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Wasteland Rebel

Going #ZeroWaste

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How to Use Horse Chestnuts aka Conkers (Not Edible!) aka Buckeyes as an All-Natural Laundry Detergent

How to “zero waste” in official meetings?

How to Make Zero Waste Liquid Dish Soap With Non-Toxic Ingredients in Just Minutes

Homemade antibacterial mouthwash

Why you shouldn’t use Q-tips to clean your ear

Most Recent Posts

How to Make Zero Waste Coconut Milk and Coconut Butter

FAQ: How to Wash your Hair with Rye Flour? #NoPoo

How to Unclog your Drain the Natural Way Without Harsh Chemicals

How to Wash your Hair without Shampoo: An Overview of Different No-Poo Methods

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Our tash of one entire year! #TrashTalk

Beginner's Guide, Magazine

What The Heck Is Zero Waste?

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Magazine, School, Office & Workspace

How to “zero waste” in official meetings?

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Magazine, MISC

FAQ

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Magazine, MISC

Vegan- and Zero-Waste-Friendly Places to Visit in Vancouver

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  • Every time I post our weekly grocery haul many of you want to know what we prepare with all the veggies we buy 😊💚! • I used to post many recipes in my stories, really need to get back into that! But not right now, I just came down with a cold, sniff... 🤒🤧 • So here’s how we keep food prep manageable! • We don’t usually prepare specific recipes, but we prepare food according to certain patterns. We do this because we just buy whatever is local and seasonal at the farmers market and go from there. I feel because most produce is usually readily available all year round, most recipes today have a complete disregard for what is when in season. So being flexible helped us a lot on our journey to eat more seasonal and local!! • So what we make a lot are stir fries. 👉 We heat up some oil in a skillet, fry some onions, ginger, and garlic for 1-2 mins. 👉 Then we add the ingredients, starting with what takes longer to cook first. 👉 Sometimes we add a bit of veggie stock we make from kitchen scraps, soy sauce and roasted sesame oil. But most of the time all we add is some salt. Because if you have fresh high quality ingredients there isn’t a lot you need to add. And there isn’t a lot you’d want to add, because you want to enjoy the original taste. 💚💚💚
  • In my book Napa cabbage season = kimchi season 😝! One dear follower actually guessed we were going to make kimchi from the last grocery haul I posted! What a mind reader LOL! • I‘m getting back into fermenting, yeah!! I have also started to make kombucha again!! The bottle in the picture is kombucha that I‘m infusing with pears for the 2nd fermentation. • I like fermenting, because it reminds me that some things take as long as they take. I often feel that we humans have gotten used to forcing our will onto whatever is around us, a side effect of industrialization and the time-is-money mindset. • Anyway, we bought two huge Napa cabbages and a buttload of chili peppers 🌶🔥😈! We bought ALL the remaining chili peppers the farmer had, because these will be the last locally grown chili peppers we will be able to get before summer next year! • Traditional Korean kimchi is made with gochugaru, the Korean red chili flakes with a unique sweet taste. Bulk gochugaru is extremely rare (the only store I know that sells it in bulk is Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco). So we make our own chili flakes with locally grown chili peppers. • We try to buy mild, sweet chili peppers and sun dry them if there is still sun out. Then we remove the seeds and grind them in the blender. Make sure the flakes are contain no moisture at all before you put them away, or else they will grow moldy! • We are vegan, so we don’t add any fish sauce to our kimchi, but it’s still got this extremely pungent flavor that I love 🌶❤️. 👉Link to recipe in bio👈
  • I think it was almost three years ago when we decided to only buy locally grown seasonal produce. It was one of our new year’s resolutions 🎉, and guess what? We failed miserably 🤪! • We had no clue about what was when in season. Besides, starting in the middle of winter ⛄️ was the worst timing we could have chosen! Winter just isn’t the season of rich harvests after all 😂… • What we also didn’t take into account was: access. We quickly realized even health food stores (and we were lucky there were health food stores to begin with!!) usually source their produce from all over the globe. Back then I was working night shifts at a sports bar until 4AM, so going to the farmers market (where farmers were mostly reselling produce anyway) was difficult for me, and without a car ❌🚗 we couldn’t join any of the local CSA farms 👩‍🌾. • We decided to not get discouraged, and downloaded a seasonal produce calendar. Meanwhile, we found a health food store that made sure to put the name and address of each farm next to the produce, so we went for what was “most locally grown”, which sometimes meant another country. • Granted, Germany’s not that big of a landmass—only half the size of British Columbia and about the size of Montana. Fun fact: Due to smaller country sizes what’s perceived as an acceptable amount of food miles in Europe is very different from North America or Australia. • My point is: It’s not about perfection. And sometimes it’s just beyond your control. Be kind to yourself and don’t let it discourage you! Do your best—and who knows, you might discover an option out there you hadn’t known about, like urban farming or a grocer that sources from local farmers!
