Reducing household waste ideas

takoo

I have a path with old carpets as a base. All twiggy stuff goes on it - pruning twigs, nut shells, dry stalks of perennials, dry leaves, etc. They are cut or broken to about 6 inches.

Later I shall add bonemeal, chicken pellets etc and then gravel to break up the material more quickly.

After 12 months I could now get a good few bins of soil conditioner but it willnot have much in the way of nutrients.

Takoo

nickj_2

manufacturers should be forced to reduce the amount of packaging they create .

Ben84

Thank you all for the interesting responses! I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who is thinking about rubbish, which otherwise seems to be an unpopular topic. Sure it's not pretty or nice, but it's really bad for the environment, and it costs the UK a lot of money to throw things away. The cost is huge, and considering the financial problems elsewhere in public services, rubbish should be getting more publicity because it's eating a big portion of our council tax.

The rubbish diet looks good, but we're some way away from such drastic reductions. We're not extremely wasteful, we eat almost every single food item we buy, but still the packaging piles up. We recycle what we can with our fairly good recycling service and have a compost bin.

We have a black 240L wheelie bin that's emptied every two weeks and goes to landfill. It's usually full, so half a bin each week to landfill. We also have a green recyling bin, same size that is also emptied every two weeks and is usually full. Glass is recycled in bottle banks, and big metal items like biscuit tins are taken to the dump as scrap metal. On average, our house of three people generates about one normal size 240L wheelie bin a week of rubbish, although around half is recycled.

The house is currently full of various products in packaging that were bought during sales, so we'll have to use that up before we notice any great differences from changing how we buy things.

I've made a few positive changes already however. I've replaced the liquid hand soaps in plastic bottles with bar soap, which is wrapped in low mass recyclable paper. I've also stopped buying washing liquid and fabric softener in plastic bottles and changed over to powder in card boxes, which claims to be 2 in 1 with softener included. The boxes are already 80% recycled card, and I can recycle them again when they're empty. Powder seems to go further too. I also bought a long lasting washing up brush to replace the sponges we use.

It's a small start, but I can't change everything at once. It takes time and effort to avoid waste or replace products with less wasteful ones.

Ken68

You are on the right road, Ben, but things could be done better.
For example in my town a chap goes round the shops and charges 50pence per bag or per large item for disposal. Then , presumably he has to pay the council to dump the stuff. Plus his other expenses, licences etc.
SO...why doesn't he come to my house...50pence a week...£26 a year.
Instead of all these bins and special instructions and calenders and environment officers peering into my rubbish , why can't I opt out of all that twaddle.

moonrakerz

green_beanie wrote: »

However, I urge everyone to seriously think first about reducing the amount of waste you produce

Whilst I would not disagree with much that is said about the need to recycle and reduce the amount of waste that is produced - I am afraid the statement above is one of my pet hates:

In general, I do not produce waste !!!!

I do not have a shed at the bottom of my garden where I spend all day "producing waste" - just to clog up the local land fill.
What I do have is a load of products which are grossly over-packaged which is foisted on my by the retail trade which I then have to pay extra Council Tax to get my local council to take away.
Consumers should start by, where possible, unpacking their purchase in the shop and leaving the packaging there.
I started my own little campaign by removing, at the checkout, those stupid plastic hook/price labels that Morrisons put on every bunch of bananas. The last time I was there the check out girl removed the label herself - perhaps I have won a small victory !!

green_beanie

Thanks for the reply and the tip Margaret. I think everyone here is really trying their best to help the environment and it's great to see people coming up with good ideas. It's amazing to see you all really making the effort, I can't even get my housemate to recycle her glass bottles! There's even some ideas here I didn't even think of before, thank you everyone, you're all my heroes

green_beanie

moonrakerz wrote: »

Whilst I would not disagree with much that is said about the need to recycle and reduce the amount of waste that is produced - I am afraid the statement above is one of my pet hates:

In general, I do not produce waste !!!!

I apologise if what I said has offended you. By using the word "produce", I didn't intend to say people produce waste with malicious intent, 'waste production' is just a formal term.

Semantics aside, my point was to encourage people to think about how much they're throwing away and try to reduce it as much as possible. If you take a look at the waste hierarchy, prevention and minimization are the top two options.

Unfortunately, gov't policy isn't hard hitting enough to reach waste minisation targets for companies that sell packaged items, and there isn't enough pressure from consumers to get them to reduce the amount of packaging. Good idea about removing the plastic from vegetables though, hopefully they'll get the message. I still haven't really figure out why in the world they pack them in the first place..

moonrakerz

green_beanie wrote: »

I apologise if what I said has offended you. By using the word "produce",

I wasn't offended in the least, it's just that this particular phrase is constantly churned out by (usually) Government minions in their never ending attempts to justify yet another, way above inflation, increase in (usually, Council) tax to make us feel guilty and stop "producing" so much rubbish.

Most of it is, I am afraid, water off this duck's back, the vast majority of schemes to "save the planet" involve me paying more tax. There are many other more useful things that could be done - but aren't, because they don't raise, or would, actually decrease revenue.
Perhaps I would be a little cynical if I were to pose this question: which is of more benefit to the planet; increasing the road tax on a million Ford Fiestas or banning 50,000 5 Litre "Chelsea tractors" from the roads altogether?

love_lifer

reuse old socks and knickers as dusters and old scourers to clean toilet.
advertise stuff you dont want on freecycle
just a few ideas...

bigpaws23

There are a few ideas on this blog too; most have been mentioned already, but there might be a few new ones:
http://littlegreenblog.com/2008/03/03/reduce-plastic-tips/

I'm really happy to see this topic being discussed too. I agree with the poster who said that we have to take away our demand for highly packaged products. We think we are at the mercy of the manufacturers, but I believe it is the other way around. Our issue is that we all want convenience, perhaps............

You're obviously making some great changes, Beb84 - well done!

Bigpaws x