#the non perishable groceries that have been on the counter... all day... and the laundry in the dryer...

[neonpigeons]

took me. over 4 hours to finally take out the garbage. but I did it. but now there's two other half finished tasks to finish :') I hate having a broken brain and body

[markswoman]

sucker | ml

“the hospitals are probably packed.”

mark shakes his head and points his chopsticks at the screen. “no, people usually don't go to the hospital this early in the game. especially if the symptoms are just flu-like.”

it's a game to mark, and that sends a quick shiver down your spine. you spill a bit of leftover noodle soup on your leg.

pairing | mark x reader | apocalypse!au | fluff + angst | 3.4k |

warnings: implied sex, description of illness, death

You and Mark start out with a stockpile of basic necessities.

You’re lucky—lucky that you’re a bit of a hoarder and keeps everything you have, often buying double or triple-sets of non-perishables.

You had heard about it through the Internet weeks ago, but more than half the news alerts you read don't amount to much of anything, so you ignored it. Mark, on the other hand, the more intuitively proactive, doesn't hear about it until it reaches television weeks later—television, radio, schools, and hospitals.

“You're lucky you didn't take that accelerated med-school program,” you say over a bowl of instant noodles. You’re curled up on the couch together with the evening news flashing through the apartment, a tradition you’d started since moving there about a year ago. Mark arrived home just in time to catch the end of the daily headlines and see the news for himself . “The hospitals are probably packed.”

Mark shakes his head and points his chopsticks at the screen. “No, people usually don't go to the hospital this early in the game. Especially not if the symptoms are just flu-like.”

It's a game to Mark; that sends a quick shiver down your spine. You spill a bit of leftover noodle soup on your leg.

–

You’ve been casually dating since college.

Mark likes to call it 'dating,' and you like to call it 'casually dating,' because you honestly don't spend much time together outside the apartment. “It's a good thing, too,” Mark adds while slipping on a jacket the next morning. “Because if we were out all the time, we'd be hospitalized and dead by now.”

You sigh and tsk and reluctantly swallow the truth in it. The television's been reporting hundreds of hospitalizations in the past couple of hours, and Mark's headed to work to bring back some office supplies and to tell his manager that he'll be out for the rest of the week. You look forward to it. “Your office is probably closed,” you offer, but Mark claims that he'd left his laptop in an unlocked drawer last night and needs it if he wants to work from home.

You’ve been casually dating since college, where you’d met senior year in a Tuesday Music History class required by the core curriculum; as the only two seniors, you and Mark sat with your arms and legs crossed in the back of the classroom taking turns dozing and supposedly listening to the lecture. You found out you lived on the same floor, and after walking in on him in the shower, it'd been pretty much impossible to avoid some sort of social interaction. Or, as you like to call it, 'casually dating.'

Love isn’t mentioned. But you mention it to make Mark squirm, and you don’t expect much of a positive reaction.

You close your email and long-outdated job-hunting windows and refresh the news until Mark comes back; the virus is the front page of every website, making a filling appetizer of the media before attacking the people, and you jump when your phone rings. It's Mark.

“The office is open today, and we're still going strong. So I won't be home for a while.”

“Sure,” you reply, an echo of how you’ve been replying to all of Mark's calls for the past couple of weeks. Months. Years, maybe.

“So,” Mark murmurs, but his sinking tone says that he doesn't have anything to follow up. You stay quiet, pressuring him—or, perhaps just avoiding the farewell. “I'll, I'll call.”

“If anything happens.”

“Yeah.”

Mark's voice sounds a thousand times more strained over the telephone, where you can't see him and the way he prefers to talk with his hands and his face and multiple, “You know what I mean instead of with words. Mark's never been linguistically adept, and you remember your own surprise when Mark had come home with a job offer and a salary a week after graduation.

It isn't just Mark's voice, though; it's the whole conversation. The way of going about mentioning casual afterthoughts; it’s a thousand times more strained over the telephone, where you don't know whether or not Mark's hung up. Mark snores at night but breathes soft during the day, and you, on the other hand, balance the telephone between your ear and your shoulder and huff right into the receiver; Mark used to tease you about the breathy, distorted messages you’d leave on Mark's voicemail. Mark used to tease you about a lot of things.

You hear the familiar voice of the recorded operator, telling you that you better hang up and get the fuck over Mark—or, rather, the harsh beeping that pretty much implies it.

–

Mark's office closes after about two weeks, and you smile with eyebrows arched in, feigning wry but expectant disappointment. You like to think you have decent control over your facial expressions, at least enough to fool Mark.

“Aren't you happy I'm home?” 

You eat dinner in the kitchen together that day, you leaning against one counter where Mark stands across from you, the television off for the first time in years after Mark had complained about it. You don't like change, but you like Mark.

“Do you want me to be happy?” You reply.

