How does your garden grow?
August 24, 2019I started another garden this year. Last year was a learning experience for me and I was determined to improve and (pardon the pun) grow. Since cauliflower and broccoli were a disappointment, I decided to try two new vegetables: tomatoes and cucumbers. To my surprise, my strawberry plants came back and I just let them…
Trying to Make Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar
July 2, 2019Once you get into zero waste/reducing your waste, you realize that everything that you buy, you can probably make yourself. Sometimes it can be something easy to accomplish, and sometimes not. After taking my food waste class, I have become extremely aware of what I put into compost. While composting is a “good” thing, not…
4 Steps to Reducing your waste
June 13, 2019Spring is here and with the arrival of a new season, our thoughts also turn to personal changes. My colleague Fany is a busy, working mother of two young girls. The other day, she asked me to coach her on zero waste/reduce our waste living. It can be overwhelming. I used to be one of…
Rethinking Mother’s Day
May 13, 2019Once a shopaholic, always a shopaholic. Well, mentally at least. Now that I am “allowed” to shop, I often find myself thinking: It’s a nice day and I should go to the store and buy something. But wait, what is it that I need??? We all know that most of the time, the answer to…
Reduce our Waste Travel to St Lucia
March 31, 2019Let’s face it. Air travel is not zero waste. However, since my goal is to reduce my waste while still having fun, going on vacation isn’t something that I am willing to give up. To minimize my footprint, I always travel with reusable utensils, a few containers and water bottles and try to share best…
My Favorite Containers
March 4, 2019One of the most frequent questions I get on reduce our waste living is, how do you buy or store your meat and bread? This is definitely one area where I had to do some research and experimentation. For my bread, I go to the bakery with fabric bags. I purchased this one from Vert…
Making Homemade Nutella
February 24, 2019When my daughters told me that they wanted Nutella crepes, I understood. Nutella, the Italian chocolate hazelnut spread, is delicious. Although Nutella comes mostly in plastic bottles, I was able to find it in a glass jar with a plastic cap: However, like my mustard experiment, I figured that there had to be a way…
A Reduce our Waste Cold
February 1, 2019I had a great time during the Christmas holidays and New Year’s Eve, however, with all the mix of people, I caught a cold. I actually hadn’t had a cold in all of 2018 and I had attributed it to my decreased consumption of meat. Maybe it was simply a question of luck (and frequent…
Thoughts on One Year of Reduce our Waste Living
January 6, 2019Happy New Year! My family and I have survived our 52 week challenge of reduce our waste living, and no one was (really) hurt in the process. The following outlines some of my key observations and learnings this past year: I was actually able to resist shopping for a year. Despite the skeptics (including myself),…
A Reduce our Waste Christmas
December 26, 2018I love Christmas. For me, Christmas is the most magical and exciting time of the year. Strangely, I have maintained my childlike love of the holiday season. I love the music, the decorations and the food. Even though we weren’t particularly well off, my mother and father always managed to make Christmas special. Our tradition…