Packaging-free food shopping?

Inhabitat, a nifty green design/lifestyle/architecture blog, recently posted (all wide-eyed and ooooh) about Unpackaged, a grocery shop that sells lots of foods loose.

Well, it's a great idea. But it's not new. Of course, now it's come to the notice of trendy posh Londonites, who want Bee Pollen and Red Quinoa, it's the next big thing, but weigh-it-yourself type shops have been around for ages - they're not common, but they are there. It's just that, you know what? They are in run-down areas where people don't have much spare cash, and they sell no-brand cornflakes. Fancy!

It seems it's either top end or bottom end of the market, and nothing in the middle...

What's new?

Long time no blog...

How about an update of good habits and slippage? Where are we over a year after zero waste week?

Food buying habits are still pretty good I think. We still head to the local shops or market as much as we can, and we don't buy much processed food at all. There has been a bit of slippage on the baking front, and a few more cereal bars and similar snacks being bought, but we're back on home made cake this week. Yay! And we still fearlessly laugh in the face of Best Before dates and Consume Within advice, and trust our noses, with no should-have-been-edible food going in the bin. There are a few things that have gone in the compost when they've gone off too soon, pears and satsumas being a bit prone to mouldiness for some reason.

There has been a loss to the eco-shopping scene in Norwich. Wholefood Planet closed this month. I said when I originally blogged about it that it was out of the way, and I think that probably did for it. In an industrial unit down a dead end road on the very edge of town is not the place to open a shop, or a cafe (as they added later). It is a real shame, as it deserved to do well, but it also deserved to be better located for passing traffic and those who don't drive (presumably a fair proportion of their target eco-audience?). I will miss the large packs of wholefoods.

We have reluctantly moved away from the Bio-D washing liquid and softener that came in 25 litre containers and saved us lots of packaging. It was causing huge amounts of what can only be described as gunge in the washing machine. I don't know if it deteriorated because we didn't use it quickly enough, but there were grim mucus-y blobs in the softener, and a similar substance building up in the tray (and presumably in the pipes). We are trying some other eco alternatives including concentrated softener and, I'm afraid, wrapped tablets. Any comments on better-packaged things that work and don't cause gunge?

We had a new situation back in November - workmen in the house. Our old boiler went pop (more like dribble, actually) and so we replaced it with a more efficient one, requiring some changes to the whole heating system. The plumber took away the old boiler, feeder tank from the loft, and the insulated hot water tank from the airing cupboard. But he left behind cardboard and polystyrene packaging, broken tiles, leftover mortar/plaster stuff, assorted screws and general waste. Unfortunately he left it in the recycling bin, since that's outside the front door and the rubbish bin is tucked away behind the garage since we use it less often. So we had to tip up the whole wheelie bin and sort out the contents. Even when I mentioned it to him, MORE waste went in it the next day. ARGH.

There have been some changes to our Freecycle group in that it's become Freegle, but it still works just as well as ever. We had some great publicity in the November 2009 issue of Your Rubbish Your Choice (you can read it online from that link - page 16-17), and once again went to te Norfolk Waste Partnership conference to spread the word. In YRYC you can read about Recycle-PC, who collect all manner of old IT equipment through Freegle, make working systems, and give them away to those who need them - not to mention disposing properly of the bits that are no longer useful. I was really pleased (and not a little surprised) to find out that old PCs from work go to these guys, and passed on a whole vanload of computers to them at the end of the year. I'll be adding some bits of our own as soon as my husband's not looking ;)

The dreaded lurgi

No, I'm not ill - but there's something wrong.

I still carry on my Zero Waste Week habit of baking some sort of tray bake for the week, rather than buy packaged cereal bars etc, but the past two weeks have ended in disaster. Green, furry disaster. Despite being stored in airtight containers, my cakes (banana last week, date and walnut this week) have been showing mould after just 4 days. And I don't mean a mouldy corner that you can cut off before eating the rest of the cake (I'm not squeamish!) - I mean a fine fuzz of filaments across the cake.

At least the birds have had quite a feast!

Both cakes came out quite moist, so I wonder if that is it - in this humid weather I guess any mould spores in the air will just go crazy given some yummy sticky sweet bits to feast on.

I think I will have to bake something I can freeze this weekend - if I take a piece out in the morning it will be defrosted by lunch time. I'm just very annoyed at the waste :(

New shopping opportunities...

It's been a busy couple of weeks... not much to report on the waste front but I have taken advantage of a couple of new (to me) shopping opportunities that score well on various green credentials including waste.

First up it's the HFG Farm Shop at the local garden centre. Their boast is that for most produce they can measure "farm yards" rather than "food miles" - everything is labelled with its origin and indeed there is lots of stuff from within 10 miles or so, grown on HFG farms. There were also goodies from local bakeries, meat producers and other food businesses. So, local credentials firmly in place, how do they do on packaging? Pretty well I think.

