Stumble It!Don’t bother..
“Shall I put the bin out Mum?” DS asked me this morning, knowing it was grey bin (landfill) collection day.
“No, don’t bother, there’s not a lot in it.”
I’m quite impressed.
Following the My Zero Waste example we’ve been recycling more after discovering the Tesco recycling machine a few weeks ago. It was out of order today so we brought out plastics home and will take them next week, or another day we’re going in that direction. We’re also being so much more careful about the waste attached to things we buy – which to be honest we’ve been naughty about until recently. I hadn’t realised quite how much volume the plastics take up in our bin. We get through a lot of milk and tend to buy the 2l plastic bottles and now they get rinsed, the labels peeled off and then flattened and stored and recycled. The bin is less than 1/4 full – really not worth putting out even knowing the next collection is 2 weeks away. I’m actually quite astounded at the huge difference it’s made – just the sheer volume and extrapolating that to every house on the street, in our town and onwards…… How much plastic that could be recycled isn’t? How much is in landfill? It’s scary.
So, having tackled the solid plastics – bottles, food trays etc – next is the soft plastics – bags and the like. I plan to investigate each fruit bag, each cheese wrapper and post those into the tesco recycling place as well, wherever possible. That should cut it down further.
Oh and more hens coming at the end of the week – that’s pretty much ALL our food waste being processed on site to enrich the garden, whether it’s directly into the compost or via an animal (we have a guinea pig as well and she likes the crunchy bits!) Hen pics will be posted when they’re here.
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February 17th, 2010 at 1:44 am
A few years ago, our counci didn’t have a recycling collection and so we set out plastic boxes to store the various recyclable bits of our waste and take them to the recycling bins at the supermarket. We composted our food waste. There was a weekly collection from the council of landfill waste and we would, on average, manage one half full bag a fortnight.
We try to be really careful about the packaging we bring home. We buy loose fruit and veg where we can and put it all stright in a cotton bag, but cashiers still seem determined to bag everything up.
Good on you for cutting down so much. In my house we’ve slackened off a little I think, and we will have to start making more of an effort again.
February 17th, 2010 at 11:48 am
We buy loose where we can as well. Taking the hard plastics to the recycling thing is something new for us and is another step along the way.
If everyone makes some small changes then together we can make a huge difference.