Steps towards zero waste - 2019

stirchleygirl

OK so the yoghurt making was a fail :-) it was a risky venture as the sachet of yoghurt mix expired in 2012 (I did say I'd bought it a long time ago) - so the disgusting tasting runny end product went down the sink - not very ZW or MS. I'll be trying the next load using some Greek yoghurt with live active cultures - I'll let you know how that goes.

So last week as I was a bit more recovered from my relapse but still not well enough to return to work I decided to do a bit more towards eliminating my food waste (as a single person the fresh sometimes goes off before I can use it all or get my PA to make something with it) so I made an inventory of what was in my fridge, freezer and cupboards. Wow I have an awful lot of veggie sausages! So as I'm back at work this week I thought I'd need to do a food shop to have food for my PA to make salads for my packed lunch. After starting an online shop (I'm unable to go shopping) I realised it was stupid to be buying more food when I already had lots. So I studied my inventory to have a think about what meals and work lunches my PA could make out of what I already have - instead of the usual ones as I would need to do a shop to get those items - so for the 2 days that I leave the house to work 'on-site' (I work from home for some of the time) I came up with 2 x fruit smoothies using up fresh bananas some frozen fruit and soya milk. 2 x Pasta salad (dried pasta; mixed with the remainder of some vegan garlic soft cheese left over from Xmas; the remainder of the mushrooms which were 'starting to turn'; and the remainder of a bunch of spring onions. 2 x individual fruit yoghurts (not home made). 2 x satsumas. I discovered quite a few packets of veggie quick set jelly powder (the type up put over fruit flans) so I asked my PA to make some up and pour over pineapple chunks and satsumas segments as both tins of fruit had been there for over a year. For evening meals after going to work on Thurs & Fri she has pre-made 2 portions of cous-cous (today) which and she will top with a tin of veg tagine on one day and a tin of chickpea dahl on the other day (both of which I've had for months. For the weekend and Mon & Tues next week (days my PA does not come) she has made me a pasta bake (dried pasta, 1 jar of tomato/bol cooking sauce, a mixture of some of the many frozen veg that lurk in my freezer, and some of the copious amounts of veggie sausages also from my freezer. I am well pleased that I was able to create (with a bit of thought and consulting my food inventory) a whole week's worth of meals without having to do an online shop. Yay I'm so proud of myself and my PA for making them. I've still got loads of food left - but apart from a few satsumas (which I'll be eating as snacks throughout the week so they don't go off) and some flavoured cheese left over from Xmas and will keep - all the fresh stuff has been used and nothing ended up in the bin!!!! :-)
I'll be planning over the weekend what meals she can make next Weds from existing stocks (though my need to get her to pop to the little shop at the end of the road for some fresh fruit.

maryb

That's really good Stirchly. JackieO herself would be impressed! For those of you who haven't come across her, JackieO is one of the most prolific posters on the Old Style board but she generally posts on the love food hate waste thread and the daily thread. What that woman can do to make her food streeeetch is amazing. I think she has been trying to eat down her freezer for months so she can defrost it but because she stretches anything she takes out she ends up putting loads back in

stirchleygirl

maryb
Thanks :-)

Yes I have seen many of JackieO's posts and as you say she is a prolific poster and it is amazing how frugal she is.

It's also going to take me quite a while to use up all of my stores - after I've used up my large stash of veggie sausages I'll have to start on my large stash of veggie haggis.

A few years ago I saved up and bought a very tall freezer that is frost free as my old one was a standard under counter one and due to my disability I was unable to defrost it (this was before I had help) and I ended up reduced to only using half of it as 2 of the drawers had got frozen over and the plastic drawer fronts got broken by the force of the ice.
I was able to give it and my under counter fridge away to a friend who had just moved at the time and hadn't got either and couldn't afford to buy them - so I was glad that they went to a good home as they still worked.
My new very tall fridge and very tall frost free freezer were sound investments (both saved up for and both researched via the MSE shop-bot to get best deals/price) as due to having to buy more than I need as a single person in order to make up the minimum spend for an online shop I now have the space to store it and can take advantage of offers on fresh and especially frozen items (which is how I ended up with so many veggie sausages LOL) the veggie haggis I deliberately stock pile as you can only get it from supermarkets in Jan for Burns Night.