Mark nods, and maybe it's just the way his lips are pursed around his half-chewed food, nostrils flared for breathing, one chopstick still in his mouth, eyes large and intent, but Mark nods, and you see the Mark you’d fallen in lo—you’d lov— you’d been attracted to three years ago. You mention love to make Mark squirm; Mark doesn't mention it, and you never squirm. Mark doesn't mention it, so you never squirm.

“Sorry, I—”

“No, I'm happy.”

“Don't pretend to be happy,” Mark says, a hint of a whine in his voice, tossing the empty cup into the garbage bin. You laugh at the irony of it and push yourself off the counter. You move to take off Mark's coat—the black one that you bought together after hours of sifting through the extra large coats left on the clearance rack. It looks nice, though.

“Anyone infected at your work?” You ask.

Mark steps out of the sleeves. “Yeah, a few.”

“You're lying.”

Mark would always turn to you when he spoke because he feared a misunderstanding like the plague, pleading you to read his facial expressions. He'd turn away when you would bother him about finishing his paper, or when you would remind him to call his parents, or when he told you he'd never dated before. Mark hasn't lied to you for a while—Mark hasn't spoken to you for a while.

“Okay, a lot of people,” Mark says softly, turning around, and you smile.

“Maybe we should burn all your office clothes. For good measure.”

“I don't think that would help,” Mark says, reaching for a hanger through a quiet but long sigh. His voice goes low again, low and dull, and you take it upon yourself to think that you’ve done something to ruin the moment.

–

The advisory to stay indoors implies a demand to stay indoors after a few weeks. You notice when you’re dragging a few bags of garbage to the curb and the last of the cans on your street have vanished. The garbage smells a lot nicer, at least— You’ve been scraping every container empty to preserve food, though you and Mark are probably a lot better off than most of the people in the complex. The city can't issue a mandatory evacuation because there isn't anywhere to go, really, but about half of the neighbors are in the hospital either as victims or as family members, or, as Mark likes to say, “soon-to-be-victims.”

“You only say that because we're not infected yet,” you said, flipping through an old magazine on the couch. You’re supposed to get new issues weekly, but the postal service hasn't been operating either. “Be sensitive.”

Mark shrugs. “What's the death count?”

“Hundreds of thousands, at least. Stores are empty or closed. Shit's on sale. Economy sucks.”

Mark hasn't touched his office clothes for weeks, white shirts stiff and pressed, hanging to collect dust in the closet. And you kind of like it, hanging up Mark's hoodies and tees in the center of the rack and pushing the slacks off to the side after you do the laundry.

After a moment, Mark murmurs, “Want to go out?”

You look up.

“Like, shopping?”

“Like a date,” you said, your voice sliding into an embarrassingly high range, and Mark laughs.

–

You kiss when you close the front door and Mark tugs both your scarves off. Mark's lips are drier than you remember them being, but they still taste like him, salty in the corners and tinged with the slightest hint of blood, because Mark has a habit of picking at his lips. You drop the groceries to the floor and wrap your arms around Mark's neck, flinching when the cans roll toward the living area, but Mark holds you tight and has you pinned against the door. It's a struggle between Mark and the slightly neurotic side to you, so you end up ducking the last kiss and Mark's lips land somewhere between your nose and your cheek.

“The cans,” you breathe, and Mark blinks, then laughs.

“You don't change.”

Of course I don't, You do. Is what you want to say, but you slip from Mark's arms and into the living room. You’d only ended up buying more groceries and leaving the department stores closed and unguarded with a tense atmosphere lining the streets and doorways—people wanting to leave, to stock up, but being too afraid of the free-range air. Sidewalks had been deserted but felt packed, and with gallons of peanut butter and canned fish, you both rushed back to the apartment with a sort of surreal background chasing you both down every side-street. That, and Mark's sudden urge to kiss you through the obstructing scarves, but you can't say that you don’t appreciate it.

“I don't understand why you insisted on scarves in the middle of May—”

“Protection,” you insist, and Mark leans against the doorway.

“If it's going to get you, it's going to get you. There isn't much you can do to stop it.”

You carry the rest of the groceries to the pantry, which is now being somewhat contained in a pantry-cupboard area, but you want it to overflow again. It would give you some kind of security in a suspended, unprepared world. The last thing you want to do is die of starvation. “Look, I bought a bunch of face masks.”

“Don't tell me we're wearing those around the house.”

You hold your hands protectively over the boxes and hesitate. “Is the disease fatal?”

Mark nods. “Pretty much, yeah.”

It’s easy to be awfully calm about it. Because there isn't anything to shout at, nothing to fight, no antagonist, nowhere to put the blame; you pity the victims and put them in isolation and move on tip-toeing through the rest of the week, wondering who'll be the next to go. Sometimes, you panic to fit in, but there's no one left to imitate. And in an eerily quiet city that used to always be one day ahead of itself, there's not much you can do to effectively panic. Panicking is just part of a mob-mentality lifestyle that loses its attractiveness when there's no mob. You put your hand over Mark's. “Then, no. Let's not wear them.”

