Reflecting the challenge

I'm in a real reflective mood today, thinking about this time last year, when I was on the blower to Kate from the council in a bit of a panic.

I'd got myself all het up over plastic bags. Not just carrier bags, but grape bags, bread bags and frozen peas packaging. I realised these had still been bunging up my black bin and I needed to find a solution, but Kate verbally soothed my brow and reassured me I could recycle them at the local supermarket or even our nearest HWRC (household waste recycling centre).

I can't believe I got myself into such a lather back then, but the pressure was on. There was one more week until Zero Waste Week and I was determined to give it my best shot to really see how low we could go. I'd even swapped my bins around, using my 50l stainless steel Brabantia to guard the recycling while my teeny tiny recycling bin took over its roll as the new dustbin.

I had also started eeking out the toothpaste, for fear that I'd have to chuck out the empty tube during the big week itself, and instead of filling the whole toothbrush head, I reduced the amount to the pea size as recommended by the manufacturers. We'd also started reusing things, stuff like polystyrene, which would normally end up in the bin.

Before doing the zero waste challenge, I felt I did my bit for recycling but I'd always been bugged by the Reduce, Reuse and Recycle mantra. Every time I'd read or indeed heard someone speak about the 3 R's I'd wanted to poke them in the ear with a stick or run off into the distance with my hands over my ears singing la,la,la,la, Boring la,la,la,la,la.

Somehow it all felt like a virtual straightjacket that would spoil my fun. And God help anyone who threw me some extra Rs, such as Refuse, Rethink or indeed Repair.

You can tell I was in denial at the start of the challenge because when I realised what I needed to embrace, I handed the job over to a YouTube video set to the the 3Rs by Jack Johnson. Like whispering the name Voldemort in the Harry Potter tales, I didn't dare say the words myself. My only contribution was a brief statement in the vain of "I don't think I need to spell out the basics, as there are enough organisations out there who already do this".

And I meant it. I didn't want get on the bandwagon.

How I now cringe at my attitude and if my name was Rodney, I'd have Del Boy poking a stick in my ear calling me a right Plonker!

Twelve months on I feel I've now grown up and have recognised the real importance of Reducing and Reusing and even Repairing before you can even embark on the final step of recycling. I've also done my fair share of rethinking and refusing. How far things have come eh!

And I've learned that it's not about spoiling fun or taking away choices. In a way we have more choice and have saved ourselves a right load of cash in the process, for example we've paid for the Eglu with the money we've saved on our shopping each week.

So as I prepare for the anniversary of my Zero Waste Week, I've finally got over myself. I am now ready to blog about the relevance of reducing, reusing and recycling and am getting really excited about uncovering some fine examples this week.

The problem is though, with my new way of thinking....or should I call it rethinking....next week's Maximum Waste Week challenge is getting me more in a tizz than Zero Waste Week ever did.

It's a good job I'm doing it to raise money for Comic Relief or I might just back out.

So while I go and plan my campaign and try to calm myself down, I think it's time to hand over to Jack Johnson again, for him to share his magic words. Now don't put your hands over your ears and sing la,la,la will you? If like me, you too are in denial, you'll find this the perfect introduction.




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Zero Waste: On avoiding obsession

So it's the end of a long week of celebrations. I've just dropped little J off at his chess club and I've got a delicious hour to myself in the lounge of the stunning Angel Hotel, in Bury St Edmunds.

Peace at last eh... one whole hour to stop and pause in the perfect setting, sat next to the glowing embers of the open fire.

Just what I need after the mad rush of yesterday, an opportunity to quietly reflect on the developments of the last twelve months.

Like any other challenge, a zero waste lifestyle requires focus, careful attention and a particular drive to achieve your goal, bringing with it a gradual change of habits. It also demands research and a new learning curve as you explore alternative products that fit your personal needs and that are easy to process through your local recycling system. But above all else a zero waste journey needs commitment if you want to maintain your waste minimisation goals.

Then just like any other learning experience, you suddenly realise that after so much hard work focusing on this, that and t'other, your new lifestyle has become the norm, with new routines, rewarded with unpackaged goods and sustainable brands that suit your needs and your pocket.

It becomes automatic, just like breathing and remembering to clean your teeth.

Now that's a comfortable place to be.

But what about the other side...the other challenge to your zero waste experience?

If you're not careful it can gradually creep up on you and bite you on the bum when you least expect it.

You see, while you're busy changing your ways to reduce what you buy, reuse what you've got and recycle what you don't need, you gradually wake up to the fact that your passion and commitment is benefiting the environment. And every small action you take to save and preserve valuable resources is one small step closer to sustainability.

