... and when you finish with stuff, what do you do with it?

Reposted with permission from The Gleaner: What does your shopping list look like? Whether its clothes or groceries or furniture and furnishings, the motto should be Consider Disposition before Acquisition.  

In short, as we make a decision to purchase we should be considering what to do with all the stuff we acquire after we have finished with it?

What do we really need?

On the shopping list on the left, all that is necessary is the fruit and vegetables.  And as for that category, there can be a great deal of culling if we grow our own.

I am a renter and so have my limitations with gardening. Almost all of it is done in pots - and I have a wide definition of what is a pot.  Irrespective of size or what it is made of, it is surprising what can be a pot. In my yard, I have the sort of pots one buys at Bunnings, old saucepans and pots, a watering can, pallets lined with weed matting, storage jars, storage crates, a Woolworths shopping basket, and there are the pots I 'acquire' - from others' throw aways  mostly.

I love a good forage among my herbs and veges in preparation for the evening meal.  And I don't stop at what is in the pots.  You see, I take an interest in edible weeds - particularly dock and plantain.

And if I have fruit and vegetable waste?  That's easy - a no brainer, in fact.  Things like onion peels and citrus skins and crushed eggshells go in the compost (and I add, through the compost's life span, stuff like lime and blood and bone to my compost). The other stuff - the vegetable peels, skins, cores etc - go into my busy farm of red wriggler worms who convert the stuff into worm poo and worm juice which goes back to the garden.

This way my food waste becomes beneficial

and part of an on-going cycle of life and death.