By Robbie Brown

In celebration of this year’s Earth Month as well as Stop Food Waste Day, which is on April 28, I couldn’t think of a better individual to meet with than Anne-Marie Bonneau, aka the Bay Area’s Zero-Waste Chef. Anne-Marie is well known in the community as a leader when it comes to educating others on how to reduce waste, cook with food scraps, use induction cooktops, and work with local businesses to encourage the use of reusables. Anne-Marie and I sat down to talk more about what it means to be zero-waste, and her recently published cookbook The Zero-Waste Chef: Plant-Forward Recipes and Tips for a Sustainable Kitchen and Planet.

RB: At what point in your life did your passion for a zero-waste lifestyle spark? 

Well, it started back in 2011. I read about plastic pollution in the oceans. I always recycled and knew that plastic is bad but I thought, well [it’s okay because] I’m putting these things in the recycling bin and they go away and get turned into new things. Then I learned that that isn’t actually happening. When I learned about all of the plastic pollution, for things we don’t even need, it was heartbreaking. So, I told my older daughter, we have to get off of plastic. I don’t want to play a role in this, and she said okay great! 

It took months and months to purge the plastic and switch our routine over. I don’t find it difficult here in the Bay Area. We have year round farmers’ markets, bulk bins, and great second hand stores. This is a good place to do it. I then started hearing the numbers with food waste. I found those numbers astonishing. In the U.S. at the end of 2020, I believe 49 million people were food insecure at some point. In our landfills, food is the number one item. We have these two horrible crises, we are heating up the planet with food, while people don’t have enough to eat. So I went down this rabbit hole…

RB: Can you define what it means to have a zero-waste lifestyle and how is that related to food?

I think everyone will have a different definition. For me, it’s not sending anything to landfills or needing to recycle. I [rarely] recycle anything because I try not to buy things in a package. It’s an anti-consumerism movement. 

This is just a term, you’ll never get to the “zero” and that is okay. Even if I don’t bring any packaging home, there is still waste [created] all throughout the supply chain, but I can at least minimize what I am bringing home.

[With food] composting is a last resort, just like recycling is with plastic. Ideally, we would eat all the food we buy. 

RB: Is it difficult to embrace a zero-waste lifestyle in a contemporary American society? Is it expensive?

I absolutely save money. According to the NRDC – Natural Resource Defense Council – The average family of 4 in the United States spends $1,800.00 a year on food that they don’t eat. If you use every little scrap, that is saving you $150 a month. 

I have pants on right now from Savers – a second hand thrift store –  they were $5.

I wrote a blog post about gardening. I’m like the world’s cheapest gardener. I can’t bring myself to buy plants at the nursery. Everything is in plastic. I belong to a South Bay group that has a garden share every month. People bring plants and food from their garden and you help yourself. My yard is filled with free plants.

Now if you are working 2-3 jobs… yeah this takes more time. But not more money. You do have to have time to cook and take care of yourself. Just focus on the big stuff when it comes to reducing waste. Plastic Free July – an initiative of Plastic Free Future – suggests starting with the top 4, meaning the plastic that is everywhere but easy to replace: Plastic bags, straws, water bottles, and to-go coffee cups.

RB: In April of 2021, you released your first book: The Zero-Waste Chef: Plant-Forward Recipes and Tips for a Sustainable Kitchen and Planet. What can readers expect to gain from your book?

The cookbook is vegetarian. None of the recipes have meat, but some recipes are not vegan because they may have dairy and eggs. There are a lot of recipes that are easy to veganize. There is a little bit for everybody. Some recipes are very simple, and some recipes are [more complex]. At the end of almost each recipe, I have a sidebar that says “now for your next recipe,” where I tell people okay, you now have these scraps here from this recipe, go to this page to make something else that uses those scraps. When I wrote it, I tried to think of it like a big puzzle. I wanted everything to work together, so that you are not just cooking a recipe and then you’re done. I wanted people to cook something, then turn the leftover bits from that recipe into something else. 

