Food waste friday and weekly weigh in year 1, week 28

Filed in Blog by on December 18, 2009 3 Comments
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apple and blueberry puree complete with fur jacket

apple and blueberry puree complete with fur jacket

Ooops, we didn’t quite manage zero food waste this week, but our landfill waste is pretty impressive; especially as we swapped Yuletide / Christmas gifts with Grandma and Granddad Green yesterday.

Grandma and Granddad Green are pretty much into the plastic free way and dutifully took off as much excess packaging as they could before wrapping gifts for Little miss Green; which was really thoughtful of them.

Also in my favour is that LMG enjoys re-wrapping all her presents and then unwrapping them again at a later date. So more or less all the plastic packaging is going to be reused for a while. We’ll cross the bridge of what to do with it once the play value has expired.

I had a bit of a mishap with some apple and blueberry puree. I’m rather annoyed because it isn’t cheap and it seemed to go off really quickly.

Well I guess it would; although I don’t like to eat them, I understand why manufacturers put preservatives into their food. The shelf life of this beauty was about 3 seconds after opening.

Well ok then; it was down to my own lack of organisation that led to the demise of this product. I allowed it to do the typical ‘slip to the back of the ‘fridge’ scenario which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. I found it a few days later, was about to dig my spoon in for breakfast and was beholden with a furry sight.

I dumped it into the compost bin as there was only a scraping in there anyway.

Onto the landfill waste. This week we have:

  • 1 large crisp bag
  • 1 toothbrush
  • 1 licorice bar wrapper
  • 1 cereal bar wrapper
  • 1 organic broccoli wrapper
  • assorted plastic packaging from toys
  • plastic wrap from a ball of string
  • hard plastic from a roll of sellotape

All in all it weighs a pretty feather weight 40 gms. I’m really pleased with that!
How did you get on this week and tell me; what is the last scary thing you found lurking in the back of your ‘fridge?

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About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (3)

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  1. When I saw the thumbnail photo beside this post, I thought it was blurry christmas lights. Not quite.
    Even so, your general lack of food waste continues to impress me.

  2. Jane says:

    It is getting harder as Christmas approaches and the preparations take up time and shopping takes longer and office parties are tiring and life becomes more impromptu to manage the fridge as well as usual.

    I did think the WRAP initiative to check out what was in the freezer quite a while before Christmas was a very good idea. Then there’ll be more room for the food bought in for Christmas. Fridges can also become more difficult to control with people opening them and peering in looking for ‘someting nice’! That was why I decided we wouldn’t have an American fridge. I would just end up getting fatter trying to eat all the yoghurts etc that nobody else would eat.

  3. Mrs Green says:

    @Jen Clean Bin: Blurry Christmas lights LOL! Alas, it’s blurry blueberry – that sounds like it could be a good marketing name 😀

    @Jane: Hi Jane, I’ve been doing some prep for Yule tomorrow and feeling really good about achieving a zero waste celebration. I’ll be doing the WRAP freezer exploration after Christmas. I’ve decided to do it for financial reasons (I’d like to achieve 2 weeks no spend after the festivities) and to start the new year with a clean freezer.
    Well done on resisting the American Fridge LOL!

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