Tips from the Zero Waste Chef: Reducing Food and Plastic Waste at Home - A Conversation with Anne-Marie Bonneau

SolPods Amy Sabik sits down with Anne-Marie Bonneau, author of The Zero Waste Chef: Plant-Forward Recipes and Tips for a Sustainable Kitchen and the Planet.  Anne-Marie describes how she went plastic free starting in 2011 and her journey to zero-waste in the kitchen.  Anne-Marie's tips include making up-cycled cloth produce bags which have inspired individuals from Seattle, to Scotland and beyond,  to start their own produce bag making groups.  Anne-Marie also reminds us its going to take time, be patient and remember that every step you take no matter the size helps our planet.  

Teaser tips from Anne-Marie:

• "Shop" your refrigerator and garden
• Your freezer is your friend for storing extra food
• Simple planning saves time, money and waste
• Eat more vegetables!

For more information on Anne-Marie visit her website : https://zerowastechef.com/
Follow Anne-Marie:  @zerowastechef
Book: https://zerowastechef.com/zero-waste-chef-cookbook/
23 Simple Ways to Reduce Planet-Heating Wasted Food: https://zerowastechef.com/2019/01/10/23-ways-to-end-planet-heating-food-waste/
31 Climate Actions you can take in your daily life in Response to the Latest IPCC Report: https://zerowastechef.com/2023/03/22/31-climate-actions-ipcc-report/
Find more eco-hacks and tips when you join the SolPods community: https://solpodscommunity.mn.co/spaces/7440612/feed

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Transcript

Lucy 00:06

Welcome to SolPods Studio. We're not your average social network. We're a community of professionals, enthusiasts and students taking sustainability to the next level. Join us on our journey and get inspired by earth heroes just like you.

Amy 00:23

Welcome back to another episode of SolPods Studio. I'm Amy Sabik and today we're here talking with Anne-Marie Bonneau, author of the book Zero Waste Chef, Plant Forward Recipes and Tips for a Sustainable Kitchen and Planet. Aside from her lovely book, Anne-Marie has a very informative website with tasks everyone can do to be more sustainable. You can find tips on how to go plastic free, 14 days to zero waste, and you can even sign up for a workshop on how to make sourdough starter, which is a highlight in many of her recipes where she even shares how to use your sourdough discard. Nothing goes to waste. These tips are available on her website or by following her on Instagram at Zero Waste Chef. Welcome Anne-Marie to SolPods and thank you for sharing your zero waste journey with us today.

Anne-Marie 01:15

Thank you Amy. Thanks for having me.

Amy 01:18

Great. Well, let's get started first with your adventure into going plastic free, which as I understand you started back in 2011. What inspired you to become a zero waste home advocate? And how did you get started on your zero waste journey?

Anne-Marie 01:31

Well, it started, as you said, back in 2011, I was reading about plastic pollution swirling around in the oceans. And this group of environmentalists had built a catamaran out of plastic bottles and waste materials. They sailed that from San Francisco to Sydney Australia to raise awareness of plastic pollution. So raised my awareness, I knew the plastic wasn't great, but I thought, well, I'm putting it in the recycling bin, then it gets turned into new things.

And as I read, I discovered, oh, that's not actually happening. And you know what, we have a really low recycling rate in the US and worldwide. So that's what got me started and then I went down this rabbit hole. So I think by paying attention to the plastic waste, it made me more aware of all of the waste. And a couple of years after reading about plastic waste in the oceans, I then read about food waste.

And you know, we, we waste a huge amount of food and worldwide, it's about a third of the food we produce in the US. It's even higher, it's closer to 40% and it keeps evolving. You know, things come up like COVID new challenges and yeah, so that, that's how it started.

Amy 03:02

That sounds great.

I can imagine just seeing that boat and realizing that that was made out of plastic. It's really true when you look at what we put into our recycling bin that we don't always know exactly what is getting recycled and what isn't. So it really does kind of raise your awareness, seeing that there is a huge amount out there that's probably not really ending up in the recycling system, which is unfortunate.

Anne-Marie 03:25

Right. Our waste management system can't handle all the plastic we produce. So it's, it's not possible and it shouldn't be on the onus of the consumers and the municipalities. So it has to stop at manufacturing.

Amy 03:41

Absolutely. And it really is about kind of a mind shift away from consumption of those plastics and buying things in packaging. But tell me what were some of the hardest or most surprising things about going plastic free and how have you adjusted to them?

