0 Waste – Half Way

We’re already halfway into the zero waste week. So far things haven’t been easy. Getting really to zero definitely is hard. Yesterday my husband made puff pastry with home-made mushroom ragout. The ragout was laughably easy to make. First melt the butter and add flour. Mix. Then add vegetable broth, and finally the cut-up mushrooms. Bake the puff pastry in small forms in the oven. Put the ragout in. Done!

But there was some waste. The puff pastry was wrapped in plastic, with sheets inbetween the pastry sheets. It definitely generated less waste then if we would have bought ready-made pastries and ready-made ragout. And it is great to also see how my husband is becoming more waste-aware! So I simply added part of the waste to my personal waste bag for this week.

Another tricky thing is that it is difficult to plan ahead when you’re pregnant. Sometimes I feel a bit faint, and I have to eat something, anything, right then. Of course it helps to carry something on you. Yesterday to work I brought an apple, a banana, and some nuts with sultanas. But I also already have been in a situation where I had to eat something, and all I saw  around me in the store where I was at that moment was wrapped in plastic. In the end I bought a chocolate bar. The paper outer wrapping is fine. I have no idea whether that aluminium foil is filtered out in post-separation though. So I added it to my waste bag.

Aside from the yummy new recipes for bread and ragout, I also discovered something else this week. I can refill my old Ecover containers for laundry detergent and fabric softener at one of the local eco stores. A nice surprise. They also had pure olive soap (wrapped in only some paper), that I had not been able to find elsewhere.

So what am I really missing? I miss potato chips: it always comes in this mix wrap of plastic and alimunium. And vla (a type of custard), especially because it seems to help with stomach acid, which is definitely a problem during the last stages of pregnancy. I have been looking for vla in PET or glass bottles, but so far, no luck. Perhaps at some point I could try to make these myself (recipes for chips in microwave and deep frying, recipe for vla (sorry, Dutch)).

Even though I will not be really 0 waste, it is still nice to try to make it as little as possible. It is probably a bit similar to becoming vegetarian. In the beginning I really had to make an effort, but as time goes on, you just know what you can and can’t do, what you like and dislike, and it becomes a habit that you no longer have to think (too much) about. And it is definitely a fun challenge to think about how you could still do certain things but then without the waste!