- You ready to spend the day with us?

Let's go, come on!

Hey everyone, it's Sustainability Week here at Bazaar.

I'm Lauren Singer, and I'm going to show you

how I go through my entire day, breakfast, lunch and dinner,

without creating any trash, any waste, or use any plastic.

I'm going to walk you through my routine,

starting with breakfast, which I don't eat,

and haven't eaten since I was, probably, an infant.

I think a lot of people think that eating breakfast

is super important, the most important meal of the day,

bla, bla, bla, but for me,

I believe it's more about listening

to your body and what works for you.

And what works for me, is just having a nice cup of coffee,

and taking my day slowly,

and then going into lunch and dinner later.

I make my coffee in a French press.

I do it because, one, I drink a lot of coffee,

and we can fit a lot of coffee in here,

but two, because I buy bulk grounds and I put them in here,

and after I'm done with my coffee I compost them

in my freezer, bring them to the farmer's market.

So it's a really amazing, waste-free way,

to enjoy what is the most important moment of my day,

besides cuddling with my dog, Rose.

After I finish my coffee, we are going to head out

and go and buy some food for the day,

so I'll show you what I bring when I go grocery shopping.

So I've been living a zero-waste lifestyle

for eight years now, and the one thing that I've really

learned is it comes down to being prepared,

and being prepared helps to prevent

all of the circumstantial trash and waste

that can enter your day at any given point.

When it comes to buying food, I like to be prepared

with things like silicon bags for produce.

Mesh bags as well, for things like bread and vegetables,

and then I always like to bring a second bag with me

that's expandable, in case I decide to buy something extra.

I don't wanna have to get a paper bag

or another type of carrying device,

so this really helps prevent all types of waste

that I can encounter when I'm shopping for food.

I'm gonna throw all of this in my tote bag

and head out to get some ingredients, let's go.

(upbeat music)

We're here at Marlow & Daughters,

it's one of my favorite places to go

in between farmer's market trips

or to grab bread or something

that I need to supplement in one of my meals.

(upbeat music)

Okay, just got back from the market,

and I'll show you what I got.

And as you can see, totally plastic free,

so it's doable, possible, easy, it happened.

Usually when I make lunch I try to keep it as healthy

as possible, but make enough of it

so that it can get me through the day.

Very often I'm so busy that I forget to eat,

and I like to be really kind to myself

and have enough ingredients, or food made, on hand,

so that when I am in a situation where I'm rushing,

that I'm not grabbing something that's packaged.

I'm eating something that's really good for me,

healthy real food.

Even though I'm not always the best to my body,

I can treat it well when I can.

So we'll just do a big salad of different cut up vegetables

and call it a day.

Some would call it a panzanella,

but I just call it a big-ass salad, with bread.

I think something that I see a lot

is people buying pre-washed greens, instead of a whole

head of lettuce, or prepackaged cut vegetables

instead of cutting them themselves.

It takes, basically, zero time,

and often you can get non-cut items for less money.

So you save money and you save waste.

For me, composting is really easy.

When I'm cooking I just take any scraps that I would have,

and I put them in a big bowl.

When I'm done preparing whatever I'm preparing,

I take everything and put it in another bowl made of metal

that's flexible in my freezer.

And then every Saturday, I take that out and put it

in a paper bag that I find in the recycling room,

and I bring it to the farmer's market to compost.

And I freeze my compost so that it doesn't start

breaking down or smelling in the refrigerator or my counter.

You can really compost anything

that comes from something that grows.

You can compost anything from paper, leaves,

dead house plants, rest in peace, any kind of scraps

or peels, meat.

But you have to just check with your local municipal

composting program to see what they accept and don't accept.

But anything that comes from something that's alive

can be returned back to the Earth, that's the beauty

of our ecosystem.

I don't really think there was anything

that was super hard for me with going zero waste.

Honestly, one of the biggest things that I realized

was that I couldn't buy my way out of plastic.

I couldn't walk into a pharmacy or grocery store

and just buy everything

that was in my daily routine without it.

That's why I started Package Free Shop,

was to make it easy for people to have access

to the tools that help you reduce waste every single day.

The only thing that I'll buy online

is maybe secondhand clothing.

I don't think you ever really have to buy

any new clothing anymore.

And then I'll just make sure that I ask the seller online

to ship it totally plastic free

and they never have a problem with it.

