ZWW 2017 Day 4 - Time Saving Tips for Thursday

Day four of Zero Waste Week was all about Time Saving Tips

I arranged to visit a wonderful "SuperHome" local to me prior to their open day. They have a display board featuring my book, so I nipped over with some signed copies for them to sell on the day and I was guinea pig for their guided tour around the house. Plenty of top tips there, particularly around energy saving.

SuperHomes Open Day

Sat 9th Sept, 11am-2pm
4 St Denys Close, Stanford, SN7 8NJ

"If you're interested in making your home more efficient and environmentally friendly, you might like to visit a SuperHome. Open days let you quiz the owners, so you can discover what worked and get frank feedback on what didn’t. There are open days across the country in September, including one in Stanford in the Vale. The Williams family’s 1950s bungalow is heated using wood pellets, and is free from fossil fuels from heating to transport. When it’s sunny they can cook with a sun oven, concentrating heat using reflection."

Some of the things I learnt:

• I had a vague idea that chest freezers were more energy efficient than upright freezers, but I didn't realise it was by as much as 50%. 
• I had never thought of the idea of a chest fridge - also 50% more efficient.  
• I loved their guilt-free fairy lights, using solar energy from a battery system. 
• I was interested to hear they had set up a local Facebook group for sharing stuff.  I think one of those would be great in my village so I'll be onto that later this month.
• I was so delighted to hear that their local "Sustainable Wantage" group was collecting crisp packets for a craft workshop - my last fail of Zero Waste Living.  I was brimming with enthusiasm when I said to Mr Pitt, that we needed to save up his crisp packets for them. "I already am," he said.

As for my own top tips, for making Zero Waste easy here are a few ideas.

My recycling centre

I love my little recycling centre for the few things that don't go into the kerbside collection. The biscuit wrappers I save for a friend who has a Teracycle collection point at work.  I'll need to add in crisp packets to my collection now.

I have a reuse centre with these lovely pull out boxes on a shelving unit, for things like envelopes, notebooks, and sewing accessories for mending.

One thing that is wasting time at the moment is my collection of tubs - none of which seem to have the right lids attached, so a sort out of these is needed to get back to an easy life.  I use these all the time for buying meat and cheese from my local butcher, buying dry goods in bulk, freezing extra portions of things like casseroles and curries so I have home-made ready meals in the freezer for days when I have to visit clients or schools. Just a quick sort out and I will no longer be wasting so much time finding a box and lid that go together.  If I end up with lid-less containers I'll relegate them to the tool shed.

That's my top tips for tidy zero waste life.  Onto #FoodWasteFriday.

ZWW 2017 Day -2 #TrashlessTuesday

For #TrashlessTuesday, I'm continuing my theme of using the boxes from my signed book copies to clear out some space in my understairs cupboard (obviously known as Harry Potter's Bedroom).

I'm a bit concerned that by venturing anywhere near my cupboard I'll be finding waste that could otherwise stay hidden - out of sight out of mind, and all that.  But I have the advantage of living in an area of the UK that really cares about maximising use of resources and minimising waste. I live in Oxfordshire and here we have brilliant kerbside collection services and a very extensive offer at our Recycling centres across the county, which were recently given a reprieve to stay open, in the face of continuing budget cuts.

From delving into my cupboard each time I empty a box of books, I'm realising that there's a lot of packaging materials in there.  Does that happen in all households?  I keep things for reuse and I do go to my cupboard rather than go to the shops any time I send anything anywhere or gift anything.

I really don't need all this packaging.  It would take me years to reuse it and anyway, my stock of gift bags and packaging tends to grow every Christmas because we are usually hosts for the family gatherings and for some reason, no-one seems to want to reclaim their gift bags.  So these are going into a box to be taken to the charity shop on Friday morning.

Box 1 ready for the charity shop

Added to the gift bags, I've found bubble wrap which I know my charity shop can use as they sell quite a bit of crockery and other breakables. In goes the brown paper that I'm finding in my boxes of books too.

As for my plastic bag of trash to be carried round all day, I am following with interest the posts on the Zero Waste Heroes Facebook group and realising that my own zero (well nearly zero) waste is clearly made a lot easier because of where I live. I've seen people add yoghurt pots and flyaway plastic to their #TrashlessTuesday list.  I had both of these today and both go into my kerbside recycling box.

The one thing I ended up with that can't be recycled or reused was this packing tape on the bubble wrap. I pulled off the packing tape carefully to save as much of the bubble wrap for reuse by my local charity shop.  The tape itself will end up in the general waste bin - that always pains me, but the bubble wrap isn't useable in the mess it was in, so this is the sacrifice.

A mess of bubble wrap

Tape (on the left)  removed - that will go in the bin and the untidy edges of the bubble wrap (on the right) will recycle.

It made me think about how I was packing up my books for postage as I was using a lot of sellotape.  The #TrashlessTuesday bag challenge really works does't it?  By making me focus on waste, I realised by folding the very old envelopes (40 years plus, I reckon) a different way, I use less tape and that will maybe make the envelope more likely to be reused by the recipient.  Open your books carefully please, lovely people, and apologies for the excess tape of the books I've already posted.