Almost everything we wanted veg-wise was unwrapped - including celery, which is uncommon. However, peppers were only available wrapped and on a tray, and herbs were in plastic boxes rather than unwrapped bunches. We also passed on the loose onions to buy a (cheaper) 5kg mesh bag, although I am confident we'll find a use for the bag or maybe just take it back and refill it. None of the manufactured/prepared foods were unwrapped, since they are not processed on the premises - meat, fish, cheese, bread and cakes all have plastic wrap and (for meat/fish) polystyrene trays. So I think we'll stick to the butcher and fishmonger for these. But there is an interesting selection of frozen goods - loose fruit and also bake-yourself croisssants etc. which Alex tells me can be put in your own containers.

One slightly offputting aspect was that bicycle access is not good. A cycle path runs right by the entrance, but it's an awkward turn to get in and you then have to run the gauntlet of the car park to find... no cycle parking. However, I sent an email suggesting that they might improve this aspect and got a positive response to say they are about to rethink cycle access so I look forward to it getting easier in future.

On to the next new discovery - Wholefood Planet. This was flagged up in our county council magazine lately, and is very close to where we live so we decided to check it out. They sell a range of ethically-sourced and environmentally-friendly products, including organic foods and Ecover refills, operate a coffee shop inside the store, and they also employ people with learning difficulties and are committed to fair wages.

The shop is located on a small industrial estate, a bit out of the way but well signposted. It's not really near other shops but it's more the sort of place to do a monthly stock-up so that's not a problem. I was delighted to find lots of Suma things on sale - just the sort of thing that I wanted to order direct but was unable to due to the minimum order cost. Prices were very reasonable too, and compared well with organic products on sale elsewhere. I was a bit disappointed by the packaging of these things as it didn't seem very efficient - the packs are very large and flat, which leads to a greater surface area (i.e. amount of packaging) for the same volume of goods. But I understand that the thick polythene used is accepted by Polyprint for recycling, so that is a plus.

We'll definitely keep shopping at Wholefood Planet, and will probably go to HFG occasionally, but the greengrocer we usually use is closer to other shops (butcher, baker, Co-op) and we have got to know the people who work there so feel quite loyal to it. But if you are off to the garden centre anyway then it is well worth a look!

There is such a thing as a free lunch

As reported in today's EDP, there is such a thing as a free lunch - at least at one pub near Halesworth in Suffolk:

Monday lunchtimes, traditionally the quietest time of the week for pubs, at The Plough are now pulling in credit crunch-busters from miles around, thanks to a clever idea by landlords Nick and Debbie Sumner.

“On Mondays we always used to clean out the fridges,” said Mrs Sumner. “We were throwing a lot of food away. We said, 'Instead of throwing it away, why not give it away?'

“As long as people buy a drink, they can have free food instead of it going to the chickens.”

What a great way to reduce food waste and help attract more customers to the pub - community pubs are struggling in this recession and need all the help they can get. And the idea has certainly been successful on that front:

The couple admitted that the popularity of the offer had escalated through word of mouth, and now necessitated food being prepared solely for the purpose, rather than just using up leftover produce.

It can be hard to estimate demand for food, and no pub likes turning hungry customers away when they want to buy food and drink, so you can understand owners erring on the side of caution when buying their food supplies for the week. If you pride yourself on serving fresh food, then perhaps there is a limited amount that can be done with freezing things - so it's good to see a bit of lateral thinking. Let's hope the chickens still benefit from any scraps left behind on plates!

Zero-waste treats

This waste reduction lark doesn't have to be all vegetable soup and knit-your-own-yoghurt you know. Recently I found a couple of luxurious and delicious shop-bought puddings which might make you fearful for your waistline, but leave your bin resolutely slim.

First of all, it's Chocolate and Vanilla Cheesecake from those quirkily-umlauted people at Gü. Small but perfectly formed, these are cute glass pots of indulgence, with foil lids and a simple cardboard box to hold them. The ramekins can be kept and reused, for cooking or other purposes (ideal as tea light holders as they are quite thick).

Next up it's a true champion of real food, the Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding people. Their puddings come in a sturdy foil tray (easily reused or recycled), cardboard lid, and cardboard sleeve. And if I said that this was one of the most lip-smackingly, plate-scrapingly, more-please-ingly delicious things I have ever tasted in my entire life, that would be no exaggeration.


Don't get me wrong, I still love cooking and baking, but these two really are well worth a try if you want a real treat without going near a hot stove. And not a bit of plastic packaging in sight.

My perfect waste campaign... LFHW day 1

Well, it's true. I love food, and I hate waste!

As tomorrow sees the launch of the LFHW campaign in Norfolk, and I have been lucky enough to bagsy an invitation, I will have loads of information on reducing food waste coming up on tomorrow's blog.

I have also decided that this will be my own LFHW week, and I'll tally the waste we create with particular attention to food. First it's worth saying a bit about the start of the week, which in food terms is the weekend as that's when we shop.

On Saturday morning I sat and planned the food for the week - a mix of old favourites (stir fry, tomato and bacon pasta) and new recipes to try (white fish with spicy beans and chorizo, sausage and butter bean casserole), plus any baking I want to do. This gets translated into a list and we go out shopping - to the greengrocer, fishmonger, baker (all the same shop!), butcher, and then to the supermarket for tinned and dry goods and non-food. Using the list, we should find that we don't overbuy - buying things loose from independent shops also helps with this. Over the weekend I baked banana flapjacks with some almost-past-it nanas, and made a big pan of vegetable and pasta soup to do for lunch both days.

