Mindful Eating and Waste

 One of my goals for May was to measure and record our organic waste that was put into the garbage.  We started putting organics in pails and taking them into town for recycling or feeding then to the chickens that we have.  Still the total amount of organics placed in the garbage was 2,437 gms.  That consisted of bones (until I found out I could put them also in organics) and some waste that others threw out but the biggest culprit was the Kurig coffee pods.  I tried to open them up and dump the grounds but I could never get them all out and there was so much plastic left over.  We don't drink a lot of coffee at home but we seemed to go through more pods then I thought we would.  We are really considering getting rid of our Kurig just due to the waste that they create (just haven't made the jump yet LOL)

By monitoring our organic garbage, it made me mindful of the other items that were recycled or garbaged.  The biggest waste in our garbage bags were the clam shells that my fruits and vegs came in.  I remember when we were in the Maritimes,  produce was placed in cardboard containers, not the plastic clamshells we have here.  It is making me look at the packaging that food comes in as well as the quality of the food.

The other big difference was the reduction of wasted food.  We still had some items that needed to be sent to the organic bin, but by being mindful of what we had in our fridge, we used most items up instead of them rotting in our fridge.  I started buying items only when I needed them and developed more meal plans using what we had on hand instead of buying more items.  According to lovefoodhatewaste.ca, Canadians will throw out 2.2 million tones of edible food each year, costing Canadians in excess of $17 billion.   That is a lot of food and resources (water, gas for transport, packaging, etc) that are wasted for no good reason.

You might wonder why I am blogging about my May goal in July, but I wanted to see if my habits would stick for longer than the 30 days and they did.  It has been easy to incorporate these new changes.  I am still very mindful of my garbage, and more importantly, making choices to limit that garbage.  Are you mindful about your eating and your waste?  If decreasing the amount of waste in our landfills is not incentive enough, think of all the money you will save just by being mindful and not wasting food.