It’s Day 7! Just typing Day 7 makes me happy and feel accomplished. I can’t believe I made it a week on this zero-waste eating challenge, but I can at the same time. For the most part, I don’t think my diet changed much. I’ve always eaten a lot of whole foods and not very many processed items, but the way I buy food definitely changed. In the beginning, I had to keep an eye out for all the foods I wanted to buy with less packaging and in packaging that could be composted or recycled. And now I think I’m starting to get the hang of where to go to get the most environmentally friendly item of interest.
I actually just went to the co-op today to get a head start on next week’s meal prep. I’m planning to make this stuffed sweet potato recipe and this chickpea salad recipe. This time at the co-op, I was very prepared, knew how to buy all of the desired ingredients, and brought enough of my containers in the right size.
The one issue I have about this challenge, though, is how I feel like I can only buy certain foods based on the packaging it comes in. For example, meat just seems really hard to get without that plastic that goes in the trash, and I don’t want to put raw meat in my containers. I also miss eating yogurt and the convenience of granola bars. There’s always the solution of making my own, but who has the time for that? How do *true* zero waste people eat on an unrestricted diet?
Today was also the first day I ate out at a restaurant on this challenge. My friend was leaving town, so we wanted to meet up one last time. I was kinda running out of my meal prep, so this was good timing in the challenge. Since I knew we were going to a sushi restaurant, I didn’t plan to bring a reusable container for leftovers because I usually finish my food. If it were another restaurant, I might have to rethink that. But imagine bringing a giant Tupperware that’s bigger than your purse to a restaurant; that does not seem fun.
When my sushi order arrived, I forgot that I would be using chopsticks. I thought I would have to count that towards my waste and regretted not bringing my own reusable ones, but my friend pointed out that the wrapper could be recycled and that the chopsticks could be composted (at the school). I’m planning to do the same with the paper napkin, but the wrapper the complimentary chocolate mint came in will have to go into my trash bin.
I decided to take those items back home to compost because I doubt the restaurant composts. I don’t know if I’m right (I was unable to get an answer when calling the restaurant), but what I did find was that, according to this study, only 14% of surveyed Berkeley, CA restaurants dumped food into landfills. This does not surprise me though; California is much farther ahead in environmental practices than Michigan. For example, California cities began the plastic bag ban at checkouts in 2014, while there is still no action from Michigan yet.
Thinking back to today’s co-op trip again… I was going to check out the Saturday Ann Arbor farmers market on the way to the co-op, but I discovered that it had shut down due to COVID-19. I wanted to go to the farmers market to see if I could find any ingredients on my list at a reasonable price. The farmers market is no doubt more expensive than a store, but it is possible to find a good deal.
One reason farmers markets are important is because it is one way to know for sure that your food is grown locally. Buying local helps reduce food miles, the distance traveled to transport the food product, which ultimately adds to greenhouse gas emissions. This study found that of an average household’s food carbon footprint, 68% is due to production and 5% is due to transportation. This means reducing consumption of foods with the largest carbon footprint, like meat, would make a more significant difference than choosing something local. However, buying local is still something that factors in and should be considered. It also supports independent farmers and the local workforce hosting the market.
So, in addition to the farmers market being shut down, I encountered another roadblock when I got to the co-op. Because people were panic buying food during this COVID-19 outbreak, most foods were looking scarce… at least the ones I wanted to purchase. Since I spent so much time finding the perfect recipe that would work well with this challenge, I decided to make do with what food was still left.
Instead of buying the normal dried chickpeas, I had to buy the more expensive organic kind. They also ran out of almost all their lentils. It was either buy the more expensive unfamiliar looking lentils or go somewhere else and buy lentils with plastic packaging. In the end, I decided to try new lentils: French lentils. Sounds fancy right? Hopefully, they taste that way too.
This roadblock, almost like the one on Day 1 when I thought they ran out of carrots, brings up some questions about zero waste. When living zero waste, if the ingredients you need that day are not available, how far do you go to get them zero waste? Do you try to go to another store (assuming that’s an option), do you just skip it, or do you buy it in a form that is not zero waste? I’m lucky that I have the co-op nearby, otherwise I think I would be producing much more trash from the things I’ve been eating zero waste. Eating zero waste is definitely a privilege.
Comments