On to today, the start of my LFHW focus, and it went something like this:

Breakfast: porridge with fruit, nuts and honey, and a fruit tea. For hubby it's weetabix.
Food-related waste: a teabag.

Lunch: I have a big salad with spinach, cucumber, celery, pepper, carrot, cherry tomatoes, tuna, and sweet chilli sauce, followed by an orange and one of the fruity oat bars I baked last week (packed in a reusable tub). Him indoors doesn't do packed lunches, not that I haven't tried! It's usually a supermarket sandwich, yogurt and fruit, but today he was at a meeting with lunch included.
Food-related waste: inedible vegetable and fruit bits (peels, cores, seeds, etc.)
Packaging waste: celery wrapper.

Snacks: an apple and a banana, and some nuts (a small pot, filled from a big pack at home). Mark manages to munch some cake.
Food-related waste: banana peel, apple core.
Packaging waste: empty almond bag.

Dinner: haddock fillet with spicy beans, chorizo and cabbage, crusty bread, then yogurt and some flapjack. Clean plates all round apart from the scaly haddock skin!
Food-related waste: tough ribs from the cabbage's outer leaves, onion and garlic peel, fish skin.
Packaging waste: tomato and bean tins, plastic yogurt pot and lid, thin plastic bag from the fish, foil yogurt lid.

As you can see, there is plenty of "unavoidable food waste" (i.e. non-edible bits), but the vast majority of this (320g) can be composted. Just the fish skin (8g) has to go in the bin. Of the packaging, the tins and foil (110g) can be recycled, but the plastics (38g) can't.


One thing I do know is that there will be less compostable waste for me tomorrow as the launch event includes a buffet (suitably low-waste I hope...)

Waste vs. waist

As part of my efforts to get fitter and healthier, I'm a member of a diet and fitness website, and often read the forums on there. I have noticed that when people ask for food ideas, there is recommendation of home cooked food as well as "diet" ready meals, which is brilliant to see. A recent thread on what to have for dinner for about 300 calories not only gathered suggestions of Weight Watchers ready meals, Quorn cottage pie, boil in the bag fish and rice, and other pre-packed stuff, but also ideas including fresh fish and meat, and recipes for vegetable soup, butternut squash casserole, and Spanish omelette.

This must also mean a reduction in packaging. Ready meals have at least a plastic dish, film lid and cardboard or plastic box/wrapper. Supermarket "healthy goodies" often come in acres of plastic, sometimes wrapped separately in individual portions "for calorie control". Fresh fruit and veg, however, can be had with minimal packaging, as can meat and fish if you venture beyond the fluorescent-lit halls of Tesco et al. So it's great to see people recommending these things to each other - I think that is generally much more successful than a finger-wagging nanny state - right, wastebloggers? :)

Of course, it's not an absolute link. You can buy plenty of chocolate in recyclable paper and foil, and wine and beer are not known for their unrecyclable packaging either, to give two examples. But I have found that the two things are often mutually supportive:

• I make fewer frivolous/impulse purchases, and those I do make often involve fruit.
  
• I make more effort to buy in bulk, and use small pots and tubs to take what I need to work or out for the day.
• I bake my own cakey snacks which are tastier and more satisfying than the shop alternatives.
• I plan the week's food in advance, and don't fall victim to "I can't be bothered, let's order a takeaway" syndrome.
• I know how much food I should be eating, and I don't have lots of extra things hanging around the house being tempting.
  

I've said before, I do have the luxury of no picky eaters to feed, and time for planning, shopping and cooking (although by no means do I slave over a hot shopping list for hours) - not everyone is in the same position. But this time last year you didn't find me cycling to the local shops for my fresh produce (more health benefits!) or taking half an hour on a Saturday morning to look up a few recipes and decide which old favourites are coming up this week. These are small changes I've made that are really working.

I don't think what I do is a particular hassle. And if it has double benefits, then surely it's even more worth it! What other benefits are you all finding from your waste reduction efforts?

Fab winter warmer from the end of the veg drawer

This is almost turning into a food blog, but here's another delicious recipe that makes great use of leftover / slightly past-it veg. We had it for dinner yesterday and found it very filling and satisfying. Flippin' cheap, too. It works brilliantly with potato, carrot and parsnip as here, but why not try sweet potato, squash, celeriac, add a chilli, bit of ginger, some chick peas, spinach... use your imagination!

Winter warmer root vegetable and lentil casserole

Serves 4

A little sunflower or vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, smashed or chopped
2 med baking potatoes, diced (I scrub them and leave the skin on)
3-4 carrots, diced
2 parsnips, diced
2 tbsp curry paste
1.5 pints/800ml vegetable stock
100-150g red lentils
fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes. Add the root veg, curry paste, and a splash of stock, stir well, and cook for 10 mins, stirring occasionally. Add the stock and lentils, stir, bring to the boil and then turn down to a simmer and cook (covered) for another 10-15 minutes. Take the lid off for the last few minutes to allow it to thicken, adding the coriander at this point to keep the fresh taste. Save some for sprinkling on top if you feel like being fancy pants.

