Have you heard of Bookshop.org yet? If not, you’re probably not alone. Bookshop is a Certified B Corp (more on that later) specializing in – you guessed it – selling books.
But why? Doesn’t everyone just buy books from Amazon? Well, yes. And that’s kind of the problem. Since Amazon’s whole business model relies on annihilating the little guy at all cost (literally, they take a massive hit in profit to undercut an independent seller, just so they are the only ones left on the market) many independent book stores suffer in the wake. So how does another online book seller help independent stores? Kind of seems counter-intuitive.
As a Certified B Corp, Bookshop adheres to a social/environmental standard. In order to become a B Corp, a business must show that they comply with standards that essentially mean profits don’t come at the expense of the environment and consumer interests. B Corps must be transparent about their business structure and basically prove that they are going to run an ethical business that serves the public in a good way.
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How Bookshop.org Helps The Little Guy
So it seems like adding in another online book store would just add more competition and further harm the independent bookseller. However, part of Bookshop.org’s business model is that they donate 10% of EVERY purchase to a fund that is distributed to independent book stores across the U.S. Really! They also allow independent book stores to set up an online bookshop on their site where they receive the entire profit margin from purchases made in their shop. Really! And then there are people like me – people who aren’t running a book store – who can sell as well as affiliates. We design curated lists, and create links to our book recommendations. On these purchases, the 30% profit margin is distributed like this: 10% to me for driving the sale, 10% to the fund for independent book stores, and 10% for Bookshop.org.
They also, of course, sell books directly from their site, and on those purchases they make 20% profit and 10% goes to the independent book store fund. Isn’t transparency interesting?
Bookshop + Zero Waste
If you think that this business model sounds horrible – donating a portion of every profit?! – then I suppose you and I are fundamentally different. I’ve talked before about our family’s transition to living as close to “zero waste” as we can, and believe it or not, this fits in with that.
It’s probably true that the zero waste hierarchy of reading goes something like this: Read on an e-reader, borrow from the library, purchase used, purchase new. But there are times when we purchase new books. We give our kids and families books as gifts, and we also like to keep hard copies of all of our book club books (both my husband & mine and our son’s!)
While a huge part of the zero waste lifestyle is not buying anything you don’t need, another part of it is buying responsibly when you do make purchases. It has been shown time and time again that Amazon is good for Amazon. And only Amazon. Sure, sometimes we save a little bit of money, but at what cost? When we purchase responsibly, we are consciously choosing to support businesses who choose to benefit the common good. Supporting the many independent book stores around the country is, for me, better than lining Jeff Bezos’ pockets with my hard earned money.
Is Bookshop Expensive?
I’m not going to lie, when I first signed on to Bookshop I thought, “Man this is expensive!” But I took some time and did side by side comparisons between Bookshop.org and Amazon, and I found that for most books on my list Bookshop was less than $2 more expensive. That difference is fine for me, considering the difference in the business I’m supporting. And with the introduction of used books coming soon, we will likely see lower price options too! I can’t yet afford an Avocado mattress, but an extra dollar on a book? I can do that.
Go Forth and Read!
Hopefully this post has either introduced you to Bookshop or solidified your desire to purchase from them. Maybe you’re even considering starting your own lists there too! If you’re looking for a good book, here’s a sample of some of my lists:
When working towards a zero waste lifestyle, making adjustments to the way you’ve always done or thought about things can be really hard. Throw kids into the mix, and it’s even harder. Throw kids’ teachers/schools/friends in, and it seems like an uphill battle you will never win. Luckily, you can help the transition to a zero waste school with simple ideas.
Part of living low waste is accepting that you cannot change anyone else – though you can certainly influence others through your actions. The waste that comes in from outside the home is often hard to quit. However, when we send our kids off to school each year, there are some things we can control. If you remember to use what you have whenever possible, refuse what you do not need, reuse/repurpose when you can, and recycle what you can’t, you’ll be on the way to a zero waste school year.
*This post contains affiliate links – that means if you make a purchase from one of my links, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you! Thank you for supporting my blog!
Back to School Prep
Clothes Shopping – Who doesn’t love a new back to school outfit? It’s fun to dress fresh for the first day of school. Unfortunately, one of the biggest culprits in the climate emergency is the fashion industry. According to this study conducted by Quantis, the apparel and footwear industries “account for an estimated 8.1% of global climate impacts.” Instead of buying new clothes every year, try searching secondhand/consignment stores or organizing a clothes swap for friends & friends of friends. When you must buy new, consider styles your kids will actually wear vs what you want them to wear, and buy well made clothes that will last instead of fast fashion that will break down quickly. It is also important to note that like us, our kids will have their favorite clothes that they put in a short rotation. Do they really need 10 brand new shirts to crowd the closet?
