Earth Day

Cupcake Compost!

Happy Earth Day everyone. I’m gonna tell you all a quick story.

When I was in high school, I wanted to get a job in a bakery. I found a job at a big supermarket called Loblaws that had just opened up at the mall near my house. This would be my first time working in the food industry.

The bakery section of this supermarket was tucked into a corner. They sold everything from birthday cakes to baklava to cannolis. The supermarket itself had a pretty steady stream of customers, but the bakery section was always dead. My job was to restock whatever was running low in the case and to serve customers. “Restocking” meant running back and forth to the huge walk-in freezer to grab frozen cakes, peel the plastic packaging off, slap an expiry date on the bottom, push them into the case, and pretend that it was freshly baked. (A huge reason why you should purchase your baked goods from a real bakery but that’s an argument for another blog post)

Since I was a full-time high school student, I could only work late nights. I worked until closing every night–9pm. My first night closing, I was trained by another employee. She taught me how to clean things up and stack things away until finally we reached all the food in the case.

“Here,” she said, handing me three large garbage bags, “Throw away all the cakes and cupcakes that are past expiry and all of the freshly baked goods.” My job every night was to take all this perfectly good food and toss it.

Perhaps I was naive or perhaps I didn’t want to admit it in the past, but I was shaken that this is what happened every single night. It absolutely destroyed me, and I so desperately wanted to take the whole bag of fresh croissants and hand them out to homeless people all over downtown Vancouver. Every night when I left work I felt sick, and I would brainstorm all the things I could do to reduce the amount of food waste that supermarkets produced. I asked my boss if I could take the bags home, and she said no. She told me I wasn’t even technically allowed to take one or two things home for myself, but that she would look past that. I lasted at that job for 2 weeks before I couldn’t take it anymore and left.

This experience sparked something in me. I vowed to myself that when I owned my own food business that I would do whatever I could to reduce food waste. I vowed that when I owned my own home and when I had complete control over my life that I would do what I could to reduce my carbon footprint and reduce my negative impact on the environment.
Now, I work at Butter Lane–a small cupcake shop in the East Village. Every night, we also toss all our cupcakes because our cupcakes are baked fresh every morning. Every night it still hurts to see all that perfectly good food in a garbage bag.

The difference is that now I can do something about it.

I know this post has already been long and winding, but I’m getting to the point I swear. This Earth Day, I want to share some of the things that I do in my daily life as an employee in the food industry, as a pastry chef and cake decorator, and as a homeowner, that help reduce food waste and also make my life more sustainable. Every day I am aware of the waste I produce and I am constantly trying to change. Every difference is a big difference if we all do it, so I hope you continue reading and try to employ some of these things in your own lives.

A Food Employee

• I always ask “Do you need a bag?” When prompted, people tend to take a moment and think to themselves, and I have found that when I do this, the majority of people realize they actually don’t need a bag. I also do this with boxes for baked goods–I’ll ask, “Do you need a box or are you going to eat this right away?”
• At the end of the night, instead of throwing all the cupcakes away, I pack a few boxes up and hand them out to people I know on the way home. Neighbours, friends, the people who work at your favourite restaurant–you’re reducing food waste and people will like you more! Win-win!
• Adding onto the above tip, hand out food to homeless people. They will always be grateful and you’re helping someone who really needs it.
• Instead of tossing all the leftover food into the garbage, take them to a composting bin. In NYC, there are public compost bins scattered all around the city usually located in front of community gardens. Find the one near your workplace and dump the food there. If you can’t stop food waste at least it’s not ending up in some landfill when it could be returned to the earth. REMEMBER no plastic bags in the bin! Just empty the bags out into the compost bin! If you're in NYC, here's a link to show where compost drop offs are located.
• If you’re going to be taking food home from work, bring a tupperware!
• When it’s getting close to closing time, I start offering people a free cupcake here and there. Some employees make it Buy One Get One Free. These customers already want the food so might as well give them some more!
• Check your calendar. Is it someone’s birthday soon? Or is there a party coming up? Somewhere that you can bring food to? If yes, save the leftovers and bring them!
• College kids will eat any free food you offer. I’ve left cupcakes with the security guards at my boyfriend’s college and they were so grateful!
• Let all your friends know the days you close. Let them know that if they ever need food on these days that they should definitely reach out to you.
• My workplace doesn’t recycle, so when I can, I take all the recyclable things I find home to recycle them.
• Compile all the garbage from all the garbage bins in your workplace so you can take out just one garbage bag. This reduces the amount of basically empty garbage bags being wasted.
• This one is pretty specific to a niche, but whenever there are leftover naked cupcakes in the back, sometimes I'll take them home to practice new decorating techniques or to do a project I've wanted to do for a while. For example: I took cupcakes home to make a "flower bouquet" out of cupcakes. It was something I wanted to do for a while, so this way, I didn't have to bake my own cupcakes (saves me time and energy hehe) and I was able to prevent the leftovers from being tossed.

