trashy lady

chickens

2008-05-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

I have been away from the blog for awhile. I really must get someone to help me do pictures. I am a tech dunce and I have little patience for figuring out how to resize files, etc. I'd rather be playing outside. Anyway, the next step in my adventure is my own backyard chickens. Chickens are low maintenance, they eat your kitchen scraps and bugs in your yard. I'm in it for the eggs. Humanely, ethically, locally produced eggs. Hooray!
I'm going to go take some pictures of the chicks so that when I figure out how to post photos I can put up some pics of my cuties.

L.A. Zero Waste planning

2008-03-28T21:27:00.000-07:00

So the city of L.A. has been in the process of making a zero waste plan for the last year.You can learn more at www.zerowaste.lacity.org.
They have had a lot of public meetings, I think they have caught on to the idea of participatory planning and also hope that by inviting so much public input that they can avoid some future problems.
At last night's meeting bottled water was provided. People complained but even the woman who first brought it up was drinking it. All around, people were drinking the bottled water the city had provided. I felt on high moral ground with my reusable bottle.
But all in all, these meetings seem to bring in the converted and we are all bitching about how we need to do more but the fact is that we need to get to the people who can't even figure out recycling 101. I can give up packaging and recycle religously but that doesn't have the same kind of impact as getting the millions of people in this city to simply bring their own bags to the store, carry a reusable water bottle and properly recycle at home. Simple steps made by millions add up to a lot. I don't like to preach or make people feel bad. I'd rather practice moderation in my consumption habits and do my little part.

Zero Waste is a long way off but so much of what we need to do is so simple. I save money and waste by always making my coffee at home. Having coffee at a coffee shop is a special treat. I've come to really value the occassional cappucino and I am mindful of it. Would putting Starbucks out of business be such a bad thing? Just think of all of those plastic frappucino cups, dome lids and straws piling up in landfills. I would be happy to see a world in which we felt we no longer needed such things.

Local discoveries

2008-03-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

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.

cheating

2008-03-09T22:22:00.001-07:00

This is a difficult challenge (unless you have infinite time to shop and cook and everyone around you is totally on board.) So I've cheated a little. Tortillas have been a big issue. They are a staple of our diet. We ran out of tortillas and my partner went out and got mexican takeout because he couldn't make a burrito at home. His meal came with a styrofoam clamshell box, styrofoam cup, plastic lid, plastic straw and three little plastic cups of salsa. That is a lot of waste for one measly meal. So I decided that it was important to get tortillas, even if they came in packaging.
Beer has been another problem. Draft beer is ideal. Kegs are reused hundreds of times and can last decades. However, there is no local watering hole anymore. I deeply lament the loss of our short lived neighborhood bar, Johnny's. They only sold beer, wine and soju drinks. Without the full liquor license the place didn't attract so many obnoxious people. It was a lovely little place to get a beer and only a few blocks away. I like to have a beer and relax in front of the TV now and then. So I bought a six pack. Sure I can recycle the bottles and the paperboard box thing, but I really want reusable packaging.
I was talking to a professor at my school (I'm a grad student) and he said that he homebrews and would take any 22 oz bottles I have. So I'm going to ask Whole Foods to order a case of Lagunitas Maxximus 22 ouncers for me. Lagunitas is my favorite brewery. I crave their bitter hoppy brews. So I am excited to find a second use for my beer bottles and solve that issue. I'm saving my bottlecaps to make a large mosaic so even those will be reused.

