Why start volunteering this year?
We have been volunteering for 10 years. We can’t imagine our lives without it. Why you should make volunteering a part of your life? Read below.
Author: Kerly
How to embrace the new year and set your goals?
Bye-bye 2020! You were a struggle, enjoyable, but still a struggle. We are really happy to greet the new 2021, and set our new goals!
Community fridge – new phenomena on the streets
During tiring times, communities have come together. Read below how the community fridge is helping to fill the gap while offering free food for people in need.
We appreciate food, hate food waste, and work every day to save food, share food, and enjoy food. As a society, we waste so much food every day – approximately 1/3 of the food will end up in the garbage bins. Since we love the environment and try to consume as little as possible, this is a really hot subject for us.
Though we have close connections with the European way of saving and sharing food – Foodsharing, the more common term in Northern America is community fridge, a new phenomenon that should be the norm in every community.
What is a community fridge aka freedge?
A Community Fridge is a refrigerator located in a public space. The fridges, sometimes called “freedges” are a type of mutual aid project. They help to share food within a community. Some Community Fridges also have an associated area for non-perishable food.
Source: wikipedia.org
So basically, it is a fridge in a public space, which gets filled by anybody and can be emptied by anybody (you what you need, leave what you don’t). The food is always free. There is always so much leftover food. These fridges offer a convenient way to store and share surplus food.
Sometimes, such fridges are accompanied by little pantries, which hold the space for food items, which do not need refrigeration. So in a way, community fridges are like little free stores offering a variety of food; except that you never know what you’ll get at the freedges!
Wow, that sounds fun – how can I start a freedge?
Luckily as with most wonderful things, you can educate yourself using the world wide web. Freedges are connected to a worldwide network offering information, support, and media for all community fridge related questions. Please find the link to the Freedge Network at the end of this article.
You may already have a fridge or two in your city, town, or neighbourhood. Now you just have to fill it with food or take food if there is a need. Leaving food in the fridges is not charity. Food is a basic human need. And if our governments fail us, then joining our forces for mutual aid is the only way to go.
The first and most important thing is that you need a small group of like-minded people who believe in saving food and sharing it with others. This is a good start if you can communicate with a small group and set your goals and tasks. Finding a location for the fridge is a very tiring process. Especially when reaching out to businesses and asking permission for the fridge at their storefront. If that doesn’t work out, try private locations. All you need is a spot for the fridge. The shed to protect it from weather, and electricity to keep it working.
When you have found a spot for your community fridge, then it is time to explore more about the options of how to fill the fridge on a regular basis. Visit your local bakery, café, and speak to the manager at your home grocery store and inquire about their surplus food. Most of the time it just goes to garbage or organic recycle bins, but instead, it should reach people. This is where we all can step in. Reach out and make a change.
No good deed goes unpunished
The idea to write this article came because of saddening news. As one of the first community fridges in Toronto was shut down by city officers at the end of November 2020. It was closed because in the city official’s opinion that it was abandoned therefore posed a threat to children, who may lock themselves inside of it…
Jalil Bokhari, founder and community organizer of Community Fridges Toronto shared a post about it on their Instagram feed. And it went viral – 5000 likes in a day! Obviously, one little fridge touched so many people. It offered food to hundreds and hundreds of people in its short four-month life-span. Luckily, the Toronto Community Fridge has four other fridges up and running. But they need desperately all the support they can get. Including filling with food, maintenance, and winterizing. Communities can together to help with all that.
CBC wrote an article about Toronto city’s shameless decision to close the fridge down. In there: “Bokhari said the city’s order is upsetting because the fridge was a source of “fresh, good looking food” for many people in Parkdale and food insecurity is an issue in the neighborhood. The city also failed to help provide a solution, he added.”
It is heartless that the government body, elected to support and help us, makes a decision to close a community initiative that helps them take care of its most vulnerable and forgotten citizens. This being said, it is more of a reason to start even more fridges everywhere! Share the food, spread the love, and keep our tummies full. All of us. Not just those with money to buy all they need and throw away long before the food touches their plates…
Conclusion
With winter is around the corner in the northern hemisphere, and as times are hard for many, it is the right time for people to come together to start community fridges and pantries all over the world. Find a group of like-minded people, a place for a fridge, and plan to build a protective shed around the fridge. When this is all done, the rest will follow. Your community will come together and the fridge will make many people sustained and happy.
Reference and links:
Biomethane and the environment- Why the car you drive matters
If you absolutely have to buy a new car, then please consider for the sake of our planet, investing in a biomethane gas vehicle!
Don’t Buy Peanut Butter In A Plastic Container. Ever.
