one.

One downside of these metal filters is that they allow more sediment into the coffee than the paper  ones. However, this isn't a huge problem, particularly with the fine-mesh disk. A much bigger drawback is the extra cleanup work. Removing the filter from the press before knocking the grounds out into the bin doesn't sound like that much added hassle, and it wouldn't be if the filter came away cleanly. But no matter how carefully I pry it off (after running cold water over it so it's cool enough to touch), at least half the coffee grounds end up stuck to the filter rather than the press. And unlike the grounds stuck to the plunger itself, they don't come off cleanly. If I simply rinsed them off the filter, I'd be washing several grams of coffee grounds down the drain with every cup of coffee I brew, and I think it wouldn't be long before our plumbing objected to that. I've tried scraping the grounds off the filter onto the plunger before emptying it, but that never works neatly. Some grounds stay stuck to the filter no matter what I do, and some get all over my hands, so they have to be washed too.

I consulted Reddit on this subject and found two suggestions for dealing with this problem. Some users say that sliding the metal filter off sideways rather than lifting it off removes most of the grounds. Others say pulling the plunger back slightly and then inverting the press and letting it rest (without unscrewing the cap first) allows the grounds to drop back onto the plunger and away from the filter, leaving it mostly clean. I'll give both methods a try, and if either one works, then I'll be able to say definitively that the mesh filter is superior to the paper ones. 

[UPDATE, 5/5/24: I have now tried both methods of cleaning the metal filter. Neither one is perfect, but the first is much better than the second. When I invert the plunger and let it rest before removing the cap, the grounds do not fall away from the filter; they remain stuck to it at the top. When I remove the cap, some of the grounds fall off onto the top of the plunger, but at least half remain on the filter:

By contrast, when I rinse the plunger, unscrew the cap, and slide off the filter, it leaves only a thin film of coffee grounds behind. A quick spray with the faucet hose is enough to get them off. And I'm not concerned that the amount of coffee washing down the drain will clog it up.

I've also discovered another advantage of the metal filter: it fits more securely than the paper ones. With those, I always had to take care that the filter was exactly centered in the cap before screwing it on. If it wasn't, it would slip to the side and let some of the grounds through into my cup of coffee. I'd have to strain it a second time before I could drink it. 

So, in addition to saving me money and eliminating waste, this metal mesh filter has eliminated the two biggest problems with my Aeropress: the stuck-plunger problem and the slipping-filter problem. The additional step of rinsing the filter is a small price to pay for that.]

[FURTHER UPDATE, 9/13/24: I've now figured out that the best method of all for cleaning the filter is to combine the two suggestions. After rinsing the press and unscrewing the filter basket, I pull the plunger back slightly so the metal filter is flush with the bottom of the tube before sliding it off. This takes only a few seconds and leaves almost nothing stuck to the filter.]

Ecofrugal Episode 5: A Pressing Concern

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I had ordered us a new (or more accurately, new-to-us) garlic press to replace our old Oxo one that broke. After a little research, we decided to go with the Joseph Joseph Garlic Rocker, which got consistently solid reviews from cooking sites. A new one costs $15 at Amazon, but since we don't do Amazon, we bought a secondhand one from eBay for $14 ($17 with shipping).

It has since arrived, and after testing it out several times, Brian reports that it's better in almost every way than its predecessor. It takes a couple of passes over a garlic clove to mince it as finely as the old one, but on the plus side, it does mince the entire clove rather than extruding part of it and turning the rest into a sort of squashed blob. It's easier to clean than the old press and takes up less room in the drawer. And since it's a solid piece of metal with no moving parts, we can be confident it won't simply fall apart like the previous one.

This espisode makes me inclined to add a seventh principle to my Ecofrugal Manifesto: Buy It to Last. (You could call this a subset of my sixth principle—Mend It, Don't End It—but I think it's different enough to deserve a principle of its own.) If you have to buy something new, buy something that's built to last as long as possible. Look for sturdy materials and construction, check reviews for complaints about durability, and minimize the number of moving parts that can break. And, other things being equal, opt for mechanical rather than electronic controls whenever possible. Electronics of all kinds usually cost more to repair than to replace—if it's possible to replace them at all.

Ecofrugal gifting games, 2023 edition

One of our most successful holiday gift ideas this year was a model of ecofrugality. It provided not one, but eight secondhand gifts for family and friends, with a little extra entertainment thrown in—all for just a few dollars.

