- We're typically gone from eight AM
sometimes 'til eight PM so things are really crazy.
It's only day one of the challenge
and things are not going as planned.
7:30 we need to out of the house at eight.
(gasps)
(cheerful music)
Hi my name is Aurora and I have a three year old.
This week I'm gonna attempt to make zero waste lunches
Monday through Friday, and pack them up for school.
Okay, let's take a deep dive
into what is happening in my fridge.
These are groceries I bought
before this zero waste challenge.
We don't do water bottles anymore so that's good.
We do our filter.
These are some of the things I might use
to make Naomi's lunches, lot's of plastic.
We have some restrictions with the lunches.
We can't do peanuts in school,
and we're eating plant based so
they're gonna be plant based lunches.
I think those are all the main restrictions
well and obviously zero waste.
I've always been interested in the environment
and I always thought that by recycling,
I was pretty much doing enough for the environment.
And then in 2017 China stopped taking
all of our recyclables, so now a lot of the things
that we put in the recycling bin
are actually going into the landfill.
So I started looking into just eliminating
the use of plastic all together.
It seems a bit daunting because when you set foot
in a supermarket pretty much everything is in plastic.
I've made some baby steps but now I'm hoping
that with this challenge it'll spark up some new habits.
We're here at the farmer's market, yay.
- Yay. - We're excited.
- Yay. - Yay.
We're getting lots of yummy things,
we have a nice full menu of yummy
mainly crunchy veggies and juicy fruits.
A few things we've gotten started with
the zero waste mindset is using cloth produce bags.
Do you want it for your lunch?
I couldn't find cucumbers at the farmer's market
so I'm getting them here.
They're in plastic so I can't get these
plastic wrapped cucumbers even though
they are the organic I wanted.
Oh wait.
(creepy laugh)
Non plastic ones, woo hoo we can get this.
We're getting some sandwich bread
in the bulk section so no plastic bag either.
Woo woo.
We're gonna get lots of yummy stuff for our lunch,
we're gonna get some brown rice,
and we're gonna find some chickpeas,
and we're gonna look for some bulk macaroni.
- [Both] Eeeeeeee.
- I'm taking a picture of the PLU number.
Now I have it here so I know what I got.
I've only just kind of dabbled in the world
of using the bulk bins and at first
it does seem a little bit intimidating
because you have to take a picture of the PLU number
and then you say "Hey, this is the number
"for the apricots I got."
Or whatever.
And then so that you don't get charged
for the weight of the bag you say,
"Hey can you subtract the tare weight of this bag?"
So I was looking for some bulk pasta,
but I couldn't find any bulk pasta.
So we picked up this, it's made with red lentils
so it's really healthy and it's in a box
so we're gonna recycle the box.
This should work for a couple lunches
with some nice pasta salad type things.
(mischievous music)
We were busy today, Naomi and I doing lots of shopping.
We got apples, carrots, little mandarin oranges,
cucumber we got at the supermarket,
and little sugar snap peas.
We also got these yummy raisins.
This is definitely gonna go in the little
treat section of Naomi's lunch box.
So this is Naomi's plate.
So let's go over here to see what we got.
Apricot, very easy.
So many things come in packages,
especially for children's lunches
and as busy people I understand the need for convenience.
What I decided to do was make
the same lunch Monday and Wednesday,
and then the same lunch Tuesday and Thursday.
And then Friday's sort of a wild card.
Friday's gonna be leftovers, some repurposing
of the lunches from the Monday, Tuesday variety.
So our water's come to a boil.
So we're going to cook these red lentil pasta
the way you would any pasta.
I wanted to make something I knew
Naomi would like to eat and also hopefully
something where I could pack it too for my lunch for work.
One of the days is gonna be rice
and garbanzo beans, aka chickpeas.
I have to soak them now,
this all seems like a lot of preparation
but really it's more so on the Sunday and Monday
where we're actually doing the cooking
and then the rest of the days
is just gonna be more assembling.
We're gonna soak these overnight.
Woo hoo.
I think my pasta's ready, yeah this is plenty of food.
I'm definitely taking some of this to work tomorrow.
Momma's gotta eat also.
I'm adding a little drizzle of olive oil.
I ended up putting salt, pepper,
a little garlic powder and a little turmeric.
Those are kind of the spices I have on hand.
And I know that my daughter does like the taste of turmeric
so it's something nice to put on it.
So now I'm gonna just cut up these vegetables
and we'll put it in here,
and then the lunch is gonna be ready.
We're done with Naomi's lunch and I hope she likes it,
we'll see tomorrow what the verdict was.
And now, my lunch is ready.
So you gotta take care of yourself too man.
Bed time.
Which thing did you like in your lunch?
- Apple.
- Did you like the pasta?
- Yeah.
- So we had a busy day, Naomi went to school,
I went to work of course.
And then I went to Zumba class,
and Naomi hung out at the gym child care
which she loves to do.
So we only just got home, it's already 9:30,
Naomi had her bath and we attempted
to go to sleep but Naomi's super hyped
and doesn't feel like going to sleep.
I haven't even made her lunch yet.
And Naomi is gonna help me since she's up
and wanting to participate.
(laughing)
It's only day one of the challenge
and things are not going as planned.
I was hoping to make the rice and the chickpeas tonight
but it doesn't seem like that's gonna happen.
