Category Archives: composting

Day 81: Sick of Tissue?

I was sick this week.  Nothing too extreme, but a pretty bad head cold, sore throat, conjestion, headache.  You know, the usual across-the-board malaise.  Enough to garner me a couple sleepless nights and a day off (you know I’m sick when I take an unpaid day off work).

But this leads me to the issue of tissue.  We’re not supposed to be buying things except food and hygine basics.  So I guess the question is the definition of “basics”.  I think we had intended it to mean soap and maybe toothpaste, but that’s about it.  Paper towels are out, toilet paper is in. . . tissue kind of falls in between. 

Originally I had envisioned using cloth hankies, but that seemed unrealistic once my nose became a faucet of snot.  Sure, I don’t mind carrying around the occasional sneeze in my pocket, but at the rate I was going, I would’ve needed a bedsheet in my purse.

Using toilet paper seems nearly the same as tissue  except that it avoids the plastic film on the top of the box and is decidedly less soft and cosy.

For now I’m in the clear because I still have a half-box of tissue on my desk at work.  (Thank goodness I made a quick recovery.)   I’m going to try to make it last all year, so i can avoid the dilemma of whether to buy a new box.  In the meantime I’ve been composting my kleenex so at least it doesn’t end up in the bin.

Advertisement

4 Comments

Filed under composting

Day 76: Wasted Food, Or Not

Following up on the theme of wasted food, introduced today by Mrs. Green over at My Zero Waste, I’ve been doing some research on food waste over here in North America.

Can you believe that 25% of our food goes into the trash?! That means for every 4 apples you buy, you throw one out. Seems ridiculous doesn’t it? And that statistic doesn’t even account for the food that never even makes it to the stores due to physical imperfections and crop disease.

We recently did an interview at our local green grocer, and we learned that, even though they discount food that is getting old and cut up veggies into stirfry bags when they are getting really old, they still throw out a lot of food. They told us that the number one perishible food in the store is berries. Sometimes an entire flat of blackberries is mouldy by the time it arrives at the store, and they have to throw the whole thing out. Or worse, when most of the fruits are going bad in a box, and it is often not worth the time to go through and pick out the good ones.

I’ve also been learning a lot from http://www.wastedfood.com/ by Johnathan Bloom. Johnathan is writing a book about food waste in America, and reports on all sorts of things such as how school cafeterias are saving food waste by eliminating trays. “How does that work?” you ask. Continue reading

3 Comments

Filed under composting, food waste