It's been 3 months since I started my minimise waste project and I didn't realise how difficult it was going to be. An example is doing to your regular supermarket shop you don't realise how much of the food is actually packaged in plastic and with my crazy work lifestyle it's sometimes can be a little bit difficult to get to the market to purchase the weekly groceries. I work 50+ hour week so no markets are open after work and on the weekend I don't really have the energy to travel to the city to go to the market but I do still live at home so I'm not necessarily doing the big grocery shop.
Living at home I don't really get the opportunity to cook for my family as I don't get home till late and on the weekend my parents like to go out for dinner. Within these three months I had the opportunity to cook a few time for my friends. The first dinner I did most of my shopping at South Melbourne Market and I enjoyed chatting to all the other vendors I purchased from about zero waste and they like the idea I was bringing my own containers.
Once I finished cooking for my friends we had a little conversation about my project not only about food. One thing they were intrigued about was what I was using when I had my cycle. I was telling them about my menstrual cup and they couldn't get their head around the idea of only needing to remove the menstrual cup twice in the day to clean it and even having it in for 12 hours without it leaking. I would highly recommend using a menstrual cup not only you're not using a vast amount of pads and tampons but it also doesn't feel like you've got your cycle and who wouldn't want that feeling.
The first month I still had a couple of items I had purchased online prior to the project coming in the mail and one thing that arrived was my two pairs of prescription glasses. I don't know if I would have noticed this as much prior to this project but the amount of plastic packaging they used was unnecessary. I know at the start of the project I said that I wasn't going to do any online shopping and I still haven't but I was looking at purchasing a pair of prescription sunglasses through that website so I emailed them saying that I would like to purchase from them again but was wondering if they could minimise the amount of plastic they use? They emailed back saying that they would pass on my feedback so maybe in a month or so I may purchase through them just to see if they've taken on my feedback. I promise that will be only thing I'll buy online.
One of the other things I said at the start of my project to minimise was that I'm going to use a reusable bags, no plastic bottles and no coffee cups. From each of those items I have used only 2 coffee cups, 1 plastic bottles and 2 plastic bags.The next thing I'm going to try and minimise is plastic straws. I've already started trying to do that but I tend to forget when I'm at a restaurant or a bar to ask for no straw and when I have ask for no straw sometimes they give me a weird look.
I'm currently on two weeks holidays from my regular job so the next thing I want to achieve is I'm going to do is clean out my wardrobe to see what items of clothing I actually use and whether anyone would notice if I only wore a selection of my wardrobe for a month. I also want to make a few items like toothpaste as I'm almost running out.
Stay tuned to how things are going and will I be able to get to a zero waste lifestyle and hopefully you are getting inspired.
