The Zero-Waste Lifestyle: Live Well by Throwing Away Less

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Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed, Dec 26, 2012 - House & Home - 272 pages

A practical guide to generating less waste, featuring meaningful and achievable strategies from the blogger behind The Green Garbage Project, a yearlong experiment in living garbage-free.

Trash is a big, dirty problem. The average American tosses out nearly 2,000 pounds of garbage every year that piles up in landfills and threatens our air and water quality. You do your part to reduce, reuse, and recycle, but is it enough? 

In The Zero-Waste Lifestyle, Amy Korst shows you how to lead a healthier, happier, and more sustainable life by generating less garbage. Drawing from lessons she learned during a yearlong experiment in zero-waste living, Amy outlines hundreds of easy ideas—from the simple to the radical—for consuming and throwing away less, with low-impact tips on the best ways to:
•  Buy eggs from a local farm instead of the grocery store
•  Start a worm bin for composting
•  Grow your own loofah sponges and mix up eco-friendly cleaning solutions
•  Purchase gently used items and donate them when you’re finished
•  Shop the bulk aisle and keep reusable bags in your purse or car
•  Bring your own containers for take-out or restaurant leftovers
 
By eliminating unnecessary items in every aspect of your life, these meaningful and achievable strategies will help you save time and money, support local businesses, decrease litter, reduce your toxic exposure, eat well, become more self-sufficient, and preserve the planet for future generations.

From inside the book

Contents

Trash Trash Everywhere
1
GETTING STARTED
13
A Trashed Planet
14
Planning to Go Waste Free
21
3
25
Reduce and Reuse
46
Recycle 5
48
Organic Waste
81
ZeroWaste Kids
171
ZeroWaste Travel
183
The ZeroWaste Workplace
201
ZeroWaste Holidays and Special Occasions
207
NEXT STEPS
229
The Global ZeroWaste Movement
230
Epilogue
241
An AtoZ Guide to Recycling Just About Anything
248

TRASHFREE CHALLENGES 105 6
105
The ZeroWaste Kitchen
106
7
130
The ZeroWaste Bathroom
132
8
135
The ZeroWaste Bedroom
155
ZeroWaste Cleaning
162
10
167

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About the author (2012)

AMY KORST is a teacher and blogger who launched www.greengarbageproject.com along with her husband to chronicle their experiment in living a zero-waste lifestyle. She has been featured on CNN and in USA Today and the Guardian, among others. Amy has a Master Recycler certificate and is a frequent speaker for local environmental organizations. She lives in Pacific City, Oregon.

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