- I just got back from the grocery store.
I found this branch of Brussels sprouts.
I never in my life did I think
I'd get so excited about a baseball bat of Brussels sprouts.
(playful music)
Hi, I'm Hannah, and I'm the world's okay-est mom.
And this is about the amount of trash
my family generates in one week.
Now, I don't know what the norm is
but this seems like a lot, so I wanna try something.
For one week, our family's gonna try to live zero waste.
Now I don't even know where to begin,
or how this is gonna go, but we're gonna give it a try.
So wish us luck!
So what is zero waste?
It is trying to generate
as little landfill waste as possible.
So anything that would end up in a landfill,
we don't want none of that in our house.
We as a family are going to attempt
to generate zero waste, and I'm talking food waste,
I'm talking trash, packaging.
You know, number one and two waste is fine,
that doesn't count.
Yes you can poop.
What I wanna do with this week is highlight
every single small, doable, easy way
for us as a family to reduce our waste
and use those going forward.
So we are doing a little research.
We are going to read some testimonials
of people who've gone zero waste
to learn some tips and tricks
to make it a little bit easier.
Matt is on the case. - I'm on the case.
- Okay I'm here at Whole Foods.
I'm kind of intimidated.
So Day One, the dreaded grocery shopping trip.
I usually go grocery shopping in the pajamas
I wore the night before.
And I feel like Whole Foods is a little more of a scene.
My goal is I at least buy a third of what I need.
So let's see if this works.
Whole Foods did come through
with these reusable produce bags.
So I went and I got them there,
and then I just used them and paid for them
as I checked out, but they come with packaging.
So, first piece of waste.
The irony of your reusable produce bags
coming in a crap-ton of packaging is just, it's priceless.
Who do you think you're making this product for?
People who wanna waste less.
So I got some lettuce to make a salad,
these bell peppers 'cause they came in this,
tomatoes for my salad.
After that shopping trip, I didn't have very much at all.
Most notably I had no bread.
Every piece of bread at the grocery store
is heavily packaged.
So Day Two I knew I had to do something different.
So Jackson and I are headed to the farmer's market.
Why are you so sad?
He was kind of in a mood.
I don't know if you've noticed lately,
but as he's getting a little older
he's getting a little more emo.
I let him simmer, he just wants to be left alone,
and left to his thoughts, and then he snaps out of it.
So, emo Jackson at the farmer's market with me.
You ready? - Yeah.
- 'Kay, let's go.
So I figured going to the farmer's market
would be the best place to get bread package free,
because it's the bakers themselves
bringing everything to the farmer's market,
so they probably don't have everything
completely packaged there.
We got a lot of what we needed.
We got bread, we got some berries,
we got plums, and we got these cool purple and white beans,
we got a couple eggs.
Now, I had heard that at most farmer's markets
there'll be booths of bulk cleaning products
and bath and body products,
and at this farmer's market I didn't find any.
So, I ended up resorting to making my own.
So for now the only DIY household product
that I can really fathom making is an all purpose cleaner.
It has vinegar, lemon juice, and a little dish soap.
So I just ran out of my all purpose cleaner,
so this is actually perfect.
So I have an empty bottle that I'm going to make this in
and let's see how it turns out.
I made a little sampler.
I'm gonna test this out, see how it works.
We're used to the smell of cleaning products
being like floral, fresh, clean linen,
and this vinegar smell.
Oh, boy that is pungent.
I mean probably better than chemicals, right?
So I woke up this morning and Wyatt and I
are both pretty sick.
But I'm still gonna do this.
I'm going to attempt to make a zero waste lunch.
I'm used to putting everything
in just resealable plastic bags in the lunch boxes.
So I pulled out a bunch of Tupperware,
and then I found this other really cool product,
it's a beeswax wrap and it's reusable.
So I wrapped Jackson's sandwich in that.
And then I was super nervous sending it
with him to school because his instinct
is to just throw everything in the trash when he's finished.
And if he threw away my $10 beeswax wrap,
there would've been some problems.
This is very expensive, so we don't throw this
in the trash, okay?
When you unwrap your sandwich,
just put it back in your lunchbox okay, Jackson?
Promise? - Promise.
- And I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
For breakfast today we're going to try
our duck eggs (laughs).
Now duck eggs are not anything
that any of us have eaten before.
So thank you farmer's market for introducing us to it.
Let's see what a duck egg looks like, oh woops.
Get that out.
The biggest difference that we noticed
that morning for breakfast
was that they're larger, the yolks are bigger,
and they're a little bit silkier.
Let's get these going. - They're sizzling like
I never heard eggs sizzle. - You excited about them?
- Yeah. - Taste it.
- I love it! - Oh, yay!
- They tricked us. - High five.
Alright, what do you think?
- Pretty good.
Tastes exactly the same, I wouldn't know the difference.
- Hey duck eggs, who knew?
I'm gonna have a duck coop out in the back of my house
one of these days, maybe.
So Day Four was a load of crap, literally.
Rosie, oh my goodness, don't go hiding.
Look what she did!
She pooped on the floor.
I'm using paper towels for this,
and I'm not going to save them in my waste bin,
or my waste jar, that is so gross.
So (groans) gross!