The Farmer's Market

2008-02-27T14:25:00.000-08:00

Getting produce without packaging is at least relatively painless. It annoys me that Trader Joe's sells all that produce in plastic. Yes, some of the plastic packaging they use is compostable, but the fact is that it is only compostable in commercial composting systems. If you put 'compostable' plastic in your home bin it will be there for years. So most of this packaging ends up in the landfill anyway. But, at most grocery stores you can bring your own bags for produce.
I grow some of my own fruits and vegetables and supplement this with the local Farmer's Market. No one blinks an eye if you bring your own bags to the FM. Once in a while I'll get a couple of items at the market down the street. Mostly items I can't live without, like onions, garlic and bananas. And you can't get bananas at the FM.
Another great thing about the Farmer's Market is I can bring back my egg carton for eggs. Not only are the eggs local, free range and not from poor chickens crammed into battery cages, but they taste awesome. Our egg consumption has risen considerably during this challenge. They are quick and easy to prepare and filling. I have one egg carton and I just bring it back over and over again. I have been reusing a lot of containers designed for one time use.
The thing is so many of these items are quite durable. I reuse take out containers, plastic bags, glass jars, whatever. These are handy storage items that can be used over and over again. It seems like such a waste just to throw out something so useful. And many of these items I can eventually recycle, but I can give them a longer life by reusing them first.

Milk

2008-02-24T20:06:00.000-08:00

So the rule is that whatever food packaging I use must be reusable. Recyclable is not enough. Very few products come in reusable packaging these days.
I have been getting my staples in containers I bring myself.
But what about yogurt? I've never been a huge milk drinker. I'm ovo-lacto vegetarian so no meat, but I eat a lot of eggs and yogurt. Soymilk is now totally out of the question. I used to keep a lot of soy or almlond milk on hand for making smoothies or baking or in case someone came over that liked that stuff in their coffee. But there is way too much packaging. Those boxes are a recyclers nightmare- a layer of paper, a layer of foil and a layer of thin plastic sandwiched together. The soymilk may be shelf stable for ages but the packaging is considerable. So without soymilk or purchased yogurt I am turning back to milk. There is a dairy processor in Montebello ( East Los Angeles) that still bottles milk in returnable bottles. You pay a deposit for the bottle and bring it back to the store to get your deposit back. Luckily the milk is available at a local store, so I went and picked up two bottles of chocolate milk for drinking and a bottle of regular whole milk to make yogurt with. It was interesting, looking at this huge grocery store where I couldn't buy anything. I bought the milk and a couple of onions. There was virtually nothing else there I could get without packaging.
The chocolate milk is divine. I could drink the whole bottle in one sitting probably and I'm not a milk person at all.
I have an old yogurt maker that was my mom's from the 1970's. This is surprising since my mom is not exactly Martha Stewart. I learned to bake with her mostly using mixes and our household specialty, pumpkin pie, is just Libby's canned pumpkin and canned sweetened condensed milk.
But the yogurt maker still works thirty years later (good to see some things are built to last). I made a batch last night but haven't tried any yet. I added some homemade chocolate syrup to half the batch, so I'm looking forward to my dessert.

The challenge

2008-02-20T21:47:00.000-08:00

So I've decided to give up food packaging for a while. Those soymilk boxes and the gazillions of plastic bags and plastic containers have been bothering me for a while. I see foods that are supposed to be pure and healthy, but they are packaged in all of this plastic! I have had enough. This means that aside from the fruits and veggies I can grow myself, I am bringing my own bags, boxes and bottles to the store. Luckily there is a natural foods store nearby that sells bulk. The woman at the counter didn't think that I was wierd for bringing a ketchup bottle to fill with soy sauce. I always save jars so I just brought a bunch to the store. So now I have a pretty assortment of beans and grains and chocolate chips in various jars. It looks pretty cool.

Today I tried to find tortillas. They always come in thin plastic here. When I was fifteen I spent a summer in Mexico. We woud take our tortilla holder to the local tortilleria about every other day and get amazing fresh tortillas- with absolutely no packaging. So I went to my local tortilleria here in L.A., but the tortillas had already been placed in plastic. I bought some anyway. At least its a local, small business rather than a corporate tortilla. I went late in the day, when they were almost closing. I'm going to go back early in the morning next time to see if I can get some tortillas straight of the assembly line.