A Chef and Decorator

• Making hand piped sugar cookies requires a lot of different icing colours. Instead of constantly filling new piping bags, I take the bags with the lightest colour icings, squeeze them out, and recolour them to a darker colour I need. Then I use the bag again. Is it a pain sometimes? Yes, but I know that I’m reducing the amount of plastic being thrown away. This works with anything that needs piping bags! Just make sure you’re going from lightest to darkest colours or weakest to strongest flavours.
• Alternatively, use reusable piping bags!
• Invest in silpats! Yes they can be pricey but they are soooo much easier to use than parchment paper and you only need to buy them once. They last a lifetime (if you treat them well) and you’ll cut down on your parchment paper use (which saves you money too!) Find tons on Amazon here.
• Compost! All those egg shells, failed recipes, banana peels–COMPOST! And pro tip, old fondant buckets are great compost buckets.

A Consumer and Homeowner

• I always have my water bottle. It is both costly and highly wasteful to use plastic water bottles every day. Mine is from Fressko and I love it!
• Bring tupperwares with you! If I know I’m going to be taking food home, I bring a light, plastic tupperware with me.
• To my fellow bubble tea lovers, invest in metal bubble tea straws. Keep one at home and put one in the bag you bring with you. Amazon sells 5 for $12, so split it with a friend! Here's the link.
• Bring chopsticks with you too! Anything can be eaten with chopsticks so you can opt out on plastic utensils. Or just bring a cutlery set with you everywhere.
• When ordering takeout or getting delivery to your house, tell them you don’t need utensils. You’re at home and you should have utensils so you don’t need plastic cutlery. When ordering delivery, you can write this in the “special instructions” section.
• Recycle correctly. That means sorting correctly. Sometimes I’ll go down to my building’s recycling bins and sort them out.
• Wash your clothes in cold water.
• Takeout containers are the BEST tupperwares! Why even buy tupperwares when people give it out for free?!
• When I order from Amazon, I try to wait until I have lots in my cart. This heightens the chance that they’ll package things together and it’ll use less packaging than if you ordered everything at different times.
• Sell your old technology if you can. Tech has so many harmful chemicals that leach into the soil and water when they’re tossed in a landfill. Also, some extra money is always great.
• If you can’t sell something, donate it to Goodwill! Throwing something away should be the last case scenario.
• If you have old or damaged fabrics, lots of brands have started textile recycling. For example, H&M takes any textiles and gives you a coupon for 15% off if you donate, and Madewell takes all denim!
• Don’t be afraid to speak up and say you don’t need a bag. Or that you don’t need a lid, or a straw, or utensils. As someone who works in customer service I can promise you that it is not inconvenient or rude to do so.
• Freeze things! Things will last months past their expiration date if they’re frozen. For example: bread, almond flour, veggies, meats, fruits–all these things can be frozen and will last exponentially longer than they would’ve in the fridge.
• Some restaurants will put the food in your tupperwares if you ask them to. (Our favourite restauraunt LoveMama does!)
• Opt for paperless bills. It should be an easy switch through your account.

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