Honoring Earth Day, Every Day
We have an Earth Day Every Day print at cinder + salt, but it's not just a cute slogan... it's my way of life. When directly asked, I find it hard to think of ways people can get involved or to point them to sustainable resources on the spot, because for me, it’s just a lifestyle. My passions have become my habits. So, for Earth Day 2025, I wanted to share some of the most simple & impactful ways I consider the planet in my everyday actions.
Rehome!
The best way to get rid of things you don’t want is to rehome them. As they say, one person’s trash is another’s treasure. It takes a tiny little bit of extra work, but honestly still remains easier than hauling trash bags of stuff to Goodwill.
Use your local Buy Nothing group on Facebook. Instead of donating to Goodwill or other thrift shops, who may throw away items that don’t sell, find a happy new owner asap. Simply search ‘Buy Nothing (your town name)’ on Facebook and request to join the group. Once approved you can post items you’re giving away. It’s always my rule of thumb to try to rehome something on Buy Nothing first; if there are no takers, then I’ll find other places to donate.
Donate old books to your local library, or bring them to a used bookstore like The Book Barn in Niantic, CT where you’ll get cash or store credit for your old pages!
Donate furniture, tools, hardware, lumber and anything you’d get at Home Depot to Restore. ReStore is an initiative of Habitat for Humanity and helps get leftover home materials to those on a budget.
Donate arts, crafts and hobby materials to Ecoworks. “EcoWorks is a social enterprise that reduces waste while supporting the arts. Our mission is to promote resource conservation, creativity, education and community engagement through material reuse, waste reduction, recycling, composting and zero waste strategies.”
Sell your old clothes on Poshmark… or if you’re like me… pawn them off on your family members! My nieces love free clothes, and my sisters rarely turn them down either. The key is getting your goods in to hands of people who want them - it always better to rehome than to simply donate.
(THROWBACK : Save electricity, hang dry your clothes!)
Recycle!
Look, I’m a millennial, and I drank the recycling kool-aid. Honestly, I’m still drinking it and not ready to cut back. I truly believe in recycling, as a concept, and if we were all better informed and had resources available, it would be much easier to be more successful as a recycling nation.
Most people are only using single stream recycling, which is often offered by your town and comes with a bin you put at the end of your driveway each week. It’s easy, user-friendly and, unfortunately, ineffective. Less than 40% of what you put in there gets recycled. Even less if you recycle improperly - or if your neighbors recycle improperly. Some estimates are as low as 9%!!
Despite how ineffective our curbside recycling situation is, recycling still works and is one of the best ways to dispose of certain materials. The trick is to use dedicated recycling streams.
Cinder + salt has hosted in-store collection bins for hard to recycle clean-waste for over 7 years. The program is currently on pause BUT our Recycling Guide has a lot of tips on where to recycle some of those items, and what items we will be accepting once we restart the program.
Here are a few of the resources I use most often :
Recycle Plastic Bags & LDPE Plastics to your local grocery store. There are usually bins in the bottle & can redemption room, or at the exits/entrances to recycle plastic grocery bags. Most soft plastic materials (like bread bags & wrapping on paper towels) are LDPE and can go in these bins
Recycle old printer ink & toner cartridges to Staples.
Recycle plastic bottles and aluminum cans in the machines!!! I know it’s super annoying compared to the single stream bin at home, but about 99% of what goes in the machines gets recycled, compared to 40% or less at home. That’s HUGE!
Pro tip! I hate recycling bottles and cans at the grocery store, so I connected with a local Boy Scout Troop through my Buy Nothing group. Every month or so, they swing by my house to collect bottles & cans and they use the redemption money to support their club. Win/win!
Recycle fabric scraps & turn them into housing insulation or new clothes! First, I always bring denim to Madewell because they have a dedicated denim recycling stream. Secondly, anything fiber related (even sneakers, purses, other weird material items) can be donated through collection bins in the city of Middletown. Again, check out our Recycling Guide for details and/or search your own town for their fabric recycling resources.
