SFO RECAP Part I // Thoughts on Living Zero Waste

This was my first time traveling (half) alone. Half because I hung out with G a lot on the last day, and my coworkers were all there the rest of the week. I don’t know if I learned much more about myself than I already knew, I hang out alone quite a lot and I’m comfortable wandering the streets on my own. I certainly tried a lot of new things.

I lugged my personal travel mug all the way from Vancouver to San Francisco to prevent using disposable cups, and it worked pretty well. I saved 6 cups, and only used the ONE disposable cup for coffee at Ritual and ONE plastic cup for coffee at a place on Haightes Street on the last day of the trip.

I got tired of Starbucks for coffee pretty early on in the trip (after 1 day), so I looked up a few places, talked to a few people… Ended up at Blue Bottle Coffee:





All I ordered was the Americano, so it wasn’t really worth any photos. D got the breakfast sandwich, which was made with the BEST BACON EVER. I gotta say, San Francisco has proven to be very good with their meats (prime rib, for example). I had the Hot Oatmeal, which was made with steel cut oats and fruit jam on Day 1…


…and the chia seed pudding on Day 2 (made with shredded coconut, orange zest, nuts, and lots of other seeds):

Today, I had dinner with H and his family/friends, and instead of using plates like normal people for cake, they decide to wrap it with saran wrap to avoid having to wash the extra set of plates for 14 people. Highly upsetting behavior… I can see how they would think it actually saves time/resources because of the water and soap used, but saran wrap is a plastic that can only be thrown away in the garbage can and sent to the garbage dump/incinerator. I hope H understands why I was so upset. That amount of saran wrap was the equivalent of the 6 disposable cups that I didn’t use this whole week. Getting closer to Zero Waste is not going to be easy, and I can see a lot of tears ahead.