Anne-Marie 03:56

Well, so we're big foodies and it was hard. It, it was, it was not easy and it took many months to adjust, but we found that most of the waste was coming from the kitchen, so that's where we started. And I also wanted to cut plastic out of, you know, personal care. I wanted to cut it out of everything. personal care for me was the most difficult. Shampoo, deodorant, those were really difficult and I remember trying to find solutions for those at the same time and it was not pretty.

Back then, there weren't a lot of shampoo bars. Now, you can find them all over the place and those are really easy. They cut out all of those plastic bottles. And you know, when you buy shampoo, you're, you're paying for water. A shampoo bar is concentrated shampoo. And so that's what I use today. And then deodorant was also hard. But my daughter, Mary Catherine, she made me some homemade deodorant. It works so well, and I've been using that ever since.

Amy 05:00

Yeah, I've actually moved over to the bars as well. I've got curly hair and my hair is always getting knotted. And so finding a really great conditioner is super important.  But now that I use the bar, I love it. I just lather it up a little bit. I get it onto my hair and the conditioner, it felt worked really great.

Anne-Marie 05:18

Oh, that's great. Yeah, it takes, it can take a while before you find a shampoo bar that works for you.

Amy 05:23

Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a little bit about how you define zero waste and what are some of the key principles of this particular lifestyle?

Anne-Marie 05:32

I think everyone will have a different definition, but mine would be sending nothing to landfill or recycling or even composting except for non edible food. Composting is great and it's crucial. It's very important, but it does not prevent wasted food. So, ideally, we'd eat all of our food and compost it as a last resort.

So, and I would also say zero waste is a conserver lifestyle as opposed to a consumer lifestyle. Although you will see all kinds of beautiful, shiny zero waste things for sale online, but you don't need to go out and buy all that stuff.

Amy 06:16

I noticed in your book you have lots of tips for how to make a lot of things that you actually would go out and buy. Do you want to talk maybe a little bit about some of your favorites that are in your cookbook?

Anne-Marie 06:26

Oh, sure. Yeah. When we started, we had to figure out how to replace these packaged foods. And when my daughter, my older daughter was a baby, I started making yogurt and I didn't realize that I was fermenting milk, but that's what I was doing and I had stopped doing that. So I just started doing that again. And what else do I make? Well, I make natural sodas which are delicious. They're so good. I've never drank a ton of soda to begin with, but it is nice to have some once in a while, so that's a nice treat. Anything fermented. I love all the fermented things. So hot peppers and hot pepper sauce. Vinegar, I make my own vinegar. Red wine vinegar. Actually, any type of wine vinegar is absolutely delicious. Even if you use just cheap wine that doesn't taste that good to drink. It makes really good vinegar. When people come over, I always make them taste a little spoonful of my, my wine vinegar. So yeah, that's a big favorite.

Amy 07:35

I recall when I was living over in Paris, I had lived with a family and they had this large pot sitting on the countertop and I asked what was in the pot. And they said that's our mother of vinegar. And I said, your what? Your mother of vinegar? I couldn't believe it.

And that's what would happen is they would pour their leftover wine into that pot and it would sit in there with the mother of vinegar and we would have delicious vinegar for our salad dressings, for cooking, for all sorts of things. It was great.

Anne-Marie 08:08

Oh, that's amazing. So, they did a continuous brew then? Yeah, they would just pour it in and, oh, I've got to do that.

Amy 08:14

Yes, it was brilliant.

Anne-Marie 08:16

Yeah, it is. And it, it, it tastes amazing.

Amy 08:19

Yeah. Agreed. 100%. What are some of your favorite low waste swaps for anyone who might be beginning their zero waste journey?

Anne-Marie 08:28

One of the simplest things you can do is to use cloth, produce bags. So reusable, produce bags, just stash them in your shopping bag. You'll always have them when you go shopping and they really do cut a ton of plastic and I think they make the food look more appetizing. And I've been doing that since 2011. My daughter and I sewed some really simple cloth produce bags. They're really cute, but you can just buy them, you can buy them all over the place.

And, I mean, that's, that has eliminated thousands of produce bags, plastic produce bags from the waste stream. So I would do that. We are all used to shopping with our reusable shopping bags. So this is just one little extra step, just stuff them in your shopping bag. And when they get dirty, you can wash them and they last for a really long time.

Amy 09:24

I think those are a great tool to have and like you said, just stuff them in your regular bag that you take to the grocery store anyway, so that you always have them on hand.

