FOOD & STORAGE - CHOOSING FOODS BASED ON PACKAGING
Hello everyone,How has your day gone? How have you gone with creating a compost bin? or how have you gone talking to friends and family about creating one at their house? or using an existing one? I haven't had as much time today as i expected to get my compost bin rejuvenated. It is pretty smelly and needs a lot more of the 'brown stuff' (twigs, paper - carbon based stuff) to reduce the smell and pests, but i have hope and i now have the knowledge of how to fix it... at least i hope so!
Today I took my own Activity advice from yesterday and had a visit to Kings Park. For those not from Perth, Australia, it is beautiful inner city Parkland that would rival Central Park, New York. And yes, i have been to Central Park! Kings Park overlooks the city and is just a lovely place to visit all year round.
I was sitting in a cafe with mum, in Kingspark, and noticed that there was this one raven that was just sitting on a tree stump like some kind of statue.
He was beautiful and stayed like that for ages. So I had to photograph him.
Anyway, back to Sustainable September...
Sustainable September Day Thirteen: Choose the foods you buy based on packaging.
I have talked about Packagaing on Day One of Sustainable September, because the best way to REDUCE the amount of packaging that comes into the house is by REFUSING it and REDUCING the amount that comes into your house.
This year I decided that using videos was a great way to help educate people, including myself. I'm not yet ready to make my own, so using other peoples videos is a wonderful way to share other peoples perspectives and experiences. Like Ela Gale, a New Zealander who took on the 55 Day Waste Free challenge. Her notes and experiences are invaluable.
Food is one of the areas in life that is the epitome of too much packaging. Almost everything these days is packaged. And a mojority of it is packaged in plastic. You just have to walk into the main supermarkets to see how much packaging is used.
I have talked about RECYCLING in the past also and some of the things that food comes in can be recycled, but a lot of it cannot. So the best way to reduce the amount of waste through packaging is to choose carefully to start with.
I do the best I can but I am limited in getting some things package free because I have to adhere to a very strict Gluten Free diet. If something says 'may contain traces of' gluten then i have to avoid eating it, as is enough to have me crawling into the foetal position on the floor. So best to avoid it completely.
I have been buying some meat in packages (like gluten free, dairy free, grain free sausages) that they occasionally sell in the deli sections at supermarkets. Becuase they are in the same cabinet as other wheat containing things, they are no longer okay for me to eat. All it takes is someone to accidentally drop one of those pieces of wheat on or near food and if I ate it I would be sick. So until I find myself a gluten free butcher, who is willing to use my containers to bring it home in (not prepackaged) then I have resigned myself to still haveing some waste. Mind you, what I have been doing is limiting the amount of food that I buy like that.
It is a special occasion rather than an every day occurance for me to buy packaged things. I like to make sure it ends up in recycling (plasic wrap in soft plastic recycling and the plastic base either reused as a palet for my art or finding another role for it, or recycled if it is able to be).
If i look at what I purchase, and decide that everything I bring into my home has to have its own home in the house (other than the bin) then I am much more aware of what I buy. Because i dont have heaps of space and i dont want to crowd it with stuff i cant use.
I also know that I am not perfect and neither is my household. There are days when we as a household make some crappy choices about waste, but the aim is to reduce it where possible. The best way to reduce waste is to not even let it in, in the first place.
ACTIVITY: Do your shopping with no plastic rubbish. Now this is more than an activity... it is a down right challenge. What people don't realise, is there is a lot of hidden plastic. Buy a cardboard box of cereal... it has a plastic package that holds the cereal. Want to buy meat... there is plastic wrap on a polystyrene tray. Buy vegetables, sometimes they come in plastic netting. So choosing food that has no plastic will take paying attention, but if you treat it like a game rather than a chore... it can be quite entertaining.
I hope this finds you all well.
With Kindness and hope,
Daena x
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