This week was business as usual for me on the waste and food front. But, I have to admit I had a moment of weakness. I love raw foods, especially raw desserts. Yum! There is a local company in Dallas that makes raw vegan tarts and sells them in individual plastic packaging at my grocery store. Yes, they can be recycled, but we are trying to stay away from excess packaging and plastic in general.

I heard all about these tasty treats at the vegan fair a few weeks ago, but never tried them. I saw them, and bought one. I must say the lemon tart was delicious and I am going to try and recreate the yumminess at home. I won't be buying them again though because after devouring the tart, I remembered the whole point of of project. Reduce. Reduce. Reduce.  WIth that said, since they come in individual packaging, I will be looking to make them at home.

J.P, on the other hand, was in Providence, RI for the week. He has his peopletowels, his strawesome straw and his reusable glass. He was happy he had his own glass because they only provided water in plastic bottles during the time he was there. Yuck!

He used his peopletowels like a champ and even braved some funny looks when he pulled it out to wipe his face. He found lunch the most difficult for waste. They provided his lunches, and most of the time, there was some waste like the plastic wrap for his sandwich. He recycled everything he could like the cardboard box his lunch came in. One thing he noticed was the amount of people that just threw recyclables in the trash even though the recycling bin was right beside the trash can. Lazy! All in all, I think J.P did really well while away from home.

1-PURCHASES

Food/necessities

CSA Basket plus some extras

• 20 tomatoes
• 16 red and white potatoes
• 6 Sweet potatoes
• 1 bunch of kale
• 1 large bunch of swiss card
• 1 romaine lettuce
• 1 bok Choy
• I small container of strawberries (not local)
• 1 container of cranberries (not local)
• 14 apples (not local)
• 3 red peppers
• 3 orange peppers
• 1 head of cabbage
• 2 avocados (not local)
• 1 container of mushrooms
• 1 butternut squash
• 3 white onions
• 2 zucchinis

Sub-Total: 79.00

Central Market

• 3 bunches of bananas
• 1 bunch of fresh parsley
• 1 large bag of carrots in bulk (in my own cloth bag)
• 2 bottles of Kumbutcha
• 6 lemons
• 1 raw lemon tart (in plastic packaging)
• 1 loaf of sprouted bread
• 4 cucumbers
• Organic beer
• Dish Soap

Sub-Total: 51.48

Restaurants

Friday: We went to Fireside Pies for dinner. We had pizza, an appetizer and J.P had 2 beers 65.00

TOTAL: 195.48

2-COMPOSTING

I was unable to drop off the composting from the previous week at Ruby's. That means, our bin is full and we are on bin number two. We put the first bin in the freezer in the mean time and have number two in the fridge in its usual spot. The total weight of our compost was 16.4 lbs. Wow, we had lots of food scraps.

3-RECYCLING

Not much to report on the recycling front. We did have more paper then usual, because J.P saw one of our good friends this week and he gave J.P all our mail from back home. I hate it when credit card companies send out applications. What a waste of paper.

4-TRASH

The trash had the usual suspects: fruit/veggie stickers, plastic banana wrap, receipts, plastic from Kombucha and a small amount of plastic from the loaf of sprouted bread.

5-TRAVEL

Seeing as J.P had to go to Rhode Island for the week, he obviously had to fly. The total was 2472 nautical kilometers (1536 nautical mi) to Rhode Island and 2600.7 nautical kilometers (1616 nautical mi) on the way back to Fort Worth. Besides flying, we did not travel very much during week and we did not have to fill up our gas tank again. We still have half a tank left. I love my diesel!  I went to get food a few times and J.P was away, so he did not use the car. The total kilometers was 170.3 ( 105.8 mi). Pretty good. I  enjoy living downtown, so we can walk to different places. We actually walked to dinner on Friday. It is a good hour walk there and back.

Is anyone else trying to reduce their waste? Anyone interested in a weekly waste-free (or almost) challenge?