Anne-Marie 09:32

Yeah, another tip that I love to do every time we eat out at a restaurant, I pack a bag of containers, empty containers. So I'll bring maybe a couple of metal containers and at the end of the meal, when we have all these leftovers on the table, I just put them in the containers and bring them home. And that way I don't have to use one of the throwaway containers that the restaurant supplies. Most of those are plastic. Styrofoam has been banned, I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a styrofoam container around here for a really long time. Let's see, paper are often lined with plastic. If they aren't, then they may contain PFAS which renders paper grease and waterproof. But it's also, it's, it's a toxin. It's in everything forever. It's also known as forever chemicals.

Amy 10:27

And definitely not recyclable and certainly not anything we want to have in our household.

Anne-Marie 10:31

Well, no, and the thing is even the compostable paper containers that seem much more environmentally friendly. A lot of those contain PFAS. And so when you do put that in the compost, then it contaminates it.

Amy 10:46
Right.

Anne-Marie 10:47
So, if you bring your own, then you don't have to worry about that.

The restaurant saves money. It's really convenient. Your lunch is packed and ready to go the next day and then when you're done you just wash the container and you don't have anything to throw out. So, that's a really simple one.

Amy 11:05

Zero waste as you say.

Anne-Marie 11:06

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that one is. Yeah. Yeah. And then you don't have to choose between whatever kind of container they're handing you and the food.

Amy 11:14

RIght

Anne-Marie 11:15
You can, you can conserve both types of resources and those are simple tasks.

Amy 11:17

They, they don't seem that hard for people to do. So I love that.

Anne-Marie 11:23

Oh, you just have to get used to it. That's kind of like you wouldn't leave your house without your keys. So don't leave your house without your produce bags stuffed into your shopping bag.

Amy 11:34

A great tip. So what about some specific items that, that are a little bit more challenging? Like how do you manage the purchase of milk or cheeses? Butter, oils without also having to contend with the containers that those are in?

Anne-Marie 11:47

There are a few companies that sell milk in returnable refillable bottles, glass bottles. So there's Strauss. So that's what we did for milk. Oils can be a little bit tricky. I have a tiny bit of olive oil left in a jar from the bulk store, so I'll go back there and fill that up. Butter,  Strauss butter comes in compostable paper wrappers, at least the last time I bought it, that's what the wrapper had printed on it, on the salted butter. And, and it, it's home compostable. Cheese. Cheese is hard depending on where you go. You may be able to bring your own container and have  the store fill it up for you with cheese. It's not a problem. At least it hasn't been for us so far. So you just hand over your container and tell them what cheese you want.

Other stores won't do that.  Sometimes at other stores. It also depends on who's working that day because some, some employees in some stores, some restaurants think that there's a law that says that they can't do that. But that's not the case here in California. 

Amy 13:08

Well, certainly for people in other places. I know again, I'll use France as an example. You could bring your container to the cheese shop. And there are some places in, in some of the metropolitan areas where you have a cheese shop and you can certainly do that. So it definitely one way to reduce, you know, purchasing items that have a lot of packaging around them.

Anne-Marie 13:28

Oh, yeah. Well, like cheese and butter actually, oils you don't want wrapped in plastic because the fat can cause nasty chemicals to leach faster.

Amy 13:40

Yeah, we have learned a lot more about the dangers of plastic leaching into our food and leaching everywhere. So the more we can reduce any plastic that is touching our food, the better clearly.

Anne-Marie 13:53

Right. Yeah. And you know, so like, I'm not sure exactly what the, what happens, but I just know it's not good. But, you know, if you bring your own container, you just don't have to worry about it.

Amy 14:06

Well, how do you balance the demands of running a household and living a zero or, or even a low waist lifestyle? I'm sure for a lot of people out there, they're thinking, oh, this is so much work. I really don't have time like two income earners in the house, kids in school. How do I really do this zero waste journey without it wreaking havoc with another 10 tasks I have on my list to do.

Anne-Marie 14:32

I did find it difficult at first, for sure. Now I kind of have it down. Also, I don't cook anything elaborate. Everything I cook is, is really simple. I follow Julia Child's Maxim for cooking, which is I'm, I'm not wording it as eloquently as she put it, but good food for fresh ingredients and not masterpieces. Just I make very simple food and it's delicious.

Also, I don't cook a new dish every night because who has time for that? I think of myself as my own sous chef. So when I cook something, I try to think ahead of OK, what can I make tomorrow night? With the little bit of extra ingredients? I've cooked tonight from this meal because we really have forgotten how to cook kind of. We don't, we don't teach it.

We, we don't think it's important. And so we've kind of forgotten how to do it and it's not a one off thing, right? It's a continuous process. And so I think that thinking that way saves a lot of time when I do make something like I made a big pot of dal the other night, I make a lot of it. And if we don't eat it all, then I will freeze it while it's still good, so it doesn't have a chance to go to waste and then I have some emergency meals in the freezer.

