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This is week number 4 of the plastic reduction challenge and we will be continuing our journey in the kitchen, but switching gears a bit. It is time to take on your eating habits. You can go as far as you want with this, or find small ways you can make a change. The key is to make some kind of change. Challenge yourself!
Now I’m going to let you in on my biggest plastic saving secret of all. We don’t eat out. Like ever. Except for vacations and birthdays, my family eats food from home breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks. The restaurant business, especially fast food, is a plastics filled industry. About 50% of litter comes from fast food. Disposable cutlery, plastic lined paper cups, straws, and plastic wrappers are common. Not to mention all the behind the scenes plastic that you don’t even see, like the plastic bag that contained the soup that was warmed up at the fast food restaurant and then placed into a plastic lined bowl, topped with a plastic lid and served to you with a plastic spoon! Even a lot a dine-in restaurants do not cook from fresh in the back kitchen, so there is a lot of waste created before that food gets served to you on a plate. By eating at home, I am able to control this waste. And it’s not just the plastic that is reduced. Planning to eat at home also helps control our budget, healthy eating habits, and the amount of food waste we produce. It’s a win-win-win type situation. I’m not saying that you need to make this extreme of a change in your lifestyle and stop eating out altogether, but this is a huge area where you can make a change and this week I’m going to show you how my family does this. Jump in and do what you can!
Today’s challenge: I want you to open up your bank account statements and your credit card records and write down the number of times that you ate out in a one month period. If you pay in cash than honestly think about how much you eat out. I already see some of you trying to weasel out of this challenge, but it is so important to know where you are starting from! Pick a month over the past year that you think is an accurate reflection of your day to day living (i.e. not one during covid-19 quarantine or when you were on vacation for two weeks or there were a bunch of holidays!) You have to be real about this and record all restaurants, gas station runs, coffee trips, etc. All meals plus snacks. Survey your results and think about where it is realistic for you to cut back. Can you pack a lunch every day? Can you bring your own coffee so you don’t make that mid-morning run and end up with coffee and a snack? How many times per week do you eat out for supper? Can you reduce this to just 1 or 2 or even zero? What is reasonable for you and your family? Spend a few moments thinking about this and then write down your thoughts in your notebook. Anyone out there brave enough to confess how much you eat out?
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