  • It’s the time of year again: the GET YOUR FREE LAUNDRY TIME!! 🤪 • These are horse chestnuts —aka buckeyes or conkers. 🌰! THEY ARE TOXIC WHEN INGESTED!! • Horse chestnuts contain saponins, the same chemical compound found in soap nuts. So if you live in an area where you can literally pick horse chestnuts from the streets — congratulations on having your own local soap nut! • I have an 👉FAQ👈 on using horse chestnuts as laundry detergent, link in bio. You’ll also find a link to the tutorial in the first paragraph of the FAQ 😉. • So who of you is as nuts as we are and already uses 🌰🌰🌰 to do your laundry 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️??
  • It’s getting colder now 🍂🌧! But instead of cranking up the thermostat, we simply put on our hantens 😉! 📷# 1 @saqui01, 📷# 2 @utatane_yukata 💚! • Reducing your environmental footprint can come in different forms, not only reducing waste! It can be your diet (e.g. opting for more local and plant-based foods🌱), consuming more mindfully in general (e.g. buying less, and if so buying used/ ethically and sustainably produced), conserving water💧—or saving energy⚡️🔥!! • So this is a hanten (はんてん), a traditional Japanese winter coat that was widely worn during the Edo period (18th century). 👉Swipe to see how it can be worn elegantly and how I wear it IRL LOL 😜 • Traditionally, it is padded with thick layers of cotton for warmth, and the collar is made from black sateen. Hantens are still worn in Japan today, mostly at home when it’s cold. However, nowadays they are usually made from polyester instead of natural materials. • We love our hantens, because they are so incredibly comfy and it’s easy to move in them, even when doing housework! Making one yourself is actually very simple! • I’m not Japanese by the way 😉. I only spent a year in Kunitachi, Tokyo during grad school, writing my thesis (on the nation state and nationalism) and learning the language (not very well to be honest 🙈). It was there that I discovered my passion for baking🍰—which sent me on my path to becoming a food blogger (@cakeinvasion), which led me to blogging about zero waste! • During that year we also worked on an organic farm🌿 and came in contact with other Japanese traditions that have later helped us on our #zerowaste journey! Wrapping things in cloth (furoshiki 風呂敷) for example. Many traditions we learned there weren’t just Japanese obviously, like canning and pickling, using small (reusable) bamboo spoons to clean your ear, or using the water from washing rice to do the dishes. We also learned how to make sake 🍶 and miso on the farm by the way #lifeskills LOL 😈 • If you want to learn more about many of these things, head over to youtube and watch @milliefreckles’s videos!! 💚💚💚
  • I say this a lot in my posts, but I feel I cannot emphasize this enough: Screw the “zero” in “zero waste” 👻! It is so not about the darn zero! I feel the “zero” puts so much pressure on many of us, when in fact, there is no such thing as “zero” waste in real life! Not in the economy we live in right now at least. And hey, nobody’s perfect, why should we be when it comes to zero waste?? 🙃 • The term “zero" waste also puts many people off because it feels so unattainable (which, as a matter of fact, it is!). Another thing I don’t like is that it often makes people focus on what isn’t zero yet (= being deficit-oriented). • If you don’t have access to the according infrastructure, or you have needs that prevent you from cutting plastic from some aspects of your life, the term “zero waste” can make you feel frustrated or that you might be a bad environmentalist. • This is a gentle reminder to all of you earth-loving compassionate folks out there to not just spread awareness and kindness to others, but to be just as kind to yourself ❤️! • I have and will continue to use the term “zero waste”. Not because I like it, but because of the amazing community surrounding the movement that established itself as the “zero waste movement”. I feel I have found my tribe here, and I am very grateful for that!! ☺️💕 • It is so not about being zero or perfect. It is about making better or sometimes even the best choices whenever you can. We’re all human. We come in different shapes, sizes, with different needs, and we have to navigate different challenges in life. We also have good days and we have bad days. Some of us have better access to things required for a “zero waste” lifestyle than others. • If I had to chose a name, I’d call it “minimal waste”. Because “zero” is absolute, but “minimal” is relative and different from person to person, and can even vary from day to day!

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