Delicious with a dollop of natural yogurt, mango chutney, naan breads or chapattis (or pittas or tortillas...). It has a beautifully sweet-spicy taste with the freshness of coriander, and the comforting texture of root vegetables.

Healthy carrot or parsnip cake

This one's for Mrs Green and her Abel & Cole veg box parsnips :)

This cake is brilliant! For a start it is fat, egg and dairy free, so not only is it vegan, but it needs no fresh ingredients (apart from carrots!) and has fewer containers to dispose of afterwards. As you simmer and steep the carrots, old ones work fine. You can also substitute parsnips for a more golden-yellow colour and subtler taste (I tried this and gave it out to friends - they all loved it and couldn't guess the secret ingredient!). All the other ingredients are store cupboard favourites, with lots of scope for variation according to taste. It's dense and satisfying and keeps well. It also cooks well as cupcakes or muffins. What's not to like?!

The original recipe is in cups as it's from an American book, the Moosewood Book of Desserts (Moosewood is a famed vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, NY). I have a set of measuring cups so I have never converted it to grams, but I recommend this website for ingredient-specific volume/weight conversions. I will try and make one of these and confirm the conversions soon!


Carrot or parsnip cake

2 cups [~250g] (packed) finely grated carrots (or pasrnips)
1.5 cups [~330g] packed brown sugar*
1.75 cups [400ml] water
1 cup [150-200g] raisins or other dried fruit (chopped to raisin size) - apricots and ginger are good with carrots, cranberries go well with parsnips
1 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups [375g] plain flour
1 tsp cinnamon
0.25 tsp ground cloves
0.5 tsp ground nutmeg or fresh grated
0.5 tsp ground ginger (or grate a thumb size piece of fresh and put it in with the carrots)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder

*this is the original recipe amount of sugar, but it can be reduced (even halved!).

Combine carrots/parsnips, sugar, water, fruit and vanilla in a saucepan - bring to the boil, simmer for 5 mins, remove from heat, cover, sit for at least one hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 300F / 150C / Gas 2. Oil and flour a 9-10" round pan or equivalent.

Sift flour, spices, salt, baking soda and powder together into a bowl. Stir carrot/parsnip mix into dry mix just until no dry traces are left.

Pour into pan, bake until firm and a skewer comes out clean - about 1 hr.

Cool in pan for 10 mins, then invert onto a plate. Dust with icing sugar.

The great salad shame

Just read this interesting article in the Observer, containing the shocking idea that in Britain we import twice as much salad as we actually eat. That's a horrendous and stupid amount of waste, the equivalent of half of what we import AND anything that we produce ourselves. It just made me do a genuine double take when I read it and I had to share!

The article also includes a part that links to the post I made the other day about professional kitchens and food waste. With regard to the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign:

...while British house-spouses have clearly mislaid the poker-work sign that said "Waste Not, Want Not", it [is] pretty obvious that they [are] not the chief villains. Wrap puts the total of food waste at 20m tonnes. Three times as much food is wasted by retailers, processors and manufacturers, including agriculture. But the easy option is to put the blame and the pressure on the consumer. Industry is a much trickier target.

My first reaction is that I hope thatthis information is not seen as a reason for people to think "oh well, so why should I care about my food waste?" and carry on binning stuff. But on the other hand, I do agree - why are these campaigns always directed at the household when there is so much to be done on a commercial and industrial basis? Switch off campaigns, recycle more, waste less food... these all apply to businesses and organisations just as much as to consumers. But they apply at the sort of scale where a bit of thinking and leadership could make massive differences to our overall impact on the environment. Are there similar schemes and campaigns at that level? Let's hear more about innovations and successes beyond the household scale, and let's fix good "green" behaviour into life everywhere, not just at home.

Recipe time! End of the week minestrone

Inspired by Mrs Green's yummy tomato and chickpea soup recipe the other week, here's what I had for lunch. It just so happens that we had done our weekly shop and so had all the ingredients fresh, but it's something that would work really well at the end of the week when there are only a few slightly wizened carrots and some floppy celery lurking in the salad drawer.

Tinned tomatoes (maybe with herbs), beans and stock cubes are top store cupboard items and to be honest you could add most sorts of veg to that and make a good soup! One of the best ever investments we made was a big cooking pot - I swear we use it 6 times a week for stew, soup, curry, chilli, spag bol.... you name it. You can probably tell we are of the "bung it in the pot" cooking school rather than nouvelle cuisine!