I think planning ahead also is really important. That's key and it doesn't require a ton of planning. So my wine vinegar that I mentioned, it takes me maybe five minutes to start. It takes a month to ferment, but during that time I don't do a thing. So it's really easy to make. But I do have to wait. So, if I need vinegar for my recipe, I have to have thought ahead and have already started it.

Amy 16:32

That makes a lot of sense. I know for myself, I definitely have to do a little bit of extra cooking on the weekend. But it makes my weekdays so much easier because I've prepped a lot of the materials or I've even precooked some of the items and then it's just a matter of warming them up, which is always really easy and, and gets dinner on the table a lot faster.

Anne-Marie 16:55

Oh, yeah. Yeah. If I don't prep, do some prep on the weekend, I really regret it during the week.

Amy 17:01

What, what about your reaction from your daughters in, in this lifestyle and others in your life or your family? You know, how have they been supportive and interested in this way of life?

Anne-Marie 17:10

Well, Mary Katherine, was 16 when we started this. Now, the way I remember it, I told her we have to get off of plastic because I remember reading about that catamaran the way she tells it, she told me we had to get off of plastic. So I'm not sure exactly now, which way it happened. So she's really into it. Charlotte was only 10 and so kind of unaware of what was happening. When she was a teenager, maybe 13, I remember her asking why can't we just live like normal people? But she never really complained much. Mary Catherine went on to get her undergrad in environmental governance. And then when she finished that, she got a postgraduate certificate in waste management. And so she works in waste management now here in California and the biggest part of her job is to work with businesses to comply with SB 13 83 which is the law that requires residents and businesses in California to separate food waste and food scraps from non organic waste. So, and my husband's also very supportive, although sometimes he does ask if Mary Catherine and I can talk about something besides garbage.

Amy 18:37

Oh, well, clearly you had some very positive influence on your daughter's choice and her career path, which is fantastic. So I think a lot of businesses are going to need a lot of help complying with SB 1383. S

Anne-Marie 18:53

So, yeah, it's great. She's been able to help quite a few businesses set up and that's going to divert much more wasted food from landfill than one person doing it on their own. Which, which is important also, it's important for us individuals to, to do what we can. But when you got a, a business diverting all of their food scraps, food waste from landfill, that's, that's huge.

Amy 19:20

It makes a big impact for sure. Yeah. So one of the things that I loved finding on your website was you share 23 ways to reduce food waste in your household. Can you share three of those with us today?

Anne-Marie 19:32

The number one thing I think is to cook a meal from what you have on hand. If you do that, you'll absolutely slash food waste. I should call it wasted food because food waste actually isn't a thing, right? It implies that it's, it's normal and it, it's not, there's no such thing. So yeah, number one thing, cook a meal from the food that you have on hand.

I think most of us when we decide what we're going to eat, we let our cravings decide. And so we go out and buy all these new ingredients. If you use what you have, you're going to slash your food waste. So that would be my, my number one top thing. Another one is use the freezer. My daughter made this rhubarb strawberry galette and she did an egg wash on the edges of the crust and then sprinkled on some, some of that fancy sugar and, had this egg left over that she'd mixed up because you just use a small amount for the egg wash. And so I just grabbed a small jar and put it in there and put it in the freezer. Otherwise you might put that in the refrigerator with the best intentions, but it's easy to forget. So now I have that in the freezer. She might make another galette I hope this week or on the weekend that I can pull that out and thought and she can use that for the egg wash or if she uses another egg, then I'll have two eggs and then maybe I'll pull those out and have them for breakfast, have a, you know, some scrambled eggs. So freezer, freezer is really important. Another really simple way to reduce wasted food is to store food in glass. If you want to cut waste in the kitchen, if you wanna try the low waste thing, you're gonna wanna horde glass jars because you'll use them for all kinds of things. And one thing you can use them for is storing food. If you can see the food in your refrigerator, then you're more likely to eat it and it's less likely to go to waste. If you have opaque containers sitting in the back of the fridge, then by the time you realize you have those and you open them up that are, you know, they might be pretty sad looking and beyond edible. So that's a simple thing to do. Just store food in glass jars.

Amy 22:00

I know food always ends up at the back of our refrigerator. So if they were in, in clear glass containers a lot more would get eaten. And if we didnt put so much in the refrigerator too, if we had things a little bit more organized in there, we didn't put so much in there, we probably would also eat more of what we have on hand.

