A Zero Waste Game

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is a blogger, cookbook author, and tireless advocate for plant-based cooking. When asked whether she misses meat, she answers: “No, just as I don’t miss kindergarten lunches.”

Should you buy a reusable coffee cup and a set of bamboo drinking straws? Maybe it would be better to donate some money to charity and sign a petition? Marta Dymek examines different ways of helping the world – starting with your own kitchen.

It seems to me that ‘zero waste’ is one of the most popular terms nowadays. It is a constant refrain in the newspapers and on the television; there are websites, shops, collectives, and a plethora of zero waste-related hashtags. Most importantly, there are a lot of disputes on the topic. Not Oxford-style debates, mind, more like late-night pub chats: “Have you seen what she wrote? What a pile of…”

I wish that there could be a substantial exchange of thoughts and ideas on the matter, especially since zero-waste ideology has divided its followers into two separate groups. The first one insists that a lot can be done through the individual observance of a more ecological lifestyle. The other team criticizes such an approach, condemning individual efforts as a narcissistic act of identity-building.

Before I invite you to meet both factions, I will try to explain what the zero-waste approach is all about. The shortest definition describes it as a lifestyle committed to

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Marta Dymek:

is a blogger, cookbook author, and tireless advocate for plant-based cooking. When asked whether she misses meat, she answers: “No, just as I don’t miss kindergarten lunches.”

Translation: Aga Zano

Publish date: 24.04.2019

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Monika Kucia:

is a journalist and culinary superintendent at sialababamak.pl. Monika likes to bring words, flavours and people together. She helps foreigners learn about Poland from the tastiest side. She also creates culinary spectacles in which she encourages participants to eat leftovers, breathe in the smells of the basement, and sprinkle food with golden dust.

Bread with butter and salt, a slightly burnt crust and soft crumb, the taste of fat and the crunching of salty crystals. The bliss comes when I’m eating while standing up, swaying above the table, spreading crumbs all over my book, my computer, my skirt. I bite huge chunks off, each time feeling softness, crunchiness and fatness all at once. Whenever you eat bread, you’re at home.

Certain tastes carve out a rut in your mind, creating a permanent association with that one specific flavour or smell; that one and only feeling on your tongue and in your heart. This experience has been recorded in literature as ‘the madeleine phenomenon’. It’s thanks to these pathways through culinary memories that a person can sometimes weep while eating a meatloaf in a fancy restaurant. A familiar taste comes back, the memory hits like a wave, and presto! You’ve travelled through time to arrive at some far-flung and emotion-laden destination in your past.

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