Talking Rubbish with That's Oxford TV

A few weeks ago I was invited to talk to Robin Shuckburgh about how to reduce waste and make better use of our resources.  Here's the Youtube video.

Zero Waste Week Day Three

So today is all about food waste and how to avoid it , and how to reduce the packaging associated with it. My speciality! But today it is going to be harder. Much harder as I am now in France, separated from my food waste bin and my compost heap. On the plus side, to minimize packaging, we've brought our Onya weigh bags and the supermarket here were fine with them. There are no single use bags in French supermarkets, but we brought a plentiful supply of reusable bags. All our fruit and veg was packaging free. Meat on the other hand was a challenge. In France meat packaging is often polystyrene and no recycling facilities exist here for that. Plan is to have not much of it. There's also no separate food waste so we have already thrown some melon skin and seeds in the general waste. I don't know what happens to it thereafter. To minimize avoidable food waste we brought the contents of our fridge with us in a cool bag and that provided us our first meal. We plan to get inventive with bread. Croutons for goats cheese salad is our first use it up plan. Bon appetit!

The plastic-free challenge - we can no longer buy The Guardian

Mr Pitt's Parmesan Bites with Chilli and Rosemary

So, after feeling the glow of success last Saturday, we went out on a mission to acquire more good quality plastic tubs to continue our naked shopping.  Senior Daughter is also keen to join in even while living away, so we will be needing lots more re-fillable pots to manage our mission.

We also needed butter, cheese, toothpaste and some small round batteries for our kitchen scales.

The butter we buy is wrapped in paper, so there's no change there at this stage as although our aim is to reduce single use anything, we are at the moment concentrating on plastic.  We headed to the market with a suitable cheese sized plastic tub to see if there was a cheese stall.  No luck there, so we decided to give Waitrose a try.  We did come away with a chunk of cheese in our plastic container but the young lady who served us looked a little perplexed and it took some explaining that we didn't want any plastic packaging in the box with it.  She used a sheet of plastic to hold the cheese while she cut it and to transfer it to our box.  I think she then threw away that sheet of plastic. However, if we hadn't taken our own container, not only would the cheese have remained wrapped in the sheet of plastic, it would have been placed inside another plastic bag, so at least we are saving on waste if not entirely.

The toothpaste, however, was our first failure.  Dental hygiene is a big worry for people and I had done a little Internet research about alternatives to toothpaste in plastic tubes.  I occasionally use LUSH toothy tabs, which I really like and I always use these when travelling.  As I understand it they are basically toothpaste in solid form.  They are packaged in recycled cardboard, which itself is recyclable.  I have probably been using them on and off for about a year, but unless I use them consistently and completely ditch the tube toothpaste then I won't really know if I pass the dental check.  So, I've decided to try to be more consistent on my use of the toothy tabs.  I realised that one thing that stops me is that I haven't been keeping them in the bathroom for fear they will get wet.  So my plan is to find a small jar to keep them in, so they stay dry and are always to hand.  Old habits die hard, they do say, and sure enough I find myself reaching for the toothpaste tube more often than not.

The batteries for the scales were another fail! They had a small plastic bubble to keep them in place on a piece of card.  However, we do want to get our scales back into use and return the ones we had to hastily borrow from my Dad on Christmas Eve, when ours packed up.

The next challenge, I think is going to be cat food.  We did a bit of research, to see if we could find a local bulk buy place where we could fill our own container, but no joy.  We looked at brands like Go-Cat that come in a cardboard box, but the meat content is around 3.8% rather than 38% like our current brand.  My thought so far is to switch to the Countrywide own brand which comes in a no-nonsense clear plastic bag, which would be recyclable, or washable and reusable if opened carefully.  It seems to have largely the same ingredients as the current cat food.  I've got a couple of days to make a decision. In the meantime, I would be grateful for any suggestions.

