Take out the take-out!

What does our garbage chez-nous consist of these days? The bathroom's garbage is mostly from disposable diapers (boo on us for this one :<). Our kitchen's is mostly of pieces of packaging that can't be recycled or composted. I think that since doing take-out (DH decided that we had to do this in order for me to have a break from cooking with a crying crawler attached to my leg and a noisy preschooler howling and running around, slamming the fridge and freezer doors and drinking from mylk and juice cartons). Unfortunately, there really aren't any good places to take out from!

If I'm thinking coherently while ordering some Chinese food on the phone, I would ask them to leave out celery and any extra packaged sauces (do people actually add extra soy sauce and chili sauce to whatever is already too salty???) as well as not give us a menu. Our take out experience hasn't improved since beginning this weekly routine. The pros of taking in: no stress in preparing dinner so that I can play with the children and wait for dinner to arrive home with DH; not too many dishes to wash afterward. Cons: poor quality food, cost, waste and guilt of putting unhealthful food into our bodies. We usually order from an Asian place (Chinese or Thai). It's hit and miss whether they will put your food in a styrofoam container or an aluminum one with a cardboard lid line with foil. The Thai place in Oshawa (yes, there's also the mileage that you have to pay for picking it up and bringing it home) uses plastic reusable containers. I used to love them because I could pack food in them without having to buy proper Tupperware. Well, we're trying to reduce pastic containers for liquidy or hot foods, so I tried recycling the containers. The recycling guys didn't take them. The only things I reuse are the brown paper bags. I'm able to recycle the aluminum containers but not the lids, styrofoam and the plastic. That's a lot of waste for one week. It's annoying bulky waste!

There must be a way to by pass this unhealthy take-out routine. If I had a dream restaurant to order from, it'd be like this:
This restaurant would be accessible to walking as well as driving customers. It's a place that welcomes their customers to bring their own containers for the food that they will bring home. For customers who do not have their own containers, the restaurant provides reusable containers that can be returned later. For customers who are from out of town, they can either choose to purchase reusable containers (mostly stainless or glass) or a compostable ones. Customers can bring their own bag or choose from compostable/reusable paper bag or a reusable cloth bag from the restaurant.
The food is made fresh daily. Choices range from organic salads, soups, noodles, stews and casseroles consisting of seasonal local ingredients. This food is so delicious that there is no need to add extra sauces.
Maybe I should open this restaurant... for now I'll just keep dreaming. But I am going to figure out how to prepare meals without stress so that we can drop the garbage that take out brings in. We'll be healthier, and we won't spend so much money.

A lack of garbage?

A few weeks ago DH took the garbage out, noticed that we did not have enough garbage (a full black garbage bag) to take out for the two week period. He was quite happy with this, and thought that I should write about it.

Yes, it was good that after a two week period that we had not accumulated a full bag of garbage; however, wouldn't it be great to have NO garbage at all? Well, let us celebrate in our efforts and improvements thus far while making it a long term goal to create less trash. Presently, we bag on average about one black bag of garbage per month. Most of the substantial waste comes from disposable diapers (yes, unfortunately we do use disposables when we know we're out for a long time or for overnight for Little S now) then the stuff that we can't recycle or compost like plastic wrapping. I have been delighted to learn that grocery stores will take back plastic bags for recycling. So underneath my kitchen sink I have a place for the garbage, the recycling and a plastic bags for recycling. Now, I'm not sure if this program recycles all plastic bags or if it's certain types of plastic bags. I've been trying to find out. I'll let you know more when I find out.

Most of our "waste" leaves us through the green bin program. We've managed to cut down on recycling as well by requesting no flyers from Canada Post and not buying bottled water. For all our usables, we either give them away to friends and family or donate. By making our meals mostly from scratch I buy less packaging. And of course we use reusable shopping bags.

Little by little we're doing our part to make less garbage, but we certain don't have a lack of it.