My First Zero Waste Event--Absolutely Fabulous Vegan Fayre

Hello everyone! In my last post, I talked about creating my own ZERO WASTE KIT from stuff I already had. Today was my first day to try it out.

Because I knew I was going to bring home LOTS of delicious food I loaded up my kit with 3 containers.

So how did I do?

Brilliantly. I was like 99.9% zero waste because each of my ice cream cones had a paper napkin that I forgot to refuse. I was just so incredibly excited about vegan ice cream, I didn't even see the napkin until she handed it over.

I actually ate ice cream TWICE because it was that good. The nice lady from Cardigan and her company Ice Green makes cashew based ice cream with homemade gluten free waffle cones. This is why I had it twice.

There were so many flavours I couldn't decide. First I had Black Forest Gateau (chocolate with GF brownies and cherries) and then went back and was so indecisive so she kindly did me a half scoop each of Peanut Butter and a sort of Pralines and Cream with a caramel swirl and cinder toffee.

This was also how I was so mesmerised I forgot to refuse the napkin on the second cone.

This is actually not my ice cream cone because despite eating two, I forgot to take a photo before consuming them. This is the hand of a friend who kindly acted as my stunt double.

So two strikes for getting paper napkins when I had a cloth one, but let's see what I did right.

For lunch I ate from the lovely people who run Brownwins Caribbean Food. They had Chinet heavy duty paper plates for their food or you could get it in a cardboard box, which was great. However, I had come prepared.  

I got the jerk tofu with rice and peas and coconut curried vegetables. It also came with salad but it wouldn't fit in my box, so I had the hot food in one box and salad in the other. I used my own cutlery and cloth napkin to eat it.

close up of my jerk tofu in spicy gravy

 There was so much food, i saved half of it for my supper tonight.

I went and washed my fork in the bathroom and shook out my salad box and went and filled it with cake from Vegangela Rose Cakes  (Angela is my ice cream stunt double ).

This cake was gluten free white chocolate banoffee cake with salted caramel and a sprinkle of vegan meringue. 

Here it is in a box. There are two slices in there, plus a big blop of icing she plopped in as an extra.

Because my supper was sorted with jerk tofu, I went and bought a Mr Nice Pie for Spiderman and refused his offer of a paper bag and used an old Swedish Glace ice cream tub instead.

I was pleased to see so many stalls having paper containers and wooden cutlery.  This may be because vegans are more environmentally aware that non vegans. But I was still happy I had brought my own.

Verdict: it was easy and doable. People were really nice about letting me use my own containers and no one looked at me weirdly. It was perfect for carrying leftovers home--my cake didn't get squashed, my gravy didn't seep out the bottom of the cardboard box.

If I can do it, you can do it. It didn't take much forethought because all i had to do was chuck a few extra containers in my Zero Waste Kit.

If I had not been such a greedy guts about the ice cream, I would have been 100% zero waste. But I am not beating myself up over it.

Progress not perfection.