Zero Waste Holiday

Last week we boarded a plane to head east to visit family for a week. My challenge for the week was to try to continue our journey towards cutting out plastics and eating non processed foods.

To prepare; the day before I made up a big batch of our granola and a couple loaves of bread to have while in Ottawa. So I picked up a large stainless steel container for the granola and used my cotton bags for the bread. I do place the cotton bags of bread into zip locks which I reuse just so they won't dry out. When I'm home our bread goes into cloth bag and then a tin.

The morning of our trip I packed up lunch,snacks,dinner, and water bottles so we would have enough food on us for the whole trip and extra in case of delays. The only issue I had was my afternoon tea as I can't bring liquids so I brought my to go cup and bought a tea at the cafe at the airport so I had a bit of waste with the tea bag :(

 

It was great having all our food with us at the airport and on the plane. When we arrived at the Kelowna airport and got thru security we went straight to the water fountain and filled up our water bottles. Once on the plane Bean was very excited to get to have juice as we don't normally have much juice. I did think ahead and brought some enamel cups so we wouldn't have to use a plastic cup. Our first plane ride was only about 45 min but the amount of plastic cups that were collected after was crazy, so we highly recommend bringing your own glass or a water bottle.

Our second plane which was our longer plane ride from Calgary to Ottawa ended up being our dinner time. I had made our dinner (burrito bowls) and had them in our tiffin which worked well. 

Our stewerdess was quite impressed with Bean and her cup that she stop and chatted with her and Mike about cups and plastic and her experience with casually picking up 40 straws in one stretch of beach. She told us that all those plastic cups that are collected on the plane will end up in the garbage. She said that in Toronto all cups are thrown out but in Vancouver if the Stewardess stacks the cups they will be recycled. That turns out to be a lot of plastic thrown into our landfills every day.

We arrived in Ottawa at 2:30am a little tired but excited to be there.

The next morning was a quiet day of adjusting to the time change but we did head into town to pick up a few groceries with Mikes mom Gram. Before we left Kelowna Bean made sure we packed our grocery bags with us which worked out well as Gram forgot hers. Gram said she had never heard of anyone taking there grocery bags on holiday with them lol.

Unfortunately by Thursday evening Mike was not feeling too well as he had caught the cold Bean had before we left, by Friday I was feeling under the weather and Bean who I think had been suppressing it was down too.  Thankfully I had packed some cloth hankies with us. The next few days were pretty mellow for us.

Bean was fine after Friday so Gram,Aunty Caroline and her went to feed the chickadees on Saturday.

 

(The chickadee photos were taken by Aunty Caroline)

Sunday was a snow storm and a family dinner party with all the Aunts,Uncles and cousins which was a great time. Here Bean up cycled a bow from a gift into a hair clip for the party.

On Monday we headed out to Hull Quebec to experience a bit of The Winterlude activities. Bean got to try her hand at skiing and they had these amazing slides of ice. We did cheat a little on our plan also as we had to experience some real Poutine and of course Beaver Tails!

 

 Today our last day we made one more Winterlude stop to see the ice sculptures.

Tomorrow we get up super early and hope the snow storm allows us to get to the airport and be on our way home.


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