I'm also on the lookout for somewhere to buy frozen peas in my own container. So far, we have just done without, but we are missing our peas :(

Last but not least - we realised we can no longer buy The Guardian at the weekend as it comes wrapped in plastic. NO OTHER NEWSPAPER on the shelf in Waitrose had a plastic wrapper so why does The Guardian feel it is necessary?  I'm sad about that, but I'm sure the unread sections of the stash of Guardian's we already have will keep us going for a while.

To date the 2015 Pitt purchased plastic tally is this:

2 toothpaste tubes with lids
2 plastic bubbles from the battery packaging.

Zero Waste Week 2014 - Day 1

I've been looking forward to Zero Waste Week and seeing through my pledge.  I found that I've been thinking about it on and off for the last few weeks, making mental notes about what I'll need to tackle and wondering what I'm going to part with.

As you've probably guessed, I love this year's Zero Waste Week theme of 'One More Thing'.  I wrote a whole book of things we can all do to reduce waste, but there's always one more thing.  There's always room for improvement  and this week, I'm going to try to do just that.

My Zero Waste Week pledge - my 'One More Thing' to reduce waste -

…is to go through each room and pick out at least three things that we no longer use, but can't give away as they are because they need some kind of attention.  I'm pretty rubbish at mending stuff.  I have good intentions, and I never just throw something away.  But I do find that I procrastinate instead of just dealing with broken things straight away.  So, I'm going to use this week, to try to develop my mending skills and try to kick the habit of letting things build up in the hope that I'll sort them out one day!

In addition to that I'm going to join in with the Zero Waste Week daily emails and find something more each day that I can be doing to reduce my use of resources.

So, what am I mending today?

I decided that I'd start in the spare bedroom as I know that there's lots of stuff in there, hidden in drawers and under the bed and there's at least one box that is full of stuff with bits missing, so I thought it would be easy to pick out three things we could part with and get off to a flying start.

First up, I decided to take the plunge and address these lovely ladies…

They have been long neglected atop the spare room wardrobe.  They get a very occasional dust, but they are really a bit sad and unloved.  I brought them down from their perch to investigate whether they could be cleaned up to be given away, and found that the clothes were removable and washable.   They've been through the wash, and are now out on the line and hopefully they haven't shrunk.  If I can dress them up again, then they will go to the charity shop, to see if they can find a new home.

Next up, hanging on some wall hooks I found a stash of unwanted jewellery, which I've add to my collection of broken beads, ribbons, single earrings and cufflinks, buttons, jewellery boxes and old watches, which I collect up for the charity, Against Breast Cancer.  A lovely lady, Laura Hounam, who I've blogged about before, takes these bits and pieces and turns them into wonderfully desirable and modern jewellery that she sells at craft fairs and exhibitions to raise money for the charity.

Third up is a dressing gown, that has somehow escaped the charity bag for all these years.  That's gone into the washing and will be added to the charity shop clothes bag that I've started up.

That wasn't so hard!  But I'm still left with the box of toys and games from last year's clear out.  I've decided to keep this, in the hope that as I go through each room, I might find the missing pieces.  If not, then I'll have to have a re-think at the end of the week!

Onto my Zero waste week daily email that awaited me this morning!  It's all about plastic, with lots of suggestions for how to reduce the amount of single use plastic we all use.  Plastic is one of those things that because there are so many different types, some local councils choose not to offer a collection service.  Pretty much all plastic can be recycled and the myth that it all gets shipped to China and landfilled is very far from the truth.  There are many companies who recycle plastic here in the UK.  I know that, because I've visited several of them!

But despite the fact that most plastics can be recycled and I live in area that does take almost all of it in the kerbside collection boxes, it is still something that I try to cut down on.

I always keep a few plastic bags in my various handbags and rucksacks.  We keep plastic bags in the boot of each car, so that we are not caught out shopping without a bag.  We buy most fruit and veg loose, and if not, then again we reuse the bags and put them back in with our shopping bags when we unpack the shopping.  We take our egg boxes to the butchers to refill with local eggs and we also take our own plastic containers for our meat purchases.  We use various tupperware pots for packed lunches.