Mark doesn't get it and breathes out a sigh of relief, but you don't need him to get it.

–

Police issue a quarantine weeks later, giving the survivors a couple days to stock up before plastering the bright yellow warning tape over every church, grocery store, school, and office building still open—only the hospitals remain in operation, and you imagine a line of the sick, running through houses and city streets and public places, stretchers lying on the grass and nurses falling ill but working until they're on the floor, white-faced and heaving.

You flinch when Mark puts a hand on your shoulder.

“Are we going out again to get the last of the food?”

You sigh and rub your hands together, flipping through the two or three television channels that are still being run by substitute news-casters. “Bad organization on their part. All this is going to do is infect the rest of the city. Think about it, hundreds of people running through restaurants and waiting in food-lines, bringing whatever they can manage back home to their families, who will be in an isolated area with them for the next couple of weeks.”

“So instead of dying in the hospitals, they're—”

“Dying in their homes,” you finish, and Mark nods.

“So we're not going?”

You look up at Mark, whose eyes are wide and, not angry, more determined, eyebrows furrowed and large irises directed straight at you. It's been a while—a Mark that’s attentive and waiting for you with his feet together and rooted in one spot. It's been a while, a Mark who isn't waltzing through your legs and tripping you over spaces between the tiles and slipping through your fingers at every turn of a corner.

“Let's stay,” you say while leaning back into the couch, and Mark sits closer than he has in three years. During dinners, you’d balance your respective meals on opposing armrests and jerk your feet apart whenever they touched. During quarantine, Mark leans against you, your shoulders and arms and legs shared, dipping into the crack between cushions and fatal illnesses, waiting for something and waiting for nothing.

–

The world death toll is in the tens of millions, and you’re lying on the couch with a towel around your body after showering with Mark and having been hoisted up against the glass and fucked hard. Shower sex was something you teased each other on multiple occasions, but you’ve perfected the art, pointing the shower head toward the wall, and cool, smooth glass feels a lot better on your back than any sheets ever have.

You count your sins on one hand and your sayings on the other.

You’re having fucking shower sex when people are dying; your parents called you multiple times, and you haven’t answered. The calls have since stopped coming, and you’ve assumed the phone line went dead. (You’re too afraid to check.)

But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and part of you regrets that it'd taken a worldwide pandemic to drag Mark home from work and to force what you’d been too suspended, too unprepared to say. And part of you doesn't give a fuck, because it'll kill you both in the end, even with the precautions, even with the face masks and the insulated windows and the empty streets and quarantines.

“You want to go again?” Mark says, rubbing his hair with a towel and motioning at your fingers.

You kick at him, and Mark laughs.

And after that, it just sort of slips out.

“I love you.”

You don’t know who said it first, but suddenly, you can't get enough of it, Mark kneeling in front of the couch so you’re eye-to-eye with each other and cupping your face with large, stiff hands. He kisses you, his breath still hot and a little uneven, and you love it, pulling back just a bit to fill the air between you with more, lost in the time it took you both to realize it.

It's July, and you’re running out of food, and you’re sure you’re going to Hell, lying on the couch and sucking Mark's tongue into your mouth and letting out short whimpers, but it's more than just part of you that doesn't give a fuck anymore—it's half of you, all of you.

–

The symptoms begin with a relentless sore throat and a mild headache that worsens over the course of 72 hours, when they then deteriorate into coughs and sneezes that help spread the virus when it's at its strongest state. Your temperature rises all the while, slowly at first, but steadily—one thermometer reading will never be lower than the last one, which makes for a sort of helplessness, much like the later stages of drowning, only more conscious. More aware. You're more aware. Then comes the blood, out of the nose, the mouth, then in the end, the ears, and most victims will die of some sort of asphyxiation.

You take glass after glass of tap water—in the middle of the night at first, when Mark had still been asleep, but after a while, you think it’s asinine to keep Mark in the dark—it'd be like murder, and you would rather give Mark the chance to leave if he wanted to.

It isn't easy. It isn't easy keeping composed when a little itch in the back of your throat means much more than just that, and you don't know what sort of reaction to expect. And perhaps if you mention it in passing, Mark will only come to understand the gravity of it in bits and pieces, thereby spreading the reaction through the afternoon. So when you’re sitting on the couch and  watching reruns of your favorite dramas, you carefully shifted to your own side and Mark to the other, you murmur, “My throat kind of hurts. Want some water?” between standing and sliding toward the kitchen, waiting for a yes or a no or anything, your hands shaking as you pause just before the doorway.

Mark closes his eyes and doesn't reply.

Mark closes his eyes as if he'd been expecting it.

