Revolutionary Zoe here.
My Rubbish Revolution team consists of myself and my husband Ty. In some ways this challenge has come at an opportune time as we just got married and are establishing our ways of living together – so we have a fresh start and just started our own household together. Our chosen focus for now is on how we consume and what changes we can make to our consumption habits. The biggest way we do this is through being more mindful of the way we purchase food – many of the other ways we might consume for example buying clothes, toiletries, or household items, etc. we already do in a reasonably low-waste way. However, watch this space because there is always room for improvement...
The main thing I have learned is that you have to be prepared! A small example of this is choosing where and when to have takeaways for dinner. We will often buy dinner from a Thai place on our way home from church, particularly if we have been leading worship that day – we might have been at church since 3 pm, leaving around 7.30 pm. With this in mind, I pop a couple of empty lunchboxes into our bags before we go, and we ask for our food to be put in them instead of the containers they provide. We also each have a spoon and fork in a cute little fabric wrapper in our bags so that we never get caught needing plastic cutlery.
This works well, although I can’t say I anticipate every time we are tired and keen to get takeaway food on the way home! Because of this, I am trying to be in the habit of carrying an empty container with me wherever I go – which comes in handy for picking up food on the way home from work as well. If we need something from the deli, butchery, pick and mix or fish shop, I’ve got my container ready to hand over. (I have never had anyone look at me strangely for doing this, in case that was of concern to you!)
Next time, I’ll write up about our weekly shopping habits. Maybe this week, you could try to keep a plastic container or two in your bag/bike basket/car, and see how many times you get the opportunity to use it?