Our Bin: How It All Started
Throughout our lives, Krista and I have been interested in the natural world around us. From an early age, growing up in the Latvian countryside, Krista would pick up litter on her morning walk to school, go on summer and autumn forages for wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca) and various mushrooms, later on enroll herself in a Countryside Management college course, when arriving to Scotland. The country where we would meet and become friends. As for myself, growing up on a large forestry estate in the Highlands of Scotland, I roamed the hills and hit my father with a bamboo cane whenever he put out a mouse or mole trap!
A few days before leaving Scotland and what would become the start of our current long term travels, we stumbled upon a video called “30 days of wearing my trash”. This would be the first in many video’s we would watch by the great modern pioneer of dumpster diving and near zero waste living, Rob Greenfield, from Wisconsin, USA! We found him whilst looking around the internet for conservation videos. What we didn’t know then, was that the Trash Man alongside with other inspirational videos we watched and then people we met during our journey, would have a profound effect on us and would soon change our cycling and lifestyle forever.
On route to Iceland May/2017. We got talking about the teaching of Rob Greenfield and the colossal waste production of the modern person. We knew landfill was obviously bad and recycling was not the answer to the waste problem. So we decided to see just how much waste we could reduce ourselves! Krista and I were going to try to buy items with recyclable packaging or even better NO packaging at all, like fruit and veg, whenever possible.
In Iceland this was not too hard because their recycling program is very good. They even recycle things like Clingfilm and tin foil. When we were unable to purchase something with UN-recyclable packaging, we would clean it and keep it! And so therefore starting Our Bin. The rubbish of ours would no doubt grow as time went on, but could we keep our waste production to a minimum.
Being on a bike would make us more cautious when buying packaged food and things we needed, as we had limited carrying capacity on our bicycles. The last thing we wanted was a full pannier of just plastics and non-reusable waste. Although setting this challenge for ourselves whilst traveling was going to make us more careful, it would also help being on a bike, since we don’t need to buy most household items like washing powder/liquid, cooking oils and BIN BAGS! We have also learnt along the way, since coming to the USA, that we no longer need to use soaps, shampoo or even buy toothpaste. And no we don’t smell! These things all cause waste and are, or can be harmful to us and the environment around us. Instead we make our own shampoo when needed and toothpaste using only edible ingredients.
Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose & then if you have to - Recycle!