Mark closes his eyes and motions for you to come back to the couch. And it's the gentle flick of his wrist that breaks you, who crawls back, pushing yourself up onto the cushions again. Mark catches you when your hand slips, gripping your forearm so hard it hurts, and it doesn't make your throat feel any better, but mends the little parts of you that had been waiting for redemption.

–

The Internet service providers are on and off, but you go through your cached pages and run through the symptoms with Mark in a quick and curt and stoic, or so you’d like to think, manner, until you can't speak anymore. Which is when Mark, as if he'd been expecting it, guides you over to the bed and pushes you onto it, draping a blanket over you that doesn't quite cover your feet.

“So, this is it, huh?” Mark says, his weight dipping into the mattress.

“I don't know if it's contagious yet or not,” you whisper, and Mark shrugs.

“I'll stay.”

You see a bit of a glimmer in Mark's eyes before you let your own flutter shut, but you’re half conscious through the whole evening, not really delirious or tired or sick, even. Mark stays for hours, occasionally humming and occasionally running his hand through your hair and occasionally speaking to you in a series of ‘remember whens’.

He leaves when the sun starts setting, and you hear some noises in the kitchen, then the sound of the shower turning on—you have to think about that one for a couple moments, never really having heard it from outside the bathroom before; you’ve usually showered together since moving in. And the strange muffled taps blend into one continuous, soothing hum that lulls you into a real sleep.

–

You wake up in the middle of the night with the itch in your throat more of a harsh tear and untangle Mark's fingers from around your waist.

And as you make your way to the kitchen, the blood rushes to your feet, leaving your head half light and half pounding, as if you’d doubted the disease yesterday. In the context of your entire lifespan, the pain will last for a fraction of a second. Mark will have it worse, when you leave. (If you leave.)

Under the fluorescent light, you notice the pantry door open and a bit of a mess on the counter, half-empty trash bags in the corner and stray tissues in the garbage, and through the translucent bags, you see more than tissues—as if on cue, waiting for you—white cloths. Mesh. The face masks, cut up, torn, unusable, boxes destroyed, every single one.

[fmcgmistral]

Having A Provocative Soft Drinks Distributors Works Only Under These Conditions

The 3 primary categories of durable goods include durable goods, nondurable goods, and services. Durable goods, such as furniture or vehicles, last at least 3 years. Typically, economic experts will watch durable goods spending to track the health of the economy. Nondurable goods are items with a service life of under one year, and are taken in rapidly. Fast-moving consumer goods fall within this classification. Lastly, services consist of intangible product or services, such as hairstyles or car washes.

Amidst the coronavirus crisis, the FMCG industry is generally quite steady and shows growth in sales in comparison to most other industries. The major FMCGs gamers remain in a good shape with incomes growing at 4% throughout the pandemic. Organic growth has shown results from acquisitions. In addition, the profits of FMCG business has continued to grow in spite of the increasingly unpredictable market, altering consumer routines, and intense digital competitors. The major players in FMCGs are Nestlé, P&G, Pepsico, Unilever, Coca-Cola, British American Tobacco, Mondelez, and KraftHeinz.

Processed food makes up food that has actually been prepared, canned, frozen, packaged, or customized in nutritional composition. Processed food has a spectrum from minimally to greatly processed, from simply pre-chopped or pre-prepped to ready-to-eat microwavable dinners. The processed food sector is on the rise, particularly ready-to-eat food. There are a number of aspects that add to the growth: the increasing earnings families, reducing cooking skills, and the pattern of food shipment apps.

The impact of FMCG brands is demonstrated by their organic growth recently. The majority of the progress is originating from global volume growth. Constant growth can be accomplished by keeping up with consumer trends and investing early in emerging sectors. Consumer goods are products bought for usage by the average consumer. They are divided into 3 various classifications: durable goods, nondurable goods, and services. Durable goods have a shelf life of three years or more while nondurable goods have a life span of less than one year. Fast-moving durable goods are the biggest section of durable goods. They fall under the nondurable category, as they are taken in instantly and have a brief shelf life.

Fast-moving consumer goods consist of packaged food, toiletries, drinks, stationery, non-prescription medicines, cleaning and laundry products, plastic goods, personal care products, along with more economical consumer electronic devices, such as smart phones and earphones. Some fast-moving durable goods are highly perishable, such as meat, dairy products, baked goods, fruits, and veggies. Sales of FMCG are usually impacted by discounts being used by the stores, and by vacations and other seasonal durations.

Personal care products are durable goods used mainly for appeal, cosmetic, and personal hygiene use. Personal care consists of products as diverse as hand soap, body wash, shaving cream, moisturizer, toothpaste, and shampoo. Because of the essential nature of consumers to use personal care products, they are commonly utilized throughout the world in substantial amounts. Some significant corporations in the personal care industry are Henkel, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive.

