Zero waste, a personal journey. Part 3: vinegar and enzymatic cleaner

Bill Mollison is the father of permaculture. He used to say something of the sort of: "trash is a resource ill-used". Nature doesn't generate trash. Everything is part of a chain, of a process. Also from permaculture is the concept that every element of that chain has multiple functions.

Early in my zero waste journey I learned about ferments as a vital part of a healthy body and a healthy household. In particular home-made vinegar recycles some of the kitchen waste, reduces the consumption of plastic packaging and saves the costs of large facilities manufacturing, oil for transportation, space, etc. All this thinking vinegar as a food. If we think of it as a cleaning agent also, the amount of waste reduction we produce along the whole chain is immense.

Enzymatic cleaner is very similar to vinegar, both in its preparation and environmental properties. This is why I'm putting them both together.

How to make vinegar

To make vinegar we need three ingredients, a glass container and plastic wrap.

Ingredients:

• Clean water : Tap water doesn't work because it's full to the nose with biocides of different types. We need drinking water for edible vinegar and we can use untreated rain water if we make the vinegar for the purpose of cleaning. I usually make three litres at a time, because that's the size of my jars.

• Unrefined organic sugar: Between 1/4 to 1/6 of the amount of water. The sugar provides both the main food and the ferment for the vinegar.

• Fruit sliced thinly or fruit peels: More or less same weight of sugar. I use fruit to make vinegar for eating, and peels for vinegar destined to cleaning. What fruits? any, really. We only need to be careful of not putting spoiled fruit because mold will take over. Apple cider vinegar is made with green apples. I do it at times, or with red apples. For the most part I prepare loquat vinegar because loquat trees produce all the fruit in a very short amount of time and need processing. More about this other time.

For cleaning, the peels I prefer are citric. Worms don't appreciate them in the compost pile, and they make a great cleaner.

Preparation:

• Clean a big glass jar.
• Put the three ingredients inside and give it a swirl.
• I cover it with plastic wrap. Some other people use other methods.
• The preparation needs to ferment for about forty days, with a daily swirl.
  *After the forty days, strain the fruit. Compost the fruit or eat it in a salad, and save the vinegar in clean bottles.

All this is quite standard, except for a couple of details.

Why the plastic wrap? because the fermentation gases can escape easily, but fungus in the air can't come in. It creates a safe environment without threatening to become a bomb.

Why the daily swirl? It makes sure that the fruit, which will be for the most part on the surface of the water is completely embedded in the liquid. Failing to do so will create mold.

Safety and other bugs

If we start with clean healthy fruit, and we keep the preparation under the wrap (a cloth doesn't work in my experience), and we move it daily, it's very hard to get it wrong.

If we fail to move it and everything else is in place, a white film will appear. This is a biofilm with mostly penicillium bacillus. It's not toxic, but not tasty either.

If instead of white, it's green or black. Then it's time to throw the whole thing into a corner of our compost pile and start over.

Benefits of raw vinegar

If we are going to use vinegar, raw is the only way to go as the pasteurized one lacks most of its healthy benefits. I use vinegar for salads, and don't take it as a medicine, but many rave about it. Instead of looking around and reproduce a list of these benefits, I will let Dr. Mercola do what he does best:

I used vinegar for a long time as rinse for my hair also, when I tried the sodium bicarbonate-vinegar recipe for no-poo shampoo. I have to admit it's not my favorite. Long ago I changed this method for my own shampoo and water kefir for rinsing.

This vinegar is also the one I combine with the used-oil soap introduced in Part 2 to take care of the extra lye. It's an all-in-one surfaces cleaner on its own, and combines with sodium bicarbonate cuts through grease like no other. There is a chemical reaction involved, so it can´t be mixed in advance.

Enzymatic cleaner

Enzymatic cleaners are made with the same procedure as vinegar with two and a half differences:

It also requires bread yeast added (I use 10 gr dry or 50 gr hidrated), and among the fruits or vegetables we need to have pineapple or kiwi.

What's the other half difference? The fermentation process takes three months to fully develop. This way every nutrient is used up and we have the strongest possible product.

The presence of yeast results in alcohol, some of which still appears in the end product. Because of the sugar and fruits, it will also have vinegar. And both pineapple and kiwi have special enzymes released in the mix.

We can make soap with water kefir, and with regular vinegar. But because of these enzymes, we can't make soap with an enzymatic cleaner replacing water.

In Malasia they call garbage enzyme to a vinagar composting system, which is also very useful:

We have been making and using fermented fruits and vegetables since the beginning of agriculture. In the last century some of this knowledge stopped being passed from one generation to the next. I firmly believe it's time to bring it back.

Do you make your own vinegar? You don't? I want to hear about it. Please leave me a comment below and we start a conversation.

All posts of this series so far:
Part 1: Composting
Part1.5: Composting in action. My garden
Part 2: Making Soap out of used oil.
Part 3: Vinegar and enzymatic cleaner