My war on waste!!!

pigpen

My 'tiny top-up shop' is usually in the region of £150 .. this isn't happening here.

If I go to the local shops I buy stuff loose anyway so no packaging and if there is any it can be recycled.. plastics or paper.

there is no milkman here, he had to find another job.. he charged as much for 1 pint as the local shop sells for 4pints in recyclable packaging... I cant afford that and clearly no one else could either.


My cats get what they are given too.. they bring home rats.. live and/or dead quite often.


I do however have 4 large recycle wheelie bins which are usually filled to overflowing ... and my 3 black wheelie bins.. I usually have about half a bin full every fortnight.. we don't do bad .. and the recycling keeps people in work.

lillibet_dripping

skogar wrote: »

You probably already do this but you can reuse wine and beer bottles for homebrewing. Much more energy efficient than sending them for recycling. If you use picked / foraged fruit then very little waste involved. Reusing jars for pickles, jams etc. I usually end up scrounging other peoples - just doing my bit for the planet. :rotfl::beer:

Hello skogar!
My cottage is surrounded by sloes and blackberries and I have, in the past, made my own wine. Trouble is, I was drinking it too quickly!!!
We are not huge chutney/pickle fans in this house, but I do keep 'pretty' jars for buttons, paperclips, loose change etc. and will often give homemade jams as Winter Solstice gifts (don't 'do' Christmas!!).

lillibet_dripping

meritaten wrote: »

sorry lillibet! I have viewed, then gone away again to think. hmmm - I take for granted that I take my own bags shopping (we have had the carrier bag charge here in Wales for some years now - but I used to take my own bags for main shopping prior to that).
I do recycle - my recycle bin goes out far fuller than the 'rubbish' bin! I figure I am keeping 'someone' in employment in the recycling centre to sort it.
I like to re-use or re-purpose things. will paint old things and fix them up if I can.
I recently unpicked all my granddaughters 0 - 6 months baby cardies and sweaters I had knitted, and crocheted a cot blanket for her - her mum brought up a bin liner full of 6 - 12 months clothes I had knitted with a request for a bigger blanket. any buttons I can salvage go back in the 'button box' to be re-used.
I hardly ever buy 'new clothes' even though I can afford it - Charity shops are full of hardly worn or never worn clothes and accessories. and I do tend to have my own 'style' rather than follow the latest 'trend'. They are also full of quirky 'stuff'! or 'useful stuff' like the little glass jug which cost me 50p, and is the ideal size for mint sauce or a drop of cream. and cat plates - for some reason I get through a lot of cat plates!
They are also a marvellous source of kids toys - which as I mind said grandchild for mum to work, means I can have a good supply of age appropriate toys for her (plastic ones get dunked in steriliser and others just get wiped with steriliser).
and they go back to CS when she is finished with them (I have always done this and have 7 grandkids).
I could probably do more - so will read this thread with interest.

Hello Meritaten!
You seem to be doing great with the recycling already!
I wish I could crochet. I can knit (after a fashion!) but have tried and tried but can't get the hang of crochet.

I thought I was pretty recycling savvy but having read the zero-waste blogs I have ramped everything up a gear. I don't think I will ever manage zero waste but aiming for it has presented a whole new challenge.

It is still very early days, but one big change I've made is to shop mindfully. I have to confess I felt incredibly powerful asking for my ham to be put in my own container!!

Baby steps, but it's a start........

thriftwizard

I've shamelessly used a shopping trolley since I was in my mid-20s and living in Westminster. It's easy to carry loose fruit & veg in one of those; I can get almost enough food for 7 of us for a week in my current one. And I've always preferred to shop at local markets, and we're lucky enough to have one just round the corner here; on visits back to London it seems that many of the local markets there have withered away to "grockletraps" just selling tat to tourists, no longer having good fresh food.

Loose fruit & veg are one thing, but meat & cheese are another. Currently the stallholders all use plastic bags, which I'm not too proud to wash out & re-use; I'd never thought of taking containers, but will have a think about what might be appropriate now.

We're a household of 7 and our black bin, collected every other week, is rarely full. I re-use bags, jars & bottles and the newspapers my OH insists on having are donated to next door's guinea pig "farm" (in reality, 7 much-loved pets!) or used on my chickenshed droppings board - the best use for a certain broadsheet, in my opinion, however good its sports reports & crossword.

I've had a couple of letters from our Council politely mentioning that I don't seem to be putting out a food waste bin for collection. To which I have patiently replied that there's no such thing around here... we have compost heaps, we have a Green Cone digester for bones, etc. and we have chickens... I'm also quite good at using up leftovers before they get to the stage where only the chickens would be interested in them. And I have a dehydrator, and a very good, big, stainless steel preserving pan, acquired for a fiver at the market years ago, so am quite good at using up gluts.

