Talking rubbish in the big wide world

This week has seen an interruption to my usual online witterings. I've spent most of my week away from the computer, talking rubbish elsewhere.It's actually been a very exciting week, beginning with the opportunity on Tuesday to meet the Seven Suffolk Streets project team and the door-knockers, a team of volunteer master composters who are tasked with drumming up residents' support for the Waste Reduction Fortnight that's taking place in March. I'll be joining them soon, knocking on doors across different areas of Suffolk to talk rubbish with other folk who live in my county. So watch this...

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The Rubbish Diet Challenge: Week 3, Waste Not Want Not

Welcome to Week 3 of The Rubbish Diet Challenge, where this week I am taking you into the kitchen to find out how much food gets thrown in your bin.Managing food waste is one of the most important areas of waste reduction. Not only has it huge potential for slimming your bin, but by reducing what you throw away can save you money and provide environmental rewards too.According to WRAP's LoveFoodHateWaste campaign if we all stop wasting food we could have eaten, the CO2 impact is the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road. That's a startling statistic and when I first heard it, it really...

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Decluttering: A space to eat

You won't believe it but what you're witnessing at this very point in time is a rare occurrence.No, I don't mean the messy table! Oh No! The rare occurrence is that for once I am indeed speechless!And as I write, I am experiencing nervous bouts of laughter and moments of shame as I introduce the state of my dining room to a whole bunch of strangers on the Internet, including online friends, recycling officers and academics from all across the world. Revealing this photo feels worse than showing how much rubbish we used to throw away. The only thing I find reassuring is that I might show...

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Two years old today and Mr A has the last word on the matter.

1 week's rubbish, circa January 2008It's been so busy of late, the fact that this blog is two years old today almost passed me by. So do excuse me for a moment while I grab a now defunct party blower to celebrate and give it a WhoopeyTootToot!Yes indeed. Two years old. Whoop whoop. Toot toot!Who'd have thought it, eh!It's no secret that when I typed up my first blog post on 21st January 2008, I only intended to write about my run-up to St Edmundsbury's zero waste challenge and document the big week itself.Just eight weeks, that's all.At the time I had no idea what the heck I was doing or what...

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Bags of bags in bags and even more bags!

Geez, being a trolley pulling reusable bag carrying veteran, I'd forgotten how many plastic bags could potentially come with a weekly shop.But look! Here's my latest shopping that arrived home today from the supermarket! And just look at those bags. There are blimmin' lots of them!But as you can probably guess, it wasn't me doing the shopping today. This isn't how my shopping looks when I normally bring it through the door. For the first time in absolutely yonks I'd ordered my groceries online, thanks to my car being immobile and needing an urgent mega top-up of stuff. I would have normally...

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The Rubbish Diet Challenge: Week 2, Retail Therapy

My favourite fruit & veg stall at Bury St Edmunds Market. I can't believe I never used to shop there before.Welcome back to the Rubbish Diet Challenge, where this week it's time to hit the shops with a good dose of retail therapy.However, this is a retail experience with a difference, introducing a range of steps that will help you find ways to reduce rubbish before it gets anywhere near your kitchen bins.So having worked out your local recycling options in Week 1, the tasks in Week 2 will challenge you to become more familiar with the choices you have in the shops and make you aware of the...

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Bloggers for Haiti

I interrupt my usual ramblings to raise awareness of the Bloggers for Haiti fundraising page, which is responding to the Haiti earthquake by raising money to send Shelterboxes to help those affected by the disaster. The fundraiser was started by blogger EnglishMum and several of her blogging friends. You can find more about the fundraising initiative at her latest post here: http://englishmum.com/2010/01/16/bloggers-for-haiti/You might have already seen the shelterboxes highlighted on the news last week. They are distributed by UK based clarity Shelterbox, which responds very quickly to international...

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Getting personal: Happiness and Highlights

I've received two tags in the last couple of week, one from Alybean at Life's Laundry a high-five meme to reveal my top five highlights of 2009 and the other from Sooz, at The Last Biscuit, awarding me the Happy 101 award for listing the 10 things that make me happy.I am normally rubbish at memes. I often forget to do them or wonder where I'll squeeze them in and before you know it something more pressing comes along. However, I've had an exhausting time of it lately and as both of these offer an opportunity to reflect on positive things I thought I'd give them a go. You get the opportunity...

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SPACE: the final frontier

I apologise for the photo. Messy eh!Yep. I'd agree and it's got my heart rate up even looking at it. So, just imagine what it's been like living with it. Indeed the scene that you witness here is what used to be my plastic film storage area, which until quite recently resided in a haphazard manner behind our kitchen door.Since I discovered I could take plastic film packaging, such as rice bags and pasta bags, for recycling at our local HWRC I've simply kept stuffing them into bags upon bags until I was next passing. But because I don't pass very often, my storage space got rather unwieldy.So...

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Blimey! Even my own mother doesn't recognise me

Caricature - with a very good likeness -drawn by the lovely Steve Hearn at Drawn4UIt occurred to me last night that there is something that I haven't done for months, which is utterly bizarre because it's been an ingrained part of my character since I was old enough to receive pocket money.Don't worry, I'm not going to come out of the closet with news of secret poker games at the age of 9, or sneaking away from Mr A to pop into the bookies. It's nothing like that.What I'm talking about is knee-jerk shopping. You know, the urge to rush off and buy stuff just to make you feel better.I wouldn't...

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The Rubbish Diet Challenge Week 1: Starting with the basics

A simple recycling system: a couple of bins and some hooksSo, for everyone who's resolved to slim their bins this year, I hope you've weighed your rubbish and have now got your sleeves rolled up ready to kick off with the first week of your Rubbish Diet Challenge.This week is all about easing yourself in gently. After all Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was your rubbish, so I'll be getting you to flex your muscles by tackling some basic ideas to get you started. It's a warm-up if you like for the weekly challenges that lie ahead.This week's mini challenges are really simple and I hope...

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A Winter Carnival: Wrapping up Christmas

A Winter Scene: Sutton Hoo, nr Woodbridge in SuffolkHo, ho, ho! Well Christmas is now done and dusted, Twelfth Night has come and gone and Britain is now covered in a blanket of snow. It's a good job we've had to take down the decorations. At least it's been one way of keeping warm during this wintry spell.But forget about the weather. Today I am asking how did you get on with your rubbish...or perhaps I should say....your festive resources over what is the most wasteful time of the year?Did you recycle them, or bung them in the bin? Of course, I know you wouldn't have done the latter. Maybe...

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2010: Looking Backwards & Forwards and Onwards & Upwards

It's been two years since I made a tiny new year's resolution to smarten up my domestic landscape and stated unassumingly that I intended to reduce the amount of waste we sent to landfill.With a memory like a fish, I needed a system to remember my reusable bags, I wanted to cook more and find a way to stop my husband from throwing so much crap in the bin including holey socks and unused presents. In short, I think I needed a miracle."It's decluttering" he'd say.Witnessing unworn slippers being chucked away, my defence was limited to gurning and with an imaginary kick up the backside and a slap...

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