We Tried Living Zero-Waste For A Week

I just got back from the grocery store I found this branch of brussel sprout and never in my life did I think I'd get so excited about a baseball bat of Brussels sprout hi I'm Hannah and I'm the world's okay it's 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 want to 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 wishes 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 in two ways just fine that doesn't count yes you can poop what I want to 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 have gone zero waste to learning 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 dude did come through with these reusable produce that so I went and I got in there and then I just used them and paid for them as I checked out but they come with packaging so first piece away the irony of your reusable produce bags coming in a crap ton of packaging it's just it's priceless who do you think you're making this product for people who want to waste less so I lettuce to make a salad these bell peppers because 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 Jax and I are headed to the farmers market 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 farmers market with me you ready okay let's go so I figured going to the farmers market would be the best place to get bread package free because it's the bakers themselves bringing everything to the farmers 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 farmers markets there will be booths of bulk cleaning products and bath and body products not this farmers 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 honey 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 Oh pungent I mean probably better than chemicals right so I woke up this morning and why we're 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 have been some problems this is very expensive so we don't throw this in the trash okay when you're when you unwrap your sandwich just put it back in your lunchbox okay Jackson promised and I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best for breakfast today we're going to try our duck eggs now duck eggs are not anything that any of us have eaten before so thank you farmers market for introducing us to it and see what it looks like 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 you excited it on it yeah taste it all right what do you think pretty good tastes exactly the same I wasn't doing a difference today decades who knew I'm gonna have a duck coop out in the back of my house one of these days maybe so Dave for was a load of crap literally Rosie oh my goodness don't go hiding look what she did she pooped on the floor I am using paper towels for this and I'm not going to save them in my waste bin all right waste jar thought isn't so gross so 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 dirty 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 am 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 bye why are you upset do you want to 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 want to talk about it when you're ready 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 all right we cave did we order takeout I know that's a lot of plastic 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 so I'm good I'm gonna make it eight 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 should we try an arts and crafts project it is a special box it's all wrapped when you guys get to color on this we have colored pencils and markers and let's decorate this okay Alexes and there's the polar bears on the roof here Steve and here's Alan white what are you making what is this okay 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 will 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 meetup or it kind of feels like a drug deal I got that do you need these it is done it is done the deed is done we did it 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 Hanna 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 are you gonna take me home from the grocery store so I think meat off the table I really hope that we can make something filling instead like some raw vegetables I don't even know where I'm gonna start now I really wanted to make a cheese board just cuz 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 mmm there was some dragon fruit just a bunch of random like jarred stuff like cocktail onions and olives and bruschetta sauce and I don't know it was a cluster but it looked good so how did the dinner party go Wow how'd it go away Oh so how did the dinner party go Wow the food two three times as long as it needed to do they ended up spending so much time cooking and my friends who came and then I'm helping Pete cook so we're 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 or not generating any waste and blah blah blah and then I went to clean up and I realized I had this piece of foil in my pants so into the waste jar it goes 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 so that's 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 cuz 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 wash till next time [Music] listen in these ingredients homemade deodorant been a night clay arrowroot powder sure this is so easy let me just tap into my stash with bentonite clay but I keep in my pantry like where what [Music]

Channel: BuzzFeedVideo

Views: 1,826,000

Rating: 4.9241633 out of 5

Keywords: 8rQn, KtKp, PL5vtqDuUM1Dmy4t5c_7dYCem1zXdKoZqQ, PL5vtqDuUM1Dnqiaj8uHrtqx_XXw_x1w9Z, buzzfeed, buzzfeed wine mom, buzzfeedvideo, composting, family vlog, hannah williams, millennial mom, millennial moms, mom in progress, mommy blog, mommy fail, mommy vlog, parenting, parenting fail, recycling, upcycling, wine mom, young mom, zero waste, zero-waste

Id: bBzXdRN0-LQ

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 06 2018