The number one question I get asked when people find out I’m trying to minimise my waste production is what I’m doing about food. This is asked often out of a sense of genuine concern, as if it’s somehow impossible to eat a meal without leaving a trail of Styrofoam and plastic in your wake. (In case you were wondering, the ‘number two’ question, which is normally accompanied by more than a few, often intoxicated, titters is whether or not I use loo roll. For the record, given my current living situation if nothing else, I’m not willing to compromise on that particular luxury. That’s not to say that there aren’t alternatives, though.)

This week, then, I thought I’d run through a few of the ways I try to minimise waste when it comes to meal times. One thing I should start by noting is that I’ve slightly cheated. Before term started I went to a food shop where they sell groceries without packaging (you bring or buy your own reusable containers): Unpackaged in Muswell Hill, near where I live in London. There I stocked up on oats, muesli, pasta, rice, quinoa, chickpeas and lentils, which I brought with me to uni and which provide the carbs and protein base for a lot of my meals. Unfortunately, there isn’t a zero packaging food shop in Cambridge (at least which I have been able to find yet), so obviously students here don’t necessarily have access to that delightful North London resource. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other minimal waste alternatives locally.

Carbs

While I haven’t been able to find pasta, rice or other grains sold loose, potatoes and bread can be easily snapped up from Market Square. The bread selection in particular is a lot more exciting than your average Sainsbury’s loaf.

Fruit and veg

There is an absolutely lovely fruit and veg market also found in Market Square, Monday to Saturday. Almost all of the vast selection is sold without packaging, and they also sell eggs in cartons, which you can bring back to be refilled (the Zero Waste dream tbh). To check the financial implication of shopping here, though, I did an (admittedly far from comprehensive) price comparison between the fresh produce sold here, and the produce sold loose in Sainsbury’s. The minimal results suggested that which seller is cheaper just varies from product to product. Sainsbury’s courgettes were £1.60/kg, whereas the market’s were £2.20/kg. Yet, in a shocking turn of events, go to the market and you would be saving 10p per lemon, at 25p as opposed to the Sainsbury’s 35p.

Another factor to consider in this is that Sainsbury’s has a much smaller range of produce available for sale without packaging, so if you want to get your Zero Waste grocery run all in one place, then the market is for you. Or, perhaps, you might consider doing a Sainsbury’s and market run, to get the best (unpackaged, or otherwise) deals all round. This is what I might start doing. I do, however, definitely prefer shopping in the market – no unwanted receipts and price stickers, no inexplicable aura of Sainsbury’s sadness and desperation, and no temptation from walls of heavily packaged ready meals and, more important, cookies. On which note…

Sweet stuff

If I’m being honest, one of the things I was least looking forward to about this minimal waste lifestyle (maybe the only thing?) was not being able to buy Sainsbury’s cookies. I want to marry Sainsbury’s cookies, write love poetry for them and have pictures of them on my wall. Acknowledging this, it’s probably a good thing to be forced to keep my distance for a while. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been unable to indulge my sweet tooth. As a Philosophy student, I wile away my days on the Sidgwick Site. The buttery there provides a darned good selection of freshly baked goods (including the recent welcome addition of chocolate doughnuts) which can be picked up without any packaging. For non-arts students, I regret to say that I have no idea what your faculty food facilities are like, but it’s likely that you work nearby waste-free snacks. There are also SO MANY cakes and other goodies available in the Market (you may be picking up on the fact that Market Square is just a generally great place to pick up unpackaged produce – you can also get spices, olives and dried fruit there with zero waste if you were wondering). Also, at the risk of sounding like a massive dweeb, fruit is a great sweet snack, and readily available without packaging. Oh, and you can also buy Seed and Bean chocolate in compostable packaging from Arjuna Wholefoods on Mill Road, if you can’t find chocolate with wholly recyclable packaging elsewhere.

Dairy

Short of travelling to the nearest dairy farm to pick up milk, I’ve yet to get this area of food without packaging. My weekly milk is just bought from Sainsbury’s and the bottle recycled. I am, however, making my own yoghurt. (Well, technically it’s kefir, but to all intents and purposes, it’s basically yoghurt.) Never did I imagine I would be the sort of person that does this, but it’s actually surprisingly easy, assuming you can get your hands on some kefir grains. And cheese, when I actually get round to buying some, will be sourced from the Cambridge Cheese Company on All Saints Passage.

Food waste

Having cut down food packaging where possible, there are a few easy things you can do to cut down on waste when cooking. First, try to avoid using cling film and foil to preserve food. I tend to just leave cut veggies with nothing on them in the fridge and they’re still perfectly fine. If you’re more fastidious than I am – i.e. are actually concerned about not eating ‘off’ food – you can check out this link to see ways to store produce waste-free. Secondly, if you have food that is going to go off, tell your neighbours about it and let them have it! Everyone loves free food, so whether you use notes on the fridge, messages in group chats, (reusable) labels on the food itself or something else, there’s really no reason why food should go uneaten in shared student accommodation. Thirdly, use as much of the produce as possible. If a few green pepper seeds end up in your pasta, so be it, and potatoes rarely need to be peeled. Think before you chuck.

Obviously I do produce some food waste. This experiment does not extend to repurposing banana skins. What I’m doing at the moment to deal with this is gathering my food waste in tupperware and then emptying it into the handy compost bin in the Sidgwick buttery. There are a few such sanctuaries dotted around university sites, so make the most of them, or maybe even agitate to get accessible sustainable food disposal mechanisms in place around college.

As a final note, a pretty cool result of making these Zero Waste adjustments is that you end up eating more healthily. Meals based around a few simple, fresh ingredients are commonplace in a Zero Waste lifestyle, and you really don’t miss those late-night microwaved essay lasagnas. Eating unpackaged where possible is great for the planet and great for you.

Keep your questions and comments coming in to kpoe2@cam.ac.uk.