Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

teapot2

f

 What shocked me more than our 88 pieces of the stuff was the additional info emailed out with our 'Plastic Footprint' about what happens to our plastic waste - only a miserable 10% of it is recycled in the UK & 69% is incinerated!! I can't help but think that is very polluting in terms of air quality. You only have to think how horrid & chemically a domestic bonfire smells it we accidentally burn a piece of plastic. Ah well, some food for thought there, & we will defo take part next year to see if anything has improved.

F x

Thee is a landfill incineration site near my town and the landfill caught fire last year [lithium batteries?] the smell was awful and the air choking.  The company couldn't put the fire out so had to wait to bring up some giant diggers from down south to dig the fire out.  We were all advised to stay indoors and keep windows closed etc.  Scary experience on many levels.

foxgloves

@teapot2 - I can imagine how horrible that was, as well as scary with all the fumes.The problem is that as a species, we generate far, far too much waste - way more than is sustainable & it is a problem which needs addressing at source. For instance, something simple like fruit & veg. I can't see why pretty much all of it can't be sold loose with paper bags available for those who don't have their own net ones. Even berries. I know they are delicate & easily squashed, but I remember when I was a child, strawberries were sold in tough card punnets & these, like paper bags can simply be composted. Until fairly recently, supermarkets would have paper bags near the loose mushrooms as they keep better in those than plastic, but even these are now mostly in sweaty plastic packs.
Off down the garden later to progress growing our plastic-free supplies.
F

EssexHebridean

The mushrooms that were sold loose for you to pop into your own or a paper bag were nearly always Polish though, with the British ones only being available in the pre-packed. Very frustrating, and not always easy to tell, either!  our mushroom punnets definitely get a second life though - initially their are used for amassing bits for the compost bin ready to take outside, and then subsequently they get various uses in the garden - including standing cut-down toilet roll inners in with seedlings! 

It's the people you used to see in the shops carefully placing their bananas in plastic bags that always left me raging. I mean they quite literally come with their own little protective covers! 

foxgloves

Hello Pence-Savers,
Well, I didn't hold out much hope for my gardening day at 4.30 this morning when I awoke to rain dashing against our bedroom window, but O ye  of little faith......it perked up quite quickly & after fortifying myself with porridge & 2 coffees, I laced my boots on & headed down the garden. Today's budget-helping positives:
*Lifted an almost empty compost bin off what was left so as not to waste any precious compost. Once I wasn't having to stand on my head to access it, I could see that there was plenty left to half fill the 4 troughs I had planned to sow this morning. I do find this saves on the bagged stuff - crocks in the bottom, not just for drainage, but to fill up some of the area which roots of small plants don't tend to need - then I half fill with our home made compost. I no longer sieve it unless I want it for something really la-di-dah fancypants, but I do crumble it up a bit with gloved hands to make it more friable. Then a layer of bagged goes on top & I fork them together, then I use bagged on top of that to sow the seeds onto & to cover them. So I probably use 50% less bought-in bagged compost by doing it this way. Anyway, onto the seeds that went into them......
*Sowed two varieties of spring onions, radishes, carrots & pak choi. Also potted up the last little cucumber as it was slightly behind the others so had to stay in the naughty corner for a few more days.
*Fed a bucket of kitchen scraps to the wormery. The wigglers have continued to produce liquid plant food over winter as it hasn't been cold enough for them to go into stasis. 
*Checked my CC bill which arrived this morning. All is in order. Reconciled transactions against receipts & my CC payment log sheet. No nasty surprises.
*Checked for surveys - only very briefly - nothing doing except a time-waster which asked me how many times I had used some hair products despite the fact that I haven't been part of any survey involving testing, or even answering questions about these, so clearly it had been sent to the wrong people!
*Postie brought our Council Tax bill this morning. I am intending to do a full number crunch of total increases in monthly payments, but am still waiting for Severn Trent (not looking forward to that one) & a couple of the techy ones Mr F deals with. Council Tax not quite such a high rise as I was expecting - I have input it into Spreadsheet 1 (regular household bills/DDs) & without having yet done the fine detail, it's looking like an extra <£8 per month....although that is quite enough when increases in everything else is taken into account. 
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & porridge pot.
*Diluted the last bit of my shampoo & conditioner (NOT ones the survey site seems to think I have been testing!) for a much-needed hair-wash after all my composty activities. I actually think I prefer both of them diluted! I will have to remember that, as it would be a saving & probably greener too, though tbf, both of them are environmentally-friendly products. Conditioner in particular seems to have done its job, but washed out more easily.
*Using some of the weekend's left-over roast pork in a stir-fry tonight. Will have to check this week's meal plans for a reminder of what I am supposed to be cooking tomorrow - I know it involved the slow cooker, so that will hopefully mean more time for other tasks.
Planning another productive day for tomorrow. I don't think the weather is looking as dry, so I am going to target greenhouse jobs first. I can see that several trays of seeds are germinating under their cloches, so a really good sort through all of those would be a good start. If there are any dry spells, I think I will also start filling in the gaps at the back of the border we cleared on Sunday as I have lots of free rescued plants potted up for this purpose.
Right, time to go & re-cloche the conservatory tomato seedlings for their bedtime. They had their big-girl pants on today & went cloche-less as the first step to toughening them up.
Oh......just remembered we have to administer day 2 of Ash's dental treatment....it went down like a lead brick yesterday.
F x

