Skip to main content
Ingenium Logo

You are leaving IngeniumCanada.org

✖


This link leads to an external website that Ingenium does not control. Please read the third-party’s privacy policies before entering personal information or conducting a transaction on their site.

Have questions? Review our Privacy Statement

Vous quittez IngeniumCanada.org

✖


Ce lien mène à un site Web externe qu'Ingenium ne contrôle pas. Veuillez lire les politiques de confidentialité des tiers avant de partager des renseignements personnels ou d'effectuer une transaction sur leur site.

Questions? Consultez notre Énoncé de confidentialité

Ingenium The Channel

Langue

  • Français
Search Toggle

Menu des liens rapides

  • Ingenium Locations
  • Shop
  • Donate
  • Join
Menu

Main Navigation

  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners

Ditching the plastic: How to live a “zero waste lifestyle”

Share
3 m
Jan 6, 2020
Categories
Earth & Environment
Categories
Social Science & Culture
Media
Article
Profile picture for user Lisa Burbidge
By: Lisa Burbidge
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Technology
Red apples and various grains are pictured in reusable containers and cloth bags.

Straws, shopping bags, coffee cups, plastic wrap. 

In an age where we are increasingly aware of the impact consumer products and packaging have on our planet, there’s no shortage of plastic culprits for us to villainize. Around the world, consumers are looking for tangible ways — however small — to improve our prospects for a greener future, ways to conserve, reuse, or do without. Increasingly, consumers bring reusable bags to shop, tumblers for their take-out coffees, and alternative solutions to using disposable everything. 

Some of us, like Laurence Pechadre, take it even further and adopt a “zero waste lifestyle.” The idea might seem daunting, but for Pechadre it was a logical next step. Zero waste living is a growing movement worldwide, and minimalism is something she’d already been striving towards for almost 10 years. After moving to Canada from France in 2010, she had to find creative ways to keep expenses low, which meant very little went to waste in her home. Frequenting thrift shops, repurposing items whenever possible, and purchasing only what was needed are some ways her family adjusted to make ends meet. 

The Ingenium Channel reached out to Pechadre to learn more about what zero waste living means — and how we can work towards attaining it.

Ingenium Channel (IC): What motivated you to look into zero waste living? Did you look to anyone for advice or have resources to turn to?

Laurence Pechadre (LP): I had a blunt wake-up call three years ago, when I was researching for Fou d’sea food, a bilingual activity guide. Through that research, I discovered the ominous threat that pollution and climate change pose to our oceans. Since 2016, I haven’t stopped reading about initiatives in Europe and Canada. I met the authors of Life without Plastic (Wakefield residents Jay Sinha and Chantal Plamondon), and botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of The Call of the Forest. Last summer, I also attended the first summer camp about social innovation and food system transformation at St. Paul University in Ottawa.

IC: How long have you been living a zero waste life? Was it a long or difficult transition? 

LP: A full year! It’s still a work in progress, but my lifestyle is 80 percent plastic free, and I no longer produce food waste. I save time shopping since I purchase from local suppliers — which I’m very familiar with — and there are fewer product choices. I also spend less time having to sort through waste, since it’s quite minimal. As it turns out, I’ve also been saving money. Turning 60 this year was the time for me to start a new career as an author. I am currently writing a book titled, BIG 60: Poetry in Sustainability and I also launched a “Waste Free, Worry Free Christmas” column in the Glengarry News. I’m a doer — and I wanted to lead by example.

IC: What is something simple that people can change right away that would make the biggest impact?

LP: The easiest thing to do, with the biggest impact, is to purchase goods that are grown, crafted, and manufactured locally. Go for the items that are not wrapped in single-use plastic, like apples from the bulk bins at the grocery store rather than the pre-bagged ones. There are cloth bags you can bring for your produce, instead of using the plastic ones from the store. 

Plastic waste litters a sandy beach, with an ocean visible in the background.

IC: Beyond groceries, what other common household items can you choose to purchase packaging-free? Do you have some favourites you can recommend?

LP: Almost everything! I’m always mindful to buy local or Canadian-made products. Some great shops I frequent are Nu Grocery in Ottawa, and the Local Fill in Cornwall. Local farmers’ markets are also a wonderful source. Other than food products, my daughter — and lots of young women — are switching to menstrual cups or reusable pads. 

IC: What do you do when you grab a bite to eat on the go? Do you keep certain items with you just in case? 

LP: Absolutely! I carry my utensils, tumbler, and a cloth napkin along with my phone and laptop, and I always have an apple with me. For the most part, we all carry laptop bags or backpacks so it’s not hard to toss those items in to bring along with you.

IC: What keeps you from feeling overwhelmed or discouraged when you consider the amount of waste being produced and this huge problem we have to overcome? 

LP: Overall, there are more ups than downs! My daily walk helps me to keep my mind clear. It also inspires me to meet other people and businesses who are trailblazing. There are so many great initiatives happening in our city and worldwide; it’s very motivating. 