So, I've I hopped over onto the blog post to see what 'One More Thing' we could do to reduce the amount of plastic recycling we end up with and here's the plan…

The plastic packaged thing we don't seem to be able to do without in our family is crisps.  The problem with crisp packets is that they are made from mixed materials which apparently makes them too difficult or costly to recycle.  So the only way to avoid this waste is to do without them or make our own.  I have a gadget that will cut slices of root vegetables very finely, so this evening I'm going to give it a whirl.  Anyone got any tips for DIY crisp making?

An eggs-ellent find

My local butcher has always sold free range eggs and I've bought them from there a few times, but recently they have introduced a twenty pence per half dozen discount if you bring your own egg box.

The eggs are £1.59 per half dozen (with the 20p discount) for large eggs.  Four eggs consistently weigh 266 grammes which makes a nice big cake.  I always weigh my eggs and use equal weight of butter, sugar and flour for cake-making.

Lemon drizzle cake and raisin and oatmeal cookies.

I am really keen to support this kind of reuse system.  It is bound to work well as the customer has the incentive to remember their egg boxes or have the pain of paying 20p per box more.  Carrot and stick is always a good combination.

Cardboard egg boxes are great on the compost, and the cardboard and plastic egg boxes are recyclable and collected by most councils, but reuse generally has higher carbon savings than recycling - and this system of egg box reuse is a perfect - yet oh so simple - example of a carbon saving system.  The Waste Hierarchy (pictured below) shows that the best way to deal with packaging is to prevent it.  If you can't prevent it then the next best thing is to prepare it for reuse and if you can't reuse it, then recycle it.  If you can't recycle it then ideally your method of disposal will recover some value from it - as it would if you were to compost your cardboard egg boxes.  As the Waste Hierarchy diagram shows, binning your egg boxes into landfill is the last resort - and basically shouldn't be happening!

The Waste Hierarchy

Image reproduced with kind permission of Scottish Environmental Protection Agency:

 http://www.sepa.org.uk/waste/moving_towards_zero_waste/waste_hierarchy.aspx

The first time I noticed the egg box reuse incentive (i.e. 20p saving) I didn't have egg boxes with me, but I knew I'd be passing the butcher's the next day, so as soon as I unpacked my meat I retrieved plastic egg boxes from my recycling bin and found a cardboard one that was awaiting being torn up to add to my wormery, and popped them in my bag.  The next day I was pleased with my 60p saving -  it was a cricket tea week - so I needed eggs for sandwich filling and eggs for cake-making.

I noticed yesterday the eggs from the little supermarket in our village were 10p per half dozen cheaper but my daughter bought those a few days ago to make a birthday cake (the butcher was closed) and the four eggs weighed just 214g.

So, I've got into the habit now of keeping my egg boxes in the bag I take to the butcher's, so I can always get my discount.  I'll be cake making for cricket tea this afternoon.  I'm thinking... lemon drizzle, fairy cakes, fruit scones and I might try making some chocolate cookies.

Ten Green Bottles and One Clear One

I was alarmed to read the other day that the average UK household uses around 330 bottles and jars a year. Alarmed, yes, because I'm sure I can get through that many in a month!

I was reading about glass recycling in the UK, and was not surprised, given the UK's (and my own) liking for wine that Britain generates a surplus of green glass cullet (the broken down glass that is then formed into new bottles) but has a shortage of clear glass required by the British food and drinks industry.

The next time I walked into my kitchen I noticed my ever growing hoard of empty glass jars.  You know, the ones you keep just in case you feel like making blackberry jam next September.  I'm going to try to cut down on my hoarding habit and admit to myself that yet again I probably won't make time to make jam.

But the other thing that struck me about this issue is that the increasing popularity of Pinot Grigio (comes in clear glass bottles) must be a blessing for the UK glass industry! Nice to think I'm doing my bit for the planet.

Cheers!