Almost everyone on the planet utilizes fast-moving durable goods (FMCG) every day. They are the small-scale consumer purchases we make at the fruit and vegetables stand, grocery store, supermarket, and warehouse outlet. Examples consist of milk, gum, vegetables and fruit, toilet paper, soda, beer, and over-the-counter drugs like aspirin. FMCGs represent more than half of all consumer costs, but they tend to be low-involvement purchases.

Consumer packaged goods are the same as fast-moving consumer goods. They are items with high turnover rates, low prices, or short life span. Fast-moving durable goods are characterized by low profit margins and big sales quantities. Products that fall within this group include sodas, bathroom tissue, or dairy products, for example.

Quick moving durable goods (FMCG), likewise known as consumer packaged goods (CPG), are products that are sold rapidly and at a reasonably low cost. Fast moving durable goods have a high inventory turnover and are contrasted with specialty goods. FMCGs are generally distributed through retailers, such as hypermarkets, big stores, warehouse club stores, and corner store. FMCGs play a vital part in the economy due to the fact that they touch every part of consumer life, specifically the important needs. The FMCG industry typically represents among the huge sectors in a nation and produces work downstream.

Nestle powder milk Distributors are consumable items utilized regularly in an office environment by companies or organizations to carry out daily work jobs. The series of products categorized as office supplies extends from little, expendable, everyday use products to higher-cost equipment. Office supply products include paper, adhesive notes, printers, janitorial supplies, writing tools, and a lot more. Work environment interruptions due to the coronavirus pandemic have actually changed the market landscape and it is prepared for to decline as a result.

[pastel-catboy]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

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[workingtolovemyself]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://bit.ly/3nqqI4x

[healthierlife4u]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://thegreenlivingsolution.com/5-sustainable-living-hacks/

[thestrategicmom]

Get Your House In Order: How to Prepare for the Inevitable Coronavirus Lockdown

Wow.. what a difference a week makes! The total number of Coronavirus cases is now close to 300,000 worldwide, tripling in just two weeks and causing over 11,000 deaths. All major events and sports leagues have been cancelled, restaurants, bars, gyms, and even churches are closing their doors, and global financial markets are struggling to stay afloat. If it hasn’t quite hit you yet, let me be the one to share the news, it’s the end of the world as we know it…

If this week’s working arrangements are any indication, Coronavirus, and as a byproduct social distancing, is ushering in a new era of life, society, and parenthood! With more and more companies asking their employees to work from home, or laying them off altogether, schools and daycares closing indefinitely and state and city officials instituting increasingly stricter lockdowns, things are suddenly very different from the norm. It’s critical that we work with our partners and families to prepare for what’s to come.

If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly plagued by the burning question: “What are we eating?” This question is hard enough in normal circumstances, but in the age of Coronavirus, it’s become even more daunting. So, to set yourself up for success, focus on ‘what’ your family needs over the next few weeks/months and ‘how’ you can meet those needs.

What: When planning your grocery list, think about the key areas you need to shop for such as food, medicine, cleaning supplies, etc. 

Food: You want versatile, nutritious foods that are easy to cook, multi-purpose, and allow for large servings, particularly if you’re accommodating a larger family.

Non-Perishables: Soups, canned goods, dry beans, and rice are my go-to non-perishables. Additionally, things like oats or cornmeal can go a long way. Get several boxes of Jiffy cornbread and freeze your favorite meats so you can whip out your crockpot and make hearty dishes like chili, chicken tortilla soup, and cuban black beans and rice. 

Fruits and Veggies: Don’t forget the fruits and veggies! Invest in your favorite fruits and vegetables in all forms: frozen, fresh, canned and dried. The good news is that frozen fruits and veggies can have just as many or more vitamins and nutrients as their fresh alternatives, so pack your freezer with fruits and veggies you and your family can enjoy. 

Frozen Items: Grab some meat and freeze it. Also, get some frozen meals that will take the pressure off of you to cook each meal from scratch. Some of my favorites include frozen bag meals, frozen lasagna, and frozen breakfast foods like waffles. 

Spices and Common Condiments: While you’re buying all these groceries, make sure to grab some spices and condiments to make your food even more delicious, so you’re more likely to eat it and enjoy it. Examples include salt, pepper, garlic powder, sugar, honey, BBQ sauce, and soy sauce. I’m a firm believer that condiments are the unsung heroes of food, so make sure not to forget them. 

Bottled Water: I’d stick with tap or filtered water for now, since there are no current concerns with our water supply or quality, but I’d recommend having at least 2-3 cases of bottled water on reserve just in case the situation with our water supply changes. 

Kid Stuff: From birth to adulthood, moms will agree that kids require a ton of stuff. Make sure to have an adequate supply of the items your little one (or big one) needs. See examples below: 

Babies: diapers, formula, baby wipes, and food pouches if they’re transitioning from milk to solid foods in the near future

Toddlers: diapers, wipes, and non-perishable snacks like apple sauce packets and goldfish 

Kids to Young Adults: quick meal and snack components like bread, sandwich meat, and peanut butter and jelly. If it works for your family and your budget, don’t be afraid to check out some of these kid- and adult-friendly meal delivery services. 

