Food Expiration...Waste Not, Want Not

Good morning all!

Now, not to spoil your lunch, I have an interesting article for you to read from NPR about 'expired food'...You know the phrase 'Waste Not, Want Not', right? Well, people at the National Food Lab have been looking into the actual shelf life of food, not just the dates printed on its containers. As someone who has been farming her whole life, I think about food a lot. I think about where it comes from, how it was made, etc., but I also think about where it goes.....and a lot of the time, food goes right into the trash can without being so much as nibbled on. Take a look at the article to get a taste for what I'm talking about.

I'll be posting again soon about food, composting, and local businesses that do both.

I'll leave you with an image of a poster circa 1917 that the U.S. Food Administration created during the war which 'addresses the matter of civilian food supply'...I think it's still a great list to live by.

M

Movie: 'Landfill Harmonic'

Happy dark days of late autumn.

I was surfing on the interwebs today and came across this project called the Landfill Harmonic. It's a documentary about a village in Paraguay where music is played by young musicians on instruments made out of  - get this - TRASH!
The village is built on a landfill so there is plenty of waste to turn into instruments...such as a cello made from an old oil drum.

Watch the trailer, you'll be blown away.

M

ps. I'm still collecting tea bags for my next trash project!

The Trashy Tale of Tea

Hey everyone!

It's really been awhile since last year's month-long trash project, and now I'm dying for more! I'm embarking on another trashy journey to educate, collect trash, and reduce the waste I consume.

So here's the deal: I drink tea. Loads of it. Too much of it, really. But the problem is, for each bag of tea I consume, no matter how much personal pleasure I gain from it, there is this plastic or foil wrapper surrounding the yummy tea that has to go straight to the trash! You really can't recycle them, and they're too small to hold anything in - let's cut to the chase: I hate throwing them away. I feel guilty every time I do. So I began using tea from companies like Celestial Seasonings, who do away with not only the wrapper, but also with the string and little tag saying what kind of tea it is.
Which is pretty cool, I have to say. At the end of a Celestial Seasonings cup of tea all I have is the actual bag of tea which then just gets thrown in the compost. Awesome.

So I've been drinking that a lot lately, but then my mom turned me on to something different, new, and exciting: tea strainers. OK, so many you probably already use these, but some of you don't, so I want to let you know.  Tea strainers are awesome! They consist of a little metal mesh ball that you put loose leaf tea in, and that serves as your teabag. So cool! Then when you are done drinking the guilt-free tea strainer cup 'o tea, you can put the tea leaves in the compost and move on with your day. I encourage you all to pick one of these up next time you're at the store, as well as some loose leaf tea, because if you're anything like me, and drinking packaged tea makes you sad (and even those of you don't feel that way!), you'll feel a lot better with the strainer/loose leaf tea idea.

And I guess here comes the point of this post. The consumption of tea leads to only a small part of the waste stream, but a part nonetheless, and I want to get that part even smaller! I want people to really think about the small amounts of waste caused every day by mundane activities, (like drinking tea) and to take some action. So this is what I'm trying to say: for the past couple of months I have been saving the tea wrappers that accumulate in my household, as well as those of friends and places like the library (I even went to this party a friend was hosting and between the nine guests, we left behind no less than 25 tea wrappers; I was saving them and then they got thrown away, so I picked them all out of the trash!).

I've been saving all of these wrappers, which will be put toward another trashy project that I've been cooking up. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is now, but I wanted to spark your interest, and maybe make you pause for a moment and think about how you will take your next cup of tea!

I'll keep you filled in on this trashy tea project.

M

ps. You don't have to limit yourself to the tea ball / strainer method! Tea junkies everywhere use infuser pots and mugs as well. Do some searches on the internet to check out!