Challenge accepted!

During the month of February, my family and I took part in the Futuristic February challenge by @sustainable_duo. You can learn more about it in my previous post. I competed against my mother, brother, and boyfriend to see who could waste the least throughout the month.

Biggest challenge: respecting the rules

The biggest issue was that none of us seemed to completely respect the rules. We weren’t supposed to throw anything in the garbage or recycling bin and yet both containers had waste in them (although much less than usual). Some examples would be:

• Since the rest of my family eats meat, they didn’t want to keep the packaging that the meat came in due to its likelihood to attract bugs or grow mold.
• Common items that we all use like almond milk, cans of beans, juice cartons, etc. were all recycled when really we should have kept them in a separate bag or taken turns keeping them.
• None of us wanted to keep my cats litter so we gladly got rid of it, nor her cans of food which we washed and recycled.
• We did not keep every paper towel used when going to public washrooms.

Grocery shopping
The first time that we went grocery shopping, we literally just looked around and said “we can’t buy almost anything we usually buy, except fruits and vegetables and even then?”. We wanted to buy a baguette and went to the bakery section and asked if we could have a baguette with sustainable packaging and the guy just looked at us funny and said what? I don’t have all the answers but this is just one example of many.

Receipts

There were so many receipts! I usually purchase groceries and I went out of my way to go to different places with less packaging but this came with more receipts. We definitely need solutions to this.

Results/takeaways
The following are items that we collected throughout the month and comments from participants:

My mother: “I was happy to work together as a family and that we tried our best to waste less to help the planet. I’m the one who cooks the most so I had a lot of waste from that”.
Key items: papers; lots of packaging for different foods; detergent; coffee cups; receipts; takeout containers; cans.

My brother: “This challenge forced me to not purchase snacks or drinks on the go because I didn’t want to waste”.
Key items: sandwich bags; chip bags; papers; Gatorade bottles; ice caps; juice bottles; cookie packages; takeout; pastry plastics; granola bars.

My boyfriend: “This challenge is a really eye opening way to see your impact on the environment and to see how much you waste in a month”.
Key items: floss (will look towards getting biodegradable floss after finishing this one); Q-tips; soup can; cracker box; papers; unrecyclable plastics; glass; body wash (switched to soap); packaging for food items.

Me: “This challenge really proved to me that I want to go as close to zero waste as possible and I’m really excited that I was able to have my family participating with me”.
Key items: takeaway container - I forgot my personal container and was really sad about this one, could be easily avoided in the future; plastic for bread; cereal box; bag of chips; wine bottle; receipts; food packaging.

So who won? Take your vote! In the end we all tried our best and became much more aware of our habits and we will definitely continue working towards wasting less. Next year we’ll be even better!

Possible solutions? 

Fundamentally, we need to change the system. We need more common grocery stores shifting towards zero waste. The average family is not going to make time to go out of their way to all these different places in order to live sustainably. In our culture, everyone feels limited by time and want to save time anywhere they can. People have busy lives or even if they don’t, in general, people are lazy.

What can you do?

Encourage grocery stores to go zero waste, which involves encouraging corporations to make changes. You can simply contact any corporation through social media and ask them if they have plans to make changes and maybe even give them ideas! I’ve done it a few times and they always answer my questions.

You can also work towards reducing your waste and informing others. Continue reading my blog for more ideas and inspirations.

Conclusion

Overall, I think we did very well compared to other average families and I hope that more will get involved in this challenge as people continue to become aware of their impact on the world.

By: Bianca Deltorto-Russell