One of the ways that I have managed to cut down on both my trash and my recycling over the last few years is to take my own containers to the butcher's, my own reusable vegetable bags to the greengrocer's or supermarket and to buy dry goods in bulk, again in my own containers.  Our two daughters will shortly be returning to university, so we had a family outing to the nearest dry goods store with almost every plastic and glass container that we had in the house and we have stocked up on all things like oats, dried fruit, nuts, rice,  and I can't think what else, but lots more.  The only packaging from that entire enormous shop was a large tub that contained peanut butter.  Senior daughter is running a marathon in a couple of weeks and she's getting through a lot of peanut butter.  We decided the tub looked like a useful container and it was probably equivalent to three of the glass jars we've been buying.  So it seemed like a reasonable packaging option.

Once you get into the Zero Waste idea, I think you shop differently. If we can shop packaging free, we do.  Otherwise, I think we always ask ourselves the question: what will happen to the packaging post use? If it can be reused (then recycled) then we'll buy it.

The one exception seems to be shop bought crisps.  My solution is to retrain my brain to not eat them. But that's not something I'm going to ask the rest of the family to do.  However, quite by coincidence no crisp packet was finished on #TrashlessTuesday so it is just the tape in the bin.

Plastic Ocean

On Tuesday, I was invited to speak along with a fellow zero waster, Hannah, at The Oxford Waste Society.

The theme of the talk was cutting down on plastic packaging. Inspired by the horrific facts that she learnt about plastic pollution in our oceans, Hannah took on the challenge of living for a year without using any single use plastic. My own inspiration for my family's plastic free year was a little closer to home. I was upset by the amount of plastic waste in the hedgerows and ditches in our lovely Oxfordshire countryside.


It was great to hear about Hannah's plastic free experience and to see all of the life choices that I have made being embraced by someone else. It was really interesting to hear that even though Hannah has now finished her challenge year she plans to continue, as we have.

"How can I possibly go back?" she said.

I know that we have slipped back in some ways. There were things that were hard or not viable to buy without packaging.  The one think I can think of is frozen peas. We tried to grow peas in our plastic free year but they got devastated by some high winds when they were still not strong enough.
I don't know why I don't want to give them up, but I don't.

The other thing that has crept back into our household is packaged crisps. I have almost managed to give them up. But even I cracked last weekend when Mr Pitt opened a packet of cheesy biscuits and I found myself picking at them.

At this point, I should say that our plastic free year wasn't supposed to be about giving up. It was about finding alternatives that were not packaged. We experimented with making home made crisps from vegetable peel and that works well. I managed to switch to snacking on dried fruit and nuts which I bought unpackaged from SESI Oxford. I haven't stopped doing that. When I  find myself nibbling away at packaged snacks at events I stop.

Home made butternut squash crisps

So reflecting on my packaged snacks nibbling last Sunday at home made me think. When you make a conscious decision about something you feel strongly about, it isn't that hard to stick to it. So I have munched my last packaged snack. That's it. I am done with them.

I can't speak for the rest of the family, but I am going to be strong willed and stick to my principles and I will draw support from Hannah's "How can I possibly go back?"

My single-use plastic collected from one year

When we did our plastic free year we ended up with one "plastic cat-food bag" full of single-use plastic and my view was that we hadn't succeeded in our challenge.  It is only afterwards in talking about it at events like the Oxford Waste Society meeting, that I have realised that what we achieved was in any way surprising.  Imagine if this was the amount of plastic produced in every household in the UK.  It is hard to remember how much plastic we produced before the plastic-free year (2015), but I would guess I may have produced four or five times that amount. I didn't measure our plastic from last year but taking a guess I would say it was probably only double. So I'm wondering if seeing and measuring waste in this way has any effect on consumption.

I had a realisation at the beginning of the year that the only thing likely to be in my bin at the end of the year is crisp packets and the non recyclable wrappers from a bag of Cadbury's Roses that were brought to our house at Christmas.

I still think that this waste will be less than an old style plastic carrier bag full over a whole year.  I plan to check, so I am keeping all the wrappers that are non-recyclable in one of my (recyclable, but also reusable for many purposes) cat-food bags to see what we gather in a year.

Talking Rubbish on Radio Four PM

On Friday I was invited to be part of a panel of experts on Radio Four's PM programme.

All week PM has been talking rubbish in an effort to get people thinking about packaging, what they are prepared to accept and how they dispose of it.  Listeners were invited to voice their opinions and to send in their questions to the panel of experts made up of Karen Cannard of The Rubbish Diet, Dominic Hogg of Eunomia and myself.

Here are the links to the programme each day with timings for the relevant section.

Monday  - 17:24 http://bbc.in/2j0cQzI
Tuesday -  17:36  http://bbc.in/2j4jSnq 
Wednesday -  17.45 http://bbc.in/2ikukpG
Thursday   - 17:20  http://bbc.in/2iLCzsk
Friday  - 17.45  http://bbc.in/2iLCzsk

The studio at BBC Oxford.  Just me on my own hoping
 the tech would work.  It did and it sounded like we were
 all sharing a jolly cup of tea together!

We had some great questions sent in. We couldn't all answer all of the questions so here's a bit more from me.