RB: What are some parts of produce that are typically discarded that you think anyone at any skill level could start using in their own cooking? 

I think most people know that they should use mushy bananas for banana bread or pancakes. That is probably the easiest one. Broccoli stems get thrown out a lot, but I made soup the other night with sliced broccoli stems. Orange and lemon zest have so much flavor! I’m hoping to make a sourdough discard chocolate cake from my blog if I have time tonight, and it’s really good with a little orange zest thrown in. Potato peels, if organic, can be fried or baked with lots of olive oil and salt. Fat, salt, and potatoes…you can’t go wrong. I make scrap vinegar with apple peels and cores. In my cookbook, I have a recipe for a Mexican drink called tepachi, that is made with pineapple peels, sugar, and water. It’s absolutely delicious. You can eat cauliflower leaves, the ribs of the leaves taste like the white part of the cauliflower. You can put the leaves in soup, or toss them in olive oil and salt and roast them. If you have fennel fronds, you can make pesto with those. 

RB: If I didn’t know any better, I’d say one of your specialities is fermenting food. You have recipes ranging from fermented watermelon rind pickles to vegan kimchi. What does a typical fermentation process entail?

Fermentation is really simple. You basically stuff food in a jar and wait. For kimchi, I like to use napa cabbage, daikon radish, green onions, garlic, ginger, and the spice gochugaru. You chop the vegetables and salt them. Then you crush them with your hands to draw out liquid. You add the spice and stir it up. Put it in a jar and weigh it down so that the vegetables are submerged in liquid. That way, the bacteria, which is anaerobic, starts to eat the carbohydrates and release gases and acids and you get this vinegary flavor. With kimchi you only need to wait three days.

RB: On your website, you have a whole section devoted to sourdough and information on sourdough starters. Typically people have to discard a portion of their starter, before they feed it again. Is there anything people can do with the portion of the starter that is normally thrown away? 

I have about 12 recipes on my blog in the sourdough section just for the discard. One recipe in my book which I really love is the sourdough tortillas. It uses about ½ a cup of sourdough discard. You make the dough and put it in your refrigerator, and then rip off some chunks when you want to make tortillas. I’ve made crackers with sourdough discard. Sourdough discard is tangy, so your crackers will have a cheesy and tangy taste. The cake I mentioned earlier is another option. During the Great Depression people made “wacky” cake because they didn’t have eggs or dairy. My daughter once made it and I ate it, and she told me it was vegan and I was like “What!? This is so good!” I changed the recipe around, it calls for water and flour and I converted some of those ratios with sourdough discard. 

RB: Can you tell me more about the Silicon Valley Reduces Program that you started?

If businesses join our program, they are agreeing to allow customers to bring their own containers and jars, etc. to their business for to-go food, drinks, bulk foods, and cleaning supplies. We have them put a sticker in their window so that people know they can bring their own containers and not have to worry about whether or not they’ll accept it. [For example] The Source Zero [in San Jose] has our BYO “bring your own” sticker in their window because they allow people to bring in their own containers to fill with their products. 

We are just getting started. Right now there are 20 businesses that are participating in our program. 

RB: For those looking for more tips and practices beyond what your book provides to embrace a zero waste lifestyle, they can visit your blog or review your 50 Ways to Kick Plastic webpage. Are there any blog posts or plastic reduction tips you’d like to highlight?

My most popular blog post of all time is: How to Freeze Food Without Using Plastic. It’s all about freezing in jars. To prevent food waste, the freezer is just an easy tool. If you have leftover food that you don’t think you’ll get to, throw it in the freezer. For the tips, they are all pretty simple. Don’t feel like you have to start with all 50, just pick a few that seem simple to you!

Robbie Brown is Acterra’s Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet Program Manager responsible for programming on food sustainability and ensuring access to healthy food. When he isn’t working on sustainable food-related initiatives, or playing in his band, he is often busy in the kitchen, developing and trying new recipes.