Minestrone soup - serves 4 hungry people or 6 polite ones :)

Basics:
1 onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, well smashed
2-3 carrots, diced small
2-3 sticks of celery (including leaves if you like), chopped
8-10 outer leaves savoy cabbage, shredded
(of course, you can increase or decrease the quantities of all the veg according to what you have)
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tin beans (cannellini, black eye, whatever you have)
600ml (ish) stock
salt, pepper, mixed herbs to taste

Optional additions:
2 rashers bacon, chopped - or any leftover cold meat e.g. chicken, ham
2 tsp pesto (really makes a difference to the flavour)
4 sun dried tomatoes, chopped
handful of pasta - small shapes are great - good use for broken spaghetti!
fresh herbs - we had some sage left over from another recipe
croutons made from stale bread

Method
Sweat off the onions and garlic with a little oil, the pesto, and a bit of water or stock if needed to keep things from sticking. Add bacon (if using) and cook through. Add carrots and celery and some more of the stock. When the carrots are starting to soften, add the rest of the stock, tomatoes, cabbage and beans, dried or fresh herbs, pasta and any other ingredients you're using. Simmer for 10 minutes or so, check the softness of the veg and the seasoning, and cook longer if needed.

Serve with fresh bread, croutons if you like, maybe save some fresh herbs (if using) or celery leaves to sprinkle on the top if you want to be posh! :)

Food waste - the professionals' opinion?

Idly browsing, the headline 'A fish head in a bin makes me cry' caught my eye. Michel Roux Jr of Le Gavroche talked to the Telegraph about food waste in a short article plugging his new book (which seems to have nothing at all to do with getting the most from your food, except maybe via the anecdotes in the article).

However, being a bit of a Masterchef addict ("COOKING JUST DOESN'T GET ANY TOUGHER THAN THIS!!" *ahem*) I also find myself, if not crying, then shouting at the TV when contestants do the round in the professional kitchen. Why? For the slightest deviation from the chef's vision of a "perfect" dish, the entire plateful is binned. Expensive cuts of meat, fish, lovingly prepared vegetables... if the dressing has been messily squirted on or the cooking isn't absolutely correct, in the bin it goes. I get the impression this happens too with dishes from regular staff (just hopefully less often).

Now, I can see that chefs have a reputation to uphold, and many of the likely customers in top-end restaurants are going to be knowledgeable and expect high standards (after all, they are paying for them). But to what extent does this contribute to our food waste as a nation? Binning food because it's not absolutely perfect seems to me to be more of a waste, more pointless than binning something you forgot about in the back of the fridge. Do restaurants have food waste collections that do something useful with the discards? (Aha - some do. And there were other London options in 2007 - what about now I wonder?)

If a fish head in a bin makes him cry, what would Michel Roux Jr do with a plate of not-quite-perfect food from one of his sous chefs? That I'd like to know.

Progress check

I have been sadly neglecting my blog lately so thought it was time for a progress check. How am I doing with the low-waste habits?

The positive points:

- we are shopping at the local independent shops more often. This has cut down on plastic waste especially meat and fish trays, and we are much better at avoiding impulse buys. From the butcher in particular we are finding the produce much tastier, too. We try to cycle there and so it also keeps us fit! (Particularly cycling back with laden panniers :)

- we are buying some things in bulk to reduce packaging - yogurt in 500g pots and dried fruit/nuts weighed out to order and put in paper bags.

- most of the time there are home baked cakes/flapjacks in the cupboard instead of packaged cereal bars.

- I make a point of saving foil and miscellaneous metal (bottle caps etc.) as I know that can go to the recycling centre now.


Still needs work:

- we still buy some things in unavoidable plastic packaging: celery, spinach, cheese (occasionally), yogurt (although see above), pasta, rice. These last two could maybe be bought in bulk, but I haven't seen large packs of wholemeal pasta or brown rice anywhere.

- I am doing longer runs now and need to consume energy gels which come in foil/plastic sachets. I might try going back to jelly babies! But the gels are easier to eat on the move.

- we haven't yet invested in any reusable containers of a suitable size for buying meat, fish etc.

- I need to get another reusable water bottle for travelling. With the liquids regulations on planes, airports even seem to be reluctant to let you take an empty "disposable" bottle through security, so you have to bin it and buy another (cunning). At least at Luton they had recycling bins for them. I had a flyer from Jarrolds this week telling me about new recycled plastic water bottles, UK-made, that they are selling for £8. I can't find the flyer (think I recycled it :) so I can't give more details, but I will probably invest in one of those, to support recycled manufacturing and to help me avoid disposable bottles on the move.


I mention travelling as I was away in Poland this week. Breakfast at the hotel was one of the least waste-friendly operation I have seen in a long time! Although you could help yourself to cereals, juice and milk from large containers, and bread from open baskets, everything else (butter, jam, yogurt, cheese, pate, tea, sugar) was in single-serving plastic cartons with plastic/foil lids. The best effort I have seen was in Germany where everything was help-yourself from bowls and plates, ranging from sliced meat and cheese to yoghurt, cereal and nut/seed toppings.


Just a few thoughts. I feel quite happy with how we are doing, and think that to go further would mean some serious rethinking of the way we live and, particularly, eat. Maybe in the future when the current habits are really entrenched, we'll look at going further towards zero waste?

The best laid plans...

I was polishing my halo last night. Having made the last lot of low-waste festive goodies, for presents at Christmas number 3 this weekend, I had 4 egg whites left over. There are already 4 in the freezer (bit of an experiment, not sure that will work but we'll see) so as the oven was on anyway I figured I'd make meringue.

Over to BBC Good Food for a recipe. Egg whites, sugar, whisk, easy. The meringues even keep well in a tin, or will freeze. Excellent.

