Reducing household waste ideas

Ben84

There's lots of talk about recycling, and we do recycle a large amount of our rubbish now, but it seems better to simply make less waste.

I'd like to significantly reduce the rubbish we throw away, and for the things we do throw away to be recyclable or biodegradable. I'd like to throw away less plastics.

We've already done some things, but I'm wondering what things people here do to reduce rubbish?

olly300

Try and buy things that are not in plastic wrappings.

If I buy fruit and veg from the supermarket I don't put them in plastic bags.

Ken68

Growing your own food and foraging is the way to go.
And being vegetarian helps, and shopping at general market and farmers market even boot sales and farm shops.And tinned food for when nowt in garden rather than running a freezer.

FrankieM

Ken68 wrote: »

Growing your own food and foraging is the way to go.
And being vegetarian helps, and shopping at general market and farmers market even boot sales and farm shops.And tinned food for when nowt in garden rather than running a freezer.

Hi, what do you forage for and where and how do you use it?
Cheers
Frankie

sillyvixen

i have started checking my kitchen bin for recyclyble stuff my brother bins!! i get something for the recycle bin on a daily basis - today was his day off, rescued a bean tin and soup tin and 2 coke plastic bottles. i store plastic bottles in a box in the under stair cupboard and take them to the supermarket bank when full.. i had a conversation about house recycling rules last night - clearly went in one ear and out the other!!!

ViHan

If you have small children/nursery nearby/relatives with small children then things like yoghurt pots and cereal cartons are usually welcomed for the children at school to do construction with. All my family collect for my Daughters' school now and it saves bin space.. only trouble is the house is full of models!!:D

geordie_joe

ViHan wrote: »

If you have small children/nursery nearby/relatives with small children then things like yoghurt pots and cereal cartons are usually welcomed for the children at school to do construction with. All my family collect for my Daughters' school now and it saves bin space.. only trouble is the house is full of models!!:D

The problem with this is most of it ends up in the bin sooner or later. It all ends up being burned or in land fill because you can't recycle a yoghurt pot that's been painted, or a corn flake packet with sticky back plastic on it.

That should NOT stop anyone donating these things to small children/nursery's, the kids love it and every thing has a price. I don't consider "being green" to be never doing anything that will "harm" the environment, more a case of "is the benefit I get from it worth the price to the environment"

Take scientist, half them tell you not to put stuff into land fill because it takes thousands of years to bio-degrade. But the other half spend their time digging holes and wishing the romans hadn't made all their stuff from bio-degradable materials.

Give it three thousand years and the 21st century will be know as the dark ages. Teachers will tell pupils that everything was fine up until the mid 21st century, then the rubbish stops. We don't know why, but we have to assume that the population of the world suffered a dramatic event during the 21st century. They were a thriving community, producing rubbish by the ton, then in the space of 50 years the rubbish disappears. There nothing for the latter half of the 21st century and nothing for a thousand years, then it starts again.

We can only assume something happened to kill most of them off. Some say the earth warmed up and most of them died of thirst, others say it was an ice age that killed them, others say it was a world war and they killed each other. But the most popular theory is that mankind was nearly wiped out by a disease they couldn't cure. It was probably aids, as we know they couldn't cure that.

OK, I may be rambling, but my point is when we don't know, we put forward theories and some people take them as the gospel truth.

Tracey_Smith

Hi All,

I came across a very good blog recently (and have made great friends with the lady who writes it unsurprisingly!)....and it's called The Rubbish Diet.

She had a handful of her tips serialised on Radio 4's Woman's Hour the other week, which was great to follow!

Have a look at it and I'm sure you'll get lots more ideas.

TS

www.TheRubbishDiet.co.uk

green_beanie

One very good site for this is http://www.recyclethis.co.uk. People post questions about specific things they'd like to reuse ao recycle and others try come up with ideas about how they can do this. I even saw someone question how you could recycle mussel shells!

However, I urge everyone to seriously think first about reducing the amount of waste you produce before you even think about how you're going to recycle what you've just bought. Where possible, reduce the amount of packaging you use, like buying loose vegetables instead of pre-packaged. Get a bag for life, get a handy folding one you can carry wherever you go. Buy products in materials that are easier to recycle (Glass and metals are the best, paper is pretty rubbish to recycle - pun not intended). Has anyone considered making their own yogurt at home? (if you want to know how, send me a msg, it's pretty easy). You have to be inventive.

One of the greatest worries about recycling is that most of the materials you recycle are separated and sold off to Asia (Mostly to China, and one really knows what their using it for). The danger is that one day they'll turn around and say "We don't want this anymore, nice doing business with you, goodbye". The UK DOES NOT have the infrastructure to process into usable products a lot of the stuff you put into your recycling bin . We are very lucky that there are still companies abroad willing to take it off our hands and process it there. But how long is that going to last? No one really knows.

Waste management starts with you, in your homes - reduce, reuse, recycle, compost, think of everything you can, then throw it away. To quote Tesco, "Every little helps". The very fact you're worried about the environment and are posting on here is an amazing start, everyone here has the potential to do a lot.

Just remember this one phrase if you remember nothing else - When you throw your rubbish away, just know that THERE IS NO AWAY. Whatever you throw, it has to be dealt with. Please, always remember that.


Warning - if you don't want to read a long winded argument about waste in England from someone who's been behind the scenes in the env. sector (and is oddly very passionate about the subject of waste), stop reading now!

