I didn’t quite make it in the absolute sense, but it was interesting to see how far I could go.

We hear it a lot, to “go zero waste”.

But what does zero waste actually mean and how feasible is it to live a zero-waste lifestyle?

Definition:

The conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.” Zero Waste International Alliance

Note that the definition focuses on the ‘responsible’ aspect of everything – not necessarily 100% reuse.

To get close to literal zero waste depends on a number of things, including where you live (access to the right shops), how many people there are in your household, and how much money you earn.

👩‍🔬The zero waste experiment

Zero waste for five days: Monday – Friday.

A few things about me:

• We are a family of five (myself, my husband and our three children – aged 10 and under)
• Live in the south of France
• Live in an apartment that’s walking distance to the city centre
• Work from home – I can make my own meals easily
• Have a home compost in our courtyard
• Average income

Experiment note: I continued to use the condiments that I already had in use, including olive oil, spices, salt, pepper and sugar – I didn’t think that doubling up on the basics would be in the zero-waste spirit, and it would be expensive.

Saturday & Sunday – some prep (& disaster)

That weekend my husband was out of town. I took my three kids with me on a trip to the health food shop, so naturally we focused on buying snacks. I had taken an empty egg box, so I bought those as well.

Although unfortunately I had a bit of a disaster happen.

I thought of summarising the experience here, because this will impact my future shopping trips i.e. I won’t go back there!

What happened?

My kids wanted to buy some chocolate coated balls. There were two options and by the time I had come over to supervise the chocolate-ball ‘bagging’, one of my kids was eager to try and pulled very hard on the handle so loads came out. I then looked at the two identical chocolate-balls and their respective labels. Unfortunately the one we chose cost €60 per kilo (!!), whereas the identical-looking one ‘only’ €18 per kilo. We were buying gold, yikes.

I quickly went to see the shop assistant to tell her what had happened, but she was so aggressive and angry, she wasn’t forthcoming on finding a solution.

With 500 grams of chocolate balls this put me €30 out of pocket. Not a great start. I didn’t want zero waste to bankrupt me..!

Zero-waste day #1: Monday

Packaging – most of the packaging we used came from breakfast:

• I hadn’t organised myself to make plant-based milk at the weekend. So, we used the cartons of plant-based milk and cow’s milk that we still had in the fridge
• We have porridge oats in the morning and I had oats left from the previous week, so I finished those from a box
• Used a few spoonfuls of nut paste from a glass jar
• Loose tea for me from a paper sachet, which will last me six months

Lunch and dinner were more successful:

• Loose veg, bread from the bakery (purchased with my own bags) and potatoes that I had left from our anti-waste veg box the other day – more on that further down
• I did have a glass of sparkling magnesium water from a plastic bottle, but once empty I will reuse this bottle for a while (and pump more microplastics into my body!)

Dental care:

• I have toothpaste tablets that I can buy in glass containers and refill. But you can’t floss without binning it afterwards. So each day my dental floss went into the bin – I do have a refillable floss container with bamboo-derived floss thread – this just seems more eco

Unforeseen packaging:

• Deliveries:
  • A magazine for one of my kids arrived on this day – it is a magazine about nature but it does come in paper wrapping
  • A parcel arrived – this was a second-hand item from Vinted, but it did come in a box, and it was wrapped up in parcel paper and sellotape. But I kept the box and most of the paper packaging that I can use for padding myself

As a side note, Vinted is a European second-hand buying and selling platform for small items, toys, books and clothes. Vinted has now expanded into North America. Vinted and other similar platforms are a great way to buy good-quality second-hand items easily – so good for low-waste enthusiasts!

🛒Zero-waste shopping on day #1

• I went to a local organic shop (there are five that are within walking distance). I managed to buy: pasta, rice, oats and fruit with my own bags
• I bought peanut and hazelnut butter in glass jars. This is not available as a loose item. I used to make my own hazelnut butter but our mixer is broken. I bought the biggest versions of each jar, so I can reuse the jars as stocking containers once empty – I can class this as zero waste!
• I had to go to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions. This all came in paper/aluminium packaging – I didn’t have to bin any of this today, nor this week, but it will end up in the recycling/waste bin later

Zero-waste day #2: Tuesday

• The milk cartons were used up this morning. My plan is to use the milk containers for an arty recycling project with the kids, so I didn’t bin these
• Play date after school. I had everything to make cookies, although the raising agent did come from a plastic pot (but this is a huge one that will last me 1+ year), and I took some flour from a paper bag that I had bought the previous week. They turned out well

Unforeseen packaging:

• Post. An admin letter arrived in the post. The envelope went into the recycling bin. I kept the letter so the kids can draw on the back of it

Automatic behaviour:

• Tissues from a box have been used for a slight cold. You can’t flush these in the toilet. Going to the toilet to get tissues is less of a habit – but I am getting into it more!

🛒Zero-waste shopping on day #2 – market day!

