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.

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!

Clean Fairfax is committed to the 5 R’s of sustainability — refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. Each method has its own purpose and place in the sustainability toolkit. Together, they comprise a way of living that is increasingly being referred to as “zero waste.”  Ideally, zero waste means not creating any waste at all, but more practically, zero waste is a lifestyle in which one adopts steps toward reducing personal waste and minimizing environmental impact. It’s incredibly difficult to achieve a truly zero waste lifestyle, but it’s the effort that makes someone a zero waste aficionado.

Are you interested in joining the zero waste movement? There’s a ton of information on the subject — some of it good and some not so good. We recommend you begin with Reddit’s ZeroWaste sub-reddit. This community is 55,000 people strong and covers just about everything under the umbrella of sustainability. Looking for a one-stop-shop? ZeroWaste’s How Do I Get Started will show you the ropes. Good luck!

In 2018, people understand the need to recycle. We understand that sustainability is important and that rapid change is needed, but little headway has been made. Why is change so difficult? Why do we still litter and refuse to recycle?

The HuffPost explores this phenomenon in the article “The Psychology Behind Why People Don’t Recycle”. In this article, Brian Iacoviello, an assistant psychiatry professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City states, “Recycling is a behavior, much like exercising or eating healthily, people often engage in this behavior less than they should”.

According to a 2011 Ipsos Public Affairs survey, “only half of adults recycle every day, a third tend to recycle less frequently, while 13% admit that they never recycle”. Although there are barriers to recycling in various communities and among different demographics, it doesn’t explain why people don’t make a stronger effort to recycle. Let’s explore a few common reasons for not recycling, and discuss remedies for said attitudes:

“It’s not accessible or it’s inconvenient”

Recycling doesn’t require too much time. We all live busy lives but taking the time to recycle can help make a change. Fairfax County provides a straightforward system for recycling pick up.

Some local governments don’t have a pick up for recycling. We encourage you to talk with your local government to see if a recycling program can be started. You can also research outside programs to see if there is a recycling program in your area.

“I’m not sure what to recycle”

This can be tricky for certain products that don’t fit into a certain category. Fairfax County provides a fantastic guide to figure out what should be recycled and what should be put into the trash. (http://www.fairfaxva.gov/government/public-works/operations-division/refuse-recycling/recycling-guide)

As you recycle, make sure that the products you are recycling are clean and without food residue. Products that aren’t sufficiently clean take more energy to recycle. 

“It won’t make a difference”

Recycling has been proven to save energy, reduce landfills, preserve resources, protect wildlife and help with climate change issues. By taking a brief moment out of your day to recycle, you are making a difference in the world.

You don’t have to make a drastic change in your life to help our planet. Being a little more environmentally cautious can make a drastic change in our environment and our everyday life.

Do you like fresh vegetables? Do you like to support local farmers? Sign up for a local CSA program! Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs are simple: members pay a set weekly or monthly fee in advance for shares of a local farm’s produce, which is delivered to your door or a nearby pick-up location. It’s basically a more sustainable version of Blue Apron!

Below we’ve listed five local CSAs that serve Fairfax County. You can find additional CSAs using this interactive map of CSA programs in the DC Metro area that Washington Post put together. Note that it was created in 2015 so it may not be completely up-to-date.

4P Foods

Vegetables sourced from various local farms in the DMV. Sign up here.

Star Hollow Farm

Vegetables sourced from farm in Three Springs, PA (100 miles from DMV). Sign up here.

From The Farmer

Vegetables sourced from various local farms in the DMV. Includes easy to use app. Sign up here.

Shallowbrooke Farm

Vegetables sourced from farm in Boyce, VA. Sign up here.

Potomac Vegetable Farms

Vegetables sourced from farms in Vienna and Purcellville, VA. Sign up here.

Clean Fairfax Council would like to welcome its newest team member, Sam Raasch! Sam is a northern Virginian, born and raised, and a graduate of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University. He is passionate about science communication and engaging the public in conservation efforts. Before landing at Clean Fairfax, Sam worked in various natural resource conservation roles at Virginia Tech, New York University, World Resources Institute and the US Forest Service.

But more importantly, Sam is an associate of the infamous Litterati. What’s the Litterati, you may ask? Why, it’s a mobile app that uses crowdsourcing to identify, map, and collect the litter we pick up as a community. It’s a simple but formidable concept that can change the way litter reduction is researched and resolved.

Any time Sam sees a piece of trash, he opens the Litterati app, snaps a quick photo, and the app applies a GPS coordinate, classifies the type of trash and uploads it to a map. Why is this useful? First and foremost, Sam finally has an easy, effective way to alert authorities about local litter hotspots, and consequently, local authorities better understand their municipality’s waste management needs. Furthermore, the data can be used to put pressure on businesses that are not focused on sustainability! Perhaps Sam’s favorite taco shop gives far too many hot sauce packets per order and the packets are ending up in the local stream. Sam’s a nice guy but he might be forced to use his finely tuned Litterati skills of persuasion to show them, using the app, that their sauce packets are ending up in the wrong places!