Last year's round robin gift exchange with our niblings was so successful that we decided we'd try to repeat it this year. Our original plan was to do it with books again, picking up secondhand ones throughout the year and supplementing as needed with new ones. But last summer, as Brian and I were weeding out our collection of board games, it occurred to me that maybe we could make some of these discarded games the basis of this year's gift exchange. This would kill two birds with one stone: finding new homes for the games we no longer played while crossing eight people off our holiday gift list.

After clearing out our game shelves, we had more than eight possible candidates for the gift exchange. As Christmas drew nearer, we supplemented this selection with others that we picked up at the local thrift shop (some of them still in their original shrink wrap) and at yard sales. We picked and chose among these to get the best variety of different games to fit differing tastes. The finalists were:

• Bali, a word game for one or two players
• Rook, a trick-taking card game
• The Sherlock Holmes puzzle case, a collection of mini-mysteries
• Tantrix Match, a pattern-matching game
• A nice wooden version of the classic peg solitaire game
• How to Rob a Bank, in which a team of robbers takes on a team of security guards
• Anomia, a hectic group game with a lot of shouting
• The Resistance, a social deduction game in which you have to find the traitors in your midst
  

But the gifts themselves were just the start. The thing our niblings (and one nibling-in-not-quite-law) seemed to enjoy most about last year's gift exchange was a puzzle that we threw in kind of as an afterthought: a hidden message spelled out by the first letters of the pages where we'd stashed $5 bills. So for this year, we decided to craft a more elaborate treasure hunt based on clues hidden in all the game boxes. Brian's first thought was to put one clue in each box, so the kids could either collaborate or compete to find the hidden treasure first. But eventually he decided it would be better to make them all work together, so he decided the first step in the hunt would be to put together a puzzle. On the back would be either some sort of treasure map or the first in a series of clues leading them to the treasure.

On a video call with his folks, Brian scoped out the house to find good hiding places for clues. These had to be spots that were within reach, but enough out of the way that the clues wouldn't be found by accident before the game had started. Possibilities included a spider plant hanging in the dining room, a curio cabinet in the living room, an old dollhouse in the basement, and the tops of various tall pieces of furniture, such as the grandfather clock. We thought it would be nice to have all the clues joined by a common theme, and after considering several ideas (names of games? Literary quotations? Cards and suspects from the game Clue?) we came up with one suggested by the plant: species names.

On the back of the puzzle, Brian wrote a winding trail of letters spelling out Clorophytum comosum, the Latin name of the spider plant. We knew they could easily find that out with a Google search, leading them to the plant. In the plant pot, we placed a slip of paper with the second clue: Strix occidentalis. Although this is a real species (the spotted owl), there wasn't a real one in the house, but there was a stuffed animal version of it in the family room wearing a baseball cap. Under this cap, we hid the third clue: Brunus edwardii (magnus). This is not a real species, but a search on the name would lead them to a joke article that appeared in a 1972 issue of The Veterinary Record on common diseases of the teddy bear, and the magnus would tell them the specific specimen they wanted was the one known as Big Teddy up in the sewing room. Big Teddy was holding a piece of paper bearing an entirely made-up species name: Erinaceus horologium. The first half of this refers to a genus of hedgehogs, and the second half is Latin for "clock," directing them to the toy hedgehog sitting on top of the grandfather clock in the hall. Under that was the final clue, Chrysochus cobaltinus. This is a real species name referring to a type of blue beetle; there were no such beetles in the house, but there was a model of a blue Volkswagen beetle in the curio cabinet, and behind this we stashed our treasure chest (a cigar box filled with chocolate coins, jewel-like polyhedral dice, and some other odds and ends).

This gift exchange was a big hit. Once we had all eight youths in the room, we laid out the gifts for them to take turns choosing and swapping, and before they'd even finished opening up all the packages, some of them had peeked inside and discovered the puzzle pieces stashed there. This so piqued their interest that they immediately started putting the puzzle together, not even waiting to look at the rest of their presents, so the adults in the room exchanged their gifts to each other while the youngsters set about solving the puzzle and hunting down the clues. The only part we had to help them with was finding the treasure chest hidden behind the blue Beetle; we'd marked it with a slip of paper bearing the traditional X, but they thought that was just the next clue in the series and had to be directed to the box it was sitting on. We did see at least one of them later playing with the game she received in the gift exchange itself, but I think that the hunt-the-treasure game was more exciting for them than the actual presents.