My own "war on waste" started many years ago, when it became apparent firstly that our collective profligate habits were damaging our own environment, and secondly that I'd ended up inadvertently contributing to the problem by producing rather a lot of offspring. We were never eligible for any "handouts" as OH always earned just above the limits, so I had to make every penny count. As the majority of them are still living with us, I still do!

lillibet_dripping

pigpen wrote: »

My 'tiny top-up shop' is usually in the region of £150 .. this isn't happening here.

If I go to the local shops I buy stuff loose anyway so no packaging and if there is any it can be recycled.. plastics or paper.

there is no milkman here, he had to find another job.. he charged as much for 1 pint as the local shop sells for 4pints in recyclable packaging... I cant afford that and clearly no one else could either.


My cats get what they are given too.. they bring home rats.. live and/or dead quite often.


I do however have 4 large recycle wheelie bins which are usually filled to overflowing ... and my 3 black wheelie bins.. I usually have about half a bin full every fortnight.. we don't do bad .. and the recycling keeps people in work.

Hello pigpen!
I've lost count of the number of nights I've spent trying to catch mice that are running around my bedroom because the cat has presented them to me alive!!

My next step in this challenge is to wean myself off of the supermarket and get to know my local shopkeepers. The biggest problem where I live is b****y parking. We have two excellent butchers in the town, plus bakers and greengrocers but parking is dire. That's where the supermarkets win hands down - and don't they know it.......

lillibet_dripping

thriftwizard wrote: »

We're a household of 7 and our black bin, collected every other week, is rarely full. I re-use bags, jars & bottles and the newspapers my OH insists on having are donated to next door's guinea pig "farm" (in reality, 7 much-loved pets!) or used on my chickenshed droppings board - the best use for a certain broadsheet, in my opinion, however good its sports reports & crossword.

I have 'trained' both sets of neighbours to donate their veg peelings etc to my compost bin! One set in particular used to throw food away on the dot of midnight (well, almost!) on the BB date:eek:

On a daily basis, I find carrier bags on the doorstep containing 'out-of-date' bread, rolls, croissants, tomatoes, cucumber - you name it, I get it!! It all goes to the chickens and rabbits...

Both sets of neighbours also tip their grass cuttings into the outdoor chicken run - my girls love rootling around for bugs and then eating the grass!

Today's baby step is my morning tea. For years, I have used tea bags, but they don't rot down very well in the compost heap. From the back of a cupboard, I retrieved a tiny, one-person tea pot and bought loose tea yesterday. I already had a tea strainer and it really isn't much more effort to make tea in this way. The leaves then go straight on the garden - RESULT!!!:T

eandjsmum

Hallo We have part of our garden turned over to fruit and veg. we grow currents, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, apples, gooseberries, chillies, peppers, tomatoes, courgettes, onions, beans, artichokes and potatoes.

Here we are lucky in that we can recycle electrical goods, and rags. We can also take old batteries to the local libraries for recycling, although we tend to use rechargeable batteries.

I keep a selection of carrier bags in the car for when I am at the supermarket and a rucksack with spare cotton bags for when I am in town.

When we first moved here we brought 2 dustbins as bin-bags get ripped open by cats and foxes. One of out dustbins has been re-purposed for plastics glass and tin recycling. All our bins are collected once a week.
Books are either borrowed or charity shop buys which can be returned and resold.
For 3 or 4 or us we put out a small amount of waste

PixieDust

another inspiring thread

lillibet_dripping

Hello eandjsmum!
Those big bins are useful, aren't they? I use two for my chicken feed. It would take a super-rat to nibble through those!

I think I might get another couple for the recycling. Our council supplies two different coloured lidded boxes - one for paper and the other for tins, plastics and glass. Trouble is, they are way too small!
We were also given a food caddy:rotfl: In this house, it goes in the freezer, the dog, the chickens or the compost bin:T

Something I noticed this morning is that the stuff the bread is packaged in is not kerb-recyclable apparently. Info on the wrapper says put it in with the carrier bag recycling at the supermarket.

parsniphead

A nice thread lillibet.

I used to be very good and put out one carrier bag of rubbish a month but have slipped in recent years, probably due to going from living alone to acquiring one husband and a small child.

I never put out a full wheelie bin, compost bits and reuse and recycle as much as possible but I could do much, much better.

I need to start training DH, I've started on DS.