Eliminating organic food waste! Week 3

Day 17 of the project and I’m feeling like I’m getting into a new groove of managing food and food waste.  Got a bit of a late start on the project after being in Yosemite for the past week so I wanted to share the results of my baseline week and the beginnings of starting these new actions:
My three actions are:

(1)Commute by bike

(2)Eliminate food spoilage waste

(3)Compost all food scraps via worm bin

One of my big goals for adopting these actions is to eliminate all organic waste (mostly food since I live in an apt with no yard).  Having a worm bin to ‘dispose’ of most food waste is certainly an improvement over throwing these items in a landfill (where they will turn into a sludge, taking up space, not decomposing and wasting valuable nutrients that could be reused).  However, composting does not solve the problem of food going bad in my refrigerator and being wasted (even if it is composted).  For this reason, eliminating food spoilage waste AND having a compost bin for food scraps (from cooking) is definitely the two-part solution for eliminating organic waste in my lifestyle.  I believe that diverting organic food waste from my trash can will significantly reduce the amount of waste that my boyfriend, Kevin, and I make.  We buy most of our food in bulk at the co-op and, therefore, don’t have a lot of waste that is created every day except for food.

Compost all food scarps via worm bin

We are still working on getting the worm-composting bin up and running again.  I actually built and used one over the last 2 years but after moving 3 times in the course of a few months, the compost bin needs to be restarted with some new worms!  This weekend, I’ll be emptying the old contents of the worm bin (only about 8 inches deep after 1.5 years of composting) into my parents larger outdoor compost bin, and restarting from scratch.  I believe composting worm can be found at Interior Gardens in NE Minneapolis, anyone else doing this action who has found them somewhere else?

Eliminating food spoilage waste

This has been the most exciting action so far.  At the beginning of each week we use the spreadsheets for this action to inventory all food which needs to be used in the next week or it will go bad.  From the baseline week information, we discovered that most of what is wasted in our apt. is fruits and cheeses.  After cleaning out the fridge to get rid of anything which was already spoiled, we made a list of about 10 items.  Most of this food is produce from our CSA.  Since we get a box weekly, the goal is to use (or preserve) everything we get by the end of the week, so that we can start fresh with each week.  We went through all of the items listed and came up with a plan for using them over the next week.  We looked up recipes and wrote dates on our spreadsheet for when everything will be used.  This makes shopping and deciding what to eat simple and easy for the rest of the week.  In addition, keeping on top of everything that is in our fridge creates a cycle of cooking with what we already have, letting ingredients for meals ‘piggy-back’ off of each other to use everything.   Fingers crossed for no food spoilage waste!

making pizza sauce with leftovers

week 3 fridge

Commuting by bike

This action has been both difficult and easy for me.  I am an architectural intern working a contract position, so I go into our studio (located in NE) only once a week.  The rest of the week, my only commute is to my serving job which is only 1 mile from my apt in Uptown.  Biking to the restaurant definitely beats driving, I can get there faster (since I don’t have to park) and I can bring my bike into our restaurant office so I don’t have to keep it outside.  Biking to NE however, is a disaster.  Even going somewhat out of my way to go through downtown on 1st Ave, I am biking during rush hour.  Bike lanes are either full of cars (no room to bike even on the shoulder) or dangerous with people turning right.  Once through downtown, the roads in NE are terrible for biking, full of potholes and brick paving.   This commute is only 4.7 miles, but defiantly the worst bike commute I have ever done.

 

Molly