Waste management is now a BIG deal for the gov't in this country. It's worrying because your local council has to pay a a tax (as well as 'handling fees') to landfill operatorswhenever they send your waste to landfill (which is one of the reasons why you pay council tax). with the tax going up from 24 pounds per tonne to 48 pounds per tonne in a few short years, if they don't get their act together it's going to spell big trouble for them (millions of pounds for non-compliance) and big trouble for the rest of us who will see our council taxes rise.

We're running out of landfill space in some areas as well, worst in London and the South East (they have 3-4 years worth of space left in some areas), so they've a lot more to worry about sooner. Some of our visiting lecturers work closely with the European Comission, Defra and the Env. Agency and scarily some of them have already noticed the English government making provisions for "Pay as you throw" for households (business and industry already have to pay to throw away their waste, but it's getting more expensive for them too). This means fly-tipping could be a problem everyone is going to have to deal with, not to mention having to pay for the rubbish you throw. Start buying padlocks for your bins folks =/

Oh and I wouldn't worry too much about incineration (burning waste). Yes, in the past there were a lot dioxin emissions from incinerations facilities, but it was due to appalling management. We've had the priviledge of visiting a couple of incineration facilities and their emissions are -very- tightly controlled, there's no room to squeeze out of or they face massive fines. Their dioxin emissions are so tightly controlled now that you get more dioxin emissions from bonfire night than you get yearly from a very large incineration (energy from waste - and I stress this point because most of these facilities produce energy and heat for surrounding households) facility. The concerns of most environmental campaigners against incineration are valid, but considering how stringent control measures are in this country, their arguments are highly overblown. Sweden of all places, relies on incineration to deal with the vast majority of their waste, and theirs are the standards the rest of Europe is hoping to reach. Compared to most of Europe, the UK sends the majority of its waste to landfill, but this is changing (it has to). The UK gov't does seem to be leaning towards building more EfW facilities. Watch this space =P

There are two major downfalls right now for incineration - massive carbon footprint for one (hopefully to be dealt with). The second is that the process produces a type of ash which, although lower in volume, still has to go to landfill. It's also considered hazardous waste, which means it goes to a special type of landfill, and you have to pay big money to get rid of it. There's research going on to see whether you can use the ash and turn in into something useful (like glass). Some of it is already used in construction.

Even though industry and other businesses will have to go through the biggest changes, public attitudes have -desperately- got to change too. Supermarkets sell vegetables in plastic packaging (and the non-recyclable kind at that) because no one thinks to tell them not to. Not only is the plastic waste a problem but just producing that plastic and packaging those vegetables and trucking the hither and tither also uses up energy and contributes to emissions.

At the end of the day, businesses produce what YOU, the consumer, wants. If you stop asking for it, they'll stop making it (it really is that simple).z

I'll stop there, I could spend weeks blathering on about this. Passionate to a fault, but I wish more people were educated in school about these things. At the end of the day, it affects everyone of us.

margaretclare

Very interesting, green_beanie, and yes, I did read right through what you wrote.

I have had an education job on here at home with my DH, who likes shopping and is good at it. However, I am gradually getting through to him. Just this morning we had a long discussion and we have decided not to buy any meat or poultry at all, not even when labelled 'free range' or organic, from a supermarket. Reason: even when buying 500g of mince you are left with a silly little plastic tray, and what do you do with it? We recently bought an organic chicken from Waitrose and we ate it on Easter Sunday. What are we supposed to do with the plastic tray that it sat in, with wrapping round the whole thing? Tesco locally have recently opened some kind of a machine that gobbles up plastics and shreds them - but only if they're 'bottle-shaped'! What are we supposed to do with anything that ISN'T bottle-shaped?

Being the generation we are, we never waste any food at all. Wasting food in our youth was a cardinal sin - someone had died to bring it to you. I've read of people buying far too much in the supermarket, then throwing it out once the dates had passed. Most of this food would be absolutely edible and not dangerous at all assuming it had been refrigerated in the meantime. Throwing out food complete with plastic packaging is even worse. The food will rot, the plastic will be there for ever.

We try to buy food as locally as possible. The butcher we go to knows where everything is sourced, most within 20 miles of his shop. He doesn't pack things in plastic trays.

We are lucky in that we still have a small traditional butcher, fruit-and-veg shop, baker who bakes fresh every night. We also have farms that sell direct to the public. If you have any of these in your area, use them or lose them! Too many people automatically think 'the supermarket' and the truest words have been spoken above:

Even though industry and other businesses will have to go through the biggest changes, public attitudes have -desperately- got to change too. Supermarkets sell vegetables in plastic packaging (and the non-recyclable kind at that) because no one thinks to tell them not to. Not only is the plastic waste a problem but just producing that plastic and packaging those vegetables and trucking the hither and tither also uses up energy and contributes to emissions.

I couldn't agree more. Look for local food sources here: www.bigbarn.co.uk

It's all about education, education, education (as someone memorably said).

Ken68

FrankieM wrote: »

Hi, what do you forage for and where and how do you use it?
Cheers
Frankie

You gotta live in the countryside...plums, cherries,cooking apples, mushrooms, blackberries, hawthorn shoots, hawthorn berries. rose hips,elderberry, green spring shoots,the tops of young nettles. Ground elder. sweet chestnuts
Always something and firewood aplenty.