Stephen from Gibralter - Wed 11th
Thanks for your great reports on the recycling of plastic.

I understand that some plastic products may not be easily recycled but is it really beyond the potential of the scientific community to come up with an effective process that would allow for the 'mulching up' of all types of plastics into a solid mass? Even if this 'by-product' only goes towards controlling the vast spread of plastic that seems to be reaching all corners of the earth & sea. Who knows, we might even find some commercial use for it. Construction, insulation, transport etc. Might inspire a few entrepreneurs to make some more money from plastics.

There’s now lots of technology that can sort plastic into different types, colours etc to enable it to be recycled.

Technically, I am pretty sure all plastic can be ‘mulched up’ into plastic flake or pellets and it can then be reused to make other products.  The issue with plastic is almost the same as the advantage of plastic.  It is lightweight to transport. However, it is bulky before it is broken down.  When transporting plastic for recycling you are transporting a lot of air.  The cost of the transport has to be factored in to the worth of recycling. 

Plastic is probably most difficult to recycle (or too costly to recycle) when it is mixed materials or heavily printed. Some plastic based packaging is both of these – such as crisp packets and chocolate wrappers. 

I think there is the technology to completely avoid any packaging that isn’t recyclable or compostable.  But research and change costs money, so consumers need to vote with their hard earned cash and force change. There are companies making money from plastics but the margins are very small, the transport costs are high and so are the insurance premiums as large quantities of stored plastics are a fire risk. 

As consumers, the more we demand that our products are made from recycled plastic, the more we are likely to see the value of recycled plastic increase.  This wouldn't necessarily mean an increase in price of the end product, because the increased demand will bring about economies of scale as the overheads of collecting and processing the recycled plastic will be spread over greater sales. So we can play a part in ensuring that companies make the transition from "virgin plastic" to "recycled plastic".  What I do is boycott products that don't use recycled plastic and support those that do.  If lots of people do that then it becomes a no-brainer for companies to make the switch.  They realise they have to in order to keep their market share.

Liz - Wed 11th
I wonder if we need to think of alternative solutions than simply what supermarkets are doing or not doing. For instance, can we avoid the need for packaging at all?

We certainly can avoid packaging for the most part through our shopping choices.  I set myself the challenge of buying nothing in single use plastic for a whole year and many of the changes I made then have stuck with me now.

Bulk Barn is Canada's largest bulk food retailer and allows shoppers to buy most food products loose at the quantity they desire and place inside whatever container they have brought with them (eg jars or tupperware), or at most in a thin plastic bag.

As part of my zero plastic challenge, I found SESI Oxford - a food cooperative that buys produce by the sack full and you can take your own tubs along to refill them at East Oxford Market and various other outlets around Oxford.  This saves so much packaging. These services are brilliant, but sadly they are not everywhere yet.  In reality all supermarkets could offer such a service -  they just don't yet, because consumers haven't started deserting in droves to go to their local refill centre.  If they did supermarkets would be onto it in the blink of an eye.

Veg box suppliers such as Abel and Cole also use far less, if any packaging, than supermarkets and most is cardboard or paper rather than plastic.

I found that Cultivate, a local farm cooperative, also used minimal packaging and I could return it for reuse. I also use a local greengrocer, where not only is most of the produce sold loose, it is from local farmers and doesn't exclude the wonky veg.   

Val - Nethy Bridge, Scotland - Wed 11th
A question re recycling: how clean do things have to be?

We have a private water supply which makes me more aware of water usage (no doubt a meter has the same effect). There are some things which take so much washing - ketchup and soy sauce bottles for example- that I am sure I would use more resources cleaning them than it's worth.

This is a great question, and one I'm often asked. When I wrote my book, 101 Ways to Live Cleaner and Greener for Free, I put this question to various waste management professionals. This is what I concluded. You need to empty out and rinse food packaging enough to remove any leftover food. 
You can’t recycle a foil carton when it still contains half a shepherds pie, so you do need to scrape out any food remains into your food bin or compost bin. Besides, that way the leftover food can also become a valuable resource to make compost or energy.

All recyclables are cleaned in the process of recycling, so they don’t need to be pristine. I don’t rinse wine/beer bottles, but I rinse most things, just giving it a swill at the end of the washing up so I’m not using extra water. I have returnable glass milk bottles, but if I had plastic, I’d rinse them certainly.  I just think about the people that have to deal with all this stuff.  Un-rinsed milk bottles in even moderate heat really stink. An un-rinsed soy sauce bottle won’t offend anyone.

For rinsing things like food cans or ketchup, I always use up the last bit of things like that in sauces.  I swill a little clean water round a bottle or can to add it into the sauce /stew/ gravy I’m making.

When I spoke to the manager of the company that collects and sorts the waste and recycling in my area his opinion was this:  it doesn’t really matter if there’s an inch of wine left in the bottom of the bottle. It's far more important that every wine bottle gets collected, rather than worrying about whether or not the bottles are rinsed.  My view: who wastes an inch of wine? Really?

Shelagh - Wed 11th 
For many years I have been trying to get Sainsbury's to re-introduce their system of boxes which a number of customers still use. We have had ours for going on 40 years! We do not, therefore, ever use plastic bags.  The boxes fit special box trolleys and tesselate when stored. This system also means we get through the check out much quicker than those with bags, which collapse, fall over and split.

