Zero Waste in Zithulele: Part I
Those of you who know us may recollect our deep interest in reducing our waste, as we are of the firm belief that us humans produce far more rubbish than necessary! When we first contemplated a new life in Zithulele, we accepted that we would possibly have to take it a bit easier on the waste reduction front, at least at first. And straight after/around the move that was definitely the case. However, now that we are finding our feet we are also finding that there are many cunning ways of cutting down on waste here too!
Our low-waste grocery haul... including 3 out of the 5 new plastic items acquired today. Can you spot them?
Even if you aren't interested in the zero waste movement, hopefully you'll find this snapshot of the nitty-gritty essentials of shopping in the rural Transkei interesting anyway.
Our most local store is a kind of slightly upgraded Spaza shop: expensive (relatively), and stocking mainly non-perishables + the unfortunately ubiquitous Twizza cooldrinks (in alarmingly vast quantities). Not forgetting white-people goods with a fairly slow turnover.
Mthatha has pretty much everything we could possibly need - within reason - but, as previously discussed, it is an hour and a half away, over some challenging roads: definitely not a weekly commute, at least not by our standards. We don't really like driving, and we use our car as seldom as possible. Can you tell from the picture we took before setting out this morning?
So the compromise option is Ngcwanguba store! It is a mere 40 minute drive, not impossible on a weekly basis, and definitely do-able fortnightly. As long as we don't go on pension payout day.
Now this store might not look like much on the outside, but it is a metropolis by our standards. Part of the excitement is that you never know what you will find here! It is like a lucky packet of grocery shopping. Sometimes there is fresh milk, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes you have given up on ever seeing a vegetable again, and then on the next visit, there it is! While sensible local staples fill the bulk of the shelves, there is also a fairly significant selection of abelungu foods (we skip most of those aisles... expensive, very packaged and not enormously fresh). Ngcwanguba even (almost always) sells petrol, clothing, hardware and liquor... a one-stop wonderland. And they take credit cards. Sold yet?
We trek off to Ngcwanguba with five ice-bricks in three layers of cooler bag in a cooler box, tupperwares, mesh fresh produce bags, and a huge bundle of shopping bags. After all, this is an outing we hope not to repeat for the next two weeks.
We are allowed to get chicken - when we venture down that road, which is seldom - in our tupperwares. We are allowed to get fruit and veggies - those that don't come in big bulk cardboard boxes - in our mesh bags. In fact, the staff are extremely impressed with the mesh bags, and discuss the idea at length both with us and with each other. It's a side-effect, I suppose, of having no municipal waste collection: waste reduction takes on a much more personal and immediate meaning.
Eggs also come in cardboard, with only a small amount of tape holding the whole package (five dozen!) together: vastly preferable to the shrink and polystyrene-wrapped monstrosities found in city shops. There is no free-range anything. This is a ridiculous idea out here, and doesn't make any sense to local people. It is sad for us. But there is exactly nothing to be done about it except reduce our intake of milk, eggs and chicken even further, and, to an extent, get over our privileged myopia.
This week, the truck which delivers fresh foods on Mondays was late, so although we managed to snag one of the first boxes of apples and tomatoes getting offloaded, we decided not to wait for the bananas. You can't get too caught up on details like that, not when your cold-stuff is getting less cold and you're still an hour from home. Bananas are not essential and they are actually grown all over Zithulele in any case. But we've noted delivery times now. Hopefully we can time our next visit for shortly after the great banana drop off!
The car is pretty full on the way home, and there is nothing non-recyclable in our haul - except the weighing labels and the tape around the eggs.
We're fairly pleased, despite the fact that there are five new pieces of plastic entering our lives. Trust me, we think very carefully about each one (especially since recycling and rubbish are more of a mission up here!), but sometimes these things can't be helped; at least not within the reasonable confines of a sustainable level of comfort.
Two (luxury) items in new plastic, and (almost certainly) non-free range chicken in our own containers.
Where will our plastic haul from today end up? The yoghurt and feta cheese containers will hopefully be reused several times (makeshift tupperware!) before they are ultimately recycled. The plastic-lidded spice bottle was designed to be reused - and hopefully it will be many times before it too is recycled. It is annoying that for some reason carrots are not available loose. We may have to rethink our carrot decisions next time as the carrot bags are an unfortunately common instance of single-use plastic (though at least recyclable) in one of our typical hauls. And the non-negotiable non-recyclable weighing/price labels (together with the packing tape from the eggs) will be EcoBricked.
By the way, the discerning grocery shoppers amongst you may have noticed the absurd number of plums (2 kg), apples (7.5 kg) and tomatoes (9.5 kg). "Cardboard boxes or no cardboard boxes," I hear you cry, "there are only two of you, and you only have a small camping fridge! This is food waste waiting to happen!"
Never fear, my friends. All of the juicy plums, many of the apples and more than half of the tomatoes have been processed and are in the hot-box cooking overnight. Soon they will be stashed in the freezer for emergency vitamin needs... you know, in those weeks when the Ngcwanguba lucky dip doesn't go our way or possibly for winter, when the sun withholds its vitamins for another season. Yum! (And thank goodness for watching series while chopping millions of tomatoes and one finger.)
Keep reducing, and so will we!
Jo and Adam