Rose likes to cook too.

She feels really left out if she's not involved

in the process.

Let's make a quick dressing to put on the salad,

and then we'll pack up the food and head out.

We're gonna do some

kind of measuring measuring, some capers.

(pepper grinder crunches)

It's not bad, you know.

(spoon clunks)

Mozzarella cheese, some herbs.

Let's get the bread.

So I love bread, but I don't buy packaged bread

or bread with preservatives,

so I usually end up buying baguettes.

But as a person living alone, sometimes I won't make

it through a whole baguette, and it gets stale or hard.

And a really great way to make sure

you're not composting bread every week

is to let it dry out, put it in the oven,

make it into croutons and it's great for a salad like this,

like a panzanella.

Also you can run bread under some water,

put it back in the oven and make it work again.

You could also take stale bread, put it in a food processor

with some garlic and herbs, and it's a great breadcrumb.

So, the most common question that I get is,

"I wanna do something

"and I don't know where to start."

That's very much why I started my blog,

"Trash is for Tossers".

I mean, that's almost eight years ago.

It was to give people who wanna have a positive

environmental impact really simple, practical steps

to reduce their waste that don't have to cost anything,

or don't cost much at all, but have a big impact.

So, I would say, if you wanna reduce your waste,

I like to say, just start somewhere.

Every positive change is positive,

so if you do something as simple as say no

to a plastic straw, you're still having a positive impact,

so reward yourself for everything choice that you make

that benefits the environment.

So about to get lunch ready to go.

I'm putting them in my favorite containers,

they're stainless steel, we sell them at Package Free.

They're totally airtight, which means you can put things

like soup or salad dressings in them.

It just makes it really easy to bring lunch.

So I'll just dump my dressing in one.

And then we'll pack my lunch for the day in this.

Because I wait so long to eat usually,

I like to pack, almost more food than I think I'll need,

so I don't end up making food purchasing decisions

that could result in waste.

We're all packed up, ready to go,

and I will see you guys for dinner.

(bright music)

Usually when I make dinner, it's something really quick

because I'm usually running between work

or coming from something, and I have a child,

who is very high maintenance, and I'm usually number 45

on my list of things to do and people to take care of.

So I like to make things that are really easy,

fast, simple, with ingredients that are fresh

but easy to prepare.

I'm going to make tacos, which is one of my favorite

things to make.

I usually keep flour in my house,

because it's a super-versatile ingredient.

I like to make fresh pasta and also tortillas.

It sounds really intense and hard,

but it's actually super fast and simple.

It's cheap, it's a really good hangover solution.

So I usually make tortillas if I'm feeling hungover

and don't wanna go out and get food.

So, tacos it is tonight.

So there are a bunch of different ways to make tortillas,

there's flour, there's corn.

This is as simple as it gets.

It's literally just two cups of,

I use organic all-purpose flour,

but you can use different types of flour,

and/or gluten-free flour if you're gluten-free.

3/4 of a cup of water.

Three tablespoons of olive oil and about a teaspoon of salt,

but I like kind of saltier tortillas,

so I add a little bit extra.

I just blend all the ingredients in a bowl,

and I'll add a little bit of water at the end,

and let it sit for 10 minutes so the gluten develops

in the flour.

And then I just roll it out, and it's really, really,

as easy as it could possibly get.

After 10 minutes it gets a lot stretchier than it would be

when you first make it.

The main reason I make tortillas from scratch,

one, because I'm usually ravenous and need something

really quick, and they're just super fast.

But two, because they all come packaged

in single-use plastic

which isn't recyclable really anywhere.

'Cause I like to ask myself the question,

is the benefit of having this thing

worth the trash that it will create?

Tortillas, definitely not, especially because

they're so easy to make.

So that's why I do it myself.

So you just need a little ball of dough.

And then just roll it out.

It's like, there's no perfection here,

especially when you're cooking for yourself.

The cool thing about making these

is that you can freeze them

and reheat them, and have taco shells, or tortillas

without having to have the plastic.

And then you can have it be like a grab-and-go thing.

Now time to cook tortillas.

Really simple, they look like this.

This is a really ugly one, not round,

but we still love it.

And just throw it on a super hot cast iron pan.

No oil or anything like that,

but it has to be really, really, really hot.

And then you have to watch it.

It kind of bubbles a little bit.