Want to learn more about living a zero waste lifestyle? Join Laurence Pechadre on January 23, 2020 at the Food for Thought Lecture Series: A beginner's guide to zero waste living.

Tags
food, plastic, environment
Author(s)
Profile picture for user Lisa Burbidge
Lisa Burbidge

Lisa Burbidge is an Algonquin College alumni and the Administrative Assistant at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. She likes trying her hand at many different things, which now includes writing articles for the Ingenium channel! She spends her free time listening to podcasts, learning everything she can about food and cooking, and crocheting.

Related Stories

The left-hand photo shows several square bins lined with clear plastic, full of bunches of purple grapes, with rows of grape vines visible in the background. The right-hand photo shows a cathode ray tube computer terminal and small keyboard. The computer has yellow plastic housing and black plastic frame. The keyboard is grey. To the right in this photo is a conservation photography colour correction card.

2 things you should know about how grape diversity could help save winemaking in Canada and how conservators use an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer to uncover and analyze the materials in the collection's artifacts

A map of the cranberry bog of Les Producteurs de Québec Limitée of Lemieux, Québec. Luc Bureau, “Un exemple d’adaptation de l’agriculture à des conditions écologiques en apparence hostiles: L’Atocatière de Lemieux,” Cahiers de géographie du Québec, December 1970, 389.

“A sea serpent without affidavit, is like roast turkey without cranberry sauce;” Or, how the Larocque family created the first cranberry bog in Québec, part 3

A serious looking Lawrence Niles Swank points out the initial impact point of the meteorite which had hit his automobile near Crawfordsville, Indiana, October 1930. Anon., “Projectile céleste.” Le Petit Journal, 2 July 1933, 22.

“A difficult target for a meteoric sharpshooter from interplanetary space” – The incredible story of a Indiana teenager, Lawrence Niles Swank, whose automobile was hammered by a meteorite

Left to right: solar panels placed high above low-lying green farm crops in a field; bubbles of various sizes rising in a yellow-green medium; and two tarantula feet magnified 40 times appear orange in colour against a navy-blue background.

3 Things you should know about using the same farmland for producing crops AND solar energy, museum conservators’ superhuman “vision,” and making french fries in space

A spliced photo, from left to right: Shaun the Sheep in front of a model of ESA’s European Service Module, a top view into a red bucket containing thousands of light-brown, rod-shaped pellets, and a toddler wearing a wool hat and wool sweater holds a grownup’s finger.

3 things you should know about why wool keeps us warm, and about its surprising uses in the garden and in space.

A large impact crater viewed from the rim, a woodern spoon full of small yellow grains, a close up of a forearm being tattooed.

3 things you should know about the untapped potential of millet, the permanence of tattoos, and asteroid airbursts

The thirty or so Mexican peasants who helped clear the Bacubirito meteorite, not far from Bacubirito, Mexico, 1902. N. Rosst, “La grande météorite de ‘Bacubirito’ (Mexique).” La Nature, 14 February 1903, 173.

A blaze in the northern skies and a cinder of sidereal fire: The Bacubirito meteorite

A rear view of a person wearing a yellow coat and backpack in winter, a close-up view of bright red poinsettias with small yellow central flowers.

Two things you should know about the science of wind chill, and the Orion spacecraft's selfies.

Three images side by side, Canada’s White Glacier, dried mealworms shown on a round wooden platter, and a pair of hands rubbing together, covered in soap bubbles.

3 things you should know about insects as an important source of protein, the science superpowers of soap, and monitoring glaciers in Canada’s Arctic

Three images side by side, plastic-wrapped cucumbers, a woman with an inflamed shoulder, and the James Webb Space Telescope.

3 things you should know about plastic-wrapped cucumbers, the James Webb telescope, and inflammation

Three images side by side, grocery shelves full of eggs in clear trays, coral reefs seen from space, and a map of Canada divided into four differently coloured shapes.

3 things you should know about egg refrigeration, coral reef satellite maps, and watersheds

Autumn vista of a river winding between pine trees and snow-capped mountains.

AI-Generated sound therapy for critically ill patients

Footer

About The Channel

The Channel

Contact Us

Ingenium
P.O. Box 9724, Station T
Ottawa ON K1G 5A3
Canada

613-991-3044
1-866-442-4416
contact@IngeniumCanada.org
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Channel

    • Channel Home
    • About the Channel
    • Content Partners
  • Visit

    • Online Resources for Science at Home
    • Canada Agriculture and Food Museum
    • Canada Aviation and Space Museum
    • Canada Science and Technology Museum
    • Ingenium Centre
  • Ingenium

    • Ingenium Home
    • About Ingenium
    • The Foundation
  • For Media

    • Newsroom
    • Awards

Connect with us

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest Ingenium news straight to your inbox!

Sign Up

Legal Bits

Ingenium Privacy Statement

© 2023 Ingenium

Symbol of the Government of Canada
  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners