My war on waste!!!

Frugalsod

camelot1001 wrote: »

I like your style! Would shopping locally help with waste? Do greengrocers still just put everything in your basket? None around here so I've lost touch.

My greengrocer sells most things without packaging, though I take my own bag in and get everything thrown in together. It will be eaten within a day or two anyway.

GreyQueen

Caterina wrote: »

However I have discovered with great dismay (I put a separate post up about this) that my local milk delivery company, Dairy Crest, are planning to discontinue glass bottles in 2016 and move to all plastic.:mad:

Sometimes it feels like a never ending uphill struggle!

My parents persisted with doorstep milk delivery for long after it would have been easier and cheaper to go to the supermarket. Their reasoning was that it kept 'Milko' in a job, was a useful service for the old folks who couldn't get out (not themselves) and the milk came in glass bottles which were reused. For this, they paid a premium over supermarket milk but considered that a 6 day a week delivery service and the reusable packaging made that worthwhile.

One by one, the dairy stripped away their unique selling points. Firstly, they went to alternate daily delivery and abandoned Saturdays. Then they switched away from reusable glass bottles. Then they screwed up the billing twice in as many months and accused two of their longest-standing and most scrupulously-honest customers of not paying.

Finally, the towel was thrown in by my parents and the other accused neighbours as they were paying a 50% premium for an identically-packaged plastic bottled product with an inflexible delivery schedule. I do think if the dairy had stuck with glass bottles, they'd still have their custom.

juno - wow!

Glad I don't live inside your head....................!

For the record, about the assistant being mildly irritated and the act, in itself, achieving nothing, you are of course, perfectly right. And at the same time, hugely wrong.

There is no change for the better in society which hasn't been achieved by individuals saying enough was enough and making conscious decisions to do differently. At personal inconvenience and to public mockery, in most cases, with plenty of neg-ferrets carping from the sidelines and saying that won't make any difference, you morons.

Gosh, imagine in the suffragettes and the abolitionists hadn't stood up to be counted, what fun we could be having now. But we might have been vaporised in a nuclear war and have interestingly-shaped relations. The US could still be fighting in Vietnam. And the NHS, why would we need that? If you can't pay privately, you deserve to suffer, you loser. Oh, and all those do-gooders who worked tirelessly for slum clearances, housing standards, rules about over-crowding, public sanitation, universal education- pah!

All worthwhile changes start small, apparently insignificantly, and are subject to public mockery. If one person per shift dumps unnecessary packaging at the till, the assistant mentally shrugs and bins it. If one person per hour does it, probably the same. If several people per hour, or every other person does it, the problem comes to the attention of Da Management. And they might think about doing things differently.

At the very least, you've made a point and put the unnecessary packaging onto the store's bottom line as a refuse/ recycling problem. Stores care passionately about their bottom lines.

Caterina

Thank you Grey Queen for responding so eloquently and in such good mannered tones, as always, to juno's post. I just felt incredulous then indignant when reading it but chose to ignore it rather than "feed the troll".

I am glad that you took your time to make such good and salient points in your well articulated and measured response. You are a credit to us all!

lillibet_dripping

Yes, thank you GQ - brilliant, as always.:T
I am fully aware that my celery packaging and the flimsy plastic sheet the deli counter used to weigh my ham will have been tossed in the bin without a thought, BUT if enough people did this then the supermarket would not be reaching THEIR OWN recycling targets and would have to do something about it.

I also chose to step over those idiotic remarks - I have far more important things to do:rotfl:

Rainy-Days

I know this is not going to be popular, but in a round-about way Juno is right! His deliverance of it could have been better, I agree, but the bottom line is that regardless the waste is still dealt with on a biopic scale by the supermarkets!

I don't recycle a huge amount, because our council has set requirements for recycling. No Tetrapac and no glass is just an example. In short what we can recycle is paper (not window envelopes and no shredded paper) empty bottles such as milk and drinks bottles and of course tins. Thats it. For us the paper and card goes into the log basket for burning on our log burner, so the actial amount going for recycling is frankly nominal.

When the recycling gets to its destination by the council the plastic bottles are taken out and bundled up into pallet sized cubes and then loaded onto a ship docked just off the Tyne and then sent over to Holland (I think) where they burn that for electrcity. The rest of the ordinary waste bin, general rubbish, gets sorted out, some of it goes for composting, but the rest then goes down to Teeside where it is burnt in a processing plant that again generates electrcity.

Regardless of whether it is household domestic waste or business, the same process happens. It makes little difference at all as to whether or not we refuse a bag; if the counter in the supermarket is using it to weigh goods (and you refuse to take the bag) out of clear hygiene requirements they have to dispose of that bag - and that is the law.

One final thing - if you are cooking your chicken in one of those roast-a-bags then frankly you want your head examining! How hard is it to roast it the right way? Plastic regardless of how it is treated is just that - it is a toxic substance especially when heated to high temperatures. I have never, not ever, advocated the use of these bags and in scientific tests they have been shown to give off certain dioxins, which then penetrate into the meat! Plastic is a by product of the petro chemical industry and the clue is in the word chemical! You use these things at your own peril, but for me (and for just about everybody I know), no one tarrys with theses bags at all!

juno

GreyQueen wrote: »

My parents persisted with doorstep milk delivery for long after it would have been easier and cheaper to go to the supermarket. Their reasoning was that it kept 'Milko' in a job, was a useful service for the old folks who couldn't get out (not themselves) and the milk came in glass bottles which were reused. For this, they paid a premium over supermarket milk but considered that a 6 day a week delivery service and the reusable packaging made that worthwhile.