I glossed over the instruction "Line 2 baking sheets with Bake-O-Glide non-stick liner or parchment paper (meringue can stick on greaseproof paper and foil)." - I don't have Bake-O-Glide (whatever that might be) or parchment, just good old greaseproof. Besides, I'm standing here with a bowl of meringue mix, it's now 9:30pm, the cooking time is 1h45, and I just need to get on.

Big mistake. I now have a large pavlova-size meringue with a resolutely unpeelable papery bottom. Forget superglue, next time you need to weld something, use egg white and sugar. Bah. I'm going to peel the crunchy bits off the top and save them for a pudding, but everyone knows the gooey middle bits (completely 100% stuck to the paper) are the best. In the bin they go.

So, if there are any other egg white recipes out there, I'd love to hear them. Until I find something less prone to disaster (or invest in some Bake-O-Glide or maybe rice paper), I'm just going to have to find biscuit recipes that don't demand only yolks. Very inconsiderate of chickens not to lay them separately, I say.

That was Christmas...

As the waste blog world is summarising its collective Christmases, I thought I would join in!

We had a pretty low-key Christmas, thinking we would try it at home on our own this year - it was nice, although the family visiting season is now much extended into January. I'm not counting those as Christmas (is that cheating? :)

Our tree is plastic (gasp) but was bought back in hubby's bachelor days and therefore nothing to do with me :) It's decent quality, and will see us through several more years, so I think for now we'll leave the pine needles on the trees in the woods, and not on our carpet. We splashed out on decorations and bought 2 (count 'em) new baubles, loose, which were wrapped in tissue paper. What we didn't do was put our unwanted old decorations on Freecycle - next year!

Pressies given were mainly home baked goodies (gingerbread and shortbread) in cardboard gift boxes. There was barely any non-recyclable waste apart from some butter wrappers and a sugar bag. I chose to use greaseproof paper when packing them, to avoid greasy marks on the gift boxes and make them reusable, but that itself can't be recycled. Choices! We also gave some charity gifts from Good Gifts, gift vouchers, and books.

We'd asked for no pressies, still got a few but they were remarkably good on the whole and included a pretty tin with home made fudge (yum!) and a large Toblerone with cardboard and foil packaging (well thought out, Alex!). Other things like silicone bakeware, a running top and some books all had minimal or no packaging, mostly cardboard. However, special mention has to go to the best and worst packaged items:

• Best: six bottles of good beer from my brother, in a re-used cardboard box, packed with recycled brown paper packing. A consumable present in fully recyclable packaging and wrapping! Bonus points for delivering it in a reusable hessian bag.
• Worst: sad to say it was a Hotel Chocolat Dark Chocolate Immersion box from hubby. Six tablets each of six types of plain chocolate... all individually wrapped in plastic, held in a plastic tray, in a cardboard box that was wrapped in film. (Note that the packaging is not fully shown on the website...)
  

I do appreciate that the flavour is the key with the chocolate (the box came with tasting notes) and so you wouldn't want the types affecting each other - there were ginger, orange and chilli flavours as well as three types of "just chocolate". And the chocolate is absolutely heavenly (yes, there is some left! On twelfth night!). But it is a little bit of a shame to see so much packaging and I have to confess to a brief twinge of disappointment on seeing it (the packaging, not the chocolate). Now that sounds rather mean, and I have to stress that it's no reflection whatsoever on the giver - the scale of packaging simply wasn't apparent until opening. And I suppose if anything I am even more determined to savour and enjoy the contents so that the packaging was not in vain ;)

Food was also a reasonable success. All the fruit and veg came from the greengrocer in paper bags or no bags at all. We visited another local butcher for all our meat, and so there was a small amount of thin plastic waste but no trays or other packaging. We bought a turkey crown and boned ham, so there was minimal food waste there - in fact minimal food waste overall. I didn't get around to making mince pies or bread, so we bought those and a few other sweet and treat bits, and therefore had a few bits of plastic to deal with.

I haven't weighed it all but in a qualitative sense I feel like it's not a bad showing. A bit more planning next year and I'll get those mince pies and snacks sorted too :)

Day 7 - feeling deflated, and a dastardly duck

Oh dear - nobody wanted the balloons on Freecycle. One person asked for them, but when emailed back she never replied. They are looking rather sad now.

However, perhaps all is not lost. A bit of an experiment shows that I can actually untie the balloons so they can be reused (employing two dessert forks and some cooking oil - let your imaginations run wild...). There are also some more balloon reuse ideas on How Do I Recycle This? The ribbon can certainly be reused too.

The rest of the day has definitely not been up to the standard of the rest of the week. This is partly due to finishing off various food bits that have non-recyclable packaging: a ham packet and superfluous bag (see last Saturday), a cereal bar wrapper and two plastic bottle caps. Finally, I made some flapjacks for munching in the week, so there's a plastic butter wrapper too (I'll spare you the recipe this time!). Away from food-related waste, I might also have an inner tube to deal with, but hopefully the puncture I got this morning isn't catastrophic and can be fixed. If not, I will have lots of rubber bands :) I did find a use for knackered old toothbrushes and washing up sponges in cleaning my bike after the ride though.

