NO NO for spam – YES YES for the environment

In this blogpost I will explain how to get rid of paper-based spam in an environmental friendly way for anyone living in Holland.

So, spam. We all get those annoying unsolicited emails – luckily I haven’t been seeing any of those as my spam filters are really good at getting rid of them. But real life spam, well, that’s kind of in your face. You know, all that stuff you don’t need and yet gets shoved into your mailbox over and over. Advertising brochures, newspapers, you name it. A clutter of stuff amongst which you ought to fish out potentially important documents you might be expecting.

And while electronic spam can just be easily filtered out and deleted, paper-based spam has to be printed, then distributed, only to then be maaaaaybe read a bit but for sure to be thrown away quite quickly, regardless of whether it’s read or not. According to the Milieu Centraal,

an average household in Holland receives approx. 66 kgs of unsolicited brochures and newspapers a year.

Yikes. It’s true though, this is the 3kg stack I have collected in about 3 weeks:

In the same article they also say that 30% of households throw things away without reading. Another yikes. That seems pretty wasteful. So basically it’s a pile of unnecessarily printed papers. And I don’t even dare to imagine the % that isn’t disposed of correctly (paper goes in paper recycling, but only after you take off the plastic wrapping…).

However, there is a solution! A spam filter for your mail does exist!

The answer has been in front of you all along. Those with an eye for detail might have already spotted it above on the first picture that there are some well-groomed mailboxes in between the ones that are vomiting out spam. Their secret? It’s the wonderful NO NO sticker depicted below which acts as spam filter for your real-life mailbox. The first NO is about advertising brochures without specifically being addressed to you, and the second NO is about house-to-house newspapers – I guess in case you are an expat in Holland and don’t plan to learn Dutch from a magazine this is something you really don’t need in your life. But it’s available in a NO YES option too, just in case you wonder.

I bet now you’re thinking: ‘Ok great, so I won’t have to go through all the unsolicited mail, but it still gets printed and thrown away somewhere else… so where does the real environmental value come in?’ Well, I have good news for you. This is the best part in the whole thing, because what happens is that the producers of these papers are updated with the number of addresses that have these stickers, and will decrease production accordingly. So basically,

the more stickers are put up, the less paper-spam will be produced.

A-ma-zing. Intrigued? Wanna get a sticker for yourself? Here’s how:

1. either walk into your Gemeente and pick up one for free – more info in Dutch here
   

2. or for the lazy internet people you can just order one online for example here

Mine just arrived today! I am saying NO NO to spam, and YES YES to the environment! Bonus point: this will also massively cut down on the frequency with which I need to empty my paper recycling bin 🙂

 

Who you gonna buy from?

Being environmental friendly in your daily life is hard. Since most of the products are not optimized for this, you need to pay double attention all throughout. This means being conscious about what you buy, where it’s from, how it’s made… And then figuring out where it goes, how to recycle it… It’s time consuming and an exhausting mental effort.

That’s why I always welcome whenever I find a company or product that employs favorable practices in this regard – like this I can switch off the sustainability-alert mode at least for a bit, at least for the time while I am buying products from them. Because someone else has already done the job of figuring out the environmental aspect of the product and I don’t have to worry about it (that much).

I have made a new discovery in this regard with the cosmetics of Lush – I just recently got a whole package of stuff from my former colleagues (yay to them! 🙂 ). I must say, I’m not big on cosmetics in general, and having a sensitive skin has already drove me couple years ago to utilize as little as possible from the simpler options available on the market. However, I have not yet managed to eliminate the plastic waste created from these toiletries, so I was delighted to see this program from Lush that promotes recycling:

Not only do they use 100% recycled materials for their packagings, but they even involve the customer in the process. You not only get to participate in a more sustainable practice, you even get stuff for free! Clever and awesome!

I didn’t know this about them, and this definitely makes me more enticed to use their products. We have to remember that in today’s economy, we vote on a daily basis for companies, practices and ideas – by purchasing their products. We vote with our money. Anything you buy, supports a business. So it’s good if you think twice who you gonna vote for/buy from today!

Shop ‘n’ Swap! – Recycling clothes

 

Until now I have attempted at covering some common aspects of dealing with household trash in a sustainable way. This included the mention of my fabulous bins with which I separate recyclables such as glass, paper and plastic from the ‘rest’. I did however, leave out one more recyclable material, and today’s blog post is exactly about that: textiles. And within that, let’s focus on the biggest pile: the pile of clothes.