Medicine: If you haven’t received the memo, the effects of Coronavirus are going to have our supply chains and healthcare system in shambles. Health staples we’re accustomed to having may be in short supply, and hospitals could be overrun, so it may be difficult or impossible to be seen for things that aren’t life threatening. So be proactive:

Fill Prescriptions -  Make sure you have at least a 30-day supply (90-day is better) of your family’s prescriptions.

Stock up on Over-the-Counter Medicines - Medicines like pain relievers, antacids, cough and cold medicines, vitamins, and fluids with electrolytes may soon be in short supply, so plan ahead and get the things your family typically uses or might need.

Don’t Forget First Aid Supplies - First aid supplies will also be important. Grab a first aid kit or two, or at a minimum, get some basic first aid items like bandaids, gauze, and ointment so that you can handle small to medium medical issues at home.

Cleaning Supplies: Coronavirus can be killed by many household cleaning products if properly used, so, keep it cute, and clean and make sure to stock up on products like soap (bar and liquid), hand sanitizer, dish soap, disinfectant and laundry detergent. Also, if your local and online stores are fresh out of hand sanitizer, make your own! 

Other essentials: Don’t forget other personal items you and your family will need like deodorant, tampons, lotion / moisturizer, and toothpaste. Also, as you’re likely well aware, everyone’s clamoring items like paper towels, facial tissue, and toilet tissue. So if you can’t get certain items, look for and consider using alternatives. While it may be old-school, a single use washcloth with soap and water works just fine in lieu of toilet tissue. You can also use wet wipes and wet paper towels, as long as you dispose of them in the trash rather than the toilet. Finally, since we’re going to be stuck in the house with our kids and significant others for the foreseeable future, don’t forget the wine!

How: Remember, safety first when purchasing groceries or other goods. If you can, order online and get your items or groceries delivered. If you have to visit a store in person, wear gloves and a mask and don’t touch your face. Consistently wash your hands, and come prepared with a grocery list to minimize the amount of time spent at the store. Also, if you’re getting meals delivered, stick with places you know, limit human contact, and exercise caution when handling delivery containers. 

This is not a drill. I repeat. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. As seen over the last few weeks, life is rapidly changing in unexpected ways right before our eyes, but this isn’t a time for panic; it’s a time for plans and action. So, get your house in order and make sure you have the items you need to intentionally prepare your family to thrive, or at a minimum survive, whatever the future holds!

If you enjoyed this post and would like more information on being intentional with your motherhood, check out my posts on value and goal-based living, intentional self-care, childcare and development, and relationships. 

[fmcgmistral]

FMCG Distributors Don't Have To Be Hard – Read These 6 Recommendation

Almost everybody in the world utilizes fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) every day. Starbucks Wholesale Supplier are the small-scale consumer purchases we make at the produce stand, supermarket, grocery store, and warehouse outlet. Examples include milk, gum, fruit and vegetables, toilet tissue, soda, beer, and over-the-counter drugs like aspirin. FMCGs represent majority of all consumer costs, however they tend to be low-involvement purchases.

Fast-moving consumer goods include packaged food, toiletries, beverages, stationery, non-prescription medicines, cleansing and laundry products, plastic goods, personal care products, in addition to less costly consumer electronic devices, such as mobile phones and headphones. Some fast-moving durable goods are highly perishable, such as meat, dairy products, baked goods, fruits, and vegetables. Sales of FMCG are normally impacted by discounts being offered by the shops, and by vacations and other seasonal durations.

Consumer packaged goods are the same as fast-moving durable goods. They are products with high turnover rates, low prices, or brief shelf lives. Fast-moving durable goods are identified by low revenue margins and big sales amounts. Products that fall within this group include soft drinks, bathroom tissue, or dairy products, for instance.

In the middle of the coronavirus crisis, the FMCG industry is typically pretty steady and shows growth in sales in comparison to most other industries. The major FMCGs gamers remain in a good condition with revenues growing at 4% throughout the pandemic. Organic growth has revealed arise from acquisitions. In addition, the income of FMCG companies has actually continued to grow in spite of the significantly unstable market, altering consumer habits, and intense digital competition. The major gamers in FMCGs are Nestlé, P&G, Pepsico, Unilever, Coca-Cola, British American Tobacco, Mondelez, and KraftHeinz.

Personal care products are durable goods used primarily for appeal, cosmetic, and personal health usage. Personal care includes products as varied as hand soap, body wash, shaving cream, moisturizer, tooth paste, and hair shampoo. Because of the essential nature of customers to utilize personal care products, they are widely utilized throughout the world in huge amounts. Some significant corporations in the personal care industry are Henkel, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive.