Makingabobor2

Another productive day by the sound of it. We are also with Severn Trent and pay over 8 months....ours went up by £10 a month!!  Not sure how they can justify that. 

PennysIntoPounds

Good luck with Ash's dental treatment!

It's so infuriating council bills going up while service goes down. I mean, I understand that they go hand in hand and there are myriad factors, but that really shouldn't be the problem of ordinary folk who are constantly having to fork out. I do wonder if it's a deliberate plan to get all council services privatised, like what's happening with the NHS. So depressing and blood-boiling.
I'm feeling an angry brolly-wave coming on Foxgloves 😂

2Scratters

@PennysIntoPounds love the Brolly-wave moment - made  me chuckle 
I can't get our water down to under the £100 mark for 6 months yet. Need to get kitchen buckets instead of the black builders buckets we currently use. Must try harder as it can be done. Yes, I use for the loo too. I am quite happy trotting off down the garden in my long fleecy dressing gown no matter the weather. 

2Scratters xx

EssexHebridean

2Scratters one of the jobs we have as a "maybe" on our list is to get another water butt - while I can't see us going as hard-core as you, you have inspired me to consider that now as something which we should focus on sorting out as a priority! (we currently have one which takes the run off from the office and shed roof, and the additional one would divert the downpipe from the house guttering).

We would usually do the same as you with the compost Mrs F - but because we lost a load when we moved (we shifted as much as we could from our old and very small compost bin, but quite a bit had to be left) and the new bin is freshly started back in the autumn, this year we won't have anything much to take I don't think. It is SO much bigger than our old one as well - it's really bringing home to me how little we put in it! 

I've got a very unhappy rosemary plant currently - it's been hanging on, we thought it would improve when we moved as it is now in a position where it gets naturally watered, rather than as before when it got watered when we remembered. I'm now wondering whether in fact that's not doing it any favours though as I have a vague recollection that they prefer dryer conditions? I may just try re-potting it at the weekend and see how it fares after that. 

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - You've had your water bill? They must be sending them out gradually or county by county. No sign of ours yet. I won't be too happy with a £10 a month increase to add to all the other increases which are popping through the door!

@EssexHebridean - Yes, the v large bins can take some filling, can't they? I'm sure you already do this, but don't overlook chompable stuff like loo roll tubes, flour bags, shredded paper, brown paper packaging & envelopes, coffee filter papers, torn up cardboard, etc. I'm having a push on adding more of this sort of stuff atm, as it is defo needed to balance out the 'wet' green stuff going in from garden clearing & kitchen veggie waste. Have just been using some very nice rich crumbly compost, so we must be doing something right!

@PennysIntoPounds - Mr F is public sector & I was too for almost my entire time in work. Under the current administration, it is just cuts, cuts, cuts & a lot of waiting to see if one still has a job in whatever the latest reorganisation is, in order to save a few salaries. I took VR in the 2nd wave of the Cameron/Osborne 'austerity' cuts. It is easy to council-bash, but the reality is that councils have had their grants from Conservative central government cut by between 40 & 50%. We all know what a cut of that level would do to our own budgets. At the same time, the UK housing system has reached crisis point, along with more people needing social care, etc, so there is that awful meeting of a lot more social need to cope with on a LOT less money. I don't doubt that it was a deliberate move so that people would blame their local councils instead of the key budget-cutting culprits. Yes, m'dear, it's umbrella time! Shame we live at such a distance, we could march down there together!
F x 

Makingabobor2

Yes, we had it about 2 weeks ago, and council tax last week. We only pay over 8 months, don't know if you are the same. If you pay over 12 months, then it wouldn't be such a big increase. Don't even know how they work out water rates, but we are a band B with council tax, if that makes any difference.