This has led us to two conclusions for next year: First, we should definitely keep this tradition going. Since we seldom see our niblings, it's much easier to get them something they like by having them swap gifts among themselves than just trying to guess who would like what. And second, since the treasure hunt seems to be their favorite part, maybe next year we should start with the puzzle rather than the gifts. That is, rather than choosing presents and designing a puzzle to go with them, maybe we should start by thinking about what would make the best puzzle and selecting gifts (ideally ones we can find secondhand) to fit it. Because with this crowd, apparently, it's the fun that counts.

What is Circular Monday?

Some time ago, I visited a site called Climate Hero to check my carbon footprint. (I like to check it on a variety of sites to see how they compare and get a wider range of suggestions for lowering it.) Ever since then, I've been getting occasional mailings from the site offering tips for cutting or offsetting my emissions. Most of these are stuff I already know, but this week I got an intriguing email telling me about something I'd never heard of before: Circular Monday.

Circular Monday, which is celebrated on the Monday before Thanksgiving, was conceived as an alternative to the consumer frenzy of Black Friday. Apparently, it was originally called White Monday, but the name got changed to something that better reflects its purpose, which is to promote the circular economy. A quick primer for those not familiar with this term: A circular economy is one in which all products can be broken down into their original components for reuse or recycling. This is in contrast to our current linear economy, in which most products are created from raw natural resources, used once, and then discarded in a landfill. (You can see a simple diagram of this model on the World Economic Forum website, or a much more complex one on the EPA site.) 

Now, this idea of a circular versus a linear economy isn't a simple matter of either-or. It's a question of degree. The more stuff gets reused, repaired, and recycled, the more circular the economy is; the more stuff gets extracted and discarded, the more linear it is. There's probably no such thing as a perfectly circular economy in which absolutely everything is reused; some things, like food or medicine, are always going to be used up. But the closer you can get to a true circle, the more you improve efficiency, reduce resource use, and limit pollution and waste. Examples of ways to make the economy more circular include:

• Making and buying products built to last, such as a pair of boots that can be resoled, and then keeping them in use longer
• A car-sharing or bike-sharing service that reduces the number of new cars or bikes being produced
• Refilling containers, such as milk bottles or printer ink cartridges, instead of tossing used ones and producing new ones 
• Shopping at thrift stores and yard sales
  
• Giving away unwanted but still usable items on Freecycle
• Upgrading your computer to keep it working longer so you don't need to buy a new one
• Turning old clothes that absolutely can't be worn any longer into rags or putting them in a textile recycling bin
  

Naturally, all this stuff is right up my ecofrugal alley, but I was a bit unclear on how I was supposed to set aside a particular day for it. It seems like you have to do these things whenever they happen to come up: refill your ink cartridges when they run dry, resole your shoes when the old soles wear out, donate your old clothes when you discover they no longer fit, turn socks into rags when the holes in them get too big to repair. The only thing you might be able to schedule on a particular day is a trip to the thrift shop, since you can always hunt for treasures even if there's nothing specific you need at the moment. But surely it would be easier to do that on a weekend than on the Monday of a busy holiday week.

I consulted the Circular Monday website and found that it's primarily a database of businesses that form part of the circular economy in one way or another. The list of U.S. businesses includes Back Market (a seller of refurbished electronics), eBay, Vinted (an online vintage clothing store), Turo (a car sharing marketplace), and Too Good to Go (a marketplace for businesses to dispose of surplus food). So it's really more Circular All Year Round than Circular Monday. However, on Circular Monday itself, most of these businesses have sales and promote them on social media with the #circularmonday hashtag. In this way, they call attention to the concept to help promote circular shopping all year round.

And this, apparently, is what Climate Hero was encouraging me to do next Monday: not necessarily to buy from these businesses right now, but to promote them by posting. "For instance," the email helpfully suggests, "you can inspire by sharing something you chose to buy circularly in the past year instead of new." Then add the appropriate tags for Climate Hero (@climatehero, #climatehero) and Circular Monday (@circularmonday, #circularmonday), and presto, you're part of the event.

