Waste is the enemy of any good prepper. Almost everything can be reused or repurposed in your home. In an emergency, any precious resource that you can access is valuable. Minimizing waste can make all the difference when it comes to self-sufficiency in emergency situations.
Composting and Food Waste
- Composting is one of the most essential parts of reutilizing your food waste. Especially if you have a greenhouse or garden in the backyard. Compost is full of valuable nutrients and minerals that plants love, don’t waste your left-over scraps! Rinds, peels, stems, cores; if you can’t or didn’t eat it, don’t throw it in your trash -- start a compost pile.
- Compost is generally divided into three categories: browns, greens, and liquid. Browns include “brown” or inorganic material like dead leaves, twigs, shredded newspaper, shredded cardboard, etc. Green material includes vegetable waste, grass clippings, coffee grounds, and other organic waste. Moisture is an essential part of composting and should be balanced alongside the browns and greens in your mixture.
- What to compost: Fruits and vegetables, crushed eggshells, yard trimmings, herbs, tea bags, coffee grounds, hair and fur, dead leaves. Just make sure you avoid anything that would be toxic to humans or attract pests, like animal bones, grease, dairy products, etc.
- If composting outdoors, choose a shady spot near a water source on your home. Add materials and moisten them as you add them. Bury new waste underneath already established compost. You can choose to cover your compost with a tarp in order to minimize the odor, keep out pests, and keep it moist.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle as much as you can
- Reduce: Use as little single-use plastics and other materials as you can. Store food in reusable materials like glass jars or hard plastic containers. Save cans and reuse them or keep them until the recycling center reopens.
- Reuse: Wash out plastic or glass containers and use them for whatever you can think of.
- Recycling: Set aside a specific recycling pile, nearby where you open packages (i.e. the kitchen, the front hallway, etc.) Make it easy to access and empty it frequently so it doesn’t become overwhelming.
- If recycling pickup isn’t available during an emergency, reuse what you can. Glass bottles or containers are very easy to clean and re-use over and over. Cans can be washed out, stripped of their packaging, and turned into pen holders, planters, toys, etc. Jars are especially good options for reusability, as they can be used again and again.
Human Waste
- So, what about human waste? In a serious emergency, the toilets and plumbing we take for granted may not always be accessible, or operational. Regardless, we all still must go. Human waste can carry pathogens and toxins and is especially harmful when contaminating soil or water. So, what are your options?
- A composting toilet is one of the best ways to manage fecal matter and liquid waste. These cost some money but are excellent choices for eliminating toxins while creating useful compost in the process.
- Without a composting toilet, your options depend on your location. If you have a septic tank, you don’t have to rely on the sewage disposal of the nearby county or city. Instead, minimize your toilet paper use as much as possible. To protect your sewage system, the best option for getting rid of toilet paper is either through burning or burying the material, rather than flushing it.
- Bidets are an awesome option to replace toilet paper use, although these will also require water and water pressure to function.
- If your water supply is cut off, there may be no water in your toilet in order to flush it. A bucket of water can be poured into the toilet in order to manually flush your waste. Use graywater or used water (from a shower or other washing), to do this.
- If your septic tank becomes full, it will need to be emptied. Usually, specialized tank emptying services do this, but without this service, you’ll need to do it yourself. Accomplish this by manually removing and burying the waste, far from any nearby water source, and downhill from your home.
Alternatively, build an outhouse for your property. Dig a deep pit, about five feet deep, far from any other water source. If you have a well, place the outhouse downhill of the well. Then, add a seat, lid, and roof to protect it from rain or flooding. Once this is full, use the soil you excavated to cover the pit, where the waste can eventually break down into the soil.
