Sustainable gift wrap solutions

Whether you’re looking for more creative and sustainable ways to wrap your gifts this year or you’ve simply ran out of wrapping paper, Ani, I Love A Clean San Diego’s Recycling Programs Manager, is here with a couple of quick, eco-friendly gift wrap solutions!

Did you know that food waste, shopping bags, wrapping paper, and ribbons all contribute to an additional 1 million tons of waste to our landfills? Here is a quick gift wrapping guide to limit the amount of waste that ends up in our landfills after the holiday season (and beyond):

Start early.  I reuse boxes from my online shopping, food packaging, tissue paper, gift bags and bubble wrap year round to avoid having to buy any additional gift wrapping materials; and it saves me some money as well!

Secret Santa 12.16 (8)
Community Programs Coordinator, Moriah, reused a paper grocery bag to wrap her gift and it looks great!

Consider wrapping gifts in fabric or newspaper. Unfortunately, festive wrapping paper usually ends up in the recycling bin and is often difficult to reuse. Give the gift of beautiful fabric or simply dig through your recycling bin to find paper to cover a gift.  I guarantee your gift will stand out from the rest!

 


Furoshiki is a type of traditional Japanese wrapping cloth

 

Skip the ribbon, skip the bow! These items are difficult to reuse and uncommon to keep. Check out Emily’s gift below!

Secret Santa 12.16 (9)
Education Manager, Emily, wrapped chocolates in a personalized reusable napkin.

All in all, try to hold on to gift wrapping items or opt out of using items that are hard to reuse and you’ll be on the path to creating less waste in no time! For recycling options, check out our one-stop database, www.WasteFreeSD.org! 

Happy Holidays from the ILACSD staff! Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest for other creative zero waste ideas!

 

ILACSD Debuts Zero Waste Workshops

Emily_team15
Emily Nelson, Education Manager

Thanks to the generous support of the City of Encinitas and Healthy Day Partners, I Love A Clean San Diego is currently providing free adult workshops as part of our Sustainable Living Series. After a successful kick-off in November, we’re looking forward to our upcoming workshops in January and February. Read on to learn more!

As a San Diego native, I’ve always taken pride in how our community members rally together during a time of need. Most recently, San Diegans responded impressively to our drought crisis. Between June and August of this year, San Diego county residents decreased their water usage by 27%. We’ve all worked together to take shorter showers and limit our irrigation frequency, but is there more we could be doing?

10.7.15 - SLS (33)At our first Sustainable Living Series workshop – What to Know about H2O – I Love A Clean San Diego staff set out to tackle that very question. After reviewing the history of water in San Diego, participants rolled up their sleeves and dug into our repurposed planter activity. Using items salvaged from Goodwill as pots, we planted succulents, saving water and saving items from the landfill in one fell swoop.

Following a tour of the Ocean Knoll Farm, the site of the Sustainable Living Series workshops, our educators discussed the benefits of selecting native plants as part of your outdoor landscape design. We demonstrated water-wise irrigation options, exploring the benefits of backyard rain barrels and detailing the process of installing a Laundry to Landscape greywater system. Our youngest participants got to “bling their bucket” with reminders of how to conserve water in their home.

Thanks to generous donations from Walter Andersen Nursery in Point Loma and Home Depot in Encinitas, we raffled off a rain barrel and 10 native plants, among other items. Everyone walked away with something to set them on the path to living more a more sustainable life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce0_SXGPUvk]

Join us for our upcoming zero waste workshops: Zero Waste Home on Saturday January 9th and Zero Waste Lifestyle on February 20th, offered at no cost to you!  

Zero-Waste-Home-Workshop
Click the image to register!

Visit www.cleansd.org/e_community.php for more information and to register.

 

Black Mtn. Ranch beautified after last year’s wildfires

On Saturday, December 5, I Love A Clean San Diego closed out its 2015 cleanups with a volunteer project and guided nature walk at Black Mountain Ranch Open Space in the 4S Ranch neighborhood.  More than 200 volunteers from the community came out to beautify this natural area, which had been badly damaged by wildfires in 2014.

In just 3 hours, volunteers filled a 40-yard dumpster with things like furniture, exercise equipment, and metal drums—all while learning about the native and non-native plants that grow right in their backyards. Check out these photos from the event.

SONY DSC

Safety first! Our team kicked off the event with a presentation on how trash can travel from this neighborhood out to the coast, local recycling rules, and safety reminders for the cleanup.

SONY DSC

This girl scout knows the importance of picking up small pieces of litter, which animals often mistake for food.

SONY DSC

Our Executive Director, Pauline Martinson, and long-serving board member, Bill Haines, joined forces with our volunteers to beautify the area.

SONY DSC

Our Education Manager, Emily Nelson, and Clean Committee member, Andrew Heath, led a group on a nature walk of the area. The volunteers used field guides to help them identify native and non-native plants. They saw a coyote, too!

SONY DSC

Farther down the trail, some young volunteers helped load bulky items into our truck, which we used to shuttle trash to the dumpster.IMG_2352

Tiny trash is important to pick up, but of course the big stuff matters, too! A team effort helped pull this old fridge out of the ravine.IMG_2363

Two of our board members, Vince Reardon and Michael Page, got their hands dirty alongside our Program Assistant, Vince Rivas, and volunteer Stan Nelson. This is their last haul of debris before calling it quits for the day.

Special thanks to the 4S Ranch-Del Sur Community Foundation for providing the funding to host this project and educate the community about caring for our environment!

Visit CleanSD.org for more information about upcoming 2016 events!

Sustainable Holiday Travels

Today’s blog comes from our Marketing Intern, Khadija! Lots of us will be traveling out of town, the state or perhaps, even the country this holiday season. When we travel it’s easy to rack up a lot of unnecessary waste. Read on to learn Khadija’s sustainable traveling tips!

Packing:

Whenever I fly my shampoo bottle always springs a leak. To prevent this, store all your toiletries in a reusable Tupperware container instead of disposable bags! It will save you the mess and keep all your toiletries in one place without generating extra waste. Extra tip: if you’re taking your toiletries in a carry-on use a clear container so TSA can easily identify what is in your luggage. Fewer headaches for you and them.

Flying:

Use E-tickets! Many airlines and the TSA allow you to have your ticket confirmation on your phone. This saves you the hassle of keeping track of an important piece of paper and reduces your paper waste. Just make sure your phone is charged!

Before you go through security, drink the last of any water left in your reusable water bottle. Filled water bottles aren’t allowed through security, however, you can pack an empty reusable water bottle. Once you’re past security, you can refill it. On the airplane, ask the flight attendant to fill it up. This reduces your use of disposable water bottles and you won’t have to worry about whether or not it will be recycled.

When you arrive:

Eat locally! Whether it’s a home cooked meal or abroad, you can get the best experience when you eat like the locals. When going abroad, each country usually has typical meals and the reason they are so popular is because the food is usually grown or raised in the country. For example, in Costa Rica eating comida tipica (beans, rice and either chicken or fish) is common with the locals and as a tourist to get the full experience you should try it as well. When you eat locally, you support local families and the nearby farmers. 

khadija travel blog (2)We were lucky enough to stumble upon a tour company that supports ecotourism and sustainability. The tour company donates to preserving the rain forest from a portion of the money they make off of us tourists. Use your purchasing power to choose an eco-conscious company to ensure that future generations can visit the place that you just did!

Last but not least, use public transportation – it’s about 100 times cheaper than taxis and keeps your carbon footprint low.

Not ready to drastically change your traveling routine? Start small. You’ll be surprised by how easy it can be to travel with less waste.

Happy holidays and safe travels!