Keep trying! Perhaps they were ahead of the curve.  They probably stopped it because it maybe didn’t have enough uptake.  I think things are changing now.  We might see such schemes back again. I remember one issue, was that some people used them to carry bagged stuff in them.  I remember thinking at the time that it was defeating the object.  Consumer behaviour is key to forcing the hand of supermarkets.

On the programme on Friday, presenter, Paddy O'Connell brought up the issue of why we have to buy a new spray mechanism every time we buy a new spray cleaner.  I thought refills for these used to be available. I don't know why they aren't, but I certainly couldn't see any when I went to check today in a Sainsbury's supermarket.  This is definitely worth investigating and I plan to check it out further.

Kevin - Wed 11th
Why can't bubble wrap and cling film and celophane be recycled?

It can be recycled.  Not all local authorities collect it, but some do.  It is usually a cost issue as flyaway plastics can cause littering during collection and it can be more costly to transport making recycling uneconomic.

Personally I always give any bubble wrap I acquire to my local charity shop – as reuse is better than recycling.  I mostly avoid cling film using airtight containers or just putting a plate over the dish.  You can also get a reusable cling film substitute called bee wrap.  I have some of that too.

Jerry - Wed 11th 
Is it really economical and environmentally friendly to wash out yoghurt pots and margarine tubs to make them acceptable for recycling?

If you just give messy yoghurt pots a quick rinse at the end of the washing up that's enough, but if you have done a good job of eating every last bit of the yoghurt you can recycle it without rinsing.  As for a margarine tub – use up all the margarine and you don’t need to rinse.

John, Aberdeen - Wed 11th
As some councils can accept plastic film, butter and other spread tubs, etc. for recycling I have assumed that they were quicker than others at signing up contracts and the demand for those recyclates is limited. Am I right?

It is more often to do with geographical availability of recycling facilities for the different materials.  In some areas the cost would outweigh the benefit, whereas other areas would have a cost effective outlet for recyclable materials.

It can also be to do with where in the contract cycle a council is as more and more revenue streams for recyclables are opening up, but if a council is one year into a five year contract it is harder to make changes than if they are coming towards the end of a contract and about to renew.

Samuel (aged 9) - Wed 11th
In Edinburgh were I live, we have one bin for all paper, cardboard, plastic, tins, and a separate box for glass. What I would like to ask you is what happens to it? How do they sort it and recycle it? (**why do councils do it differently - what are the consequences)

If you get the chance to visit a Materials Recovery Centre (MRF pronounced "MURF") you should go. They do sometimes do school visits. They are fascinating places – the technology involved in sorting materials is often quite surprising.  They use all sorts of things from gravity and air, to lasers detecting different light rays coming from the plastic to sort it by colour.  Some MRFs have good websites that you can look at and see what happens.  This is a good YOUTUBE video that shows you the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc

Councils are responsible for their own waste and recycling contracts and that results in lots of different systems all over the country.  That means that the public are often very confused about how things work.  I think it would be great to have a standardised system, and maybe one day soon that will happen.  Recycling rates seem to be higher in countries that do have standardised systems. 

There's information about the different methods of recycling in my book, along with facts and figures about what difference it makes to our carbon footprint (pages 90-97).

Carol - Bristol - Wed 11th 
We have, at home, many, many VHS video tapes and CDs and DVDs, that are blank or started off blank. It isn't clear that those non pre-recorded media are recycled by any business or local council. We've been hanging onto them for years now, along with old cassette tapes, until someone recycles them, but do you think it will happen? What is the environmental impact of the materials in these media going to landfill and if they were recycled what would the materials be recycled into?

Video and audio tapes can cause a lot of problems and costs if they find their way into mixed recycling as the tape can clog up the machinery. I did manage to find a specialist company in Bristol that recycles media – EMS Europe.  I know that it was getting increasingly difficult though, so I don’t know if they still operate their recycling scheme.  Terracycle recycles various forms of media but it is a chargeable service.  They are costly items to take apart and the recovered material is of low or no value.  Streaming and downloading is a huge help, as there isn’t the physical waste from this. But we have a whole lot of media waste to dispose of at the moment, brought about by changing technology.

I wonder if any company who has made mega-bucks from the selling of such items would consider paying for the recycling of them now? Don't you think they should?

Martin - Edinburgh - Wed 11th
Would you tell me, if we introduced recycling of packaging in all supermarkets, as they do in Germany and some other EU nations, how much difference would it make to recycling levels, to the consumer and the economy as a whole?

Personally, I think it may not help recycling rates.  Look at how many people used to get new plastic bags – 6, 8 maybe 10 a week, because they didn’t think about bringing their own from the previous shop.  I think we would be better working towards reducing packaging as much as possible, whilst still protecting goods from damage and waste, and having more standardisation around the country.  

If there was more understanding and less confusion then more people would recycle more stuff. I hope that we will get to the stage where people do feel ashamed of being wasteful. Apparently not many of us are there yet, but I think as the realisation of how much the use of resources impacts climate change, we will start to adapt and change our ways.  Education (and resulting consumer / peer pressure) is key to this, I think.