We do not buy much plastic, as we know about its health hazards. But this new discovery about peanut butter in plastic containers blew our minds!
Mould on food: meh or no way!
Your favourite pastry may grow mould overnight. Should you trash it or should you eat it? Mould on food – all you need to know!
I remember my first encounter with mould on food when I was making buttered bread during my early years. When I took the bread out from the bread closet, it was half-covered with a grayish, teal furry looking mould. I learned that was bad and not good to eat, even if the end of the bread is okay.
As I grew older, I saw mould sometimes on top or on the sides of the home-made preserve jars, my mom or grandmother had made. Mom cleaned it thoroughly and the jam always tasted good. Now, juices tend to have a bit of a funky taste. Then later I saw it on cottage cheese, milk, cheese, and nuts. I have heard so many different opinions about mould, so I finally decided to look up all there is to know about it on food.
Why is it important to talk about mould?
Because of misknowledge, we may waste food that is still edible to eat. Wasted food means wasted money, more garbage, and contributing more climate change, as food waste is considered to be one of the most heated environmental problems. If you waste food, it means that you may have wasted some of your next meal. Each bite you eat is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Think of growing, processing, packaging and transporting the food we eat. All this contributes to climate change. Discarded food will rot and release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
“Fruit always starts to rot from the inside“
I heard this from a woman with whom we were circled around to get food from Foodsharing in Berlin. I just got an apple and it had a soft brown mouldy spot. She said I should not eat it. It got me thinking. Would the same apply to bread, which is covered with small mouldy spots? Would it be okay just to cut the bad parts off and then eat it?
The little colourful spots you see on food is just the mould on the surface. These spores allow the mould to reproduce. It works really similar to plants – it has roots below the surface, which travel deep into the food. It really doesn’t help just to remove the spots covering the bread. If you do that and eat it, you will consume some mouthfuls of fungus nevertheless. This wouldn’t be life-threatening, but what one should keep in mind is that foods that are mouldy may also have invisible bacteria growing along with the mould.
Luckily most moulds are harmless, but unfortunately, some are dangerous. Mycotoxins are the poisonous ones. They are substances produced by certain ones found primarily in grain and nut crops. But they are also in celery, grape juice, apples, and other produce. These substances are often contained in and around the threads that burrow into the food and can cause allergic reactions or respiratory problems.
Some mould is good for you!
I guess you know that some moulds are used to make certain kinds of cheeses and can be on the surface of cheese or be developed internally. This is all good. For example, the blue-veined cheese such as Roquefort, blue, Gorgonzola, and Stilton are created by the introduction of P. roqueforti or Penicillium roqueforti spores. Brie and Camembert have white surface moulds. Other cheeses have both an internal and a surface mould. These are used to manufacture these cheeses are safe to eat.
As a vegan, I do not know much about it anymore. I haven’t had any vegan cheese go mouldy on me. Not sure if that will ever happen to me. 😀
Help – moldy food!
Mould grows out of spores that are always in the air. Mould spores are not harmful in the air, but when they land on a surface, they start searching for nutrients and water. So food serves as the perfect environment for mould to grow – once it starts growing, it usually will spread quickly.
If there is some mould on your food – don’t panic yet. Read the tips below. They will help you to figure out, which foods are not good to eat, when they are mouldy and which are good to go. You just have to cut the mouldy part off. Exciting!
THROW THESE OUT if you see mold:
- Luncheon meats, bacon, or hot dogs, cooked leftover meat and poultry
- Cooked casseroles
- Cooked grain and pasta
- Soft cheese (i.e. cottage, cream cheese, Neufchatel, chevre, Bel Paese, etc.)
- Crumbled, shredded, and sliced cheeses (all types)
- Yogurt and sour cream
- Peanut butter
- Legumes
- Nuts
- Bread and baked goods
- Jams and jellies*
- Cheese made with mold (such as Roquefort, blue, Gorgonzola, Stilton, Brie, Camembert)
*The mould in jams and jellied could be producing a mycotoxin. Microbiologists recommend against scooping out the mould and using the remaining condiment. I guess my grandmother and mother have been wrong all this time. :O
EAT THESE, after cutting off the mold
- Hard salami and dry-cured country hams (Eat them. Scrub mould off the surface. It is normal for these shelf-stable products to have surface mould.)
- Firm fruits and vegetables (such as cabbage, bell peppers, carrots, etc.), as well as hard cheeses, are OK to eat if you remove the mould. Cut off at least 2,5 cm (1 inch) round and below the mould spot. Keep the knife out of the mould itself so it will not cross-contaminate other parts of the produce.