Back to food waste now because this is the big let down: we had roast duck for dinner (not bought this week) - it had a plastic tray and wrap for packaging, not to mention that fact that there was a lot of unavoidable food waste in the form of bones, skin, and fat. Really, I could have thought that one through much better (d'oh), but I didn't twig until it was already defrosting and too late to put it back and keep quiet about it.

To be fair, it was already bought and we would have eaten it some time (otherwise there'd have been even more waste!) but it was a bit stupid of me to get it out during waste free week. So, I've done everything I can, stripped every ounce of leftover meat off the bones, even made stock, but now it's sat there in the bin resolutely pushing up my weekly total. Quacking hell! We'll measure the damage tomorrow.

A couple of notes: you can make stock but you still generally chuck away the same amount of bones and stuff afterwards; and poultry fat doesn't seem to solidify so you can't make fat/seed balls for the birds like you can with meat fat (and of course it should never go down the drain!). So I am wondering whether to go for a bokashi bin, but have just seen the price - £65 for 2 bins and 3 bags of bran (eek) - and wonder where I could fit it in my kitchen. Come on bokashi fans, convince me?

Day 4 - precycling, planning and treats

My other blog posts have been a bit epic, so I think I shall keep this one short. I am also upset that I failed in my quest for completely alliterative titles ;)

As I was reading the paper in the staff coffee bar (one paper, many readers, less recycling to do :), an article caught my eye. It gave a name to what lots of us waste-free bloggers have been doing this week: Precycling, i.e. selecting what we buy so as to reduce the amount of waste and recycling generated. In the Guardian article, Tanis Taylor discusses trying to cut down on food packaging, and in particular muses on the need to plan ahead and be organised, and stick to that plan. She also tells us about some examples of shops who positively encourage people to bring their own packaging - more, please!

Planning ahead is something I have struggled with occasionally this week as I am very much an impulse buyer, especially around the bargain shelf. Before, I would not have thought that much about picking up reduced items packed in plastic, even though they were "treat" items that I could have done without (small sweet peppers, prepared tapas-type dishes). Somehow the "bargain" aspect seems to click in and override the more rational part of my brain dealing with waste (and calories, for that matter!). But to be honest I haven't really missed them this week - although I did confess to getting caught out by the bargainous chocolate on Tuesday.

This is odd, as in lots of other ways I am pretty organised and I generally love planning things. I do usually think in terms of whole meals when I shop, for example. But I am a sucker for extras, "treating myself" to something, especially in that afternoon slump. It couldn't hurt to find a few more non-edible treats I can still enjoy easily (like going for 5 minutes' walk in the fresh air!).

So, fellow bloggers: what's your waste-free treat?

Day 3 - waste at work

One thing I didn't count up last week was what went in my bin at work, but this week I will take it all home in my (accumulating) lunchboxes to add to the total. However we are actually reasonably lucky with recycling in the office, and so there is not much waste.

Our desk bins are recycling bins, taking paper/card, and clean plastic bottles and tins. Battery collection has also just started in a small way. Elsewhere in the office are larger (communal) wheelie bins which take the non-recyclables. (This is actually a bit of a pain as things like tissues and chewing gum I just want to get rid of immediately rather than traipsing through the office! But it does make you think about your waste.) We can take glass to bottle banks near the shops, but there is no food waste collection in offices, communal areas or food outlets.

Being in Environmental Sciences, there are some green-minded people about who come up with their own solutions in the office. For example, sometimes people will put small compostables bins in one or another of the kitchens, and take them to their home or allotment, but the problem is there is always more waste than space! As I bring a lunch box every day, I can take my fruit debris and teabags home that way, and this week I am making a real point of doing so. But I noticed when attending a workshop at Leeds University last month that they have various recycling bins in communal areas, including ones for compostable waste. I was only in one area of one department, but I saw at least two - I think that's excellent and I will try and chase up why we don't do that.

I also said I would investigate the waste-free lunch possibilities. My quick and unscientific survey was not encouraging, unfortunately. However, we have a few more options than your usual canteen as there is a small supermarket on campus. The packaging waste potential is there, as you would expect:

• poly wrap and paper/cellophane bags (sandwiches, cakes)
  
• waxed paper sheets, trays and cups (paninis, potato wedges, veggie meals, soup, hot and cold drinks)
• condiment sachets
• plastic cups for water and smoothies
  
• all the usual hot drink detritus: cups, lids, wooden stirrers, sugar sachets (but milk in a jug), individually plastic and cardboard wrapped tea bags (!) in some outlets
  
• rigid plastic pots (salads - all with spork!, chunky fruit/veg pots)
  
• the usual crisps, sausage rolls, flapjacks, confectionery, bottled and carton drinks
  
• lots of shop options e.g. Asian pot noodley things (polystyrene cup, shrink wrap, flavour sachets)
  
• I think the "winner" is sushi from the shop: 2-part plastic tray, plastic/wood extendable chopsticks, plastic "fish" bottle of soy sauce, plastic packets of ginger and wasabi.
  

