We recently met the outreach coordinator of a local foodbank and she wanted to know how she could help her foodbank lower their environmental footprint. She invited us out to see the foodbank and the first thing we noticed was the incredible work they are doing for their community. They provide food and household products which can’t be purchased with food stamps to food insecure families every month. Their foodbank is set up like a grocery store allowing customers to shop as they would in a grocery store. During the previous month alone, the foodbank distributed 3,047 plastic bags to hold the products they make available to community members. We immediately realized the significant opportunity this provided us to make a lasting difference in the community and set out to find an alternative.

To provide families with a strong, viable alternative that allowed them to participate in the broader waste reduction movement, we bought the foodbank 3,000 reusable shopping bags, with a simple message on the bags, “Fill Me Up, Bring Me Back, I’m Reusable!”. The foodbank is going to keep track of how many bags are brought back every month, and our hope is to see at least half of the bags make repeat appearances at the facility. If 1,500 of these bags come back every month, that would equate to a total of 18,000 single use plastic bags that do not go into circulation over the course of a twelve-month period. Our goal is to minimize single use plastic and we are excited to have enthusiastic partners embark with us on this pilot program.

Clean Fairfax strives to support clean water in Fairfax County through various programs such as our Clean Streams Initiative and our Farmers Market sustainability initiative. People often ask us, “what can we do to help?” This holiday season, we’re recommending two ways in which you can give back to the community and support clean water too!

1. Sign this petition, which calls for residents to let the EPA know that we support the Clean Water Act in all its glory! This petition is coordinated by the Choose Clean Water Coalition, a group of conservation non-profits that have banded together to make our voices heard!
2. Check out Litter Free Virginia, which is a coalition of organizations and people that are interested in litter legislation in that state of Virginia. Click on this blog post to learn more!

You’ll see plenty of buying guides in the next month. We encourage you to shop thoughtfully, considering where things come from and how they get to you. We do not get any benefit from you shopping from this list. These are simply ideas we have and products we use and like. If you’re a local business with sustainable gifts, email us and we might add you to this list!

Above all, we hope your holidays (however you define them) are full of all the things you value—friends, family, food, and fun.

The Gift of Time
One of the best gifts you can give—yourself. If you have an elderly parent, relative, neighbor or friend, they don’t want more STUFF. They would love it if you came over more often to play a board game or to chat over tea. Or perhaps to help clean out their garage, to rake and compost their leaves, or to plant their garden for them in the springtime. Or maybe there’s a young family on the block with kids who would love to learn to bake, or make a bird house or grow tomatoes. When you give the gift of yourself, it is two gifts—one for them, and one for you!

Secondhand Books
Used books have a kind of mystique to them that people love! If it’s secondhand, it’s intriguing to wonder where the book has traveled, who originally bought it and with what purpose. If it’s from your own collection, add a note about what it means to you. We especially encourage circular economies like this — buy from a local used bookstore, or if this isn’t possible, Amazon sells used versions of all books. We should also note that most used bookstores have gift cards as well!

Soap Nuts & Dryer Balls
Interesting names…. great products! Soap nuts are natural and reusable laundry soap. They really do work. Dryer balls, made from 100% wool, replace dryer sheets (which are coated with chemicals and are typically made from plastic microfibers.) A few drops of essential oil (all-natural, high quality) will allow the dryer balls to act as a fabric refresher too, if that’s important to you!

Support Local Farms
Want to support local food production? Whitehall Farms, in Clifton, sells CSA shares and local products at its on-site market. We also highly suggest you visit!

Reusable Produce Bags
Reusable produce bags are a good way to decrease plastic bag usage from your weekly shopping trips. As you well know, we aren’t big fans of plastic.

The Gift of Good Health
Fairfax County Rec Centers have many locations near you and they would love for you to give a gift certificate for a membership or classes.

Meal Subscriptions
Although we’re highly skeptical of meal subscriptions, Sunbasket rises above the rest. Sunbasket has many food options, their meals are certified organic and they pack all items in 100% sustainable packaging that is recyclable and/or compostable. If you have a friend or a sibling who just works/commutes TOO MUCH and you worry that they aren’t eating well, consider a Sunbasket membership.

Mighty Nest
For $12 a month, you can get a new sustainable, environmentally conscientious product to try. Items in the past have included beeswax wrap to replace plastic wrap, silicone toppers (again to replace plastic wrap), reusable sandwich bags, all-natural laundry soap, stainless steel bento boxes, refillable dental floss in a glass tube and more. All items come with minimal paper packaging and no plastic. They also have a good selection of healthy home products to help get you to zero waste.

Seabags
Seabags is a company out of Maine that makes bags and totes that are made from old sailboat sails. They have a shop in Annapolis if you want to go see them in person. The bucket bags are a favorite and are perfect project bags for knitting, or lunch, or shower caddy!