(Make it a game with kids & let them keep the redemption funds! Photo by Htfd Business Journal)
Avoid Future Garbage
Every time we shop, we have to make choices based on price, availability AND packaging. Honestly, packaging always comes first for me because I REALLY HATE TRASH and I would rather spend more money & not make garbage, then spend less and be a total trash panda! (#DINKLIFE) Do your best to choose LESS packaging whenever possible. Packaging is just ‘future garbage’.
Choose loose fruit. There’s no need to buy a plastic bag of apples instead of loose ones. And no need to choose bagged onions instead of picking up your own. And skip the plastic produce bags too! Invest a couple bucks in reusable produce bags if you really need them - you can use them thousands of times and toss them in the laundry when they get dirty.
Choose sugar, wafer or waffle! Look, I love toppings as much as the next person but the world doesn’t need another foam bowl or plastic spoon. Rethink your ice cream trip & just eat your sweets from a cone. No one cares how much of a mess you make!
Opt for easily recyclable versus not really recyclable. Plastic bags are easy to return to your grocery store, but most clamshell packaging ends up in the ocean or landfills. So choose pastries or produce in plastic bags instead of clamshell packaging, if you don’t have a better choice.
Bring your own bag to the mall. You bring one to the grocery store; how is apparel or hardware shopping any different? Skip the heavy, colorful retail bags when you’re shopping and just carry your own canvas tote.
(Eat ice cream, save the planet - it's science!)
Invest in Betterness
It’s really really hard to do everything right, all the time, especially when everything is destroying the planet. Ugh. One mind shift that really grounds me is investing in the better stuff.
Pass on fast fashion. I don’t do fast fashion; I don’t know what’s trending. I also don’t limit myself to natural and/or organic fibers. I know what I like to wear and when I find something that fits well, holds up to my crazy lifestyle, withstands the washing machine & still looks good 6 months later… I stock up. I have 2 dozen of my favorite layering tanks. I have been known to buy 5 pairs of the same sneakers. My jeans are threadbare because I have worn them probably a thousand times. But everything I own gets used, A LOT, and it doesn’t hit the recycling bag until it has lost all functionality.
Get the espresso machine. Honestly… coffee is a weak spot for me… but when my husband wanted to spend a couple hundo on an espresso machine I was all in. A cappuccino costs $6 anyways and it comes with future garbage (single use cup & lid!) so why not skip all that nonsense and DIY.
Making our own espresso ultimately led us to buy our own water distiller. We held off for a long time but we had to keep buying big plastic gallons of distilled water and it started to feel pretty shameful. So now we distill our own.
Look! I only have cats, coffee and the planet, so that’s what I spend all my time (and money) on! It’s embarrassing… but true. (:
Landscape, or don't. When we bought our house the yard was an overgrown jungle, but as I started to cut it back I learned that the previous owners were VERY in to landscaping. I hired a few companies over the years but all they did was spread toxin filled mulch and pesticides. We gave up and let nature do it's thing for a year but that felt too chaotic. Last year I switched to Pine Bark Nuggets which are double the price of mulch but they are a byproduct of the lumber industry, don't contain the chemicals and dyes of traditional mulch and, honestly, they smell really nice!
(Not my house, not my yard, but love the natural lawn.)
Save Your Money.
Honestly, the biggest lie about sustainability is that it’s more expensive and it’s a lifestyle for rich, white people. I couldn’t disagree more.
Living sustainably means living with less.
Did I buy a water distiller? Yes. Am I still watching the same TV I bought over 20 years ago when I graduated college? Also yes. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if you can do better, just try!
We all choose to spend our money in different ways; I tend to spend my money on upgrading, or downgrading, my routines for a more eco-outcome. And in many ways, that ends up with me spending much less money over time.
If I welcome anything into my life, I always think about the exit strategy. When I take my nieces and nephews shopping I never buy them things made of plastic, or things that are future garbage - they’re probably getting sick of my bullshit. Instead we buy art supplies & make stuff, we go for walks and draw things, we watch movies or cook-up delicious snacks. In a world where everyone wants more more more and everything means… nothing, the best way you can protect our planet is to get used to living with less.
Stepping down from my soapbox now.
- Rachel