Zero Waste

UnPacking Food Waste – First Thoughts

Woke up this morning and I just have to be sure that I myself know what I’m doing to prevent food waste from heading to the landfill.

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Composting should be simple – but it keeps me up at night thinking about it?

What I’d previously done was collected food scraps and veggie peels, bones, cleared out the fridge from food leftovers we never ate 🙁 and I trench dug – so I dug a deep hole in my flower beds and I dropped the collected peels and scraps and covered over them – only though did I realise there were chicken bones in some of the holes and we aren’t supposed to bury meat or dairy in case we bring on pests, AND not close to roots in case you kill the roots?‍♀️so I stopped trench digging – also I ran out of space to digalas since I ran out of space I stopped collecting and put out for garbage day.

I’d love you to share your compost ideas with us all please!

I’ve been doing some “digging” around ? for info and what I can deduce is best for my small townhouse and suburban lifestyle is the following:

  • Keep bones separate – cook off for stock, if you have a Bokashi bin – everything can go in there.
  • Veggie peels (cut offs including onions skins excluding broccoli [they make stock funky]) can be used to make veggie stock – keep in the freezer until you have enough to boil
  • Egg shells, bread, vacuum dust, hair… I’m keeping in the freezer until I can find somewhere to drop it off or I can start my own compost bin
  • Colleen from Life Lived Simply has a great write up on what works for her small garden with dogs – go check it out here.
  • Bokashi Bins work well for some and well, not for others – its a fermenting process and the bins fill up quickly if you’re making a lot of food waste – they need to ferment for 2 weeks, be buried, left for a few weeks and then turned in the soil and it was a mission for me personally, especially at a stage of my life with a new baby.
  • YOLO Bins look awesome! I can’t afford them right now but check out their website for more info!

Other suggestions have been to organise community pickups and drop offs of scraps where compost is being made – so I need to “dig” around Joburg a bit and find out if these initiatives are taking place.

Until we catch up again – please take pics and share what you’re doing to avoid putting food into your bin, in the comments below or on my Facebook page.

Until next time…

waste less • refuse more

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