Just because a hurricane is coming, that doesn’t mean your zero waste, plastic free, and sustainable living goals have to go out the window! All you need is a little creativity.
The most important thing when preparing for a hurricane or other natural disaster with zero waste goals in mind is that your safety and well-being have to come first.
Always check with state and local governments for guidance, as advice and requirements may vary depending on your location. This is not meant to be a complete guide to hurricane preparedness (check out Ready.gov if that’s what you’re looking for!), but rather tips and tricks for being prepared while keeping your environmental impact small.
This list is based off of my own preparations, so if you have any other suggestions, please leave a comment!!
Staying Informed When the Power Goes Out
Make sure you charge up all of your communication devices before you lose power. If you do lose power, turn them off or put them in airplane mode to save power, and use them sparingly.
Have a plan for keeping in touch with friends and relatives. Let them know ahead of time that you will be conserving power and might have limited access to communications.
Consider setting up a phone tree style system with someone who will likely be unaffected. Then you only have to reach out to one person, and they can pass the information along to whomever needs it.
If you have backup charging devices or extra/external batteries, make sure you charge them up too!
Water
I think a typical reaction to hearing about a storm coming is to go to the store and buy a ton of bottled water.
Not only is this incredibly wasteful and inefficient, but it also might not be adequate for you water needs. Particularly for bathing, flushing the toilet, and washing dishes.
Typically during a storm you won’t lose access to water, but it’s good to be prepared just in case. And the good news is you can stock up on water without having to resort to plastic bottles.
You already have lots of things in your house that will work great as water vessels:
- your tub (be sure to bathe first, then carefully clean and sanitize if you plan to use this water for anything other than flushing)
- pots and pans
- bowls
- growlers
- pitchers
- jars (like mason jars or jars that had food in them that you’d just have to recycle anyway, just be sure to clean them well)
- mugs
- glasses
- reusable water bottles
- tupperware and casserole dishes
- coolers
Even better, for large storage, you can use a glass carboy, like this one my husband and I use for homebrewing:
We also have a plastic one, which is a bit more manageable for me since it’s lighter, even if it’s less than ideal for being plastic. Many grocery stores have refill and deposit systems on 5 gallon water jugs, which is a much better option than a ton of individual plastic bottles.
If you have ample freezer space, consider freezing water ahead of time. Be sure to leave expansion room in the container so it doesn’t break when you freeze it. If you lose power, you can then move anything left in your fridge into the freezer or top opening cooler if you have one, and the ice will help to keep it all cool longer. When it melts you can still drink it.
Laundry
Make sure you do your laundry before the storm hits! You don’t want to run out of clean clothes when the power’s out and the water’s scarce. For information about sustainable laundry practices, check out this page.
Toilets
It’s a bit extreme, but if you lose access to water and a sewage system for a long period of time, and you run out of water to use for flushing, it’s good to understand the basics of a composting/waterless toilet.
The key to success is keeping solids dry through two means: separation and cover material. When the solids are dry, smell is minimal and things stay livable and sanitary
Separation means keeping liquids and solids apart. Typically easier for men than women, but not impossible with practice and control. Also more easily accomplished with a urine diverter. There’s a niche market for manufactured urine diverters (typically out of fiberglass), but if you’re making do in an emergency situation, a strategically placed funnel or a two bucket system is going to be your best bet.
Cover material is really any absorbent natural material that you can place over your solid waste to dry it out as quickly as possible. In the composting toilet world there is much debate over the best material, from sawdust to coconut coir. In an emergency, you’ll have to make do with whatever materials you can: toilet paper, newspaper, dry leaves or mulch, dirt, etc.
If you’re interested in learning more about composting toilets, check out my previous discussion of them in my post about plastic free toilet paper. I provide more information and links to additional resources.
Food
For me, food is already the biggest zero waste and plastic free challenge. The additional caveats of requiring neither refrigeration or cooking make it even more of a challenge.
Please keep in mind that everyone’s definition of what is “zero waste” is different. For me it’s avoiding excess packaging, and plastic packaging especially. And unless you are growing all of your own food, packaging of some kind is going to be unavoidable. Here’s the best I was able to come up with:
- fruits: oranges, apples
- veggies: broccoli, carrots, cucumber, bell peppers, cabbage (even though my husband thinks I’m a total weirdo for liking raw cabbage), cauliflower
- homemade bread (tends to go bad quickly without any preservatives, so if you make it ahead, make sure it’s the first thing you eat)
- nuts & dehydrated fruits (if you can buy them in bulk with your own containers)
- peanut butter (unfortunately hard to find in glass jars without plastic film)
- pickles
These two articles are good resources on storing food without refrigeration:
- Storing Veggies without Refrigeration by The Boat Galley
- How to Keep Fruits & Veggies Fresh Without Refrigeration by Crisis Equipped (honestly a little more on the “doomsday prepper” side than my usual taste, but it had a lot of useful information)
Another good policy is to try to cook up whatever you can before the storm, and eat it first if you lose power and refrigeration. Try to keep things refrigerated as long as possible by minimizing how often you open and close your fridge if you lose power.
Top opening freezers are the most efficient at keeping cold air in, so if you have one, use it to keep things cold as long as you can. If you don’t have a chest freezer, you could use a cooler instead.
Lighting
If you lose power, the easiest thing to do adjust your life to daylight hours. Wake up with the sun, go to bed with the sun.
But in the event that you find yourself yearning for light at night, or need light in a bathroom, I recommend opting out of a traditional C or D battery powered flashlight and investing in a USB rechargeable flashlight instead.
My husband did a lot of research and ended up purchasing this one for his work:
He liked that it as different modes of brightness and would have up to 520 hours of brightness. So far he’s been happy with it.
For home use, however, I’m sure there are less intense/industrial options out there that are a bit more affordable, and a quick search online for “USB rechargeable flashlight” should turn up good options.
In general, I’m not a big advocate for the “buying of additional things,” but for replacing inefficient items with significantly more efficient items, I think it is fairly warranted. Especially when traditional flashlights require the repeated purchasing of additional batteries.