Adapted from Sustainable DC’s wonderful newsletter

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, meal planning and preparation is in full swing. You’ve spent the entire year cutting down on plastic, eating less meat, and conserving water — and now Thanksgiving presents a great opportunity to put another feather in your sustainability cap. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans discarded an equivalent of over 6 million turkeys last year. That figure doesn’t include all the stuffing and mashed potatoes that might end up going bad in the back of your refrigerator days after the feast.

While Thanksgiving is a time to indulge (or to run a local turkey trot), it’s also important to be thoughtful about the amount of food needed for the meal and leftovers. Being mindful of how much food you’re making doesn’t have to cut into your holiday traditions. With a little advance planning and a few Turkey Day tactics under your apron, here’s how you can have your turkey and eat it too, all while still avoiding food waste.

Determine how much of each ingredient you really need

Before heading to the grocery store, make a list of the items you need and do your best to stick to it. Along with cutting down on food waste, you’ll also save money. A typical four-person family in the U.S. wastes $1,500 each year on food they end up throwing away.  A nifty new tool from nonprofit Save the Food, called the “Guest-imator,” can help you save time and money on groceries.

No turkey, no problem!

We know it might be a tradition, but if not all of your guests are into turkey this year, that’s ok. You might choose to bypass the turkey and still have a main dish everyone will eat! Vegetarian lasagna and sustainably-sourced fish are excellent alternatives.

The dish no one eats…let’s skip it

Let’s be honest with ourselves and take an inventory of what family members actually want to eat, not what has become tradition. If you tend to make a dish solely because it’s an annual tradition, consider making a smaller portion or cutting it out entirely this year.

Send guests home with (reusable) care packages

No matter how carefully you plan your feast, avoiding the faux-pas of serving too little food means you’re going to have at least a few leftovers. Don’t let them sit in the fridge too long. Make sure you’ve got a game plan and consider sending leftovers home in reusable containers with your guests.

Compost!

Remember to compost meatless leftovers (or leftovers with meat if you have access to industrial composting facilities… not exactly FFX’s strength).

Clean Fairfax is proud to introduce Litter Free Virginia, an initiative to fight for litter prevention legislation across the state of Virginia! At its core, Litter Free Virginia is a coalition of people and organizations (non-profits, businesses and more) that are frustrated with litter and waste management issues, and want to develop and support policies that help solve these problems. Clean Fairfax has long dreamed of coordinating a coalition that attacks litter at its source, and that day has finally come!

In its inaugural year, #LitterFreeVA will focus on legislation that decreases the use of single-use bags, especially plastic bags. This will likely take the form of a local-option bag fee of $0.05. In future years, this initiative will focus on other aspects of the litter issue. Don’t worry — we haven’t forgotten about bottles, cigarette butts, fast food containers, etc. But for 2019, it’s single-use bags.

While we’re hard at work developing good policy, you have a BIG part to play in #LitterFreeVA. Here are ways that you can contribute (full details found here):

• Document litter in your community – Do you regularly snag selfies? Do you take your avocado toast on a photoshoot before you dig in? If so, this may be the perfect task for you. We’ve spoken to legislators, and they need photographic proof of the litter issues we’re having. Consequently, a main focus this year is to document Virginia’s litter problems using the hashtag #LitterFreeVA. This is super easy. If you walk upon a littered area, take a photo, upload it to Twitter or Instagram, and tag us using #LitterFreeVA. We then collect these photos using a hashtag aggregator! Bonus points if you add location (including zip code if possible) as well as a bit of colorful (but positive) commentary. Want to see the photos we’ve collected thus far? Go to our front page and scroll down!
• Contact your representatives – Your local state senators and representatives have a lot to do. They can’t keep track of every issue, so it’s on you to let them know that this is an issue you care about! Click here to find your local rep’s contact information. Please note that representatives will only listen to their own constituents. Do not waste time contacting a rep that’s not your own. If you really want to put pressure on a representative outside your locality, convince citizens within that locality to contact their rep! For talking points and sample emails, please click here.

The website should help guide you every step of the way, but please contact us if you have any questions or if you are looking to become more involved in this initiative! A really easy way to keep up with what we’re doing is to sign up for email alerts. We promise never to spam you.

It can be difficult to see the good in this rough and tumble world of conservation. There are so many things that need improving, so many people that need help. But sometimes we need to stop and smell the roses. What roses, you say? Today’s rose is Fairfax County Public Works and Environmental Services, and especially Fairfax County Stormwater!

This fall, Fairfax County is being awarded a “Gold Level in Program Management” and “Silver Level in Innovation” by the Water Environment Federation. Managing stormwater is incredibly difficult for any municipality, and it is a thankless job. The only time anyone thinks about stormwater is when it’s in their yards or streets. We have been working with Stormwater for the past two years on outreach and education efforts and thoroughly enjoy our partnership. There’s always improving to do, but it’s important to recognize that Fairfax County has put together a dedicated and talented team to tackle these issues. Congratulations to the stormwater team and all the partners that help implement the county’s MS4 program!

