Week 6 of Zero Waste
When you start up a pantry from scratch it takes time and upfront cost to build up your essentials like spices or bulkier items that will last you a while like rice etc. Likewise when you shift from single use or plastic based items and move towards a new approach it will cost more upfront but decreases over time. As our weekly expenses have increased I was hoping that is was just the initial upfront cost and that the spending would taper off once we got a few of the essentials but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. That said, we are still in the trial and error phase and figuring out where to get things cheaper etc. In the meantime at least we are eating healthier and using less chemicals in our cleaning products.
This week, in an effort to further reduce our environmental impact we are going to try a few vegetarian dishes (which should also help in the cost department) - according to this infographic it's one of the top things an individual can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Though sadly a zero-waste lifestyle was not considered for this study (I'm curious to know where that fits in). Luckily for me my sister has been vegetarian for a while and I could get a few tried and trusted recommendations off her.
I also tried a few new recipes this week - laundry soap including homemade washing soda, gluten free tortilla's and gluten free bread (using gluten recipe) - some worked out and some did not. More on that below.
Bins
We are definitely noticing a difference in our recycling. We are stock piling it and will bring it to the recycling center once we have a car load. Only thing is the recycling centre is only open to 12:30 on Saturday so it's not something we've been overly keen to do first thing on a Saturday morning - though I'm curious to find out more about what our local facility can actually recycle. I will post on it once we get to it. Apparently regular refuse is made up of about 40% compostables and ours is probably more due to cat litter - as we are holding off on starting composting until we get into the new house we aren't seeing much of a reduction on that front just yet.
Shopping
Though I bought more tinned items this week to make the veggie meals I'm justifying to myself that the offset in the CO2 production from the meat we are not eating will outweigh the CO2 from generation and recycling the tins (based on no scientific fact whatsoever but it seems like a logical conclusion to me).
Cost
100€ - breakdown below
English Market (fruit/veg, eggs, quinoa, black beans (not pictured)) - 17€
John O'Flynn & Sons Butcher (steak) - 6.5€
Natural Choice (5l vinegar, castile soap bar, yeast) - 13€
Asia Market (3kg baking soda) - 5€
Butcher (chicken for kitty) - 5€
Dunnes (bread, tinned stuff, spices, cheese, mayo, tooth brush heads, more fruit/veg) - 43€
Aldi (cat litter, wine) - 10€
Meals
Steak, chips and tinned peas
Bacon and eggs
Pork, corn, potatoes
Taco spice salad (made up recipe with homemade taco spice)
Bean burrito - w homemade gluten free tortillas
Washing soda
Most DIY laundry soaps called for washing soda (which I had never heard of) - when I asked my local Facebook group for pointers on where to find it in bulk/paper someone told me I could easily make it myself - apparently it's just baked baking soda. So I found this recipe and made some (while I was trialling my other recipes) - super easy. The only thing the recipe didn't say was that the process loses about 14% of the volume so if you need 3.5lbs of it, multiply by 1.14 to get the amount to start with.
Laundry soap
Tried this recipe, though as I only had 1 bar of soap I halved the batch which worked out well as it fits perfectly in my 2L glass jar - also when I went to get the unscented castile soap it was twice the price of the lavender one - which is the scent I was planning on using so I just got that instead and didn't use any essential oils. I tried it today and it worked a treat. The laundry didn't come out smelling strongly of soap (I love the smell of fresh laundry) however we hung it up to dry and went to a friends for the afternoon, when we came back the flat smelled lovely of fresh laundry!
The cost was about 10€ and it should last me 80-130 loads - it says to use 1-3 tablespoons per load depending on size and level of dirt, I tried 2 today but will try 1 next time and see if it works as well.
Gluten Free Tortillas
I tried this recipe but substituted regular flour for gluten free - I also didn't have a cast iron skillet but my frying pan worked ok. They turned out ok but probably more like naan bread in texture than the usual flat tortilla's - next time I will try to make them thinner. I froze 3 and left 2 in the fridge for the bean burrito's this week.
Gluten free bread
I won't even post the recipe I used as I will not try it again - I followed the recipe on the side of the yeast packet. In all my other gluten free baking I have been able to use the gluten free flour at a 1:1 ratio substitute for regular flour and the baking comes out nicer than if I'd used regular so I was convinced that would work for regular bread too....it did not. Though in talking to my mom there are a lot more variables to making bread (which I have never tried) so maybe it's not the flour. Maybe I will get a bread maker. All gluten free bread comes in plastic to avoid cross contamination so I'd like to find something handy enough to make our own each week.
For a laugh - here is how the loaf came out - I cut it down the middle to see if it was rock hard all the way through - it wasn't and tastes ok but texture wise is more like a big scone - Colm will be a trooper and try to eat the softer bits with something else...Colm picked up a regular loaf for me in his subsequent shop.
I made all of the above this morning in the space of about 3.5 hours - after which the kitchen and table were covered with a light film of white - Colm woke up to ask me if I'd seen his cocaine (for those that don't know Colm, you know he's awake if he's joking) - I am still washing powder off things!
Shame corner
Colm recommended I start a shame corner segment to disclose all the failures or things we got wrong from the week as we have a few every week - and people love to see that side too! We are after all on a journey and will not be perfect.
This week's failures:
Bread recipe (see above)
Forgot linen bag at home for bread so got in paper
Lettuce in plastic (can't find anything but kale loose for now - will try to grow our own when we have a garden)
Cheese in recyclable paper (could have gotten loose at the market)
Milk in plastic (we ran out mid-week and got some in plastic rather than tetra-pak)
Cat litter (will get compostable once we are in the new house)
Tooth brush heads (I have really weak teeth and will not be giving up my electric toothbrush so this will be an ongoing non-zero waste purchase)
Colm's vape liquid (with a view to quitting all together)
Cinema snacks - we went to the cinema and Colm got some snacks in a paper cup as I didn't bring our to-go stuff - I must get in a better habit of bringing an out 'n' about bag.
Colm's sneaky crisps (I was in bed one night and heard crunching from the other room - Colm was eating crisps) - we are trying to get into popcorn instead as that can be bought loose
There's probably more but that's off the top of my head.
Check back next week for more learnings and mis-haps