Well, I've bought a lot of things secondhand in the past year, but I typically posted about them at the time. So rather than sharing new information, I'll just provide a quick recap of the posts I've done in the past year related to circular shopping:

• Ecofrugal gifting games (December 25)
• The Dress Retro challenge (April 4)
• Why I don't buy everything used (June 5)
• Good hunting at Goodwill (August 20)
• An ecofrugal fashion makeover (September 10)
• Why we're not a zero-waste household (October 8)
  
• Yard-sale haul 2023 (October 15)
• Ecofrugal episodes (November 12)

Here's hoping something on this list can provide a bit of ecofrugal inspiration for you.

Yard-sale haul 2023

This year's town-wide yard sale was a bit of a mixed bag. As usual, it was scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday, with some people signed up for both days and others for only one. However, Saturday was chilly and damp, with predictions of steady rain throughout the day. It wasn't actually raining when Brian and I set out around 9am, but apparently the forecast had scared off a lot of potential sellers, because very few of the sales marked on the map were actually there. We walked all the way across town and encountered only two or three, and none of those had nothing of interest. Even Felton Avenue, which is usually teeming with sales, had only a sign alerting shoppers that they wouldn't be setting up until Sunday.

However, when we made our way to the central sale area—the big public parking lot behind the Reformed Church—our luck changed. Under the public pavilion, there was one table set up by The Moonladies, the proprietors of our town's former combined toy and gift shop, and another belonging to a local artisan. Together, these yielded a wealth of small gift items suitable for Christmas stocking stuffers, as well as a couple of mini rolls of novelty duct tape—one with rainbow stripes and one that glows in the dark—for a mere ten cents each. (We don't know exactly what we'll do with them, but we're sure they'll come in handy for something.) 

There were also a few hardy souls braving the rain to staff tables in the parking area itself. One had nothing of use, but the other had a bargain I just couldn't resist: a working ukulele for a mere five bucks. As far as I can tell, this uke is from the beginner-friendly Mahalo Rainbow series and would sell for about $45 new. Admittedly, it doesn't sound as good as my current ukulele (a bottom-of-the-line Lanikai), and I don't particularly need a spare, but I just can't pass up a musical instrument in playable condition for only $5. With three siblings, three siblings-in-law, and nine niblings between me and Brian, I'm sure we'll be able to pass it along to someone who's interested in learning to play. 

On top of this, at the time we hit this sale, the thrift shop in the church basement was also open. We seldom manage to get to this store during its limited hours, so we seized the opportunity to go in and found that the place has been cleaned up quite a lot. They've moved everything except clothing out of the big main room, making it much easier to move around in there and view the selection. We didn't find anything we needed on the clothing racks or bookshelves, but Brian snagged one jigsaw puzzle off the game shelf for his parents. So, in the two hours of shopping we were able to get in before the rain got heavy, we managed to bring home about as much stuff as we typically do in a whole day. (I won't show a picture of Saturday's complete haul to avoid spoiling any holiday surprises.)

This morning, Sunday, the weather was bright and sunny, and the sales were much thicker on the ground. They also seemed to be better attended than Sunday's sales usually are, probably because Saturday had been such a washout. Shoppers weren't already tired out from a day of shopping on Saturday, and they were more enthusiastic about viewing sales that hadn't already been picked over. In the few hours we spent out and about on Sunday, we hit dozens of sales—but, surprisingly, we didn't come home with much more stuff than we had on Saturday. In total, we scored five books, another short-sleeved shirt for Brian (who declared after buying it that he was officially fully stocked for shirts of that type), another puzzle for his folks, a few spools of thread for a dime, a handful of small gift bags, and a board game that looked worth trying because it was free. Not exactly a bad haul, but not nearly as impressive as our finds from previous years. There were no big scores like our $70 futon, Brian's $10 kneeler chair, our $3 camp chair, or the previous day's $5 ukulele.

So, across both days, we shopped for about five hours and came home with:

• Six books
• Two puzzles
• One board game
• One shirt
• One ukulele
• Four spools of thread
• Six mini gift bags
• Two mini rolls of novelty duct tape
• A whole mess of stocking stuffers

Based on my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that's about $210 worth of stuff that we acquired for $21.40 total. That's a savings of $188.60, or $37.72 for each hour we spent shopping. Not as much as we make at our jobs, but a lot more fun.

