Waste

What to do with worn out clothes

/ edebock / Leave a comment

LogoAfter a full month of wearing only six items from my closet, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting dressed this week! In fact, I’ve worn something different every single day!

As promised last week, I also went through my closet, tried on a lot of things, and put aside a few to be donated. I usually do this twice a year when I switch my closet from summer to winter and then back again in the spring, but after a month of not missing some of the items in my closet I knew that a few more could probably be moved out.

This exercise led me to think about the different things that can be done with clothing that we no longer want or need. Often, the obvious answer is to donate them or consign them so that they can be enjoyed by someone else, but what about those items, including sheets and towels, that are too worn out to be donated?

A conservative estimate is that clothing and textiles make up 5 to 7% of what occupies landfills globally. Many believe that this figure is closer to 12%. The average American citizen reportedly throws away 70 pounds (31.75 kg) of clothing and other textiles each year. The figures are probably similar in other first world countries. I’ve never weighed my wardrobe, but 70 pounds of clothing sounds like an awful lot to me! What can we do to keep this fabric waste out of the landfill?

Here are a few ideas:

  1. Cut them up to use for cleaning rags. Towels and sweatshirts are particularly good for this purpose.
  2. Some thrift stores do accept worn out fabric that can be cut up and sold as industrial rags.
  3. Take advantage of the H&M Garment Collecting programme. Simply bag any unwanted clothes or textiles, by any brand, and in any condition, then take them into an H&M store and hand them to a cashier. In return, you will receive a thank you voucher to use toward a purchase. Anything that is still wearable will be sold second-hand. Textiles that are no longer suitable to be worn will be turned into other products and those that can’t be used in any other way will be shredded into textile fibres that are often used as insulating material. Several other brands including The North Face, Zara, Patagonia, Levi’s, and Uniqlo have similar programs. 
  4. Check with a local animal shelter. Many will take old towels, sheets, and other soft or fuzzy fabrics to use for bedding.
  5. Compost natural fibres. Remove attachments such as buttons and zippers, then shred the fabric finely and add it to your compost alongside fresher, wetter material such as vegetable peelings or garden cuttings to help it break down faster. Find more information about how to to this properly here.
  6. Purchase an unstuffed pouf style hassock such as the one pictured below and fill it with old bedsheets, towels, and clothing. Again, remove any attachments like buttons and zippers that might poke through the cover. If you’re like me, it might take half a lifetime to fill a hassock, but you can do the same thing on a smaller scale by filling  an unstuffed throw cushion.
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Unstuffed pouf from Amazon.ca

Do you have any ideas to add to this list? What do you do with old, worn out clothing?

Garbage soup

/ edebock / 5 Comments

What do you do with your vegetable scraps? If you’re a gardener, perhaps you compost them and make good use of the nutrients that way. If not, this post is for you!

Food waste is an enormous problem worldwide. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 1.3 tonnes of food is thrown out each year. Here in Canada, according to a 2014 report, $31 billion worth of food ends up in landfills or composters every year. I’m terrible at math, but if I’ve done my calculating correctly, that’s over $870 per person! Shockingly, 47% of that waste comes from private homes, not restaurants. Fruits and vegetables account for the highest amount of food wasted. Instead of adding to this global problem, why not use your vegetable scraps to make broth that can be used in a wide variety of ways. It’s really very simple:

Think potatoes, carrots, celery, cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, beets, tomatoes, cauliflower, pea pods, zucchini and other squash. The possibilities are almost endless! Since you’re going to make use of the outer layers instead of throwing them out, make sure you wash all vegetables thoroughly to get rid of dirt and/or pesticide residue. Remove the tops, bottoms, skins, and stems and toss them into a large Ziploc bag.

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Keep the bag in the freezer and add to it until it’s full. I also add bits of leftover vegetables after a meal is over. Frozen, the scraps will keep for 6 months or more, but I find that I can easily fill a bag in 2 or 3 weeks.

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Once the bag is full, dump it into a large pot and add enough water for the scraps to begin to float.

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Bring it to a boil and simmer for several hours.

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Strain the liquid off and discard rest.

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Your scraps can even do double duty if you choose to compost what remains.

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Every batch of broth is a little bit different depending on the composition of the scrap mix. Some are mild; others more robust in colour and flavour. I always do a taste test before using or freezing the broth. So far, I haven’t had to throw any away, but my daughter did have one batch that reminded her of stinky pond water!

The broth will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator or 4 to 6 months in the freezer. If I don’t plan to use it within a day or two, I freeze mine in containers of approximately 2 cups each.

Looks like I’d better defrost that freezer soon!

There are many recipes that call for vegetable broth, of course, but it has plenty of other uses as well. You can add extra flavour and nutrition to stews, curries, and even rice by using broth instead of water. Sometimes I turn a whole batch into a big pot of hearty vegetable soup by simply adding chopped onion, celery, an assortment of fresh or frozen vegetables, some barley or rice, salt, pepper, and other herbs or spices to taste. There’s something weirdly satisfying about turning your garbage into soup!