One by one, the dairy stripped away their unique selling points. Firstly, they went to alternate daily delivery and abandoned Saturdays. Then they switched away from reusable glass bottles. Then they screwed up the billing twice in as many months and accused two of their longest-standing and most scrupulously-honest customers of not paying.

Finally, the towel was thrown in by my parents and the other accused neighbours as they were paying a 50% premium for an identically-packaged plastic bottled product with an inflexible delivery schedule. I do think if the dairy had stuck with glass bottles, they'd still have their custom.

juno - wow!

Glad I don't live inside your head....................!

For the record, about the assistant being mildly irritated and the act, in itself, achieving nothing, you are of course, perfectly right. And at the same time, hugely wrong.

There is no change for the better in society which hasn't been achieved by individuals saying enough was enough and making conscious decisions to do differently. At personal inconvenience and to public mockery, in most cases, with plenty of neg-ferrets carping from the sidelines and saying that won't make any difference, you morons.

Gosh, imagine in the suffragettes and the abolitionists hadn't stood up to be counted, what fun we could be having now. But we might have been vaporised in a nuclear war and have interestingly-shaped relations. The US could still be fighting in Vietnam. And the NHS, why would we need that? If you can't pay privately, you deserve to suffer, you loser. Oh, and all those do-gooders who worked tirelessly for slum clearances, housing standards, rules about over-crowding, public sanitation, universal education- pah!

All worthwhile changes start small, apparently insignificantly, and are subject to public mockery. If one person per shift dumps unnecessary packaging at the till, the assistant mentally shrugs and bins it. If one person per hour does it, probably the same. If several people per hour, or every other person does it, the problem comes to the attention of Da Management. And they might think about doing things differently.

At the very least, you've made a point and put the unnecessary packaging onto the store's bottom line as a refuse/ recycling problem. Stores care passionately about their bottom lines.

Have you ever worked in a supermarket? I don't think you have. The till assistant cannot do anything about waste. If they tell the management then that won't change anything - the manager can't change it, either. They will have a hundred things more important to do than to phone up the celery manufacturer and explain the problem. Even if that does get done, it's down to the person on the other end of the phone to actually do anything.

You are right that small changes will help, but they have to be useful changes. You would be much better to contact the head office of the supermarket, or even the manufacturer of the goods. What you're doing is making a fuss of "no waste in my house!" but then dumping it in someone else's bin. It's still going in the bin and isn't changing anything.

The supermarket bin, your bin, your neighbour's bin. It's all a bin. It's not changing the world.

maryb

I could easily manage with a much smaller general waste bin than I have but there is a huge problem with urban foxes and rats in our suburb and anything smaller gets knocked over and ends up all down the street.

My recycling bins are always full - fortunately our council lets you put out as many as you need. But it seems wrong that I should have so much packaging in the first place even if I do keep it out of landfill. I think our recyclable plastics go to a combined heat and power plant so I suppose one way to look at it is I've had a bit of extra use out of the oil before it gets burned. But I can't cut down any more than I have since I already buy ingredients rather than prepared food.

However I part company from a lot of you on composting. I have composted all my vegetable waste for years (but other food waste goes in the council food waste bucket). But both my original compost bin and its replacement have been gnawed right through by rats and I had to accept that composting at home was just attracting them even though I am very strict about not putting cooked or non vegetable waste in them. It got to the stage where I was nervous of taking the lid off the compost bin. So now I put everything in the council recycling. It still keeps it out of landfill and gets composted.

fuddle

I must admit I did think along the lines of it's still going in the bin when lillibet retold her tale, but that isn't the point. The point is lillibet is seeking to have no part in it from then on. She's trying to make a stand in my view and that has to be celebrated doesn't it really?

Personally I feel the only way to reduce packaging in the first place is to shop locally, face to face and request before you commit to buy. I am following this thread with interest because the amount of plastic in my recycling bin is a disgrace. I do hope we see a shift from 'recycling is good, job done' to not using extra packaging in the first place. Well done lillibet. I like your drive

juno

fuddle wrote: »

I must admit I did think along the lines of it's still going in the bin when lillibet retold her tale, but that isn't the point. The point is lillibet is seeking to have no part in it from then on. She's trying to make a stand in my view and that has to be celebrated doesn't it really?

Personally I feel the only way to reduce packaging in the first place is to shop locally, face to face and request before you commit to buy. I am following this thread with interest because the amount of plastic in my recycling bin is a disgrace. I do hope we see a shift from 'recycling is good, job done' to not using extra packaging in the first place. Well done lillibet. I like your drive

A stand is good, but only if people know it. And so far, nobody who actually needs to know (because they can do anything about it) will know. For this to work, she's even admitted that other people need to make it happen - the cashier has to notice, and then the cashier has to tell management, who then have to sort it. That's relying on other people rather than doing anything yourself.

Even writing to a newspaper or making an online petition would have more effect, because there's slightly more chance of the action leading to a result. At the moment, there is no result possible.

I'm not against change, and I'm not against the environment or reducing waste. But this is not reducing waste. It's moving the waste, and then hoping that someone else will do something.

mumps

We have three recycling boxes and one wheelie bin, boxes take glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, tins, silver paper, old clothes and shoes (mine go to the CS unless they are totally trashed) oh and we also have a compost bin. The waste gets collected it every fortnight. Sometimes I feel I have a fulltime job sorting it all out, if you put say paper in the cardboard/glass/silver foil bin they won't empty it. Recycle much more than we send to landfill.

We lost our local greengrocer and butcher which leaves me in a dilemma, I can walk to large supermarket and buy meat/veg/fruit or I can drive into town. Which do you think is greener? I haven't made up my mind.