In case you haven't noticed this week I've been photographing my food waste for National Zero Waste week, I didn't think I wasted much food and as it turns out I pretty much proved myself right. Hurrah!
This is what I did waste during the week -
4 apple cores
2 manky grapes
quite a lot of pistachio nut shells
2 lots of potato peelings
3 mushroom stalks
garlic peelings
a bit of bread crust
1 poppadom
1 piece of green bean
2 lots of broccoli/cauliflower stalks
2 blobs of ketchup
2 plates of left over bean juice
Which still seems quite a lot to me, but the good news is that pretty much everything I didn't/couldn't eat was composted. Apart from the bread crust, which I fed to my garden birds, the ketchup and bean juice which were washed away in the dishwasher and the poppadom which went in the bin.
Completing this challenge has given me a few things to think about, and there are a few things I'm going to change. I'm going to control myself with the ketchup bottle so I don't feed the dishwasher any more of it! I'm also going to try to reduce my use of pre-made food, for example when I had oven chips and vegan sausage I wrote I made no food waste, because there was no waste on my plate, but during their manufacture surely there was waste - potato peelings from the chips, goodness knows what from the vegan sausage, and so on. I'm going to write to the companies and see if they can tell me what happens to their waste, but also try to eat more homemade meals so I'm able to dispose responsibly for any food waste that happens. And this will help me with packaging issues too. Although I was producing very little food waste I was still making a lot of packaging waste this week :(
I hope everyone who joined in had a great Zero Waste Week!
It really is super useful taking part in a challenge that changes a small persepctive, isn't it? Great to see you also got something personal from the challenge :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting Julie :) I really enjoyed taking part in the challenge although I'm quite glad I can stop taking photos of my plates now!
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear about almost-zero food waste!! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd for new insights and everything!!
Yeah, I was really wondering about packaging waste too.. :)
Al those veg*n goodies seem to come pre-packed in iffy stuff, no? Ideally one could get better packaging or DIY more.. (We've made DIY vegetarian oatmeal/onion/pumpkin/etc fried yummies instead of prepackaged ones before..)
Haven't ventured to make DIY tofu yet though we have recipes somewhere.. And we planted soy for the first time ever this year!! :) so we'll see how *that* turjns out! :)
Heeey Layla! Great to 'see' you again! :)
ReplyDeleteThe only specifically vegan product I eat is Linda Mcartney which come in just a cardboard box which can go in with our recycling, but there is lots of plastic bags involved in the other pre-packed food we use, which I'm going to work on reducing (it's hard when I'm not in charge of the food shopping at the moment!)
DIY tofu sounds like a good idea, I didn't know you could diy it! At least then you'll know the soya's come from an ethical source! I'm allergic to soya, but I'd love to see how yours turns out!