Megan (primary school teacher)
What important message about packaging and waste do our experts think she should be passing on to the children in her class?

I think the most important message to pass on to children is that we need to think resources, rather than rubbish. Every time we have something we don't need anymore and want to dispose of it, we need to think: "How best can this be made use of?"

It is really important to understand the Waste Hierarchy. This is definitely something to cover carefully in primary and secondary schools. (It is in my book). Reduce, reuse and recycle is also a key message. But I think it helps if children understand why.

There are three advantages to recycling

1. Stuff that we make requires resources (materials) that we might have lots of on the planet at the moment but not an infinite supply. So one day the materials might run out if we overuse them. Often getting raw materials creates pollution and destroys habitat.

2. When we throw stuff away rather than recycling there are still places where that stuff has to go to landfill. We are running out of spaces for landfill. In many cases mixed waste in landfill is creating greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.

3. Making things from recycled materials rather than raw materials takes less energy. E.g. an aluminium can from recycled aluminium uses only 5% of the energy compared to a can from raw materials. Paper from recycled paper takes 45% less energy. Looking at the maths and science behind the figures is fun and shows why recycling makes sense and helps reduce carbon footprint.

Again, there's lots of information in my book that can help with this. I use the book for years four, five and six as well as in my Dustbin Diet for secondary schools, where children make their own version of the book. Here's the version made by Henry Box School in Witney.

You can also download a free bingo game based on the facts and figure in the book.

Recycling rates are stagnating  (except in Wales, where they are doing a great job at waste management). Food waste is increasing and many large retailers are reporting record sales, which I presume means we are buying more and more stuff and no doubt wasting more and more stuff. So it is great that the subject of waste and packaging is being discussed on prime time radio. I feel the Radio Four PM team did a great job and hopefully they will inspire people to think about packaging and perhaps start influencing a packaging revolution by encouraging people to choose carefully how they spend their hard earned cash.

For this we need to thank the research and production team. I found out that Emma Close put forward the idea and Emma Rippon bravely commissioned the series. Thank you to both of you. Then Ruth Edwards and Xavier Zapata with presenter Paddy O'Connell researched the issues. Tomas Morgan, the BBC correspondent in Wales, made the wonderful piece on how Wales is excelling on recycling.A big thank you to all of you for raising this important issue and at a time when people are generally receptive to change.

A year without plastic - the good bits

Trying to avoid single-use plastic for a year is the hardest challenge I have tried. The reason behind this strange decision that we took was this: I wanted to see if today’s highly packaged lifestyle is necessary and beneficial or not.  How uncomfortable would it be to manage without plastic packaging?

For me, the most uncomfortable part of the whole challenge is that it involved my family and not just myself.  When I have set myself challenges before, which I do most years, it has really been only up to me whether or not I succeeded in my challenge. Involving other people is always going to be harder, but it can also seem more rewarding - or at least that's what I feel now, looking back on what we achieved as a family. 

It was at times frustrating, like when I asked at the covered market in Oxford if I could have some cheese without any plastic wrapper - the guy said "yes, of course" then snuck in the plastic wrapping anyway. Uhh!  Like when I carefully look for packaging that seems plastic free - I open up a cardboard box and find that inside the contents are wrapped in plastic. But I'm getting wise to that one now!

So, it wasn't 100% successful.  However, it was certainly not all bad. In one year we’ve ended up with a 2.5kg cat food bag filled with scrunched up plastic.  It weighed 770 grams.  Even though I can’t say we achieved our challenge, we have cut down our packaging enormously. I’m pretty sure I used to produce about that much plastic in a month, never mind a year.

Here’s what I’ve learnt.
1. Living without plastic requires organisation. It’s when I haven’t planned ahead that I’ve had to buy plastic packaged goods. Having a good stock of dry goods, store cupboard ingredients and buying cat food in bulk helps.
2. Plastic avoidance requires making sure you take lunch, snacks and drinks with you when you are out and about (a huge money saver!) I have a stainless steel flask for water and I make a lunch of leftovers, or a couscous or pasta salad in a Tupperware container. For that boredom/comfort eating I take a small pot of dried fruit and nuts, which I buy in bulk from refill outlets such as Wholefoods Market in Cheltenham or SESI in Oxford when I’m passing by that way.
3. I bake my own bread, cakes, biscuits and oatcakes. Much tastier than anything shop-bought.
4. I cut out crisps, sweets and other plastic wrapped snacks. For me crisps were the hardest challenge, but finding other snacks like nuts, olives, roasted giant corn and dried fruit has helped. Much healthier!
5. Going plastic free gets easier as you learn how and where to shop. At first I thought I was spending more money, but now I’ve learnt where to shop, I save money.
6.Fresh fruit and vegetables are easily found. Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have plenty of loose fruit and veg, and Coop has some availability. I'm sure other supermarkets are the same. However, the best place I found was a local green grocer - the traditional kind - my local is Alan’s Orchard in Carterton and it really is excellent.
7. I buy good local meat and eggs, unpackaged (as you can take your own tubs/reuse your egg-boxes) at my local Butcher's - Patrick Strainge in Bampton.  If you are in the area - don't miss it! It is well-known for its award winning sausages. They also have wonderful pasties, sausage rolls and that sort of thing, which we've used as a way of keeping our holiday travel plastic free.  We have just taken a big tub with a clip lid with us on the day of departure (or the day before) and filled it with goodies.  Much nicer than anything I've ever had from a plastic packet.

