Today's entry is not associated with any tasty recipe... It will not consist any of those appetizing photos ...
Today I will talk about issues that affect us all, and if once someone called us nicely Homo Sapiens, I think it's worth to write about it...
A few weeks ago, Jarek read an article about a British family, who produces only one garbage bag in one year... Wow!!! - I thought! At first I approached the subject rather with scepticism because how can you produce one bag of garbage throughout the year when you see the supermarkets’ shelves full of products that often have several packages - first wrapped in a beautiful foil, next in the more colourful, eye-catching box and so on and so forth... But it reminded me of the situation last year when our favourite supermarket (I add that it is very popular in the UK) got a penalty from the appropriate authority for the use of excessive packaging in relation to the amount of product that was in it... And there came the fact that in the last few months, we have been throwing away frightening amount of rubbish despite the fact that there are only two of us. I thought to myself, what a disaster!!!
I must admit that I'm not a big fan of totally organic way of life because it is not always possible, especially if you live in the great metropolis... But I think that small things can make a difference... There are countries that treat the ecology as a priority - living in Germany for example, where a family friend had probably 5 different bins in the kitchen and carefully segregated it up and even rode a few miles from home to dispose an organic waste to an appropriate landfill – what’s a dedication I thought then... But now in retrospect, and perhaps with a certain consciousness - I am full of admiration for such involvement in saving their environment.
But back to the topic of this family of Strauss from Gloucestershire in the UK, I'm really impressed with the ways in which they dispose of wastes ... full article is here so I recommend a quick read... family has also established a website where you can find many tips of how to avoid the pile of garbage and its disposal - click.
I must admit that we are very moved by Strauss’s sensitivity and we wanted to try some of their ways. Firstly, we decided to use only the flax reusable bags that are comfortable and increasingly trendy. Problem solved itself when it comes to vegetables that we buy on the local markets. The question arose when we had to buy meat - now even our favourite local butcher pack it in layers of bags and boxes but we are trying to take a plastic boxes, which we have enough at home, all for different purposes. You had to see the face of our butcher when we asked him to put a piece of meat in a our plastic box .... bless him, good guy started to laugh but after a moment of explanation, he understood. Since then, as soon as we get to him to buy something, he asks us about our box :) Unfortunately, not everything can be bought without packaging, for example, sugar or oatmeal, but nevertheless we are pleased that through this small changes the amount of discarded waste dropped by half! Well, it seems that with those little steps we all can make a difference or simply reduce the amount of waste cluttering our nearest environment.
And you? How do you handle the increasing number of packages for food products and what are your ideas for their disposal?
Have you ever thought about it? Share your ideas with us....
Thank you so much for mentioning our work and I'm so excited that you have tried some ways to reduce waste yourselves. I was very embarrassed about asking our butcher to use our own containers, but thankfully he was happy to do so and like yours he has gradually started to understand what we are doing!
ReplyDeleteWe are fortunate in that we can buy sugar and oats in paper or cardboard, so we can recycle those easily. I can buy in bulk too, which helps reduce waste.
Best of luck with your waste reduction :)