Litterati is one of the most recent efforts to crowd-source data collection for science, but we’ve seen several other great examples of technology that inspires conservation. The app iNaturalist, essentially a real-life version of Pokemon Go, allows citizens to take photos of local flora and fauna and share the data with scientists. In 2012, 150 tons of plastic pellets spilled from a container ship directly off the shores of Hong Kong during a severe typhoon. A citizen then created a geo-tagging app to track the various locations of the spill, and residents used the app to begin the cleanup effort.

If you’re interested in being part of litter reduction in Fairfax County but don’t have the time to organize a stream cleanup, download Litterati (https://www.litterati.org/)! Help our county clean itself, one photo at a time.

P.S. — Litterati is currently in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to continue improving the app.

While much of our attention has been on the environmental toll of single-use plastics, glass recycling is also an important part of the solid waste management picture. As the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services points out, glass is produced by sand, the most consumed natural resource after air and water.

Recycling glass reduces the need to buy or mine more gravel and sand.

Recycling glass in Fairfax County where we have single-stream recycling, meaning that all recyclables can go into one bin, should be a “no brainer.” There is, however, more to glass recycling than meets the eye.  There are two options for what to do with glass that both residential and commercial establishments can consider.

The first option is to recycle the glass into the curbside recycle bin. A few words of caution here: While all colors of bottles and jars are accepted, and metal lids and paper labels can be left on, windows, mirrors, and glass and pottery dishes cannot be put in the regular recycle bin. Windows and mirrors should be taken to the I-66 Transfer Station or I-95 Landfill Complex for disposal.  Contrary to popular belief, broken glass can be put into the recycling bin.

There is a second option for recycling glass that keeps this resource local: Fairfax County is hoping to encourage glass recycling with a new pilot program designed to turn glass into gravel and sand that can be used locally. Source- or color-separated glass can be brought to the I-66 Transfer Station or the I-95 Landfill Complex where special machinery has been installed. The end products can be used in landscaping, construction projects, and even remanufactured into new glass.

Commercial establishments currently are required only to recycle their cardboard. Consider the number of bottles thrown away by a typical restaurant that serves alcohol— think beer, wine, and liquor bottles. By partnering with the County, glass becomes a valuable local resource.

America Recycles Day is November 15. Do the right thing: recycle your glass and encourage your local restaurants to do the same!

We’ve all been there: We get home from work and see cardboard boxes amassed in front of our door, often with the familiar “smiling” arrow pointing from the A to the Z in “Amazon.” Some are enormous and others more brick-sized. We vaguely recall the late night shopping binge a few days back.

Or we are cleaning up that pile of empty pizza boxes left from last night’s party. Or that cereal box left with three remaining flakes on the breakfast table. Or pondering the giant box left over from the new appliance delivery. And, of course, if you have moved recently, a herd of empty boxes awaits you.

So what can you do with all that cardboard?

The first stop is to see if you can reuse the cardboard for shipping or storage, to line garden beds and prevent weeds, or even to create a fun playhouse for your child or pet. Or, this time of year, cardboard boxes make great costumes that can often be recycled afterwards.

If it can’t be reused, you can do your part to support environmental sustainability and put it in the recycling bin. According to Earth911, recycling cardboard uses only 75% of the energy used to make new cardboard. It also lessens the emission of sulfur dioxide produced when making pulp from trees. Finally, it saves trees—about 17 trees for every ton. (EPA)

Proper Cardboard Recycling:

Any type of cardboard can be recycled: cereal boxes, packaging boxes, frozen food boxes, egg cartons, shoe boxes, pizza boxes that are fairly clean (see below), milk cartons (rinsed out), and even the cardboard backing on plastic “blister” packs

Collapse the box:  Boxes that aren’t fully flattened are much more difficult to transport and present problems for mechanisms in the cardboard recycling process.

Don’t worry about the tape: It is helpful if you can remove the tape, but according to Recycle Works, the recycling process of corrugated boxes involves churning it up with water to make a slurry. In this process, tape and paper labels will rise to the top and be skimmed off before the final product is sent to final buyers.

Only recycle cardboard that is clean: A small amount of food residue is acceptable, but large amounts of grease or cheese left in a pizza box, for example, can cause problems at the processing center.

Another option is to avoid cardboard in the first place and use a reusable. For example, the average move uses about 60 cardboard boxes. Companies that provide reusable moving boxes in this area include Bungobox and Lend a Box.  For an interesting take on the value of reusable moving boxes, check out http://coastalvanlines.com/reusable-moving-boxes-alternative-cardboard-moving-boxes/

Recycling cardboard is a great way to go green without much effort!

America Recycles Day is November 15 this year. Do your part!