So that's the good bits. What about the bad bits? Cheese, cucumber and peas unpackaged? Forget it. Way too stressful!

Shopping Naked

It has been maybe ten years now that the Pitt family have only needed to put their 'general waste' bin out for collection once or twice in a year and even then it hasn't had much in it.  This was the photo of our entire residual waste for 2013.

Residual Waste for 2013

Now, it helps, of course, living in West Oxfordshire, where there really isn't very much at all that can't be recycled in your kerbside collection boxes - and they even take flyaway plastics as long as they are bagged up so they don't fly away during the collection process.  I've also actively taken steps to think about my residual waste each year and have tried to avoid buying things that can't be reused, recycled, composted or burnt on my stove - or things that have packaging that can't be recycled, reused etc.  And I've done that for a while now, so zero waste has become a habit.

But, this morning I put out four black boxes each of which was fairly full of recyclables. I'm pretty sure I put out four boxes, if not five, the week before and similar the week before that.  That's a lot of packaging for one family.  I have taken in the recycling from the cricket club annual dinner and we also had a rather large 18th birthday party, but it really has none-the-less got my attention. So I decided that over the next few weeks I'm going to really try hard to reduce the amount of packaging I amass.

We have for a long time bought much of our fruit and vegetables loose and last year I converted a patch of garden to grow salad herbs in order to provide unpackaged salad leaves.  My local butcher will accept my various reusable plastic boxes for when I buy meat.  I've been experimenting with making homemade snacks, particularly to reduce food waste as well as to reduce packaging.  But there are still so many things that come in a plastic bag.

I came across this write-up of Whole Foods Markets supermarket chain on the plasticisrubbish.com blog and it dawned on me that on one of my now very occasional journeys that I still make by car I drive right past the one in Cheltenham.  So today, I went prepared with a reusable shopping bag and my tiny bag of 'Onya Weigh Bags' - which are reusable, washable very lightweight mesh bags and checked out the Cheltenham branch of Whole Foods Market.

The selection of fruit and veg looked very inviting, but I had come to investigate those cupboard store ingredients like dried fruit, cereals, rice and pasta that are rarely found sold loose.

I came away with the following haul:

1. UK sourced jumbo oats at £1.09/kg.  The last box of oats I bought - because it was the only one I could see that was UK sourced with entirely recyclable packaging - is currently £2.70/kg in Sainsbury's.

2. Organic arborio rice £2.99/kg.  The last box I bought was priced at £2.20/kg from Sainsbury's.

3. Brown basmati rice at £2.39/kg.  Sainsbury's brown basmati rice is £1.80/kg

4. Organic raisins £5.99/kg. Sainsbury's organic raisins are £5.00/kg but the raisins I usually buy there are £3.00/kg.

5. Dry roasted peanuts £5.39/kg.  The cheapest dry roasted peanuts in Sainsbury's are £4.40/kg but I wouldn't buy them as the packaging isn't recyclable even in West Oxfordshire.  The ones I'd likely buy were £6.70/kg.

Price wise, it seems you win some you loose some.  If I'd bought around a kilo of each item then given the 30p discount Whole Foods Market gave me for using my own bags then I paid £1.15 more than I'd have paid buying what I'd normally buy at Sainsbury's or 85p less if I'd have chosen organic raisins.  I did a taste test on the raisins I had left at home and the ones I'd just bought and the latter were definitely tastier.  I doubt that's just down to freshness as raisins don't last long in our house.

So price-wise I felt it was ok and quality wise and packaging wise I'd give it top marks.  I love the fact that I would soon know exactly how much I can buy to fill my storage containers for each item and I loved the fact that I was left with no packaging to recycle.  I also cheekily took the opportunity to check out my Onya bags on the scales compared to the paper bags the shop provides and my Onya bags weighed a tiny bit less.  I will be shopping there again next time I pass.

I was only disappointed that there was no bulk buy plastic free pasta.  So it looks like I will have to try and make my own :)

The Paperless Office

My office is a sea of paperwork going back 20 years.

I'm aiming to reduce the amount of paper I'm storing by around 75% before the end of the year.  Want to join me?  The plan is to part with all that old paper work you don't need and get it into your recycling bin.  Making paper out of recycled paper uses 45% less energy than making it from the virgin wood pulp.  Recycling one tonne of paper saves around 17 trees.  As paper is pretty heavy, I reckon I can save at least one tree all on my own.

I'm going to weigh the paper I recycle, because I do crazy things like that, so I'll let you know if I've saved a tree by Christmas!

Over the coming weeks I'll post my 12 steps to reducing your paper mountain by 75%


Are you ready... here's a nice easy one to get you started!

Week 1.  Pull out all your old magazines.  You can either give these away or put them in your recycling box/bank.  Every magazine you recycle, makes about enough carbon saving to watch the next six episodes of Downton Abbey!