The best food options seem to be:

• eat-in meals (but more expensive)
  
• pizza slices, samosas and other snacks on unwrapped cardboard trays
  
• fruit - unwrapped everywhere except for some bulk items in the shop
  
• loose veg in the shop - e.g. peppers and carrots (if you can prepare them)
  
• individual bread rolls, cookies and doughnuts from the shop, which can go in paper bags
• sandwich fillings from the shop could include tinned tuna, peanut butter in a jar, er... Jam? Nutella? Spam? It's a bit limited after that.
  

Whenever I can't make myself lunch, the aspect I usually worry about is getting a healthy meal, but if I was going for zero waste as well, the choices would be even smaller! Long live the lunchbox is all I can say. I will stick to my salads, fruit and cakey things. I also usually have a packet of almonds on the go in my desk drawer, but have given those up this week (which may be why I snacked on chocolate yesterday, thus negating any saving!)

I went to a gig tonight (this is an unusually social week for me, honest) and ate my dinner in the campus canteen beforehand, so no direct waste there. All I have managed to generate today is a very small tangle of sellotape, some tissues, one piece of chewing gum, and the disposable earplugs (with little plastic bag) I had to ask for at the gig because I seem to have turned into an old fogey. I didn't bring it home but I hereby admit to one plastic beer cup too (if I drank rubbish like Smirnoff Ice I could have had it in the bottle, but not St Peter's Organic Ale!). Mark contented himself with a tin of soup for tea and a quiet night in (bless).

Shopping

Today we went food shopping for next week, at the local independent shops.

We did reasonably well, but have already knowingly bought some things which have non-recyclable packaging! Oh dear. Here's our haul:


I should say that this is not everything we will eat over the week :) Plans for next week also include a couple of nights out (Norwich Beer Festival, hurrah) and a party with friends, so less cooking than usual. I hope that isn't seen as cheating! ;)

To report on the shopping...

Fresh fruit and veg all went into paper bags, or straight into our fabric shopping bags. Big tick. We also got some tinned tomatoes and beans etc., and some local apple juice that came in a glass bottle instead of a tetra. I should plug the shop - Ford & Yarham on Gloucester Street in Norwich - as they are friendly and have a fabulous range of things including very local produce when available. Most things are unpackaged, but two of our staples, cucumber and celery, come only in plastic so we gave them up this week. (Later on I found unwrapped cucumbers at the Co-op, and let out an "Aha!" that made me look like some weird cucumber freak.)

In the bakery (Breadwinner), our Belgian buns went into a paper bag, but the bread we were expecting to get in paper was bagged in plastic after we said "yes" to getting it sliced. Turns out that as the loaf would have poked out of the top of a paper bag when whole, it would have been very messy when sliced! We'll know next time - and we'll re-use the plastic bag! Ironically we only bought bread on Mark's suggestion that he takes his lunch to work next week instead of buying a sandwich from Tesco.

The meat (Banham's butchers) and fish we bought came in those thin white plastic bags that get sealed with tape. We won't be able to re-use these, but at least they are small and use far less resources than the supermarkets' typical combination of tray, wrap, and juice-absorbing-pad-thing. Annoyingly, though, while I was pondering over next Sunday's roast dinner, the butcher bagged up the ham I'd just asked for - even though it already came in vacuum packs. And I had to buy two as he had nothing except packs of 3 slices. So that wasn't exactly a packaging victory! Next time we'll see if the other butcher nearby (Spurgeon's) slices cooked meat on demand. I have seen other people comment about taking their own containers to get meat etc. put into, so maybe that is also worth a try (we don't have many containers though, so if it works it's perhaps a good excuse to get a Chinese takeaway? ;)

Dried fruit, bought by weight from larger containers, also went into thin poly bags, but they will be re-used to carry the cake bars I'm going to make with the fruit (as a replacement for bought cereal bars). At least the shop knotted those bags instead of taping them! From the same shop, our eggs came in a re-used box with the farm's own label over the top of the original logo. Eggscellent! (Sorry...)

Finally we had to get new toothbrushes, which of course came in blister packs. I remember that the Natural Collection catalogue had toothbrushes with replaceable heads, so that's on the list to try.

Things we avoided compared to our usual weekly shop are:

• celery
  
• yogurts
• biscuits/cakes/cereal bars
  
• crisps
• prepared stir-fry vegetables and sauce
• fresh herbs
  

Things we didn't need this week but that would have given us problems:

• breakfast cereal
• pasta/rice
• flour/sugar and other baking ingredients
  
• toilet rolls/kitchen roll
  
• margarine
• cheese

We also forgot to get any milk!

To smugly polish our slightly green and very small halo, for the first time we cycled to the local shops and set not a foot inside a big supermarket (just a small Co-op). It is slightly embarrassing to admit it's the first time we have ever done it, but better late than never! We spent less than we would have in the supermarket, supported local businesses, were home quicker, and got a bit of exercise too. We easily fitted our stuff into four panniers, and nothing was damaged when we got home. It helped that the sun was shining though!

So, we've made an early and not exactly perfect start on Waste Free Week. The real challenge begins on Monday though - that's when we start keeping count!