School Supplies – One of the mantras of zero waste applies here. Use what you have. Pencil boxes, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, erasers, highliters, backpacks, lunchboxes, etc. These are all things my son does not use up in a single school year, yet we are prompted to buy new each year. The list could go on, but you get the point. Reevaluate whether or not your kids need a ‘fresh’ box of pens when theirs write just fine. Buy a backpack with great reviews that is built to last in a style/print that can grow with your child.
After the First Day
Transportation
Did your mom have a carpool with the neighbor ladies when you were growing up? Mine did, and it seemed like everyone else did too. If you take a look at the car line at an elementary school today – it is clear that most today do not. We live close to our school, and we walk – regardless of weather. The exception to this is when there is a severe storm. I have begun walking my youngest to school as well, even though it’s close to a mile away. It gives me some exercise and keeps us out of the car. Those little 1 mile trips add up over the years. Not to mention the idling in line. When possible, walking or biking are the best options. Carpooling is a great choice if you live too far for that.
Lunches
It is so easy to throw in a Lunchable, granola bar, or whatever other prepackaged snack you’ve got into the box and send the kids on. It’s easy to not have your kids bring home dishes. But it’s also easy to teach your kids to rinse out the containers you sent food in and put them in the dishwasher. It’s easy to throw the cloth napkin they took to school in with the rest of the laundry you’re already doing. What’s hard is committing to a change. But you can do it! Try committing to packing with reusable containers and utensils. (No need to buy a shiny new Bento box – I know you’ve got a full Tupperware drawer.) Send a reusable water bottle with your child – they can fill up at the water fountain. And yes, in nearly every city in the country they can drink unfiltered water safely. Pack that cloth napkin, and it can double as a protective wrap for their apple or banana.
Communication
Today, there is very little reason to send physical notes, other than consent forms, to school. Ask your teacher for their preferred method of electronic communication. (We have e-mail as well as a separate messaging/behavior tracking system at my son’s school.) When you do send a note, do it on a scrap you’ve saved. I could fill a pool with the front-used-only sheets of paper sent home in a given year. Need to send money or something more secure? Take one of those used school papers and fold it into a little envelope, or designate a specific envelope you will reuse to send lunch money and write “Please Return Envelope” on the outside. This does not have to be difficult.
Single Use Items
One principle of zero waste we’ve already talked about is using what you have. Another is ditching single use items. This has been addressed in both lunch preparation and communication, but there are other areas where this comes up with regards to schools. Once you’ve been at it for a while, you will find yourself noticing just how many single use items we chunk out regularly. One example of this is staples. Sure they’re metal, but how many of us are removing and recycling staples? Are they even big enough to recycle? While I can think of some scenarios that staples would be very handy, most of the time that I use staples (single use) a paperclip (reusable) would suffice. Can you find an alternative to using Scotch tape in at least some cases? Can you send your child with a handkerchief when they are battling dreaded allergies instead of two boxes of tissue/kid?
Parties
I know some parents who truly hate school parties. I am not one of those parents. Truth is I love a good party, and I like to think about my kid having fun at school. However, school parties are a huge waste generating machine. Offer to bring in a set of reusable plates/cups for the class’ parties, and offer to take them home to wash them afterwards. Talk to your teacher about organizing a list of food items that do not come in single use packaging. (Some ideas are fruit, home baked goods, treats from a local bakery, etc.) I also think that kids would be just fine without the Dollar Store gift exchanges. My kids do love bubbles and cheap slinkies, but out of sight out of mind, right? The key here is offering to help as much as you possibly can. Nobody wants to make a change that equals tons of added work on their party plate!
The Busy Day to Day
After School Snacks – We have a house full of hungry boys. After school snacking is part of daily life. We’ve switched from individually packaged convenience foods to fruits and snacks that I can make ahead from bulk bin ingredients. Some of our personal favorites are homemade granola bars and Larabars. We also make trail mix regularly from bulk bin nuts and dried fruits. I make these snacks once per week. Once they’re gone, the kids eat apples or whatever else they can find until the next week.
Weeknight Dinners – My oldest is only 7, but we already have begun the weeknight hustle during sports seasons. The key to keeping waste down during the week is planning and preparation. At the end of each week, I meal plan for the following week. I plan quick and easy dinners for nights that are busy, and we build in leftovers once per week to help battle food waste. When we revert to convenience foods, it is usually due to a failure in planning on my part. Planning helps us reduce waste, but also saves me the stress of thinking about what’s for dinner every night. Win-win.
