Day 21
Hi I'm back after a couple of days away glamping with the children, James football team families and a disappointing Tesco delivery that catered for 30 people perfectly. As you can imagine 7 families preparing for a weekend away with two or three children can be stressful, just to pack the clothing and needing to be arriving at camp after the last school day is very time consuming, especially when you have also worked that day. All the mothers planned at a meeting last week the catering for such a large number of people and this plastic free parent was out voted on a few items. The decision to meal plan for each meal and list out a delivery was the easiest and less stressful way of doing the catering for such a large party.
I did fight my corner though on the waste side of things especially when the other moms mentioned buying water bottles. My suggestion was a drink serving dispensers to refill the children's drink bottles. Each adult and child was to bring their drink bottles to refill during their time at camp and the dispensers would be filled with squash and water. The parents agreed on this and of course we saved money this way also. The second suggestion was that I bought the meat from the butcher in order to reduce the plastic packaging that the supermarket always wrap their meat in. The parents agreed that I could order what we needed from my local butcher. So last week I ordered the meat and on Friday morning I turned up at the butchers with my reusable tupawear and collected it. I also baked three different cakes for the children to snack on and a birthday Victoria sponge was homemade too for James 9th birthday.
I could not really do much more because some items on the list included nuts, biscuits, crisps, fruit, bread, salad, dips etc and I'm unfortunately not wonder woman and had to agree on some plastic covered items to feed and pacify 30 people especially 16 kids which included 3 teenagers.
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We took two dispensers that I had borrowed from the scout hut.
The campsite owners prepared fresh pizza's for us all the first night so not a plastic wrapper in site, even her tomato base sauce was homemade. |
I will say though how impressed I was at the support I was receiving throughout the weekend from all the parents and children who were recycling what they could, composting all compostable foods, egg shells, egg boxes, cartons and paper. The waste to landfill was only one black bin bag at the end of camp from 7 families of 30 people in total which I think is very impressive. We were staying at a campsite that prides itself on being eco friendly and it had all these waste facilities available to enable us to reduce what waste went to landfill. So overall it was impossible to buy plastic free for such a large number of people as snacks, salad mixed grab bags, biscuits, nuts and most snacks are not offered at the supermarkets (Tesco delivery option) without the plastic wrapping. The weekend shop for each family worked out about £60 which when feeding 30 people in 7 families throughout 6 meals I thought was a reasonable cost. I also feel that it could not have been avoided in anyway as these items when finding alternatives are just not available anywhere without driving here and there to find them. Quite disappointedly it's was not achievable with a Tesco delivery due to no available alternatives items. I could have baked cookies, shopped for fruit unpackaged, made the dips, brought the salad separately to make up but I could not have done it all, especially when catering for such a large number of people and feel that baking over 120 cookies may have just finished this tired end of term mom off. The one other plastic free was tuna mayonnaise made by one of our mothers from tins however the mayo was plastic bottled, one plastic bottle instead of about 8 tuna mayonnaise plastic made up pots.
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| As you can witness glasses were used for beverages |
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| The pepper sauce mix my husband found in Sainsbury's was lovely on my pizza. My first pizza in a long time as I have a tomato intolerance. |
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| No packaging in sight just the hubby and the BBQ |
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| All the cutlery was metal and the plates, bowls, mugs etc were all porcelain, washable and reusable. The younger children did have plastic bowls and spoons but these were also reusable. No waste to landfill at all of these items. |
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| Happy wife, Happy life is what my husband says. |
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| The honest wheelbarrow of unavoidable plastic wrapping catering for such a large number of people. |