• On Tuesdays there is a farmer’s market just minutes away on foot. I managed to stock up and get loose dairy products: different cheeses, butter AND fromage blanc! I bought some juicy local fruit too. Chuffed with the result
• I also paid the organic shop a visit where I bought nuts, lentils and flour, although the flour is very wholemeal-y. They didn’t have the white flour available today
• I didn’t find any glass-bottled milk though – neither cow’s milk nor plant-based milk
• I went online to check out milk deliveries
  • Regarding cow’s milk:
    • Some farmers deliver locally to the farm, but none near me
    • I did find a relatively new delivery service, Le Fourgon, that focuses on a deposit return scheme with glass jars/bottles. Although it hasn’t reached Montpellier yet…
  • Regarding plant-based milk: I found a plant-based milk start-up, Meelk, that sells almond and hazelnut powder in glass jars with which you can make your own milk! This is very exciting. They only have those two flavours available at the moment though
    • There are always some waste-related issues when you buy online, but these are minimal compared to plastic/aluminium coated cartons!

Zero-waste day #3: Wednesday – vegan day

Wednesdays is our weekly vegan day – we are a vegetarian household normally, but eat vegan one day a week for the planet.

This morning I got myself sorted to make almond milk. The good thing about almonds is that I can buy French or Italian harvested almonds. The kids were quite happy with this home brew!

All our meals were easy to make today.

Another play date. I had enough snacks (including the overpriced chocolate balls) and juice from a glass bottle, as well as fruit compote from an XL glass jar.

Toilet roll finished. We could use a few rolls for an arty project with the kids. Something to think about, so I didn’t bin the roll.

🛒Zero-waste shopping on day #3

• There was a party at my eldest daughter’s climbing lessons, so I bought one pack of vegan sweets on our way. This was packaged up in plastic. I didn’t have time for zero waste shopping beforehand, but also turning up with loose sweets in a paper bag looks like you didn’t really bother
• I went to the local supermarket and stocked up on some glass-jar foods
• A quick trip to the organic shop with my bags for some more essentials
• My husband had to buy something for the car after a repair and that came in cardboard that went into the recycling bin
• In the evening we had our weekly anti-waste fruit/veg box arrive from Pimp-Up that was ready for pick up. This is a sustainable initiative👏
  • What? Pimp-up works with local farmers, where it takes fruit and veg that are overproduced, or don’t conform to the look/size of supermarkets. The start-up then sells this food at a slightly lower price to their subscribers, like us! This way tonnes of food is saved that would otherwise be thrown away. The order comes in large paper bags and the fragile fruit/veg is also put in paper bags/small boxes. There were only two of those though that went into the recycling bin

Zero-waste day #4: Thursday (and info about bamboo)

All meals were fine.

I sold two items on Vinted today. A few small bits of sellotape ended up in the bin as a result of wrapping them up into reused cardboard boxes.

My youngest child needed a new toothbrush, but we kept the old one for cleaning. I gave her the last one in the pack. The cardboard box went into the recycling bin.

On that note, we buy bamboo toothbrushes, although the biodegradability isn’t straightforward. I was curious, so I actually looked up the biodegradability of bamboo toothbrushes for this article:

• In a home composting system if you compost it horizontally it will biodegrade after three years – this is really quite long
  • If you are not in a rush to use that part of the compost then this can work, but otherwise try to find another purpose for your toothbrush
• If you have a compost that is collected you can just put it in your compost bin as industrial composters work at a much higher heat and are more active than a home composting system
• Note, if the above doesn’t work for you, then put your toothbrush in the normal waste bin – not the recycling bin. Why not recycling? Because the recycling machines won’t accept them and they will then still be sent to landfill – but getting there in a more roundabout way. In Europe a lot of household waste gets incinerated within a few weeks so the bamboo won’t have time to biodegrade
• If composting is tricky you can also think of buying a toothbrush where you can replace the head

🛒Zero-waste shopping on day #4

I went back to the organic shop for some last bits to buy for tomorrow – our last day! I managed to by white flour for pizza tomorrow (and for baking another batch of cookies), as well as the long awaited chocolate cereals – everyone has been nagging me. This shop was pricey though.

Loose bags note:

• I used all of my own food bags, but I didn’t quite have enough, so I also used some paper bags that we already had and kept. This was really handy, but at some point the paper bags will split

Zero-waste day #5: Friday – final day

The meals were fine.

The homemade cookies were yummy. I make cookies often anyway, but the kids are keen to go out and choose store-bought biscuits again.

We finished the cheese that I bought at the market. The cheese rinds ended up in the general waste bin, as we can’t compost any animal-derived products into our home compost -apart from crushed egg shells. Another tip, we also use egg shells to naturally keep certain insects away from our outdoor plants.

🛒Zero-waste shopping on day #5

We made sure that none was needed!

What ended up in our bins?

Apart from the bamboo floss, a few tissues and the cheese rinds nothing was in our waste bin.

The recycling bin had only had the envelope, the small repair box, the oats and flour wrapping and the bamboo toothbrush packaging .

