Local discoveries

Well its been several weeks since I first embarked on this adventure. Things are starting to settle down into a routine. It seems that giving up all non-reusable or compostable packaging is impossible for someone who wants to lead a normal life. Sure, I could live off just the weeds in my backyard probably, but personally I'd rather eat a pizza and add some of those wild dandelions on top. I don't want to have to give up all of my favorite foods. I've had to give up some and changed the way I make others but I enjoy eating to much to give it up because its all wrapped in so much damned plastic.
But there have been some fun discoveries along the way. I'm still buying my tortillas at the tortilleria down the street. Yes, they are packaged in thin plastic. But hey, they are local and delicious and tortillas are very important to my burritto-centric lifestyle. A new restaurant also opened down the street. It is called Andiamo. They serve Italian style food. They use all compostable plates, cutlery and to go containers. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of biocompostables for the simple reason that they still fall in the high consumption, disposable paradigm.
I favor reusable items whenever possible. However, I also realize that these compostable plastic forks are far better than conventional petroleum plastic forks.
Since the restaurant just opened the place was pretty empty when we went. We had a great pizza and a chance to sit down and chat with the owner. I asked him if they were using the LA city's commercial composting pilot program and he said they were. He said they have almost zero trash. Pretty much everything can be recycled or composted. In fact, they were trying to eliminate their dumster entirely, but hadn't convinced the city to actually take it away yet. Pretty cool. I love to have these conversations with people and to see that I'm not totally crazy in my waste reduction and composting obsessions.