This week I've recycled:

12 x Writer magazines
4 parenting magazines
4 copies of Woman and Home
3 travel magazines
2 copies of Golfer magazine
2 copies of  RSPB's Birds
1 copy of Good Housekeeping
1 weekend Observer magazine
1 Guardian weekly guide
1 copy of Time magazine (from 1996!)
1 copy of l'Equipe
1 copy of Marie Claire
1 brochure from Oxford University's Continuing Education Department

Yes, I'm a bit of a magazine hoarder, I confess, but I'm sure this is not unusual.  These magazines have a combined weight of 8843 grammes.

If I really want to save a tree by Christmas, then I'd actually need to recycle 58,823.5 grammes in total.  So I've still got just under 50kg to go.  Hmm!  I wonder..?

For next week, you'll need a shredder.  If you don't have one, then maybe you can borrow one from a friend or from work.

The Post Christmas Clean-up

Happy New Year!

Here's my post Christmas tidy-up schedule.

Eat any leftover Christmas pudding for breakfast.
(That's my favourite bit of tidying up)

Collect up all the empty gift bags to use next year. This year I didn't have to buy a single gift bag but I have got pretty good at rounding up any abandoned bags left by my Christmas guests. Given that gift bags can be anything from about 80p to £2.50 and that I'm no good at wrapping up I think I must have saved about £20 by re-using gift bags and most of them seem to have found their way back to me ready for next year.

Extract all the ribbons and bows from the Christmas present unwrapping. So you don't need to buy any for next Christmas. More money saving.

Cut up Christmas cards to make labels for next year.
 But don't do what I did and lose them. This year I've made sure to keep them next to my stock of gift bags so I'll know where to find them.

Recycle your Christmas Tree.
For a few years I had a pot-grown Christmas Tree which was great but it didn't survive more than about five years of neglect. Since then I've not been organised enough to find a pot-grown tree at a reasonable price. But most local councils offer a shredding service for Christmas Trees now. We used to have to take our tree to one of several local car parks for shredding. That was always a messy business that I felt a lot of people wouldn't bother with so it is great that many local councils now pick up Christmas Trees along with the normal waste and recycling collections this week or next week. Check out your local council's website for details.

Free Fuel

Last Christmas I was given a briquette maker - one of those metal contraptions you use to turn waste paper into 'logs' to burn on the fire.

I was mad keen to give it a go but a quick read of the instructions and a bit of common sense told me it was not a job for January. The main thing about making waste paper briquettes is that the paper needs to be soaked before you make them and then they need to be able to dry out. So... a job for the summer, it seemed.

But having sensibly put my briquette maker away until the weather was right, you may have guessed it, I never once thought about making myself some winter fuel this summer. However, on a gloriously sunny day in mid September I remembered my plan and went to survey the pile of newspapers that I'd been donated by my grandmother. It was a big pile. Better late than never, I thought, and set to work making my briquettes. By this time I had of course lost the instructions so a quick search on Google led me to this video from http://www.downthelane.net.  What was bothering me slightly was that the newspapers I was shredding up could easily have been recycled so other than the benefit of hopefully gaining a little bit of free heat was I really being environmentally friendly turning newspapers into fuel?  As we have two wood-burners and a Rayburn we get through a lot of wood in a year, most of which we manage ourselves from a small woodland.  Chopping wood, where ever it comes from always generates wood chippings and there is lots of waste from the smaller brushwood, and other than a useful mulch for flower beds and around our new trees it pretty much seems like a waste product, so I decided to add a bit to my paper mix to see what happened.

Having set my mixture to soak for a few days I went to inspect and it seemed to be a suitably gooey mess. So I spent a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine making 36 paper and wood-chip briquettes. Are they going to dry I wondered?

I left the soggy creations on a palette in an open barn hoping that if the sunshine didn't last at least the wind might dry them out. Little did I know our Indian Summer would continue.  This morning I went to inspect my briquettes and they were nicely dried out. Here they are stocked in my shed ready for use.  I'll let you know how they burn!

TIP: I think one of these briquette makers makes a great present, but really, why buy one? - just borrow. Anyone who has one will only be using it for a few days a year!

Christmas Shopping

I don't even like to think about Christmas shopping until December. But December is here whether I'm ready or not.

This year I want to make a more conscious effort to ensure that the presents I give don't contribute to the ever increasing landfill problem, so I've been having a good look at the packaging of everything I buy.

Yesterday, I raided the cupboard under the stairs and retrieved all the Christmas gift bags from last year ( or the year before, or the year before that maybe!). I found 15 bags. I have now bought two rolls of wrapping paper from Oxfam, made of 100% recycled paper and which can, of course, be recycled after use.

I've bought a few bottles of wine. I know that won't go to waste and most people that I know these days recycle their glass. Every ton of recycled glass used saves 1.2 tons of raw material.

I also bought some big tins of Quality Street. It tells you on the box that the outer coloured wrapper can be composted, the inner aluminium recycles just like a drinks can and of course the tin can be used again and again until it gets so battered it too needs to be recycled.

Books will certainly be featuring in my Christmas purchases - no packaging and they can be passed on to friends or charity shops when people have finished with them. If you feel bad about writers missing out on royalties when you pass on books to friends, have a look to see if they have websites where you can donate the equivalent sum of money they would have received in royalties if the book had been bought new.