wort

Well done stirchley girl, I find it easier to freeze any thing that's needing using up. Like peppers ,onions mushrooms, chopped and frozen then used from frozen on pizza ,pasta and stews.
Carrots and other veg, cooked and frozen are great for a quick tea.
Also I freeze milk ,and cheese grated . Most things can be frozen and I don't waste any food that way. Good luck.

maryb

Anyone know whether you can recycle the metal type wine bottle collars with the metal recycling? (not that there are many like that any more, they are usually shrink wrapped plastic collars). I know they are not made of lead any more and they look like aluminium. I've been googling to try and find out but nothing although I did learn that you should put the screw caps back on wine bottles as the glass recycling technology enables them to be separated


I've taken another step towards trying to reduce waste by dipping a toe in the water of doorstep milk delivery. It's about twice the price for organic milk, which I prefer but it wasn't that so much. I gave up using the milkman many years ago because we were at the end of his round and the milk was always on the turn by the time it reached us in summer. More recently I've been trying to get straight in my mind whether glass bottles are actually better than plastic - they use a lot of energy to produce and transport. If you just look at carbon emissions, it's more finely balanced than I realised. But when you look at wider implications like minimising plastic waste then I decided opting for glass would reduce the need for new plastic production, since the plastic bottles can't be reused - or indeed recycled, just downcycled. And with easy sources of oil diminishing, increases in plastic production must mean fracking is on the increase at a global level.


Sorry to ramble like this but I find it all quite complicated when I try to bottom it out

GreyQueen

Hi maryb, what I'm doing with small bits of recyclable metal is putting them in a tin which will eventually go on a one-way trip to my Red Cross charity shop. Mine recycles metals as well as rags via their scrap merchant. Little bits need to be tinned as they would otherwise fall through the sacks used to take the metals away.



I know about this because I asked the manager, who is a friend and an ardent recycler. He has a tin for little metal bits running in the stockroom and I can even add in rusty bits of metal and nails dug up on my allotment. For me, it's about avoiding waste and getting things back into the material stream to be re-used. Frintsance, I have dug up lead and aluminium recently on the lotties.



Perhaps you could have a convo with a chazzer near to you to see if they do something similar? HTH.

maryb

Good idea. I am actually coralling them in an old jam jar so that when I have enough I can squish them into a blob that is big enough to be detected by the recycling machinery. But if the wine bottle collars aren't aluminium but some sort of composite that could contaminate the rest. One thing I did find out is that if one messes up and it ends up going for incineration, then they can recover aluminium from the ash. But then again...



Our council sends low grade "recyclable" waste to the combined heat and power plant at Deptford. They say that no dioxins have been found in the emissions but I know that local residents have complained about dust and I can imagine it is not the sort of dust you would want to breathe in. So the less I send to incineration the better.


But I can't do without cream for my pudding with Sunday dinner. And that comes in plastic pots, can't find it in glass. Sorry environment!

Nargleblast

You could get your own cow and produce your own milk, cream and butter, maryb - but hang on, what about all that methane polluting the atmosphere? It seems we are doomed to pollute the Earth whatever we do.

maryb

Reading back I realise I sound like a complete dipso! I don't have that many wine bottle collars, honest, guv!!

GreyQueen

maryb wrote: »

Reading back I realise I sound like a complete dipso! I don't have that many wine bottle collars, honest, guv!!

The lady doth protest too much!


Yeah, Nargle, to live is to consume and to consume is to pollute, one can only do the best to limit the pollution and not trash too much of the planet as it needs to be left inhabitable for future generations. Life on earth will always continue in some form or other but we homo sapiens have very specific requirements for our survival and a degraded planet may/ will not be able to support a fraction of the population of us that it supports at present.



Even those who scorn the tree hugging could perhaps be steered towards low waste and zero waste practices by hard economics; handling refuse and recycling costs MONEY. Picking up fly-tipping and litter costs MONEY. It degrades environments and (probably) reduces property values.:rotfl: