Wasteless Pantry Mundaring News (12th January 2018)

Happy New Year!

May this year be the one where you see that you are part of a whole community that cares about reducing waste, living well and making a difference.  May you know in your bones that every action you take has an impact.

  • We have had a major win at the store!! After a year of encouraging, supporting, directing and educating we have finally achieved access to recycling facilities for all businesses in the Mundaring Shopping Village!  Up until this point businesses either looked after their own recycling or (more often than not) sent all of their recyclables to landfill.  We are so pleased that Centre Management has come on board and we’ll be pushing for education sessions for local businesses to make the most of the new facilities.  This is a big scale change and hopefully will make a big difference to the amount of landfill created by our area!
  • We’re still getting through the Christmas wrapped toilet paper so expect to see green and red for a little while longer.
  • We’ve almost exhausted our local supplies of Olive Oil from Wundowie and Wooroloo but we have another local one in the background ready to take its place
  • There have been a number of requests for a larger glass pump/spray bottle but unfortunately, that particular model is as big as it gets.  We are looking into alternatives for you all though so keep an eye out.  
  • With the trendiness of zero waste right now we are seeing more and more suppliers now offering us a range of goodies that we couldn’t access before.  Look out for Sisal Knitted Exfoliating Gloves, Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottles (with a plastic-free lid no less!), coconut fibre Scourers, wooden Dish Wash Brushes and replacement heads, Stainless Steel Drinking Cups, Organic Muslin produce bags, Bamboo Cutlery Sets and coconut fibre scrub pads arriving shortly.
  • Back to School preparations are underway and the range of naked lunch box alternatives are expanding.  So if you need some inspiration, look no further.


Going Zero Waste with a Naked Lunch Box

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” William Morris

We are all drawn to a life of simplicity. There are many of us that are drawn to that idea of a simple life, which is a hands on, peaceful and present one.

To me, that is what zero waste living is all about.

It’s about going back to the basics of being able to cook your own food and live a life more intentional, and less disposable.  It is not about making life harder for the sake of the environment or doing things the hard way.  It is about creating a life that fits with your values and encourages slowness in your days.  You don’t have to bake your own bread or make every meal from scratch unless you want to.  But what if doing these things not only reduce the waste you created but gave you back control of what you eat and the beauty with which you do it?

 

 

There is lots of depressing information out there about why reducing waste is so important.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or birds that are dying on some random island somewhere filled with our rubbish, or thousands of acres of forest that are lost every day, or the orangutans that are dying because of our love affair with cheap palm oil.  This information doesn’t help you move forward.  What helps you move forward and do the things that are going to help are finding ways to integrate good practices into your life.

I’ve been on this journey for a few years now and at the beginning, it was completely overwhelming.  There was so much to change and it felt as if it was too much to add to an already full life.  But what I have found over that time is that by going back to basics and reducing the waste, it has saved me time and has given me a better appreciation for how I live my life.

I’m hoping for this blog post to inspire some sort of change, but that might just be a change of mindset.  It might be a growing awareness of the little changes that you can make.  Changing to a slower and more intentional life, especially around this issue of waste.  As we like to involve our children in our growth, our first step might be around the naked lunch box.

A naked lunch box simply refers to packing a lunch without disposable packaging, and instead using reusable containers.  Those of you new to this idea should know that each school-aged child packed a disposable lunch creates 30kg of waste per year with their lunch alone (Australian statistics).  Just changing this one thing can have a significant impact!

There are lots of ideas for lunchboxes and what to fill them with available – so many Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram photos out there to inspire!

For those of you who have been packing a reusable lunchbox for some time and want to take your waste reduction skills to the next level, I encourage you to step it up a level and try to source your ingredients without packaging.  This might be taking a cloth bag to the bakery and asking for unwrapped bread.  Or it might be going to a bulk food store and buying your goods there.  Or it might mean taking produce bags to buy your fruit and vegetables (little reusable mesh bags instead of the disposable plastic ones).  Or maybe it is going to the farmers market and simply filling a box to take home.

This is just one way to get started.  It might sound like another thing to add to the to-do list that is a mile long or another challenge in an otherwise overwhelmed life, but what you might find is that by living this way you cultivate a skill.  You get to have an intimate and caring relationship with the food that you put into your children’s and your own body; as well as saving time and money.

 

 

Photo credits

Photo by Michał Grosicki on Unsplash

Photo by Jenn Evelyn-Ann on Unsplash

Photo by Litterfree Living