The Bigger Picture
There are some schools out there doing truly amazing things. I’ve read about huge community gardens maintained by the kids and teachers. There are school districts who are battling food waste by sending unserved food home with students who may not otherwise eat dinner. Some have begun large scale composting programs. There are classes participating in zero waste school initiatives such as online assignment submissions.
If you have an idea for your school, pitch it. The worst that could happen is a rejection – which really is just keeping the status quo. Best case scenario, you are a catalyst for change on a scale bigger than your home. Living zero waste is a great start, but for real change to occur there simply is not enough we can do inside the walls of our homes. By getting involved in our communities and proposing changes for the better and helping implement those changes, we can start a zero waste school snowball rolling. Hopefully it doesn’t melt too fast.
Don’t forget to check out my post about how we started the Zero Waste journey as a family! If you’re just getting started, check out this book – (the zero waste option here is literally – check it out!)
Recently, our city announced that they may be removing public recycling bins due to the inability of our community to properly sort and dispose of recyclables (rendering them all landfill bound). It’s an issue that is not unique to our city. And it is frustrating when you think of all of the unnecessary landfill buildup.
Our landfills are a huge contributor of greenhouse gasses. Many of the items in them are usable (glass jars, fabric, items that could be repaired), compostable (food waste, grass clippings, other organic matter), or unnecessary in the first place (plastic bags, plastic bottles, other single use plastics, i.e. plastics used once then thrown away to go to their forever home in the landfill).
Additionally, it is estimated we are currently consuming and wasting resources at an unsustainable rate estimated to be about 2 Earths’ worth. There’s much debate surrounding this claim, but most of that is NOT as to whether or not our consumption is sustainable. (Most scientists agree it is not! In fact, if you go here you can learn about Earth Overshoot Day, the day each year where we use up 1 year’s worth of Earth’s resources and start diving into resources that will never be replaced. It’s usually around August 1!)
This, paired with a growing anxiety about our children’s future led my husband and I to seek something new. A way to have a positive effect on the state of our planet and do our small part to reverse the damage that’s been compounding for so long.
Enter: The Zero Waste Movement
*This post contains affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase from one of my links, I will receive a small commission – at no extra cost to you! Thank you for supporting my blog!!
What is Zero Waste?
The Zero Waste Movement is about finding ways to live a sustainable lifestyle in an effort to preserve resources that are currently just wasted. The term “zero waste” itself implies that the focus is on producing no trash, but that can be misleading.
Part of living sustainably is being mindful of all of the needless trash you produce. Naturally, if you strive for a sustainable lifestyle, you are aiming to drastically reduce your waste production. I don’t think it is possible for a modern American human to produce literally ZERO waste. Some families are able to get theirs down to the famous quart sized jar per year. Most are not there yet.
Our family has been focusing on making sustainable swaps for things we need and trying to reduce our overall consumption. We’ve been at it a few months, and our actual trash content at this point for our family of 5 is that we could wait at least a month before we’d have to roll the city issued trash bin down to the curb. (We don’t, because it stinks something crazy if left that long! One of our lingering waste items is meat byproducts, so letting them sit for a month is not an option.)
The 5 R’s
For more about zero waste itself, read The Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. She is one of the most prominent spokespersons for the lifestyle, and her book is a great place to start. Her expansion of the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) to 5: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot (in that order) is really the best way to sum up zero waste.
The primary focus is not necessarily on trash, but rather on refusing unnecessary items and reducing consumption altogether. Then, for things you do consume, choose sustainable options and dispose of waste responsibly. This includes seeing if you can use something you already own before buying something new and aiming to, at the very least, eliminate all single use plastics from your lifestyle.
Zero Waste Swaps
We have been consistently adapting our lifestyle for about 3 months now. It’s important to note that we did not make every change or implement every system at one time. When possible, we are really trying to adhere to the “use what you have” rule. After all, the most zero waste you can possibly be is not consuming something new in the first place (and not sending something still usable on its way to you know where!)
Part two of this post will be more detailed information about some of these changes (let me know if there’s one or more you’re particularly interested in!)
The Easiest Swaps
One cute boy and two easy kitchen swaps!
From paper towels to cloth napkins and rags. We’ve eliminated all paper waste of this sort from our kitchen. They go into a well ventilated bin hanging above the washing machine when dirty and are washed with other loads throughout the week. We use old cloth rags and burp cloths for cleaning.
From water bottles to reusable cups. We were never huge water bottle consumers anyhow, but I can safely say we are in a position to not need to purchase them again. Our kids have ones that seal and can be tossed in a bag, and we’ve got plenty of cups for when friends come over. We just wrapped up a water bottle free camping trip – so it is very possible!
