It's all good and fine to promote packing your own lunch, but one doesn't always expect to be still out and about when hunger strikes. Or you just feel like having a quick drink and a snack to keep you going until you get home to your organically stocked fridge and cupboard! For those occasions, EXKi fits the bill quite nicely.

Is EXKi an organic restaurant? Not really, but they use a lot of organic ingredients, and mention this in the ingredients list for everything they sell (as is the caloric value). However, the reason why some thing are organic, and others aren't, elude me. But I suppose running a business means making some choices to remain commercially viable… 

But going green is more than just eating organinc. And this is where EXKi puts in some effort as well: environmentally friendly packaging, customers have to sort their own trash, and eco-civic behaviour – like bringing one's own mug or bag – is rewarded... Asking for a free glass of tap water with your meal is no problem at all – as it should be in all restaurants.

It's not all positive though. After a day of shopping last month, and having lunch at EXKi, at the end of the day I realised that EXKi was the place where I produced most – be it 'environmentally friendly' – trash all day. Wouldn't it be possible to provide some real plates instead of the paper 'boxes' for the customers eating in? The dishes have to be done anyway, because hot drinks are being served in real cups already. I wouldn't even mind washing up myself, if that would help! 

Update:
Laurent Kahn, the General Manager of EXKi, wrote a comment regarding my concerns, so be sure to read the comments as well!

Rest assured: I haven't given up on this blog already and I'm still going green, but I have another week of exams ahead! After that, I'll have some more time to discover new green things in Brussels and I'll be back with some new blog posts.
Meanwhile, don't hesitate to send me suggestions!

Martijn

When I talked about the LunchSkins, I mentioned reusable 'wraps' as well. So I went ahead, and ordered some Wrap-N-Mat wraps (from Onya, in the UK, so they wouldn't have to ship separately from the US, where they're made). But even before they arrived, Kudzu.be announced they had another wrap in their shop, the Boc'n Roll. Since I intended to order some other things from Kudzu.be anyway, I ordered one of those as well.

I've chosen the checkered Grande' Wraps from Wrap-N-Mat, 43 by 35 cm. I must say, the (transparent) lining looks a kind of cheap, and I was slightly disappointed by that. But I suppose it will do what it is intended to do: provide a safe, non leaking wrapping for (cold) food.
The 'receiving' strip of velcro is a bit short, so you have to wrap your food in such way, that both pieces of velcro will end up on top of each other. This will limit the size and shape of the food you're packing quite a bit of course…

The Boc'n Roll – a Spanish creation – only comes in one size: 30 by 49 cm. Upon receiving the fresh green wrap, I instantly noticed how much better it looked: the non transparent, less noisy and creaseless lining makes a huge difference!
The long strip of velcro provides a lot more flexibility regarding sandwich size, especially since the wrap is even a bit longer than the American competitor's.
The Boc'n Rolls can even be machine washed, whereas the cleaning instructions for the Wrap-N-Mat wraps say "hand wash" only.

So by now it is probably clear that I prefer the Boc'n Rolls over the Wrap-N-Mat wraps, especially when I want to pack some huge French bread style sandwich.
But the Wrap-N-Mat wraps will do just fine for flatter foods, like slices of cheese or meat. Just make sure the butcher or cheese shop assistant will sett the scale to 0 with the wrap on it, because it weighs 35 grams (even 45 g for the Boc'n Roll). This might not seem much, but for a quality cheese or meat €30/kg isn't exceptional, and you'd be paying a euro for the weight of the wrap alone!

It might seem strange to discuss a shop like Colruyt in a blog like this, but if you look a little closer, it isn't that strange at all.

The most obvious green thing about Colruyt is their own organic brand Bio-time. Apart from their own branding, like most supermarkets have, those products carry the EU Organic and the Belgian Biogarantie logo as well, so you can trust it is all legit. I actually started using Bio-time products long before I really made the move to organic food, simply because the cheapest whole grain pasta was the organic kind. Who said going organic is expensive?

But apart from Bio-time, Colruyt has some other green things that appeal to me. They go through great lengths to save energy, by using closed freezer chests for instance. They have their own wind turbines and solar panels, and use the natural gasses from fermenting food waste as fuel, which – by the end of 2011 – should enable them to create all the electricity they need! Of course most of these thing are also economically a sensible choice in the long run, but Colruyt is a business of course!

Belonging to the same group as Colruyt, are the Bio-Planet shops: real organic supermarkets. Unfortunately, there are no Bio-Planet shops in Brussels. You can however order the non-perishable products from Bio-Planet and have them delivered in a Colruyt shop of your choice. There's a small fee to pay for this service (€ 1,95), but for the occasion of Bio Week in Flanders, until June 12th you'll be able to give it a try without this fee. Too bad it's mainly the food from Bio-Planet I'm interested in, so I guess I'd have to go to Dilbeek some day if I want to check out their butcher shop and frozen products.

In most cases, dry cleaning involves chemicals, more specifically the solvent perchlorethylene (perc). Perc is not really healthy, to say the least, or environmentally friendly, so normal dry cleaners are to be avoided if you're trying to go green. But some clothes can't be washed in a normal washing machine without ruining them, so what's the alternative?

