Weekly diary #111: picking up trash while walking our dog

Hi there, welcome into my personal weekly diary! I really appreciate that you’re here and I hope you get some value out of my experiences. In this weekly diary I try to share the basic daily habits and decisions that make my life, as I call it, eco-positive. I try to reduce my negative impact and make positive impact on a daily basis. The past week I picked up some trash, bought some secondhand clothing and had some big deliveries for my package free webshop Loose. Want to read along?

Thursday

Today I went for drinks at our Student Association for the first time. I’ve been studying in Amsterdam for about 10 weeks now and I hadn’t gone once. It’s this thing a lot of people do every week on Thursday and so it’s fun to get to know people that way. Unfortunately,  the bus me and my classmate went with to go to school had a delay of 40 minutes and she had to leave quite early so we only stayed for about 50 minutes I guess. Better luck next time! I was prepared to refuse some waste today, since I had brought my own cup with me. However, they had drinks in glass and so everything was fine. But it’s always good to be prepared!

Friday

Once back home in Enschede after school I went to the Albert Heijn with my mom. Since we attend the lottery we were given some cards so you could do free groceries there. The theme of this year was vegetarian food and so you could only choose vegetarian things! That is great since a lot of vegetarian things are vegan as well. I bought mostly meat replacers, since I always buy these at Albert Heijn anyway. Meat replacers are something I cannot live without yet and so I accept the plastic. I also bought a sort of mushroom mix. The reason I bought it is because it was discounted by 35%, this means if they don’t sell it that day it’s wasted. And as I wrote in this article buying discounted food is the second most sustainable food choice, plant-based is number one. I also bought a sandwich in my own bag and so plastic free. This is to make a vegan sandwich with herb butter out of the oven tonight. I had never tried that before but I have been missing it since I went vegan and so this is a great solution. At last, I bought some vegan croissants. There are the only vegan croissants I can find and so it was a treat for myself for this weekend. At night I made some vegan pasta with the mushroom mix and combined it with some vegan herb butter sandwich. It was delicious and I will share the recipe soon (even though it is very simple)! At night I had a big delivery for my package free webshop Loose. Delivering families with zero waste groceries always feels so good!

Saturday

On Saturday I went to my grandpa and grandma again. Last week my grandpa repaired the lights on my bike but it seemed like the front one wasn’t working quite well. So, I went back to see if he could fix that. And he could! It is great now, with front and back lights working and so I generate my own energy for the lights with the dynamo. I guess I could say my bike is zero waste now as well. I never need to buy batteries or lights, lovely! Once back home someone from a secondhand online platform came by since I sold the slatted base of my old bed on there. I had put it for sale for 1 euro since I wanted serious comments on it and no people who say they’ll come but end up not showing up at all. The guy I sold it to was very happy with it, he was going to make some sort of small roof from it. It was all fine with me, as long as it got reused. In this article I have written why reusing is more sustainable than recycling. For dinner I had a vegan pizza from Lidl today. At very rare moments they have these pizza at Lidl and so I ask my mom and dad to buy these. They are delicious and a good cheap vegan option.

Sunday

My mom and I went to a vintage clothing event today in our city. I had been looking forward to it since one of my favorite second hand stores would be there too, VindIets. It was an event with multiple second hand stores all in one location and so you get to see a lot of secondhand and so sustainable clothes. In the end I bought some things, but I’ll show you these in a seperate blogpost since I will get rid of a lot of clothes as well. On Friday I just felt like I was done and cleaned my closet all at once. For dinner I made the vegan sausages (the package which said Rookworst) I had bought on Friday and they were very good!

Monday

Since I now sell package free groceries on a national level I had another order for my package free webshop Loose today. A big one! After that I went with dad to get rid of top layer of my bed. The secondhand store had picked up the bed, I had sold the slatted base to someone but the top layer was something I just couldn’t find a new place for. Nobody seemed to want it. And so, my last resort is recycling unfortunately. I went to recycling center with dad and we put it at the same place at the mattresses. On the website it said they could not recycle these things into new things, so I guess they’ll ‘recycle’ it by burning it for energy. I don’t really know. Once back home I went for a walk with our dog Darco and picked up trash meanwhile. That’s always a simple way to make some positive impact! Also, I had gotten another card to buy free groceries at Albert Heijn. And so, I went to buy even more meat replacers haha! I bought again six packages of them and so I have a good stock now haha. I also bought a bag of sandwiches because I had about 1,79 euros left on the card and the bread cost about that. At night I went to Utrecht to see my boyfriend, his brother and the girlfriend of his brother. We went out to eat sushi, my favorite food! We went to Zinnia and they had a lot of vegetarian and vegan options which was great!

Tuesday

Yesterday we slept in Utrecht and so I had no food to bring to school (except for some vegan yoghurt which I brought on purpose). And so, I had no lunch with me to school. During lunchtime we went to Albert Heijn and I bought some plain sandwiches in my own bag which I brought with me. Zero waste! I did however need something to put onto the bread and so I searched for something with a 35% discount on it. This way I am rescuing food! It was hummus with olive flavor, I had never had it but it was delicious!

Wednesday

Over the past days, even in the weekend, I had gone up quite early because I had a bunch of things to do. Today it was time to give myself a little rest and sleep till 10 am. While I went to the bathroom once I had woken up I saw this insect in our bathtub. It had been there a while, since I saw it yesterday too but didn’t really think anything of it. I decided to catch it and release it. It took some time, but I got it inside of a cup and put him outside. I don’t know if he’ll make it but today I just felt like I needed to help him. That’s sort of positive impact too, right?

Yours sincerely,
Romee

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