The Compost Nightmare
Last week in my Moms group, we helped out the church food pantry with various tasks in which they needed volunteers.
We were told that the previous Friday, volunteers had built brown paper bag lunches for the Saturday lunch program, but then had a terrible drop off and had over a hundred bags left over with perishable food.
Here it was on Tuesday and the food was no longer good. So, the environmentalist in me decided that all of those plastic bags and all that food could NOT be thrown in the dump! Heaven forbid.
I volunteered to take the food home and place it in our compost bin. Might as well put it to use, right?
Well, little did I expect how long it was going to take to unwrap every little plastic bag! To top it off....the hundreds of flies that swarmed me while I was doing it .... GROSS!
Jonathan was nice enough to help when he got home, but in the end, we ended up throwing some of it away, but composted a lot of food and recycled hundreds of bags and twelve boxes that would have all ended up in the dump. Mind you that the sandwiches in the bags were not built - turkey had a bag, cheese had a bag, lettuce had a bag....and on and on.
So here was our challenge:
Twelve boxes full of individually wrapped ingredients for sandwiches....
Here was our compost afterwards:
I know it was presumptuous of me, but I always feel like I can heal the world. Even though I can't, maybe my baby steps will make some type of difference! Maybe I can be a reflection of good to others.
We were told that the previous Friday, volunteers had built brown paper bag lunches for the Saturday lunch program, but then had a terrible drop off and had over a hundred bags left over with perishable food.
Here it was on Tuesday and the food was no longer good. So, the environmentalist in me decided that all of those plastic bags and all that food could NOT be thrown in the dump! Heaven forbid.
I volunteered to take the food home and place it in our compost bin. Might as well put it to use, right?
Well, little did I expect how long it was going to take to unwrap every little plastic bag! To top it off....the hundreds of flies that swarmed me while I was doing it .... GROSS!
Jonathan was nice enough to help when he got home, but in the end, we ended up throwing some of it away, but composted a lot of food and recycled hundreds of bags and twelve boxes that would have all ended up in the dump. Mind you that the sandwiches in the bags were not built - turkey had a bag, cheese had a bag, lettuce had a bag....and on and on.
So here was our challenge:
Twelve boxes full of individually wrapped ingredients for sandwiches....
Here was our compost afterwards:
I know it was presumptuous of me, but I always feel like I can heal the world. Even though I can't, maybe my baby steps will make some type of difference! Maybe I can be a reflection of good to others.
Comments
In the meantime, I cannot wait to get my own compost going so I can stop feeling guilty about all the food scraps we are throwing away.
http://organicparenthood.blogspot.com
Good job! You'll end up with great soil in the end.
Too bad the lunches couldn't have been given to people at the park or to a daycare or something on Saturday. You'll have to suggest something to them so it doesn't happen again!