Toys are always the things I'm most wary of, packaging wise and so I've decided to try and get the shopping done this week so I'm not making last minute decisions that tend to stop me from even considering what packaging surrounds the gift. Hopefully that way, too, I won't be responsible for frustrated children and parents spending hours trying to find their way into the toys through the hundred completely useless layers of plastic and cardboard wired and glued together, supposedly to make something look better than it is.

Happy shopping and Merry Christmas!

Bottle tops

I checked out with my local recycling people today and found out that, yes, we can put metal and plastic bottle tops in our curb-side recycling boxes*. I delved a little further and found out that the best thing to do is to collect them up into a can – for steel caps use a steel food can such as a baked bean tin - then squash the can with the tops inside it so they can't fall out. This apparently helps to make sure they are efficiently recycled and don't get in amongst other materials such as paper and plastics. I'm told it helps not to have small bits of materials (of any kind) on their own as they fall through the holes in the separation process and end up being dealt with as mixed "fines" which are either land-filled or incinerated.

I also enquired at a local craft supplies place – they turn scrap into art and craft materials – and they take metal beer bottle tops there. So, if your local council don't collect them maybe you could find a place like this near you.

* Your local authority may have a different policy so, if in doubt just email them and ask.

Plastic Bag Recycling

Did you know that......?

'Flat plastic bags are hard to remove from paper and are easily contaminated by the leftover liquids in beverage containers. If plastic bags are to be collected in a program, residents should be required to place the bags within other bags and only set out full bags,not loose individual ones.' Source:
http://www.conservatree.com/learn/SolidWaste/BestPracticesManual021407.pdf

You may have noticed that larger branches of Sainsbury have plastic bag recycling facilities. In my local branch it is situated just inside the main door, rather than at the recycling point. Have you also noticed that on a lot of plastic bags that form the packaging e.g. of fruit and vegetables Sainsbury now print 'Recyclable at larger branches of Sainsbury'?

I try to buy fruit and vegetables without packaging, but I find this is not always practical. When I do have plastic bags from such packaging I check they are clean and store them for reuse. I use them for wrapping sandwiches and storing garden produce in the fridge or freezer. I haven't had to buy food bags for over a year as even though I try to minimise the packaging I acquire from shopping it provides me with enough bags for whatever I need.

I did wonder if my children would complain at having their sandwiches packed in an apple bag or the film from bread rolls – children are always so conscious these days of how things look – but they don't. I conclude that it must fit with the new eco-chic.

As these bags are only intended for single use, I only re-use them once or twice. I then rinse them and collect them into a largish plastic wrapper which has fulfilled its reuse already, then take them with me a couple of times a month to put in the recycling container at Sainsbury.

Does anyone know of other supermarkets that have similar recycling materials? My intention is to promote waste reduction, not Sainsbury, but I just happen to live near one. I'll be on the look-out if I am out and about elsewhere but please let me know of similar facilities in your area.

Thanks.

Rosie

Stocking Fillers

 

I was thinking about Stocking Fillers this Christmas.

It is fun to open lots of little Christmas presents in our Christmas Stockings. Like me, you are probably being bombarded with emails about cheap stuff you can buy your loved ones this Christmas.

I am going to think about one thing when I buy my stocking fillers this year: where will the stocking fillers end up?

If it is something that will provide 5 minutes of fun and can then be passed on and on and on, then I guess that's ok. But is anyone going to want it? Is it really just going to end up in landfill by the end of March? Perhaps it will go via the Charity Shop in an attempt to appease your conscience – but landfill is landfill, rubbish is rubbish.

Have a look at The Story of Stuff!

I think these would make good stocking fillers though: http://www.recycline.com/toothbrush.html

 

 

 

All Wrapped Up

I'm sure lots of people have been out buying Christmas cards and wrapping paper this week.

I like the range at Oxfam.

What I like about it most is that it is made from recycled materials and can be recycled again after use. The clear label tells me the wrapping paper I chose was made from 100% recycled paper. It also asks "When you have finished with this wrap please recycle it."

The Christmas cards told me they were printed on 50% recycled paper and FSC sourced wood pulp. What is more, the packaging is scant but robust with no plastic wrap.

Perfect!

 

New EU laws for Recycling Batteries

BBC News reported this morning that Britons will be expected to recycle far more batteries under a new European law which is coming into effect. The EU batteries directive requires that an eighth of all portable domestic batteries sold are recycled by 2012, rising to a fifth by 2016. At the moment only 3% of batteries in the UK are recycled and the government will now be expected to ensure the necessary facilities are in place. Read full article

 

Our local council run kerbside collection takes batteries for recycling. They ask that batteries are kept separate from other recyclables within your recycling box.

 

This whole issue, though, made me wonder why we don't always use rechargeable batteries and this led to thoughts about the environmental impact of disposable versus recyclable batteries. Think I might do some research.

 

Last year I bought one of these Freeloader gizmos. It was quite expensive and I have hardly used it. Most of the time I can't seem to find the right attachment to charge what I need and annoyingly neither of my children's mobile phones would connect to it despite the multitude of adapters. But perhaps it is time to give it another try. Are there any success stories about these things?