Processed food comprises food that has been prepared, canned, frozen, packaged, or customized in dietary composition. Processed food has a spectrum from minimally to heavily processed, from simply pre-chopped or pre-prepped to ready-to-eat microwavable dinners. The processed food sector is on the increase, specifically ready-to-eat food. There are a couple of elements that contribute to the growth: the increasing earnings households, decreasing cooking abilities, and the trend of food delivery apps.

Office supplies are consumable items used regularly in an office environment by organizations or organizations to carry out everyday work jobs. The variety of products classified as office supplies extends from little, expendable, everyday usage products to higher-cost devices. Office supply products consist of paper, adhesive notes, printers, janitorial supplies, composing tools, and many more. Work environment disturbances due to the coronavirus pandemic have changed the market landscape and it is expected to decrease as a result.

The impact of FMCG brand names is demonstrated by their natural growth over the last few years. Most of the development is originating from worldwide volume growth. Continuous growth can be accomplished by keeping up with consumer patterns and investing early in emerging sectors. Durable goods are products purchased for intake by the average consumer. They are divided into three various classifications: durable goods, nondurable goods, and services. Durable goods have a shelf life of 3 years or more while nondurable goods have a life span of less than one year. Fast-moving durable goods are the largest section of consumer goods. They fall into the nondurable category, as they are consumed right away and have a brief service life.

Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), also called consumer packaged goods (CPG), are products that are offered rapidly and at a relatively low cost. Fast moving durable goods have a high inventory turnover and are contrasted with specialty goods. FMCGs are typically dispersed through sellers, such as hypermarkets, big stores, storage facility club shops, and convenience stores. FMCGs play a vital part in the economy because they touch every part of consumer life, particularly the important needs. The FMCG industry usually represents among the big sectors in a country and produces work downstream.

The 3 main classifications of consumer goods include durable goods, nondurable goods, and services. Durable goods, such as furnishings or cars, last at least three years. Typically, economists will see durable goods investing to track the health of the economy. Nondurable goods are products with a service life of under one year, and are taken in rapidly. Fast-moving durable goods fall within this category. Lastly, services consist of intangible services or products, such as haircuts or vehicle washes.

[pastel-catboy]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://thegreenlivingsolution.com/5-sustainable-living-hacks/

[workingtolovemyself]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://bit.ly/3nqqI4x

[healthierlife4u]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://thegreenlivingsolution.com/5-sustainable-living-hacks/

[striving-toward-170]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://bit.ly/3nqqI4x

[healthierlife4u]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://thegreenlivingsolution.com/5-sustainable-living-hacks/

[striving-toward-170]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://bit.ly/3nqqI4x

[workingtolovemyself]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

 The post  5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://bit.ly/3nqqI4x

[healthierlife4u]

5 Sustainable Living Hacks – Be the change

So as you know, I am a super thrifty person. I super enjoy saving money, and also, I am working very hard to minimize my footprint. Now I am by no means an extreme minimalist or a zero-waste person, but I think it’s great that we can all aspire towards that. Today I also had the opportunity to work with a fantastic app called Bunz.

 A friend of mine was getting rid of all of her craft supplies, and she passed on a lot to me. She told me about this app where you could swap for things. You could trade for things that you don’t want for things you need instead of selling it online where many things don’t have monetary value anymore, but they still can have value for somebody who wants it. So ever since then, I have been like non-stop trading. It’s just a great system to keep things out of a landfill and find new treasures that you would have never seen anywhere else.

 So let’s get started with our first hack. This first hack has been a real money saver for me. I bought these foam soap dispensers from the home goods store because I saw all these Bath & Bodyworks bottles of foam soap and realized this is just soap mixed with water and charge so much for it. I can do this myself. I buy bulk body or hand soap, mix one-part soap to five parts water, and it lasts me forever. It works just as well as concentrated soap, if not better, because it’s already lathered for you.

 Buying natural liquid soap and using fewer quantity chemicals is just a small way to reduce consumption and waste. I do the same thing with my detergent. My parents have a huge jug of detergent we share, not that they know that we share, which is technically stealing but yeah, we kind of share. I’ve had this bottle of concentrate for a year now, and it’s still going strong. Reusable straws are trendy now, and my favorites are the stainless-steel kind. It doesn’t affect the taste of anything I drink, including water, and I even have these bubble tea sized straws for my extreme tapioca consumption.

 Related:  Build your own shipping container home today 

 On my most recent trip, the beaches were completely littered with straws. Small plastics on the beach wash into the ocean and injure animals. I love straws. I drink everything through a straw, but recycling facilities have a hard time catching small plastics through their filters, and too much of it ends up where it doesn’t belong.