That was kind of a fail, but I feel like
I get a free pass for that
because I'm not picking that up with my hands.
So speaking of paper towels, I wasn't using any.
So very quickly my dish towel supply dried up,
and my washing machine filled up.
I've dirtied every dish towel in my entire house.
Dish towels, they kind of were the hero product of the week.
I used dish towels to save the day.
So we decided to go out to eat.
I came fully prepared when we went out to eat.
I'm going to bring a dish towel
for all of us to share instead of a napkin.
And I brought silverware just in case.
And it was a success.
We looked very ridiculous all wiping our mouths
on one large dish towel, but I don't even care.
At this point I have no shame anymore, you know?
Hey bud, why're you upset?
Do you wanna talk about it?
So Day Five was the inevitable day of any week like this,
this is the day it all fell apart.
Okay, will you tell me when you wanna talk about it?
When you're ready? (Jackson mumbling)
Okay.
We were having trouble surviving like this, food-wise.
We couldn't live off of fruit for much longer.
So, I did something I'm not proud of.
Alright, we caved and we ordered take out.
I know that's a lot of plastic, but you know what?
Rome wasn't built in a day.
Yeah, yeah I know we can't all be perfect, okay?
Some of us need a cheat day or two.
So you're going to take these egg shells
and crack them up and we're gonna put them on our soil.
Sound good? - Are you gonna make a eggs?
- No, it doesn't grow eggs.
So Day Six was all about reduce, reuse, recycle.
And we had lots of little projects to get done that day.
We are cleaning up the boys' room
and we found some Lego boxes.
I think we can use these for something else
instead of just throwing them away.
- Maybe like arts and crafts. - Should we try
an arts and crafts project? - Yeah!
(playful music)
- [Hannah] It is a special box, it's all wrapped,
and then you guys get to color on this.
We have colored pencils, and markers,
and let's decorate this. - Okay I'm on it!
Both of (mumbling) here's Alex's and there's
the polar bears on the roof.
Here's Steve and here's Alex.
- [Hannah] Wyatt what are you making?
What is this? - That's a potato!
- So we are going to use these
to store mismatched socks, excellent.
And at the end of our big recycling day,
I had a major mission to accomplish.
This is my little compost bowl
that I'm going to keep in my freezer.
I'm gonna try to find somebody who'll take the compost.
So what I ended up doing was joining a Facebook group
with like-minded people and I found somebody
who composts themselves.
So I'm here, I'm by myself, I wish I had brought somebody.
It feels kind of like a Craigslist meet up,
or it kind of feels like a drug deal.
I got the food scraps, you got the compost?
You need these?
I got you.
The deed is done.
It is done, the deed is done, we did it.
Woo! (laughs)
I feel alive right now.
Got rid of my compost, yeah!
Oh my God I'm too pumped on this, alright, I gotta go.
Tonight we are having my friends over for dinner.
We have two friends that we haven't seen
in a very long time.
So about a month and a half ago
I invited some friends over to a dinner party.
And we planned this way in advance,
and of course in true Hannah fashion
I completely forgot about it.
So I had to plan a zero waste dinner party.
I don't even know where to begin with feeding people.
And one thing's for sure, I don't think
we can serve any meat because how're you gonna take
meat home from the grocery store?
So I think meat's off the table.
I really hope that we can make something that's filling
instead of just like some raw vegetables.
I don't even know where I'm gonna start.
Now I really wanted to make a cheese board
just 'cause I'm known for having
really big, beautiful cheese boards when people come over.
Like I'll eat a cheese board for dinner instead of food.
It's my favorite thing in the world.
What ended up happening with this cheese board
is it had a lot of very odd ingredients on it
that you wouldn't expect on a cheese board.
There was some dragon fruit, just a bunch of random,
like, jarred stuff like cocktail onions,
and olives, and brushetta sauce, and I don't know.
It was a cluster but it looked good.
So how did the dinner party go?
Well, how'd it go Wyatt?
So how did the dinner party go?
Well, the food took three times as long as it needed to.
And I ended up spending so much time cooking,
and my friends who came ended up helping me cook.
So we were just kind of in the kitchen the whole time.
But I made a mistake.
I just out of habit, I roasted my pumpkins
on a piece of foil.
And I didn't even notice I was doing it.
I was patting myself on the back
for not generating any waste and blah, blah, blah
and then I went to clean up and I realized
I had this piece of foil on my pan.
So, into the waste jar it goes.
- Put it up! - And just like that,
seven days came and went.
Zero waste week was over.
It was pretty easy for everybody except me,
but that was to be expected.
And this is what we have to show for it.
I collected our waste in this jar.
It is a little overflowing, but I'm pretty proud.
If this is the majority of our waste
compared to what we usually do, this is huge.
(playful music)
So that's all I got for today.
I'm Hannah, and if you have an idea for a future episode,
leave it in the comments, or you can always text me.
This is a real number and I don't always respond,
'cause I get a lot, but I do read every single one.
Now if you'll please excuse me,
I have a ton of dish towels left to wash.
'Till next time!
(playful music)
Listen to these ingredients.
Homemade deodorant: bentonite clay,
arrow root powder, sure this is so easy
let me just tap into my stash of bentonite clay
that I keep in my pantry, like what?