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👎Difficulties with the zero-waste experiment

Food availability obstacles

• It was hard to find certain foods as loose items, and you will have to make a number of concessions
• There are literally a handful of places where you can buy dairy products in your own containers – milk was impossible for me to buy in a shop
• Some liquids are available to buy with your own bottles, e.g. oil. but this can be messy, and loose cooking oils can be purchased in only one or two shops

Other, including medical supplies, post & electronics

• All medical supplies come in packaging, and often a lot of it!
• All post comes in some sort of packaging
• A lot of our electronics come with USB or socket chargers, but we also have some battery-powered devices, especially toys
• This experiment was all about physical waste, but there is a lot of  e-waste/digital waste that I’m not addressing here. I wrote a separate article on the carbon footprint/waste of electronic devices. Have a read!

Automatic behaviour

• Even in places where it would be easy to use your own bags, like the bakery, you have to tell the sales assistant that you have your own bags as you order, literally “I’d like this bread and I have my own bag to put it in”
• We also have our own automatic throw-away behaviour. Like grabbing tissues that you can’t flush down the toilet, or throwing away a little bit of water that is left in a drinking bottle rather than using it to make tea (or just drink it!)

Expense & time

• I spent a lot more money on buying loose foods
  • I had to buy 85% of my items at organic/health food shops or the market. I could only buy limited loose/glass-packaged products at the local supermarket
    • I am lucky that all of these shops are within a 20-minute walk from my house
  • Even if I removed the infamous chocolate balls purchase, I probably spent 30-40% more on our food shopping this week – as a guesstimate
• I also spent a lot more physical time to buy food every day and time to plan my meals

🙌My REDUCED-waste solutions

The experiment has made me think more about buying and how to make it low-waste where possible. To follow are some tips:

• Glass waste is the easiest to recycle. So try and find a glass-packaged version of the liquid/paste/sauce/condiment you want to buy
  • Plus glass containers can be handy to keep for home storage
• Reusing:
  • you can reuse some plastic bottles e.g. as water bottles. I did this with the plastic sparkling magnesium water bottle, it’s of the sturdy type. But any plastic container will leave microplastic residue
  • You can also use large plastic containers to stock rainwater. We store rainwater in our six-litre white vinegar containers
  • You can use some packaging/wrapping for crafty projects with kids. This is fun to do on occasion and you can make some impressive things. I actually have a lot of upcycled-rubbish craft ideas on Pinterest!
    • But you can’t use every piece of rubbish for an arty project. But also, where are you going to keep all of this?
• Boxed foods:
  • Staple foods: rice, pasta, couscous etc can be bought as loose foods. But it’s much easier and cheaper to buy these from your local supermarket in cardboard packaging. Buy the bigger version rather than a small pack = less packaging for the volume of food
    • Even the organic shops get their loose foods delivered in packaging!

😮Yes, zero-waste shops also buy food in packaging

We must not forget that zero-waste shops also buy their food in containers/packaging. I did some digging here. This is what I found:

• One local producer, who supplies cereal to organic shops that is sold as loose food, can only pack its food in six kilo plastic bags due to preservation and contamination issues
• The largest zero-waste shop in my town receives its solid oils like coconut and shea butter in 10 litre plastic containers
• I found a zero-waste shop in London that tries to buy food in bulk of mostly 25 kg – where possible

💪My actions 

Since the zero-waste experiment I have taken some actions upon myself. Hopefully I can keep myself accountable to follow through.

At home:

• I have lots of fabric from old clothes, so I will make more food pouches. You need a lot if you want to buy more loose foods (and my husband normally does a lot of the shopping too!). I need a proper sewing machine for this though, so I’ll be going round a friend’s house to make them!
• Actively giving sales assistants my bags if I have to get behind-the-counter foods
• Create a ‘projects’ area in the living room where we collect some recyclable material for crafty projects with the kids
• Think about how any packaging can be reused before recycling it, e.g.:
  • reusing plastic bags from cereal boxes as bin liners for our little bins in the kitchen and bathroom
  • reusing berry containers to plant my own herbs into
  • using kids’ drawings for gift wrapping…
• Take our eco cups with us when we go out for takeaway coffee/tea

Contact:

• Buy almond and hazelnut milk from Meelk !
  • Also contact them to find out about their plan to produce different flavours of plant-based milk – we actually mostly buy oat and soya milk. Also check with them if they will be thinking of a deposit return scheme for their glass containers
• Contact Le Fourgon to find out more about their national expansion strategy
• I am going to contact a few yoghurt brands to find out what their move is into glass containers. For example, Danone has said “We will explore shifting packaging for certain product lines from plastic to materials with higher recycling rates (paper, glass, etc.).” (Source: Danone)

👌If you want to try and reduce your waste, my mantra is always to “do what you can” – but not to overdo it. This will stress you out. My experiment was fun to try, but I can’t live happily like this! So, going forward I will do what I can 🙂

…And if you want to read more about what I do in the climate space, then please do check out my services.