Reducing Waste with a Fashion Statement?

Have you been able to reduce the amount of garbage your family makes? Along with your traditional recycling efforts, have you started composting yet? Have you considered getting a COMPOST BUCKET to hold all the daily vegetable peelings and egg shells? Okay, enough with the nagging. Just trying to encourage putting less waste from last night's dinner into the landfill. Which brings us to creating less waste from the bags we use to carry home the food we buy from the store to make dinner. 

As part of our ongoing conversation about cutting back on the ubiquitous plastic grocery bags that fill up our landfills and don't decompose, we keep searching for reusable bags that GGN can endorse to replace them. We want to be sure that anything which claims to be reusable is ultimately biodegradable, compostable or recyclable, after their usefulness has ended. So far, there hasn't been a perfect solution. However, from time to time we find some interesting ideas to share. They may not be perfect yet, but they often inspire hope that there's an idea just around the corner.  Yours, maybe?

Out of Austin, Texas, comes an idea for a locally sourced business that implements Austin's ZERO WASTE philosophy [reducing waste by 90% by 2040] with the creation of a sustainable industry. In this case, recycling of something quite unexpected not only makes a fashion statement, but provides living wages for the workers who create the products -- most of whom are refugees from war torn countries. WATCH VIDEO HERE.

Meanwhile, recycling, zero waste, and sustainability are what's in it for the planet. So what's in it for YOU?  Why, fashion, of course. And the good feeling you've repurposed something that used to get tossed in a landfill. Not to mention that you can answer the question, "Paper or plastic?" with "Neither. I brought my reusable bag." 

Here's one example of what there is for sale -- a reusable tote bag [big enough for all kinds of shopping don't you think?] made from the unexpected product we hinted at earlier -- reclaimed outdoor vinyl signs. We recently saw one of these totes made from an old Coca Cola sign. Read about the variety of these durable, recycled, and well-made products HERE: 

Now for the big question. What can WE, as residents of Northbrook, do to reduce our landfill trash? Recycle. Check. Compost. Check. Start a sustainable business? Check in with your thoughts. And while you're coming up with ideas, read about even more of these kinds of recycled products HERE.