Recording My Trash

January 8, 2017:

I decided not to join the chaos at the grocery store during the ice storm/freakout in Atlanta. So I was running low on food supplies and getting hungry and Moe's is just outside of my apartment building...

Moe's is basically a fastfood restaurant, so I made a decent amount of trash. The baskets get reused, but the paper, plastic fork, plastic fork wrapping, and receipt all were thrown in the garbage. It's amazing to me that one meal at Moe's produced more trash than I have in an entire week of eating at my apartment, and I ate my meal in the restaurant. If I had taken the meal to go I would have had a large paper bag and a plastic box to throw away as well.

Obviously, to reduce this trash I should not eat fastfood. I'll be healthier that way also. I had a moment of weakness, but I won't let it happen again! If I do need to eat out, eating at a nicer restaurant should be fine since they use real plates and utensils.

January 7, 2017:

As evidenced by my lack of updates, I have been doing pretty well at eliminating my trash! Most of my waste is compostable paper or food (even lint from the dryer is compostable). The one piece of trash I cannot escape though are produce stickers. Produce stickers usually made out of plastic, so they are not compostable. Even the few that are made of paper have the adhesive coating on one side which is not compostable.

My pesky produce stickers

I did a little research on these pests, and it turns out there are a few alternatives currently being investigated. The first I found, and the coolest, is the FruitWash Label which is a sticker that dissolves into a soap to wash the dirt, bacteria and pesticides off of your produce. I love this idea because not only does it get rid of the sticker trash, it also helps you conserve water, vinegar, soap, or whatever you normally use to wash your produce.

The next idea I found is the CO2 laser for etching food. This idea was recently approved by the FDA, and I think it is more likely that we will see these laser etched foods in the grocery store than we will the FruitWash label. The laser will etch the produce PLU code, barcode, and any other information that is usually contained in a sticker.

CO2 laser-etched produce

Here's the catch: do we burn more CO2 in manufacturing these innovative sticker replacements or laser etching into our food than we do by producing the normal stickers and throwing them in the trash? Usually, technology comes at an energy cost, and the energy burned by creating a more complex sticker or by running a laser is probably higher than the energy burned by producing the standard stickers. I still believe, however, that these ideas are worth pursuing, especially the FruitWash label. The energy saved on the consumer's end is significant enough to make the technology worthwhile to the environment as a whole. A large company will have to invest in this technology first, however, and big companies generally are only interested in their profit margins and believe that it is the job of the consumer to deal with their waste. With time, I believe the manufacturing process could be optimized to make printing a FruitWash label worthy of a company's investment, but someone more powerful than I am will have to make the plunge first.

January 2, 2017:

I cooked myself a meal for the first time since the New Year. I've mostly been living off of bread, vegetables and fruits prior to this. I made salmon rubbed in delicious homemade taco seasoning and pan-seared with some mixed veggies which I cooked in a little bit of butter and topped with sliced parmesan. Yum!

Taco-flavored salmon with mixed veggies

Unfortunately, this meal was not trash-free. My boyfriend purchased the salmon a while ago from Kroger, so I decided I might as well use it. Each salmon piece is individually wrapped! This level of wastefulness absolutely drives me crazy.

Salmon from Kroger, with each piece individually wrapped in plastic

Ways to reduce or eliminate this waste are plentiful, since this is about as wasteful as you can be. Purchasing a larger pack of salmon would eliminate a lot of the waste. A single piece of plastic or aluminum foil could be used to wrap the leftover pieces, instead of plastic wrapped around each piece individually. Also, I have found that the meat counter at Whole Foods will allow you to bring in your own glass jars for them to fill with the meat. Some waste is still produced from the paper they use to weigh the fish and the label they print to scan at the counter, but most of the waste is eliminated.

A lot of stores now have spices for purchase in the bulk section, so no waste needs to be created there.

Buying cheese in a wax wheel reduces most of the waste associated with buying cheese in a plastic wrap or container. I've read that the wax can even be reused later as a fire starter, or as a wax seal for your letters, if you want to be a bit medieval.

The butter I used also created some waste, but the paper can be recycled once all the grease is rubbed off. I've folded the paper in half and am saving it in my refrigerator to use for for greasing a pan instead of having to use one of the nonstick sprays.

Grease from butter paper is a great substitute for spray-on oils

January 1, 2017:

I woke up at my friends' house after a night of celebrating the New Year. In a daze, I grabbed a pack of Belvita breakfast biscuits out of the pantry and ate them. So, I produced my first piece of trash :(

My first piece of trash in 2017

I have been thinking about ways to reduce this trash, and I think homemade granola is a great solution. I found the recipe for my homemade granola on the Zero Waste Chef blog, which I have mentioned before. Her website is an amazing resource for anyone who is trying to go trashless. Below is a picture of my homemade granola in a mason jar, which can easily be thrown into a purse or backpack when I'm on the go.

Homemade granola: a trashless breakfast on the go

When I am in my apartment, my typical breakfast is a grapefruit, a hard-boiled egg, and a piece of toast with peanut butter on it. I never buy grapefruit inside any plastic or mesh bags that I'll have to throw away later, and the skins can go into my compost pile. I buy eggs in the cardboard boxes so that most of the box can be composted along with the egg shells, although the label still has to be thrown away. I make my own bread, although I still buy flour and sugar in paper bags that get recycled. I have yet to find anywhere that sells flour and sugar in bulk. And I love fresh ground peanut butter from either Whole Foods or Sevananda. So my breakfast still isn't completely trash-free, but it's getting there!