Zero Waste Meal was born when two students from Rotterdam set down and had a zero waste meal together. By cooking zero waste together and exchanging ideas while eating the meal we inspire each other and have a great time too. In December of 2018, this idea has won the first Circulair Student Award of Rotterdam. Since then we had a Zero Waste Meal week and met amazing students who want to reduce their waste.
Where stands Zero Waste Meal for?
Zero Waste Meal stands for cooking without waste, mainly plastic waste or non-recyclable waste. With sharing tips, tricks and experiences with other students we like to motivate them how easy reducing waste can be.
Zero Waste Meal also stands for positivity. We do not pay attention to the people who think it is nonsense what we do. We pay attention to people who want to change their daily lives in a positive way. Of course we like to talk about the difficult aspects of reducing waste in this busy society, but we must not forget that positivity can achieve much more than negativity.
Who are we?
Zero Waste Meal started when Dora and Lotte won the Circulair Student Award of Rotterdam in 2018. Today Dora is the person behind the project.
Hi, my name is Dora Varga. I am 23 years old and currently studying Graphic Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Last year when I was on holiday in the USA I traveled along the West Coast with my boyfriend. From Seattle to San Francisco we stayed with friends and family and it became an amazing trip. But what really got my attention was the amount of single use plastic people were consuming. At home I was used to bringing my own cotton bags when I do groceries or have a reusable water bottle with me everytime I go out.
When I got home I started questioning myself if I was doing any better with reducing my plastic. I was bringing it to recycling bins but I never stood by how much I was actually consuming.
In September a new semester started during my study and I was following Data Design as practice. For that project I started to collect my own plastic waste for 4 weeks. That became 60 liters of trash for two people living together. That is 720 liters a year but only 9% to 10% gets recycled because creating new plastic is cheaper than recycling it. These numbers really got to me since I thought I was doing such a good job in the first place.
That was the reason I started to dramatically reduce our plastic waste at home. I did a lot of research and started to follow people on social media who are living the zero waste or low impact lifestyle. They inspired me in such a way that only in the first month I reduced my plastic consumption by 66%. I started to go to the greengrocer where nothing is packaged in plastic or I went to bulk stores and did my groceries there.
That is how we started to think about a project that could inspire more people to reduce their plastics usage. Read about the research here.
How can we help?
Today we would like to help, inspire and motivate other people who have the same mindset like we do. Feel free to contact us with questions, for presentations or if you want us to help you reduce your waste.
Contact us via: zerowastemeal@gmail.com
Or visit our instagram and DM us there.