The start of an 8 week Rubbish Diet challenge, coordinated by Karen over at the Rubbish Diet. Our starting weigh in is a bit odd with having been away at centerparcs for 4 days last week! We threw out one swing bin worth while we were there – that included food waste that we would compost at home, as they don’t have options for dealing with green waste there. There were also more disposable nappies than usual, as I don’t take cloth on holiday. (Or not in winter anyway. I have been known to take cloth nappies camping before now!)
Our grey bin (landfill waste) is collected fortnightly, and it is generally between a third and half full. I’d guess that’s up to 7 of our kitchen bin loads and includes things like the disposable nappy that’s worn overnight (struggled with cloth overnight this time around), the odd bit of clingfilm, though generally we use containers with lids, non recyclable plastic like lids of bacon packs, sausage wrappers, cereal bags etc, then there’s bathroom waste like old toothbrushes, cotton buds, the pump bit of lotion or conditioner bottles. From other rooms around the house there will be junk mail offerings – CDs or stickers, and window envelopes that can’t be recycled. Oh, and I forgot my biggest kitchen bugbear – tetrapaks. We go through lots of fruit juice, so there’s probably at least one tetrapak a day, also things like passata come in it.
Where we lived before we came here, you could recycle tetrapaks. I think the first part of my personal challenge ought to be to find out if there is anywhere here where I can recycle them, or get an alternative product. The difficulty is with cost – I know of organic alternatives of concentrated fruit juice, I used to buy them from an organic coop place in Sheffield, but they are expensive, and to be frank about it all, we’re not precisely rolling in cash atm. Right now I bulk buy fruit juice from Lidl, and that’s going to be difficult to beat in price.
Food (or drink) for thought, anyway. There are a number of other ppl taking part in the challenge too, including Tim from Bringing up Charlie, Amy in New York, Donna from Beating Limitations and Kate, the Business Plumber.
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