 While you’re at it, reusable cups are also a must-have. Majority of drink cups are not recyclable because it’s lined with plastic so although most cups advertise made from recycled material, the cup itself will still end up in a landfill. Starbucks is super friendly and will take any vessel, while some places require you only to use their reusable cups. Just make sure to ask your favorite beverage place what they accept. Find out more about what you can and can’t recycle; find your city’s recycling chart for guidance. Toronto is not very advanced with their recycling program. As you can see, drink cups, foil wrappers, and even many plastics are not recyclable. What’s messed up is that black plastic can’t be recycled. The reason being the optical sorter cannot distinguish between the black plastic and the black conveyer belt. What is surprising is that styrofoam is recyclable. Still, there’s the taboo of it being nonenvironmentally friendly in the past, which is why styrofoam is not as standard nowadays, even though technology has caught up to meet those needs.

 Wax-coated clothes have become my better alternative to foil and saran wrap. It works better at clinging and preserving than plastic wrap. Now, this can be a pricey item, which is why I Bunz for it. I ended up using BTZ I collected to trade for the food wrap, which means I acquired this for free. Now that’s a smart deal. When you’re done with your food, and this is a trick that my dad taught me, you compost it! It is not just compost, though, as I used to keep it under my sink, and it still gets smelly, and I don’t have counter space for a table composter, which is also very pricey to freeze your compost.

 I got a little bin from Ikea, especially in the summer; this completely eradicates our fruit fly and smell issue. This is a cheat, but I wanted to shout out my recent video about repurposing old t-shirts. I made reusable cotton rounds out of an old tee that I throw in the wash to use, and I made a reusable grocery bag that doubles as a cute tote. This is to round up the number because 13 hacks don’t sound as good as 15.

 Dryer sheets are single-use items that quickly fill up garbages. You can reuse them in various ways, but for fluffy clothes, an alternative is dryer balls. I have these cute hedgehog ones that lost their noses, and because they can be a bit pricey, I’m going to trade for wool balls and essential oils on Bunz as an upgrade. In my laundry cupboard, I also have a massive stash of rags. I have old torn bedsheets and ripped clothing like the t-shirt DIY scraps to use as a paper towel alternative. The key is to think about single-use throwaway products and finding alternatives for them, like Swiffer sheets and duster refills. It’s not any less convenient to have a washable version of disposable products.

 For the home as well, we rarely turn on the heat or a/c. You can call us cheap because we are, but this doubles as emission saving for the environment. There are duvets for every type of climate and sleeper. We’ll throw a fleece blanket underneath for colder weather and have a cooling comforter for the summer, made of breathable material like wool, cotton, or even some that are mesh down alternatives that wick moisture. I went to that drapery section at the thrift store and picked up some white mesh curtains, which I guarantee will be in abundance at every thrift store. Folding mine at the top in three, I cut out a few 12 by 16-inch rectangles. Zig-zag stitch all sides but the top fold, leaving a slight gap to thread your drawstring through. Now my drawstring is old shoelaces. Thread it through what used to be the pocket for the curtain rod, and you have reusable produce bags. These will keep your produce longer with its breathable material since plastic keeps the moisture in and rots your fruits and veggies quicker.

 So what about when you leave the house, how do you bring all this with you? I take a go-bag whenever I go in the car: one large reusable tote to throw everything in, extra totes, thermos or tumbler metal straws, and the produce bags. Most days, I don’t have a car, so I just carry straws in this super cute strawberry reusable bag on me. When I go grocery shopping, I try to avoid over-packaged items, and we’ll share industrial-sized items with my family. We buy in bulk, usually industrial-sized non-perishables, and freeze many groceries that are bought in large batches. About thirty to forty percent of my house is Bunz items, so Opalma is a Bunz trade.

 This bed table we traded for an armchair. So I mostly trade for plants, toilet paper, and scented candles. My latest acquisition is a set of buns, so these mannequin butts are the newest thing to my home. They are like, where else would you find a pair of mannequin butts? I got a snowboard, boots, bindings, goggles, helmet, and bag for a $50 gift card like that’s less than rental for the day. That’s insane. I don’t even know; sometimes people want to get rid of stuff, and then in this uncertain phase, this is the best time to trade. They have this new currency called BTZ where if you can earn BTZ by referring your friends and answering their daily survey. You get a little bit of BTZ, and you use those BTZ in exchange to buy things at your local stores, so local cafes and small stores will take BTZ as currency. And if you sign up and say that I referred you, I get BTZ; you get BTZ. I can’t speak highly enough of this app. I find so much more value in the things that I’ve traded for because there’s so much story behind it then you appreciate things more. You tend not to throw away or want to buy new things to replace them anyway, and that’s why I very much support the Bunz app and the Bunz community, and I hope you guys can take a look at what they have.

 I know it isn’t easy to be sustainable, especially in makeup and fashion, and I think that there’s a great movement right now on moving towards that. I’m not perfect, but I know I’m doing my best to minimize my footprint, do what I can, even outside of just fashion in terms of home and food, minimize my waste, and make that footprint smaller. Thank you, guys for reading. Please share this post if it inspired you!

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