An ecofrugal fashion makeover

So, remember how I said last month that Brian had gotten all his back-to-school shopping done for under $50? Well, it turns out he'd like to change his major. 

After forty-plus years of the same basic jeans-and-tees look, he found himself wanting to break out of that box a little. Not to change his look completely, but just to jazz it up with some more unconventional pieces. A little bit arty, a little bit bohemian, a little bit more in touch with his feminine side. Kind of like the stuff at Free People, but for guys (and ideally, a little less expensive). However, since he hadn't bought anything but jeans and tees for so long, he didn't really have any idea how to do this. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for, let alone where to find it. So he basically asked me to be his personal stylist—to help him define his style and upgrade his wardrobe. 

I was happy to help with this, but being me, I also wanted to do it as ecofrugally as possible. Searching for inspiration on fast-fashion sites like LightInTheBox or Coofandy was okay, but I didn't want to buy a bunch of new stuff there. Unlike me, Brian hasn't taken the Dress Retro challenge limiting him to three never-used garments this year, but I still wanted his new-to-him clothes to be sustainable picks: secondhand if possible, and eco-friendly as a second choice. And, of course, I wanted any no-longer-loved pieces removed from his wardrobe to go to a good home, if at all possible.

We started the process by going through his entire closet and getting rid of everything he didn't like. Out went all the clothes he'd been given as gifts and never really worn, all the once-loved pieces too battered to wear, and most of the stuff bought for a heavier Brian that fit like a tent on his current frame. (We kept a few outsized pieces he particularly liked and transferred them to our office closet, just in case he ever needs a larger size again.) By the time we were done, we had filled up three bags with clothes in decent condition to donate to the thrift shop and one with completely played-out clothing to go to the textile recycling bin.

As we worked, we also looked at the pieces he was opting to keep and discussed what he liked about them. For instance, although he kept some shirts and sweaters in dark, solid colors, his favorites were generally the ones with bright colors or interesting patterns. When it came to T-shirts, he was all about the designs and slogans; even a freebie from the blood bank with some message like "I gave blood and all I got was this awesome shirt" was more appealing to him than a plain one. And for most garments, he liked a body-skimming fit: neither baggy nor skin-tight.

Armed with this information, we set out on stage two of our ecofrugal wardrobe makeover: hitting the thrift shops. Since there's a dearth of good ones in our area, we set aside a Sunday afternoon for a trip to  Princeton, where I knew of two stores with a good selection of high-quality items. (Their prices are also on the high side—possibly higher than we might pay online—but I was willing to pay extra for sustainability.)

Our first stop was the textile recycling bin at Westminster Choir College, which we managed to find after driving around the campus a bit. After dumping off the worn-out garments there, we took the three bags of clothes in good condition and hauled them up the steps to the Nearly New Shop, where we handed them over at the front desk before heading off to browse the menswear racks. Brian tried on two short-sleeved shirts and opted to buy one, a white-and-teal check with snaps, rather than buttons, down the front (which he said would come in handy if he ever needed to impersonate the Incredible Hulk). 

He also tried on a very heavy wool cardigan, standing right in front of the mirror first because he didn't want to have it on in the summer heat any longer than necessary. He'd owned cardigans before and worn them regularly, but always in plain, neutral shades; this one had a sort of Alpine pattern to it that he didn't think would be to his taste. But once he had it on and I asked him, "So, would you wear a sweater like this?" his response was, "You know, I think maybe I would." He was a little hesitant because he thought it would probably be too warm to wear at the office, but my position was that if it sparked joy, he should have it. Besides, as I pointed out, he can always treat it as outerwear, since it's certainly warm enough to take the place of a light jacket on chilly fall days.

Flushed with this success, we headed down the street to Greene Street Consignment. Brian tried on a couple more shirts here, but he didn't love any of them—and one that he did particularly like the look of, a color-blocked Henley, proved far too small for him. But he did hit on one unexpected find: a pair of slip-on canvas shoes, labeled as "sidewalk surfers," in a bright Guatemalan print. They were unlike anything he'd ever worn before, but with a price tag under $20, he figured they were worth taking a chance on. We then celebrated our successful shopping expedition with a quick trip to the library bookstore, followed by a snack and a game of cribbage at Starbucks, before heading home.