Remember while you’re removing mould, etc. that you should be washing your hands and food prep surfaces often.
How can I prevent mould from forming?
Refrigerate, refrigerate, refrigerate. This is the best advice coming from somebody who doesn’t even own a fridge 🙂 But I mean colder temperatures, the better, so your food doesn’t start going mouldy. Its growth is encouraged by warm and humid conditions. Be aware though, that they can also grow in the refrigerator too, just more slowly (think of yogurt and milk). When the mould spores dry, they float through the air and find conditions in which to grow some more mouldy friends.
Keep your fridge clean to avoid more food from getting spoilt and decrease food waste. And if possible keep the humidity at home 40 percent, examining food for mould before you buy it, purchasing food in small amounts so mould doesn’t have time to grow, covering food with plastic wrap, and eating leftovers within three to four days.
Sounds pretty easy, uh?
The best is not to let your food go to that state in the first place – consume it when it is fresh and do not horde food!
I have been eating mouldy bread, the same way I described above – discarding those little spots – and I am still here. After knowing that it is not only on the surface but also inside of the bread, it doesn’t make me want to eat mouldy bread anymore.
And if you are wondering what a low mould diet is, check out Balanced-healtcare.com article to find out more.
When was the last time you found mouldy food at home?
Note: Mould/Mold can be used interchangeably. Mould, as in with the ‘U’ is the Canadian and British spelling while omitting the ‘U’ as in Mold, is the American way.
References:
How many times do you think the ‘mould’ was used in this article?
Have you ever cleaned off the mouldy part of a food item then eaten the rest?
Paper waste and recycling 411
“Prefer paper to other materials, as it can be recycled”. But how many of us really know about paper waste and its recycling?
The plastic lining in surprising places*
We are on our neverending path, getting to know more what things consist of. Join our adventure on finding thin plastic lining.
How much garbage do we really create?
You are what you eat, but how about how much garbage you create? Let’s dig into our little garbage container and peek what is in the three bags.
As we have said many times earlier: we are trying to consume less, mostly less plastic, and keep the household clutter-free. Sometimes things just come to us. This can be simply avoided. Always buy what you really need, write down a list to avoid extra purchases, do not shop hungry and alone.
Our shopping habits
Anyway while on our new path, some may probably wonder how much garbage we are creating in a week. I have to explain a bit about our buying habits. Since we are vegan, we buy mostly fresh produce, oftentimes beans and tomatoes in a can, rice, and pasta. Unfortunately, the two latter come in plastic bags, which we are looking to skip as well or buy bags of rice in bulk. Also, we are lucky that we can save ready-made food from the workplace’s canteen, which keeps us away from buying plastic-wrapped grocery items. Needless to say, when buying things, we look for items made of metal, wood, glass and we are trying to buy food packed in paper, cardboard, glass, and tin cans.
What is in our garbage bags?
As said earlier, we have a little cardboard box, where we store three little plastic bags. We are collecting paper/cardboard, packages, and garbage. Organic waste is collected to a bowl, which we empty daily to our building’s organic waste bin.
Below are descriptive photos of our garbage bags on a random week.
1. Paper/cardboard
It contains Alpro yogurt container’s paper wrapping, toilet paper roll’s inside, some teabag wrappers, and a towel’s tag.
2. Packaging
Here you can see a bag of rice, kidney beans can, and a cookie wrapper. You can’t see Alpro yogurt container, as we reused it for something else.
3. Garbage
Here you can see mostly tissue paper, wet tissues, floss, Alrpo yogurt containers aluminum lid, some dust, and lint.
The photos above change weekly, depending on our consumption habits. But we are glad that we have managed to keep our three little garbage bags quite minimalistic. We are not into buying things and consume plastic – so I guess we have a head start.
Please read our other article, how we are sorting garbage in our kitchen.
Zero-waste is not possible
You most likely have come across the photos of the waste jars of zero-wasters all around the world. Their little containers hold almost nothing of what they trash in a year. Their jars look perhaps like an average person’s hourly trash, if even. Don’t be intimidated by the little waste they are creating. It is impossible to live completely waste-free, as things may break down, things that are not recyclable and are made of plastic. Though you can come across households, which contain no plastic and traditional paints whatsoever. Goals, uh?
But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to eliminate plastic from your household or consume less. Yes, please do that, it is good for our planet and your wallet. Buy less, buy only what you need, try to find it without plastic and try these three zero waste disposal options, before trashing the goods.
Just make a clear plan for yourself of what you want to bring home and how you can have a clear overview of your expenditures. Such little container with three little sections works the best for us.
How have you organized your garbage collection and how you avoid plastic? Share your experiences with us!