And that's the real killer isn't it?

Suddenly, you can be left with the burden of saving the planet single-handedly, just you and your bin. And what comes with your new sense of passion is the risk of guilt... the guilt that forgets what you have achieved and focuses on what you haven't.

And let's not forget the deep frustration over situations outside of your control...from the lack of recycling facilities on your doorstep to the unsustainable choices made by certain manufacturers and retailers. Before you know it, you're even following national politics and you may even find yourself glancing at bin bags as you walk along the street, asking don't they know and don't they care?

But beware, because you don't really want your beautiful rays of passion to get lost in the murky world of obsession. And there is a fine line.

Instead you need to keep it real.

You need to keep your passion alive.

And you need to keep perspective.

If things are out of your control, don't worry. If the kids won't co-operate, keep teaching. If there is a lack of facilities in your local area, seek the help of your local council. And if you're not satisfied with a manufacturer's packaging, contact them to find out their plans. Of course, if you're still not happy, vote with your feet and switch products or brands as appropriate.

But then again, you could sit back, relax and wait. There's nothing wrong with that.

You may feel responsible for your actions, but don't feel guilty if you can't resolve everything. After all Rome wasn't built in a day. Just be glad that you've done your best and feel reassured that there are others working with the same goals too. While councils keep focusing on improving targets, responsible manufacturers are continuing to work on their packaging. Changes may not happen as quickly as we would like, but they are happening. Indeed you can follow some of the big names that have officially signed up to WRAP's Courtauld Commitment by clicking here.

And yes I have had my own obsessive moments too, like the time I cried at the Recycling Centre when I saw perfectly reparable bike that had been left when it could have been "freecycled". Then there was the day I happily let a friend take her baby's dirty nappy home with her - at her own suggestion I should add, but still, I could have offered to put it in my bin.

But these days, I'm more cool about stuff. I acknowledge there is too much waste in the world but have trust that the more people who are inspired to reduce it, the more folk they can inspire and so on. And I don't mind if my own bin isn't entirely empty. I could make it slimmer than one small bag a month, but that would mean a lot more work, with time I don't always have. So I just do what I can do and one bag is good enough for me.

So if you start feeling guilty, refocus on what you can easily achieve and if it turns out to be impossible, then don't worry. You are only human after all. Just let the guilt go free and concentrate on enjoying your passion and trust that people will follow your footsteps.

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Can it get any better than this?

One week's rubbish, two year's on.

I’ve often wondered what life must be like several years after doing a Zero Waste Week. So you can imagine my excitement in discovering the Baker family from Bath who took part in a similar challenge two years ago

Judith and her partner Simon signed up to the challenge, along with their teenagers Matt and Laura, when Bath and North East Somerset council launched their first Zero Waste Week in 2006, a concept which had just been introduced to the UK from an idea that had already been spreading around New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk to Judith about her thoughts on waste and what initially attracted her to the original challenge.

“As a post-war baby, I had grown up with the waste-not-want-not message.” She told me, “My family were already behind the idea of leaving a smaller footprint on the earth and the Zero Waste Week supported both these ideals.”

Before their Zero Waste Week challenge, the family weighed their rubbish, two bin bags (swing bin size) which came in at 4.5 kilograms. By the end of the week they had reduced this by 80% to an amazing 900g, amounting to just half a bin bag.

Judith was already used to recycling, sorting newspapers, magazines, greetings cards and scrap paper, as well as glass bottles, jars, tins, cans for their kerbside collection. They were also lucky to have plastic bottles collected too along with batteries, textiles and shoes. Everything was sorted into plastic bags for their fortnightly collection. They generated very little food waste, so this wasn’t a problem. They also composted their peelings and whatever scraps were left would always be put out for the birds.

With excellent recycling facilities and with a garden waste service to boot, which also accepted cardboard, it might have seemed that there was nothing else to tackle. However this was not the case.

“Things like plastic fruit punnets weren’t collected by our council,” said Judith “neither were yoghurt pots or margarine tubs. We would also have had a problem with Tetra Pak cartons and polythene bags but I found out we could recycle Tetrapaks, posting them to Perry’s in Bridgewater and we could send magazine wrappings, frozen vegetable bags and bread bags to Polyprint in Norfolk”.

After all this effort I wondered what did actually end up in their Zero Waste Week bin two years ago. Judith enlightened me.

“Just some miscellaneous plastic packaging, such as crisp packets, a plastic tray from a tiramisu and a croissant wrapper as well as some scrambled eggs and baked beans that went wrong, which in retrospect could have been put on the bird table”.

