We had a family BBQ, and I am happy to report that we came very close to zero waste.  How??  Instead of paper plates and cups we used REAL dishes!!  I actually pulled out the china that I got as a wedding gift; we used it once in the past 27 years.  When my 25 year old son saw it on the counter top and asked “Where did this come from?” I was convinced that even though this is not a fancy schmancy event, (which is when the special china comes out right?) this was perfect, so what if one piece breaks?  Make mosiacs!!!  Better to use it now, then some day dig it out of the box, barely used and give it away.

How did we do it?  For the plates, we added the china to our everyday dishes.  Since we had steak, I broke out the steak knives.  For cold drinks, anything that came in a bottle like beer, gets recycled, we had some home brewed beer, so that is an even better way to recycle the bottles. For all the other drinks, iced tea, soda etc ,I pulled out the mason, pickle, salsa, and peanut butter jars, which we use as our daily glasses. Straws….bamboo of course. For hot drinks, the coffee cups from the kitchen cabinet, added to the china coffee cups. Since I only have a 12 cup coffee maker, I used some old thermos’ I had (either family hand me downs or tag sale finds) to serve the coffee out of.

 For our cutlery I had purchased forks and spoons made out of potato starch, which you can throw in the compost, but you can also run them through the dishwasher, so you can re use them plenty of times, and then when you can’t any more….to the worms! Napkins-cloth, I use old t shirts and cut them with pinking shears.

When it was time for dessert I had to stop and think for a second, the cookies we made, easy to serve, but the fruit salad, hmmmm…then I opened up my cabinet and AH HA!!…yogurt cups!!! I was wondering what I was going to do with them  The food waste gets composted, the chicken bones I froze and will make stock out of.  So the only thing we had to throw out was the packaging from the meats, which included styrofroam, which really gets my goat. I am mad at myself for even buying it, but what are you going to do?

 As far as clean up, when we have a gathering, we usually end up in the kitchen, so clean up really isn’t so bad. Everyone helps, and cleaning is hardly noticed with all the socializing.

  Almost Zero waste!!  Ahh someday maybe….

ZERO!!