So yes, clothes. Products of the fashion industry. One of those industries I know very little of on the ‘buying’ or ‘consuming’ end – as I really do not enjoy shopping and have quite a limited understanding of fashion. However, although I might be fairly ignorant towards the fashion trends, I can’t NOT realise that others aren’t, and in fact, it’s a massive industry. And with that comes unfortunately also the fact that it’s massively  wasteful. I mean, look at this chart:

For my fellow Europeans, this means that the average American throws away 30 kgs of clothes every year. I can’t even grasp that frankly, so by using some magic (Google & Math) I translated that into human terms by assigning actual clothing items to the weight. So that would mean throwing away for example a pile of:

20 t-shirts = 9 kg
20 jeans = 8 kg
20 sweaters = 8 kg
20 pieces of underwear = 1,1 kg
20 pairs of socks = 1.2 kg
2 coats = 3 kg

I felt like going even further on making this tangible, so I attempted at simulating this by actually getting my stuff out from the closet and compiling the pile (hah). I had to cheat a bit though, because I do not own 20 pairs of jeans (or pants for that matter), so I had to fill the gap up with long-sleeved t-shirts instead, but it should be about right.

Hm, yeah. That’s literally about half of my wardrobe. It took me several years to even obtain this collection, let alone to throw it away.. That will probably take me another 1o years. And they say a lot of this is in absolutely usable condition when it’s thrown away. I can’t even.. Eh. It’s just.. mind boggling.

In the light of this, as much as I don’t care about fashion, I do care about how others deal with it. Hence I’m attempting at spreading the word about some more sustainable practices about disposing of clothing. Practices that anybody who is to any degree having any business with the fashion industry – if you wear clothes at all, which I sure hope you do, then this is about you –  could easily implement into their lives. So here goes.

First and foremost, just because you don’t like/want/wear a certain piece of clothing anymore, does NOT mean someone else wouldn’t like/want/wear that. And there are several things you can do about this.

1. The Clothes Swap

Give clothes away to friends!

The most sociable and my personal favourite option is inviting a bunch of your friends over for a clothes swap. You basically ask them to come over to bring stuff they don’t want, and you have them go through your unwanted items. You match supply with demand, and it works out pretty well – you’d be surprised how many matches are made in events like this. I’ve had several of these events in my life in different countries. It’s a great initiative that will end up not only in you finally tidying up your wardrobe, but you’ll end up having a fun fashion show at your place, and last but not least, it creates a fun bond. Me and my friends still have to smile whenever we recognise some of the clothes on each other. Also, if you are a compulsive shopper and feel guilty about it, you’ll find quite some joy in redressing some of your fellow girls (or boys) who hate shopping (like me). A friend of mine felt so relieved after ‘getting rid of’ the heaps of unused stuff lying around in her room this way.

2. Second Hand shops

Sell clothes to strangers!

If you are lacking friends who share your taste – or your pants size – you might want to look into broadening your audience. In case your clothes aren’t the cheapest and are in good condition – maybe you’ve never even worn them – you can just try to sell them for example in facebook groups like this and this. You can also try marktplaats. Or, if you don’t want to go through the hassle of taking pictures, uploading, and waiting for responses, just drop them off by a second hand shop. I’ve done that myself several times for example at Zora, and ended up even making some money with it! On top of supporting the environment by re-using, supporting a small local business, and making someone happy with cheap clothes. It’s a win-win for everyone involved really.

 

3. Charity and Recycling

Give clothes away to strangers!

If none of the above works for you, because you don’t have the time, the nerves, or simply because your clothes aren’t in good shape anymore, then this solution is for you! Just take it to a charity/recycling bin. Any clothing, even if it’s broken (yes, really!) can and should be disposed of in the dedicated textile bins. To find out where the nearest one to your home is, check this map. Depending on their condition, clothes and household textiles delivered here in closed plastic bags can either be donated to charity, or recycled.

 

These are the things I wanted to share about the topic for now. Of course there are other ways to deal with your textile waste, some in between the ones I mentioned, like for example you could probably try selling your clothes to your friends, make an auction, take it to a homeless shelter, etc. Be creative. The point is, just don’t let your clothes end up here:

They can surely do better than rotting on a landfill for a couple decades.