The 'ecological' dry cleaner (or 'pressing' as they say in French…) Green and Clean claims to provide an more environmentally friendly way to clean my jackets and trenchcoats. Green and Clean is actually a 'wet cleaner', since they use water to clean, instead of those hazardous chemicals.
The first time you use Green and Clean, you get a sturdy, reusable cover when you pick up your stuff. There's a drawstring at the bottom, so you can use it as a big bag the next time you bring your dirty clothes. Well, you have to use it each time, otherwise you'll be charged for another cover. I guess that is a good incentive to reuse the cover, over and over again.

Apart from the ecological aspect, there's also a practical side to Green and Clean that makes it interesting: it's available 24 hours a day, due to the use of an automated locker system in a couple of 'shops' in Brussels. You put your clothes in a locker and enter your laundry deposit using the terminal. You'll get an e-mail when your clothes are ready to pick up, and you can pay on line, or by using the terminal.

So why the question in the title? Well, when I picked up my clothes, inside the reusable cover, each piece was in another plastic cover… So what's the use of the reusable cover if you end up using plastic – and quite a lot of it – anyway? Using the contact form on their site, I asked Green and Clean why they did this, but I haven't received an answer so far. To be continued…

Completely by accident, I stumbled upon Natural Corner, a shop selling organic food, cosmetics and household products.

The stress seems to be less on food, but unlike Den Teepot, this shop does sell some meat products. They must have about the complete Ecover range of products, and although the shop it isn't mentioned on the manufacturer's site, at Natural Corner you can refill your own bottles with washing up liquid, laundry detergent, fabric softener, etcetera. If you don't need a refill yourself, you can leave your empty bottles for other customers to use.

If you're using a Brita water filter: you can hand in your used filters here as well. 

Natural Corner is open on Sundays as well!

Natural Corner
Trapstraat 1 Rue de l'Escalier
1000 Brussel / Bruxelles
+32 2 513 30 13
info@naturalcorner.be

MON-SAT	10h00-20h00
SUN	11h00-18h00

All the bags mentioned below I ordered from Kudzu, an eco (web)shop with a lot of very interesting products, ranging from felt tip pens to furniture. So far, I only ordered once from them, but I received my parcel quickly - and without too much packaging material.

They have the KeepCups mentioned earlier as well, but you can't make your own colour combinations, and I didn't like the combinations on offer. But if you'll like the available colours, you'll probably save quite a bit on shipping!

 

Avoiding garbage when buying stuff is one thing, avoiding waste when you process and consume it is another. To take a bread meal on the road, I used a lunch box, but I've always hated how it uses up just as much space empty as when it when it is full.

So now I use another baggie. Well, not just any baggie, but a reusable one, by LunchSkins. A food safe material, velcro closure, dishwasher proof and lots of fun designs in a couple of sizes.

The L sized bag just fits my meal consisting of six thick slices, with some puzzling that is. It would be nice if they had a bag one size bigger as well, and maybe one specifically made for those French bread sandwiches a lot of people here like to eat.

Maybe later I'll try one of those food safe 'wraps' I've seen, but I'm afraid the origami involved in those will be to hard for me... :-)

 

The content of most garbage bins at home will be packaging, I suppose. For some products it will be difficult to avoid this, since you'll only find them pre-packed in stores. Other things you'll put in a bag yourself, or will be put in a bag in front of your eyes. In those instances, you can perfectly replace them by something reusable.

Enter again & a-gain, the makers of reusable bags for fruit, vegetables and bread. Their take5nets and take4bread bags will replace the plastic baggies you'll find in the vegetable section of grocery store and the (waxed) paper bags you get your bread in respectively.

How to use the green bags is pretty obvious: put veggies or fruit in bag, weigh end put the label on the bag: it will come off easily afterwards. Don't use it for something like a single head of organic garlic though: in that case the 16 grams a bag weighs can add quite a bit to the price!

For the bread bags it's probably best if you hold it up for the baker to but the bread in, because it won't stay open by itself like a paper bag will. I can't really tell how well the bread bag helps in keeping a bread fresh, since I switched to organic, unsliced bread at the same time I started using the bag. I finish a bread in about three days, and keep it standing up on the 'open' side, and it still tastes delicious the third day.

Sometimes I have a three hour class right after working a nightshift. In those cases, I really need a cup of strong coffee... I used to use one of those huge isolated mugs for that, but it didn't fit under the espresso machine at the coffee place near my lecture building, and the drinking hole couldn't be closed, so it would spill on my way to class. On top of that, it was too big to lug in my bag all the time, so half the time I ended up using a paper cup anyway.

Then I discovered the KeepCup, and found it to be the perfect replacement for those paper cups. It fits nicely under the espresso machine, doesn't spill when walking to class, and it is small enough to keep in my bag all the time. It doesn't really my your coffee warm for much longer than a paper cup, but that is not not what it is supposed to do anyway.

For the fashion conscious amongst you: you can get a KeepCup in thousands of colour combinations, to be picked by yourself. If there's a whole group of people interested in getting a personalised KeepCup, there's an option for a group order, so you can save on shipping.

Update:
Please note that you can also order the KeepCup from Kudzu.be as well. If you'd like to have a colour combination that isn't shown on their website, just send them an e-mail!