This week was a relatively good week for us. We had minimal garbage, and composted all our foods scraps, organic cotton swabs, Kleenex (from guests, we don’t buy tissue) and my hair, yes even my hair etc.

We did however, buy some glassware. We buy a large portion of our food in bulk, we store everything in glassware and J.P uses the glass containers for his lunches. We thought we had enough glass containers, but we slowly realized we didn't. We chose Anchor, an American company. They make many of their products from recycled glass and use minimal packaging. YAY!

Here are our stats for the week:

Food Purchases

Lufa Farms (roof top farm in Montreal)

• 5 small cucumbers
• 1 bunch of rainbow chard
• 1 pepper
• 2 tiny peppers
• 2 small eggplants
• 3 apples
• 1 container of gooseberries
• 3 heads of boston lettuce
• 1 head of red lettuce
• 1 lunch of carrots
• 4 potatoes
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small container of cherry tomatoes
• 1 corn cob-I find this so random!

Sub-total cost: 42.00

La Moisson (health food store) and IGA (regular grocery store)

• 2 bag (3 lbs) of organic apples (Quebec)
• 3 bunches of organic fair trade bananas (Peru)
• 1 loaf of organic bread (Quebec)
• 1 jar of organicPeanut butter in a glass jar (USA)
• 1 carton of organic milk (Quebec) for JP

Sub-total: 34.64

Restaurants

• Wednesday dinner at Thai Express for 2: 22.00
• Friday dinner at La Crudessence (Raw/organic foods) for just me: 30.0
• Sunday lunch at Thai Express for 2: 25.00

Sub-Total: 77.00

SAQ (Alcohol Store in Quebec)

• 1 bottle of wine

Sub-total: 17.45

TOTAL COST: 171.09

Random Purchases

Canadian Tire

• 2 Rechargeable batteries for our camera and computer
• 6 packs of glassware

TOTAL COST: 123.16

Composting

We did weigh our compost this week before J.P went off to a neighbors to “borrow” their compost pile this week- total weight of compost was 18.8 lbs. Not sure if this is a lot of compost, but it feels good knowing we were able to divert that amount from being sent to a landfill.

Recycling

We had more recycling than last week; not sure why. But it is not as if we have that much recycling to begin with.

Trash

We had slightly more trash, partly due to the fact we bought the glassware. The plastic wrap is not recyclable.

J.P had no personal trash. Damn him!

I had one tiny little package (for absorption of humidity/odor) both from my vitamins and 1 Q-tip (forgot to take the wooden one to compost…oops).

Our communal trash had the plastic wrap from the glassware, banana stickers, plastic from battery packaging, waxy paper from baby proofing the corners of our coffee table and receipts.

As mentioned last week, we will have receipts from buying food and stickers on our banana’s and this we will count towards our communal trash.  In case you missed it, it is recommended to dispose of BPA contaminated receipts in the trash. We are trying to avoid them, but it will be difficult.

Travel

J.P travelled 135.2 km ( 84 mi) to and from work 5 days this week, and did not have to fill his gas tank this week.

Since we had a wedding approximately 150 km away, I travelled 435.9 km (270.9 mi) throughout the week, bit I did not have to fill my fuel tank.

We are looking forward to settling in Dallas/Fort Worth within the next 2 weeks, so we have more of a system and routine set up to keep track of our composting and trash. Once we are in Dallas/Fort Worth we will start accumulating our trash and will weight it all when we leave in 6 months.

So there you have it: week 2 down, only 50 left. I think the environment would be happy with attempt number 2!

What have you done this past week to try and reduce your waste?