Today, September 6th marked day one of Zero Waste Week, which is put on by Mrs Green over at My Zero Waste.
The changes recommended are:
- As long as you end up reducing your food waste in some way, you can choose anything you like. Here are some ideas:
- Identify a particular food that gets thrown away every week and plan a great recipe to use it up
- View your leftovers as ingredients
- Say no to prepacked food and buy only the amount you need
- Get your scales out for measuring rice and pasta rather than guessing and ending up with waste
- Start a compost heap, wormery or bokashi bin.
My day has been dominated by getting things ready for tomorrow’s school year start, but so far my zero waste-ness has included:
- Having my 7th grader glue new labels on last year’s folders instead of buying new ones.
- Sauteed and then ate some arugula that got frozen while we were on vacation. (I think it was due to the refrigerator door not being opened for four days.) Keep in mind that the arugula came to my home via being left behind by one of my mother’s guest cottage tenants. So really . . . I should get double kudos for this act.
- Pulled apart the different layers of a spent cat food bag to separate the paper from the plastic in order to recycle it.
- Baked a double batch of chocolate chip bran muffins. I will freeze these to have for school lunches. (Zero packaging.)
- Made a batch of egg salad for sandwiches. I included some refrigerator pickles, which are just cucumber spears that I threw into a jar of pickles to avoid them going bad.
I will be addressing issues related to Zero Waste throughout the week.
Oh, happy day!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh! I was working on this without even knowing it was a special week. Let me get to blogging on my zero-waste! Thanks!!
Waste not, Want not. As Katy’s littlest sister this philosophy somehow got instilled in me at at time long before memory. It is most probably incoded in our families DNA. Who knows, but in any case it has opened up a world of opportunity for me, full of experiences I never could have afforded with a different mentality. Years of traveling with no steady (or just no) income, myriad home cooked leftover lunches, super cheap and funky used clothes… here are a few of my favorite long kept family strategies for high level non-wasting:
*Multitasking: its the kill two birds with one stone tactic.
*Biking: fun, excersize and transportation.
*Love your job: money, purpose, an offering. A lifetime of hard work should add up a lot to be proud of. All that work is bound to change the world, so it might as well be making it better.
*Don’t watch (most) TV: time is the thing most often wasted. Read, Play music, Be creative, Connect.
Love you Katy
Katy,
Would you be able to give out your Chocolate chip bran muffin recipe? Sounds like it would be a good one for my family. I am trying harder to have zero waste. We live in an apartment and tried the worm bin thing…didn’t work…or rather we didn’t do it right. I may try that one again since we just cleaned off the deck this weekend.
Mrs. B, I encourage you to try the wormbin again – it really can be so easy – and there are groups on the net that can give you info and encourage you.
What I tried – my husband bought a bunch of fresh dill for a recipe, using maybe 1 tablespoon of it – so I took the rest before it would go bad and have it laying on the table to dry – hope it works.
Thanks so much for the mention, Katy. The choc chip muffins sound scrummy and you definitely get extra points for the arugula and a bonus for painstakingly pulling apart that cat food wrapper 😀
Do head over to the site and participate Leslie – we’d love to see you there 🙂
I’m late to get on board, but I’m definitely participating in this week! Here’s what I pledged to do:
1. I pledge not to go to the grocery store for the rest of the week.
2. I pledge to only make enough food for dinner tonight that will feed two of us today and me for lunch tomorrow.
3. I pledge to take inventory of my pantry so I know exactly what I have.