Anne-Marie 22:18

Yeah, I also think when you're in the market for a new refrigerator, when you're in the market for a new refrigerator, and this may not be for everybody. But I think a smaller fridge is better. I think our gigantic fridges lead to more food waste because you want to fill it up and you can't eat all of that. Depending on how big your household is.

Amy 22:40

What advice would you give to somebody who wishes to start to make just some simple changes in our kitchen to contribute to helping the environment?

Anne-Marie 22:47

I would pay attention to what you're throwing out and why? That's what we did when we first started with the plastic. My older daughter, Mary Katherine did an audit and every week she would take a picture of the plastic that we had accumulated and then we could figure out ok, what do we need to do to fix this? So let's say you find, you keep throwing out, oh I don't know; oranges because they go bad, well, buy fewer oranges or figure out something else you can do with them, like maybe squeeze them and you know, freeze the juice or make marmalade or something. The easiest thing would be to buy fewer oranges. So that would be one thing, do some sort of audit. 

The other thing would be eat more vegetables. I gave a talk last week and when I got to my slide with all the vegetables, I said I could basically end my talk now. Here's, you know, this is the short version. Just eat more vegetables. Most of us don't eat enough vegetables and we eat foods higher on the food chain that require way more resources and that aren't as good for us if we eat too many of them.

So yeah, eat more fruit and vegetables. They come in their own packaging, they're delicious and they're good for you. I would tell people don't worry about being perfect. The zero in zero waste is just a goal and you never actually get there. And even if I don't bring any plastic into my home, there is still plastic out in the supply chain that I don't see.

So, so it's a little bit of a nimby thing, but I am helping to reduce overall all the plastic. So just let go of the that whole idea of perfection because it's not possible and it's more important that we have everybody trying than, you know, aiming for perfection, which leads to burnout that can be really discouraging,

 Amy 24:54

Right. And as we talked about, you know, people think it's stressful and I don't have time to do this, but I know we talked about this too, but looking for products that really use less packaging or compostable packaging. As consumers, we're making choices every day with what we buy and we're supporting companies that are, you know, we want to support companies that are being more environmentally conscious and by making those choices and choosing things that have less packaging, we're telling these companies and these manufacturers at the top, we're either going to choose you if you have these better packaging or we're not going to choose you if you don't.

Anne-Marie 25:30

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, going back to the shampoo bars when we first started this, I could not find a good shampoo bar. But now they're pretty mainstream and I think companies have caught on, oh, we need to start making this stuff because people really want it and you can find them all over. Same with um, you can buy little pods for the dishwasher and little soap pods that you drop into a bottle and add water to, to make your own dish. I mean, you're not making your own dish soap, but that's what you can use instead of the the bottles of dish soap. I mean, there are so many products like that now that that didn't exist when we first started or at least we're really hard to find if they did exist.

Amy 26:23

Well, we appreciate you paving the way and, and getting started because it really took people like you to make these choices and start this journey earlier to start to probably result in what is now happening, this explosion of other products out there that are taking into consideration packaging, reducing that etcetera. So I think that's great.

Anne-Marie 26:43

Oh, well, thanks. Well, me and me and lots of other people.

Amy 26:46

Well, I've got one last question which we like to ask this of all of our earth heroes out there. If you had a sustainability superpower, what would that be?

Anne-Marie 26:57

I, I think my superpower would be to ease people's guilt. People feel so guilty for the way we live, but our society is set up in a way that we didn't design and we have to function within the society. So I think don't, don't feel guilty for the state of the world and just maybe that would be my superpower, maybe some sort of green green therapist for everybody.

Amy 27:27

I love it. A green therapist. Yeah, I think that's great and remove the guilt, the guilt associated with, with how we're consuming, but just know that we can make changes to consume differently.

Anne-Marie 27:39

Right. Right. Right. And that those differences they add up and, and, and that one person can make a difference.

Amy 27:46

I agree. And one person, you know, multiplied by many people, we start to see big changes, which is really exciting.

Anne-Marie 27:53

Right.

Amy 27:54

Well, Anne Marie, your book is an absolute delight and it's a well worth read and a staple in any kitchen. It's available in US Canada. It's also in Taiwan, available in Taiwan. Yeah. It's the Zero Waste Chef by Anne-Marie Bonneau. You can stop by her website at zero waste chef dot com.

Again, you can find loads and loads of recipes, gardening tips, upcoming workshops and so much more for your zero waste learning journey. Thank you so much Anne-Marie for joining us here at SolPods and sharing your practical knowledge and wisdom around maintaining a sustainable kitchen and household.

Anne-Marie 28:30

Oh, thank you, Amy. Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Lucy 28:39

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