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Zero-Waste Chef

No packaging. Nothing processed. No waste.

ethical business

Zero-Waste Basics

A Zero-Waste Business

Posted on April 26, 2018April 26, 2018by The Zero-Waste Chef

jars of food

I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that. — Lloyd Dobler, […]

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To break stuff is human. To repair is divine.
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Fixing our stuff saves money and reduces the strain on our overburdened landfills. If you don’t know how to make repairs yourself, farm the job out. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Take sewing machines and appliances to repair shops or repair cafés. Tailors can mend and revive your favorite pieces of clothing. Cobblers will extend the life of your shoes so that you get many more miles out of them.
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When you support these kinds of businesses, you not only keep stuff out of landfill, you boost your local economy. I’ve had my current pair of Birkenstocks (of course I wear Birkenstocks) repaired twice—so far—at the family owned shoe store where I bought them in 2015. By now, I could have spent that money in a big box store for a new pair and chucked the old ones in the dumpster (I’d still be short a pair of shoes though, having had not one but two repairs). But if we want to see more than box stores and online monopolies supplying our every need, we have to support our small, local businesses and #shopsmall!

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Update on the fig leaves as parchment paper that I mentioned in my stories earlier this week.
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Let me first say that I think there are way worse things in our environment than parchment paper. It doesn’t clog up the oceans, you can reuse pieces over and over again and some companies make unbleached versions. But I’ve been able to get along without it, usually by greasing a pan or greasing and flouring it if I’m baking something very sticky.
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Yesterday I made some savory spiced nuts and lined my baking sheet with fig leaves from a tree in our community orchard. The nuts are a bit sticky so I had been oiling the pan with my precious, expensive olive oil.
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I let the leaves soak for several minutes to clean them (and later watered a plant outside with the water), shook off the water and let them sit to dry a bit while we ate dinner, spread them on a cookie sheet and roasted my slightly gooey almonds in a single layer on top.
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The fig leaves worked pretty well. I easily removed my nuts after they had cooled and put them in a jar. A few pieces had leaf bits stuck to them, which came off easily. I wouldn’t use fig leaves for something like very sticky bar cookies. But for drop cookies, sure. I’ll try coconut macaroons next and see how those go. All for the cause!
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On the zero-waste, low-waste, whatever-you-want-to-call-it path, you can’t worry about failure or experiments going awry. You just try stuff. I find this approach a lot of fun and I’ve made all kinds of discoveries that I would not have otherwise.

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Update on our rent a fork endeavor. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, we have not failed. We just found one way that won’t work.
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Only one person rented a fork at the farmers’ market and he didn’t return it. But that’s okay. We learned some things:
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1. We need to have a separate table from our produce bag giveaway. People almost stampede our table to get their bags and the forks can’t compete with all the bag excitement.
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2. We need to set up that second table with the forks closer to the prepared foods area where people queuing up for their food will see us. Here Cecilia and Louise are walking around the food stalls looking for takers. (They are fearless!)
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3. We need new signs. Maybe “borrow a fork” so shoppers realize we aren’t actually charging money, just lending reusable items for a refundable deposit. If we wanted to make money here in the heart of Silicon Valley, renting forks would not be the way to do it. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if some startup comes along and turns our rent a fork idea into a subscription service or app or both and gets gazillions of dollars in funding.
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4. We need a better way to ensure we get the forks back. Our lone customer may have returned after we had left the farmers’ market (it was really hot Saturday!). Thrift shop forks don’t cost much so replacing my pilfered fork won’t exactly break the bank.
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When we started our produce bag project, after our first sewing session, I wondered how we could make that work but we did. We can make the utensil lending work also. Failure is just one step closer to success 😉

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This week’s farmers’ market haul.
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I did most of my shopping on Saturday before our big upcycled produce bag giveaway—we needed a couple of bags filled with fresh vegetables for merchandising—even bag giveaways can use some marketing. (See yesterday’s post for how we did at our giveaway.)
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I predict ratatouille in our future this week, vegetable fritters, and lots of sautéed Swiss chard. The fennel fronds went into pesto last night and I’ll roast the bulb and stalks today.
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Yes, the bunches of chard and cilantro have twist ties holding them together 😱 Twist ties come in handy to close up cloth produce bags in the freezer. Once they wear out, I strip off the paper and if it’s clean, put that in recycling and hang on to the metal for metal recycling. Once every year or two, I drop this stash of metal off at the recycling depot (I can’t put it directly in our bins). Swipe to see a few pieces of twist tie metal. I don’t expect people to go this far. I just like to show you what I do on here, especially since I regularly get questions about what to do with twist ties.
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I think that if you have reduced your waste to the point at which twist ties are your biggest zero-waste dilemma, then you can buy all the chard you want guilt-free. Actually, buy all the chard you want guilt-free regardless, as long as you eat it all 😉 #mytwocents

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