Right now what we're gonna do is we're gonna use
the leftover pasta as our main course,
and then we're gonna vary up the sides.
Keep things fun and interesting, right Naomi?
- Yeah.
- And then we'll see about maybe like a dried fruit
or some pumpkin seeds or something like that.
And we're all set.
You did a really good job putting together your lunch,
are you happy with your lunch?
- Yep.
(mumbles)
- Heading back to work for lunch,
and I got my to go burrito right here.
Woop, zero waste to go babay.
Okay, these chickpeas are definitely
starting to look ready, they only really needed to cook
for like 40 minutes 'cause I soaked
them for two days when I got behind.
They got ready super fast.
I'm not really that great at cooking,
I just make really simple things.
So I could jazz it up with some sauces and stuff like that.
We're typically gone from eight AM
sometimes 'til eight PM so things are really crazy.
So just having these staples,
having a big thing of rice,
having a big thing of beans and being able
to put it into different stuff
actually makes my life a lot easier.
So, that's kinda cool.
While I get things together
we're having a little snack time.
Naomi's having some of the pumpkin seeds
from our bulk bin purchase.
She's also having some cashews
that we bought before the zero waste challenge.
It's sort of an adjustment to shop in the bulk bins
but I feel like it's something
that we could start doing 'cause these are things
that we would eat normally and there's no reason
why we can't just scoop 'em up
in the bulk bins and put 'em in a cloth bag
and then, that's it, it's not too complicated.
Since I have a kid, I felt like this is the perfect
time to be introducing new habits
and a new lifestyle because to her they aren't new,
to her they're just the way we do things.
Using reusable things,
and not single use plastics all the time.
It'll just be the way she does her life.
You wanna try to chickpeas and see if they came out yummy?
- [Naomi] Yeah.
- Did the chickpeas come out yummy?
- Yeah.
- Say "Bye I'm gonna go play."
- Bye I'm gonna go play.
- Good morning everyone, I'm not awake yet.
We're gonna see now what Naomi ate yesterday for lunch,
and then make her lunch super fast.
Oh, pretty good.
Okay, now we're gonna clean this up real fast
and fill it up with new lunch.
So this morning we're doing the chickpeas
and brown rice, and the chickpeas
I seasoned 'em up real good last night.
Naomi's lunch for the day is put together,
it took me about three minutes only
and it looks delicious.
Naomi seemed to like her lunch, so let's see what she ate.
Whoa.
It was good?
- Yeah.
- Do you want rice and chickpeas again?
- Yeah.
- All right we're gonna go to sleep
and all the ingredients are cooked up
so it's gonna take me like less than five minutes
to assemble it in the morning,
and I'm definitely doing that in the morning
'cause we're pretty tired.
Good morning.
Mm, woke up a little late.
So we're just gonna speed through all of that.
7:30 we need to be out of the house at eight,
(gasps)
Let's settle down.
So today, I'm just gonna eat that one.
I thought, oh I'll do the cucumbers
but then I saw the carrot and the apple still
from yesterday floating in the fridge,
I was like we gotta use this up.
So things are wild today.
The only thing I did in the moment
was slice up the vegetables which you can do
in advance if you want.
Lunch has come together in under five minutes.
(opening container)
- Prise.
- Surprise.
We ate all our lunch.
What did you like about it?
- Chicken peas.
(laughing)
- You liked the chick peas?
(laughing)
No don't show.
That's yucky.
I'm gonna use up all the leftover stuff
from the week to make something
very new and exciting for tomorrow.
Are you excited?
(cheerful music)
It's the last day of the zero waste lunches challenge.
So this is what we're using for our lunch today.
We have our little toast that came from the bulk bread.
We have our green beans, a few additional things I got,
I got some kiwi because I thought we needed
a little bit more fruit just to give us some variety
and then I got some lemon 'cause I'm gonna make
some chickpea spread to put on the toast.
And our lunch is ready to go.
Naomi, does this lunch look like a good lunch?
(laughing)
Did you eat your whole lunch?
- Yeah.
- [Aurora] Was it good?
- Yeah.
- [Aurora] Was it yummy?
- Yeah.
- This week I spent $34.75 on Naomi's lunches.
And the really great thing is that
I had a ton of stuff left over
that I could pack up for my own lunches to take to work.
- Yeah.
- So we did pretty well this week in terms of waste.
What we mainly have here are stickers,
these are from the cucumbers
when I couldn't find cucumbers at the farmer's market.
This is from the kiwi, this is from the lemon.
This is it in terms of the waste.
This is all sort of contributing to the waste,
even though it's not immediate for this week,
but eventually these are gonna run out.
So a good challenge for me would be when these run out
to replace the spices with bulk spices.
I'm just realizing now I totally forgot
about a very specific item of trash
that I made this week.
(shaking box)
In conclusion, trying out this zero waste lunch
challenge has been really fun.
Having a zero waste lifestyle is gonna get easier
and pretty soon it's just gonna be second nature.
And I'm so excited to take out
less trash and less recycling every week
and Naomi's learning about recycling in school
and she has this really cool art project
coming up where we're gonna use recyclable items
to make an art project and then she's going to
show it off at an art show.
I think that's awesome, we'd love to make sure
we're leaving future generations this beautiful planet
so I'm all about it.
Thanks for being part of this journey with me
(upbeat music)