Recycling can be… Complicated. Frustrating. Expletive inducing? Every city and county has a different set of recycling guidelines depending on infrastructure, haulers and local policy. This can create real confusion for citizens who are just trying to do good. In Fairfax County, we have a dozen or so haulers, all with their own requirements. That’s a lot of conflicting messages. We love Fairfax County Environment Facebook page’s effort to share what is and isn’t recyclable, but many residents aren’t serviced by the county. Our own website on recycling is, well, admittedly a bit lacking because of the complex nature of the issue. We’re working on it.

In our opinion, the best solution to this issue is probably a search plug-in that tells you if an item is recyclable after you enter the name of the item as well as which disposal company you use. This will take intensive ground-truthing and coordination, so please be patient while we develop that.

Until then, courtesy of Sally Carter (who has gone great lengths to figure this out), enjoy this awesome list of FFX County Recycling Guidelines! Note that it was assembled with guidance from the following sources:

• The county’s Public Works and Environmental Services’ Index of Residential Materials and the “The Fairfax Recycler” e-newsletter
• American Disposal Services’ Acceptable Recycling Materials and the information they share during tours of their facility in Manassas.

Also, a shout out to MOM’s and Whole Foods, both of which have wonderful recycling programs of their own.

We all do it, probably on a hourly/daily basis. There’s a fast food cup nestled on the bed of grass next to the sidewalk, or a Snickers wrapper blowing down the street towards the cul-de-sac. You shake your head disapprovingly, but walk by without picking it up. You think, “I’m not touching that — who knows where that piece of trash has been? Besides, it’s just a drop in the bucket.”

While we sympathize, we can’t stress this more: organized cleanups aren’t enough. They aren’t! Despite a burgeoning emphasis on a decreased use of plastics, displaced trash via littering or otherwise will continue to be a NoVA issue for the foreseeable future. And while cleanups (and education) are a good start, Clean Fairfax wants to encourage you to pick up that piece of litter as you walk to work, school or to the grocery store. This may seem like a endless and futile task, but every piece of trash counts. More importantly, you’re developing a social norm. When your neighbor sees you picking up that cup, they become more likely to do it too. If they see multiple people behaving this way, they become exponentially more likely to do so. If most Fairfax County residents picked trash up when they saw it, our streets and parks would be significantly better off!

Don’t forget to wash your hands afterwards. Don’t forget to schedule a cleanup with us if/when there’s too much litter for your two hands to carry! And finally, don’t forget to email us about habitually littered areas in your community so we can put it on our community map!

Clean Fairfax is excited to announce the development of our Community Map! Found on our website’s homepage, it displays local Fairfax County cleanups (hosted by Clean Fairfax or otherwise) as well as community events and markets. Our website typically garners thousands of unique views a month, and consequently, we believe that this will be a great way to get the word out about local conservation/sustainability education efforts! Please contact Clean Fairfax if you’d like your cleanup or event to be included on the map, or if you know of a litter problem area that we should be aware of! We’re happy to post anything that furthers the protection and restoration of our ecosystems.

Part of Clean Fairfax’s mission is to be a clearinghouse for environmental and sustainability information, and this map will help us better communicate to our audience. We often field questions about local volunteer opportunities, and this will serve as a way to quickly inform those interested. We’re especially interested in mapping the following:

• Cleanup opportunities
• Restoration opportunities
• Other environmental volunteer opportunities
• Local environmental events, including meetings, films, festivals and more!
• Litter hotspots that need attention
• Farmers’ markets, and perhaps other stores that go above and beyond concerning sustainability
• Anything else we haven’t yet thought of that the community finds important!

Do you have an upcoming event or community initiative that you want posted? Email us today!

The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore strives to create a cleaner and greener future. One of the ways they are accomplishing this is through their trusted friend Mr. Trash Wheel. The Inner Harbor Water Wheel, or “Mr. Trash Wheel,” utilizes old and new technologies to harness the power of water and sunlight to collect litter and debris flowing down the Jones Falls River. “The current of the river provides enough power to turn the wheel, which lifts the trash and debris from the water and deposits it into a dumpster barge. When there isn’t enough water current, a solar panel array provides additional power to keep the machine running. When the dumpster is full, it’s towed away by boat, and a new dumpster is put in place.” (Mr. Trash Wheel, 2018).

Mr. Trash Wheel is extremely popular and has a large following in the Baltimore area. With his personal Twitter account, Mr. Trash Wheel urges citizens to become a member of “The Order of the Wheel”, a secret society with the sole mission of freeing the world of trash. Mr. Trash Wheel allows the Waterfront Partnership to quantify the amount of trash flowing within the area, which makes it easier to show the extent of the pollution problem. Since the creation of Mr. Trash Wheel in 2014, he has picked up 638,262 plastic bottles, 9,391,600 cigarette butts, and 737,025 polystyrene containers. Mr. Trash Wheel has done wonders for the Baltimore community, and we can’t wait to see what else he will do.

Mr. Trash Wheel | Baltimore Waterfront. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/