Cost-wise, our haul from this trip isn't as impressive as our previous one from Goodwill. We spent a total of $76.95 for just three items: one shirt, one sweater, and one pair of shoes. But more than half of that was for the cardigan, and when you consider the sheer weight of that thing, it's not so expensive on a per-pound basis. More importantly, adding these three new pieces to his wardrobe will help him feel a little more like himself—and without adding to the environmental burdens caused by fast fashion. And if that's not money well spent, what is?

Good hunting at Goodwill

I've been a regular visitor to thrift shops for decades now. Based on a quick count, roughly two-thirds of the clothes in my closet are secondhand, including many unique pieces that I dearly love. But that doesn't mean that I normally have good luck at thrift shops. On any given thrift shop visit (including most of the ones I made during Thrift Shop Week in 2016), the most likely outcome is that I'll find nothing useful and walk out empty-handed. I've only managed to accumulate such a sizable secondhand wardrobe through perseverance; even if I strike out nine times out of ten, my occasional lucky shopping trips add up over time.

The same, however, does not hold true for Brian. In the past month, we've visited two different Goodwill stores: our usual store in East Brunswick and one up in Bound Brook that we decided to check out for our anniversary, because we're weird that way. And between the two, he has filled pretty much every gap in his wardrobe for less than $50. I, meanwhile, came away with a grand total of one item, but given my track record, I still consider that a victory.

Here's Brian's haul from the two trips combined. It includes:

• Two pairs of shorts. They're both cargo shorts, which aren't his favorite, but they both have the above-the-knee length he prefers, rather than the knee-length fit that seems to be all you can find in stores these days. The light grey pair is actually a 30 waist, so it's quite snug on him, but wearable. Both pairs cost $6.
• One pair of jeans. He actually found two pairs in his size, 32/30, on the trip we made yesterday—a rare occurrence for him, since usually he hunts through the racks and doesn't find any. But one of the pairs turned out to be skinny jeans, and he decided he couldn't quite pull that look off. So he bought only the more conventional Levi's for $8. They had a little splotch of paint on one leg, but he was able to scrape most of it off with an Exacto knife, reducing it to only a barely discernible smudge.
  
• One V-neck shirt. Brian's usual uniform for winter is jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt over that. He'll occasionally choose a sweater instead, but typically just for slightly dressier occasions. This shirt is kind of a middle ground between the two. It has an inner layer of comfy knitted material like a sweatshirt, but the outer layer is a woven fabric that's a bit more presentable. It also has a neater, trimmer fit than the typical bulky sweatshirt, so it will take his everyday look up a notch. Marked as a sweater on our receipt, it cost $6.
• One pair of sneakers. This was the biggest coup. Brian's favorite pair of shoes is a pair of classic canvas sneakers in a nifty plaid fabric, which he bought for $20 at Old Navy close to 15 years ago. They were the first pair of shoes he ever saw in a store and thought, "I want those shoes," as opposed to, "Well, I need new shoes, so I guess these will do." And other folks agree with him; he regularly gets compliments on them from friends, relatives, and even strangers. Unfortunately, after 15 years of on-and-off use, they're starting to fall apart. Mind you, that's a pretty impressive lifespan for a $20 pair of shoes, but it's clear he won't be able to use them much longer. But of course, after all these years, Old Navy no longer makes them, and until today, he couldn't find anything he liked nearly as much at a price he considered reasonable. But on yesterday's trip to Goodwill, he found three pairs he liked enough to try them on, and this was the most comfortable fit of the lot. Its solid green fabric uppers aren't quite as snazzy as the plaid ones, but the shoes have the basic old-school styling he likes and were well worth the $20 price tag. He might eventually find something else he likes better, but at least now he isn't at risk of having to go barefoot when the plaid ones finally give up the ghost.

So that's Brian's back-to-school shopping done, all for a grand total of $46. Add in the one item we bought for me, a white cotton turtleneck, and the total is still only $52. 

Just for fun, I calculated what we'd have paid for similar items purchased new from a good but not fancy retailer like L.L. Bean. My calculations: $50 each for Brian's two pairs of shorts, $60 for his jeans, $65 for the closest thing to his shirt, and $50 for his shoes (assuming he chose the color that was on sale). Add in $37 for my turtleneck, and the total for the lot comes to $312—six times what we spent at Goodwill. Even buying everything on sale at Kohl's would have cost us about three times as much.

Of course, if we'd had to buy everything new, we probably wouldn't have bought most of it in the first place.