Having made a massive reduction to their household waste, I was also keen to find out whether this effort was sustained after Zero Waste Week. What was the impact of the challenge and how much does the family now throw away?

Judith revealed “We now throw out one swing bin’s worth of rubbish per week. We learned a lot from the challenge and I have continued sending my polythene wrappings to Polyprint. It costs £1.52 per month to post a package weighing just under 500g. It would make things so much easier if the council collected all types of bags and wrappings. We also continue to recycle Tetra Paks, but no longer have to send them to Perry’s thanks to a recycling service set up by the council.”

This is a fantastic example of how once an individual or a family experiences such a challenge, life can never be the same again. Admittedly the amount of rubbish went up after Zero Waste Week, but the reality is that there is a regular reduction of 50% that has been constant over the last two years. It really does demonstrate the longevity of the effects of such a campaign on a family’s lifestyle.

The great news is that Judith has signed up for the Zero Waste Challenge again, the one that is currently being organised by Bath & NES, which is taking place this week. The only change in the family circumstances is that son Matt has now gone off to university. I wanted to find out what she thought might happen this time.

“I know that plastic will be my downfall,” she asserted. “I will make an effort not to acquire certain plastics but I don’t have access to a street market which would help to reduce this. I also know the bathroom bin will be a problem. We all wear contact lenses, so there will be a mass of plastic pods. There is also the problem of new types of polythene packaging, such as the bread bags introduced by the Co-op which are labelled Oxo-degradable. These can’t be recycled so will have to go to landfill.”

I managed to catch up with Judith on Wednesday evening to get an update about how things were going this week. Just like in 2006, the first task was to weigh the amount of rubbish from the week before. Quite timely for the Bakers, Day one was also Bin Day. So how big was last week's rubbish?

"We only put out one bag, which weighed a shade over 2 kilos, well under half of what we used to put out before ZWW 2006. More than half that 2 kilos was one single item - a large tub of tile grout, nearly full, which had gone off since the last time we did any DIY and was unusable. If I treat the grout as one-off or exceptional item, I was putting out just under one kilo, or roughly the same weight as I did at the end of ZWW 06. So we haven't been backsliding too badly. "

That's a great starting point, just one bag! But how were things faring by Wednesday night, Day 3 of the challenge? I asked Judith to have a quick check on their current rubbish.

As she poked about her bin, this is what she had to say.

"OH NO did I really put the eggshells in there? Shame on me. Into the compost with you, my beauties, along with the tealeaves (a moment's inattention from someone who shall be nameless). The rest is crisp packets from packed lunches and a few of those pesky semi-degradable plastic wrappers, unsuitable for Polyprint. But there are notable absences: no yogurt pots this week because I bought a brand which comes in a re-usable clear pot with a cardboard stiffener, and the chocolate mousses came in earthenware pots which are eminently re-usable."

And is there anything else?

"There is still a bit of clingfilm but a lot less than usual. I have been trying to give it up, honest. It's just that it is so very useful for covering left-overs in the fridge in such a way that I don't forget they are there ...So half-way through, I can see that even now it won't be zero waste, but I am hoping for an improvement on last time."

Well, I think that's fantastic and I am looking forward to their final weigh-in next week.

If Judith does end up with any rigid plastic containers, she will save them up until she has a decent amount to mail to GHS Plastics in Portsmouth, which I recommended to her after seeing the company featured on MyZeroWaste.com.

I’ve also got some some more news for Judith and anyone else who’s participating in a Zero Waste Challenge. As well as GHS and Polyprint, I’ve discovered that Impact Recycling in Kent will accept deliveries of a whole host of household waste items, including the plastic punnets that Judith found tricky the first time round. The great news is there’s not a minimum requirement, just a simple request to sort items into separate bags.

So that's another source that will help the Bakers slim their bin even further, even if something odd pops up like a cracked CD.

There are still a few nerve-racking days until the end of the challenge, so while we’re waiting to catch up with the Bakers next week, you might want to find out more about the resources mentioned in this post. The links are listed below:


GHS: Tel: 0808-100-1456
www.ghsrecyclingltd.co.uk

Impact Recycling: Tel: 01634 255400
www.impactrecycling.co.uk/what.htm

Perrys Recycling (office recycling): 01935 850111
www.perrys-recycling.co.uk

Polyprint Mailing Films: 01603 721807
www.polyprint.co.uk

And please remember, if you're planning on sending items through to the companies concerned, please call first to check their current arrangements.

More information about the Bath and North East Somerset's Zero Waste Challenge Week, can be found at www.bathnes.gov.uk
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