From plastic grocery/produce bags to reusable bags. This is a single use plastic that nearly everyone consumes and nearly everyone could cut out. Start with your totes to get the groceries home, then work on replacing produce bags with reusables. Sadly, this meant I had to give up curbside pickup.
Examples of our reusable produce bags. We use a mixture of crocheted and t-shirt bags.
Our Favorite Swaps
Combination of thrifted and upcycled jars for bulk items. The stock pot is our countertop compost collector.
Adding a bidet attachment to the toilet. This has drastically reduced our toilet paper consumption and eliminated our “flushable” wipe situation. And I love it. I will never be without one of these in my home ever again. It’s that great.
Turning food waste into compost. There’s something inexplicably satisfying about the process of food returning to the soil. Did you know that food in landfills can be discovered years later completely unchanged? There’s no oxygen for the composting process to take place. It’s wild! We’ve got two piles going. One that’s on its way to being usable, another we’re actively adding to. They’ll swap roles when #1 is spread around my butterfly garden.
From store bought to homemade treats. Granola bars, Larabars, cinnamon raisin bread. They’re all from scratch and package free now. We’re having a lot of fun learning how to make all kinds of things now. I’ve currently got my weekly batch of yogurt cooking in the Instant Pot!
Our Most Innovative Systems
Water reuse/conservation. One of the areas I’m most proud of is our steps involving water conservation. My husband taught me that you can dump water into a toilet (fast) and it’ll flush itself. We have a bucket in our shower collecting the water that would’ve been wasted waiting for the water to get hot. We use this for flushes until its empty. I’ve also got a bowl in the kitchen sink catching all of the very close to clean water there. (Think water from washing berries, rinsing out a measuring cup, etc. It adds up FAST.) I use this for watering non-edible plants, and of course, flushing.
Dog waste disposal. Turns out, we threw away a lot of dog poop. Our German Shepherd is quite the producer. Did you know the EPA endorses flushing pet waste down the toilet? (They also say the trash is fine, but we are trying to keep things out of the landfills, yeah?) There’s an outside access to our sewage line, and we add our dog waste to it (nearly) daily.
The Hardest Parts (So Far)
Our favorite low waste breakfast.
Accessibility. Buying from the bulk bins is about a thousand times harder when the only thing your town serves up in bulk is rice and pinto beans. (Which we ARE buying, but aren’t planning to live on!) A trip to Sprouts or HEB with bulk is about 30-45 minutes, depending on where we go, so we are having to do some long term planning when we make our trips to stock up.
Out and about. We’ve taken our cloth napkins into restaurants. We’ve got the silverware stash in my purse. But most waste is unavoidable at fast food restaurants. Even if you ask for no fork or napkins, you’re probably going to get a fork and napkin mountain. And you know when you hand them back, they’re not putting it back in the bin, it’s going in the trash. We are still working on ways to cut out waste when we are out of the home.
Cleaning and hygiene. We are first and foremost using what we already have, so I haven’t switched many of my beauty products to sustainable choices yet. Dishwasher detergent is proving to be the hardest cleaning swap so far. I’m settling into my new hair care routine after running out of conditioner a month ago. It’s a process y’all! I’ve put more food products in my hair this month than I’ve thrown away.
Quitting convenience foods. There have been weeks when I have felt like I had literally nothing to eat as a snack in the house. We’re learning just how much of everything we need on hand to avoid these issues. In turn, we have less food waste because we’re not overbuying and are eating fresh foods first.
Unwanted trash. The most frustrating trash of all is the trash I didn’t even ask for. Junk mail that is unrecyclable. (Recyclable junk mail is just as frustrating.) The papers from school. Random Easter eggs for my son from the ladies at the antique store. These things are HIGH on my list.
So Much More
There’s so much more going on in our house. I’m freezing random scraps of veggies (with purpose), I’ve cooked an egg in my hair (not on purpose), and we are growing some of our own veggies in the only sunny spot we’ve got left (the driveway).
Most importantly, our kids are seeing us make changes and are a part of the changes. They know exactly why we are doing what we’re doing, and they’re proud and excited. We’ve joked that when they are going through their “rebellious phases” they’re going to bring home pre-packaged food and eat on paper plates. But I think the changes we are making are instilling values that they will carry with them long term. And if we are going to affect the state of the Earth, we’ll need them and all their friends.
We are still slowly making our way to sustainability, and have so many ways we can still improve. Hopefully you can commit to a change today as well. Let me know what you’re excited to try, and brag on yourself for what you’re already doing! Check out what we’ve done to reduce back to school waste if you’re looking for more tips!
