Home Sweet Home

Phew, after two days travelling back through Switzerland, France and the UK, we're home! We finally made it home late last night, welcomed by the sugar factory towers that greet so many people back to Bury St Edmunds.

Kids in bed, car unpacked, Internet catchup...with TV on...husband enjoyed cup of tea while I stumbled off to bed. The usual routine.

Home eh. I love holidays but I am always glad to be back!

And so much has been happening.

I've come back to find that The Rubbish Diet has got a mention on the very lovely EcoStreet blog.

Then there's the news that BBC Reporter Chris Jeavans has challenged herself to a Plastic Free Month. Now that's a challenge and a half and it brings the topic of waste into the national media, which is great. I can't wait to catch up with her progress at her BBC blog Month Without Plastic.

But most of all, I am really looking forward to finding out about how the Greens are getting on at MyZeroWaste. After challenging them to a Zero Waste Week a few months ago, it is fast looming and I can't believe that there are only a few more weeks to go. The great news is that they've got a whole host of sponsors together, offering prizes to those who support them in their endeavours. To have a go at winning, all you need to do is sign up to a pledge and let them know how you get on.

So much to do, with so little time. And there's the Olympics and all their recycling efforts. Blimey it's all kicking off.

By the way, I'm sorry to say that's not my house in the picture. It's the really HUGE house opposite, which I now see is available TO LET. Should anyone be interested, it comes with a beautiful set of bins, one for recycling, one for composting and one for landfill.

Oh booger. That reminds me. It's bin day today and this week it's Recycling. Talk about falling back to earth with a bump. With loads to do I'll see you later this week with the news I promised about our travels.

In the meantime, I'd better not miss that bin lorry.

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Mrs G launches her first video

If you're looking for more inspiration while I'm off on hols, here's Mrs Green to keep you company, with her very first video shoot launched on YouTube this week. Go Mrs G! I hope this video makes it onto Gloucestershire's Zero Waste Week site.

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Hooray for Mr & Mrs Green and Gloucestershire

Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand up and give a huge round of applause for Mr & Mrs Green and Little Miss Green over in the Forest of Dean.

Do you remember when I invited them to have a go at The Rubbish Diet at the beginning of May and they took their first steps towards slimming their bin? Mrs Green had been worrying about her rubbish, so I sent her off to do an audit of her bin.

They began analysing their rubbish and weighing-in and finding solutions to cut down on their waste. They hunted down new recycling options and pondered new ideas at home. They looked at their weaknesses and played to their strengths, agreeing for Mr Green to do the compost run and Mrs Green to sort out the tins. They even set up a website to chart their progress at myzerowaste.com, where they also host regular competitions and offers.

They were getting on so brilliantly that within two weeks...just two weeks...of having started the challenge, I suggested to Mrs Green that they step up a level and hold their very own Zero Waste Week. Oh the relief, when she said yes, or rather when Mr Green said yes! No councils needed, no-one in authority to give them permission, just the Green Family honing in what they set out to do, with their Zero Waste Week set for the first week of September.

Oh the excitement!

But get this, it gets even better....because....Mr & Mrs Green have been having tea with the invaluable waste department people at Gloucestershire County Council who were already planning their own Zero Waste Week for the whole county in January.

And even better, they are launching the information during the Green's very own Zero Waste Week challenge.

....And even, yes EVEN better, they are so impressed with the Green's lack of rubbish that they have asked them to be Gloucestershire's shining lights, as the family that will inspire others.

Isn't that the most amazing story and I am so looking forward to tracking their progress. I know that Zero Waste Week will be a breeze for them and it is so fantastic that they will be able to tell their story to the whole of Gloucestershire.

So, if you're in their area be sure to keep a look out for the Greens. You'll recognise them easily, they'll be the ones with no rubbish.

I feel my work here is done and has been for a while. The Greens are really flying and deservedly so. They have worked really hard at slimming their waste.

But what we need now are people to take up the challenge all across the country and tell their councils that they are doing so. Don't worry, they won't think you're batty, they will be delighted to have local champions on their doorstep. Suggest they might want to run a Zero Waste Week too. After all, it happened in Bath & NE Somerset and is happening again on 29th September. It's happened in Bury St Edmunds and it will soon be happening in Gloucestershire.

I suppose this is simply a call to arms for people to put their hands up and say, "I'll give it a go" regardless of whether your local authority is running such an initiative. Even if you don't think you can aim for Zero Waste, why not try going for 50% and if you think that's too much of a challenge try just 10%.

If you know anyone who might be interested in joining in the challenge, email this post to them using the links below. Please spread the word on the blogs and forums to rally support behind the Greens and Gloucestershire. The more people who are watching and inspired, the better. And if you are inspired, email your councillors and your local waste departments as well.

Oops, I feel like I'm starting a campaign.

You'll be surprised how easy it is to put your bin on a diet and anyone can have a go, whether they are green or not (no pun intended), and whether you're at home or work. The best thing is, it's a cheap way of being green and helping to reduce the amount of methane produced from rubbish that's dumped in landfill, especially as methane is regarded as 21 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

You don't need a blog, but if you have one that'll be great, you can join us in writing about your experiences. If you want help setting up a blog to track your challenge, Mr & Mrs Green are happy to help out.

So let's try and do for rubbish what Jamie Oliver did for school dinners...make our lives much better. The Rubbish Diet may be crap for school meals in the traditional sense, but it's a real winner for bins everywhere!

And on that note, let's give a standing ovation for the Greens in Gloucestershire and wish them luck with a special Rubbish Bag singsong. But I must warn you, the overall performance is much better than the lyrics.





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Almost Mrs Average and the Recyclettes

After yesterday's news about the Bokashi and the Beasties, I think it's now time to stand up and show your appreciation for the Recyclettes.

The Recyclettes?

"Who on earth are they?" you might ask.

Well there are loads of different types of recyclettes that you can find on Google, but my recyclettes are the fab ladies (and their families) who have risen to the challenge of The Rubbish Diet, and my goodness they've shown some commitment. They've shared stories about ditching packaging at the supermarket, taking their own containers to the butchers and getting to grips with compost bins in their gardens.

After getting each of them started on their own personal bin slimming programme it's now time to catch up with the lovely ladies and find out what's been going on in their bins.


And there's no better place to start than the lovely Ruby from Bury St Edmunds, our first volunteer who was brave enough to reveal her rubbish.



We started Ruby's Rubbish Audit at the end of March and what a sorry state of affairs it was. Ruby revealed that she had too much packaging for her recycling bin, so the surplus was going into her landfill bin, which led to overflowing bins all round. Things were so bad that Ruby was more worried about the effect on her own environment than the world at large and by heck did it need some management.

Well the great news from Ruby is that she is now the anti-excess-packaging queen. She no longer uses packaging for her children's packed lunches, unless it's reusable or recyclable. She has begun to cook more meals from scratch instead of buying ready meals and has even gone as far as ditching her packaging at the supermarket!

She's also got a great site called Ruby's Rubbish Blog, where she focuses on all types of nonsense packaging and laughs at it in the same way as an organic gardener laughs at mutated vegetables.

Her latest blogpost reveals that she's now doing a bit of gardening herself. Ruby gardening? Growing her own herbs and tomatoes? My word, that's a turnaround!

At her request, St Edmundsbury Council gave her a brand spanking new brown wheelie bin for her kitchen waste so she no longer has to send her peelings off to landfill. The other fantastic news is that all her guinea pig bedding can go in there too, so even their droppings can be put to good use.

After all this effort and following her "diet plan" she has managed to reach her target with resounding success and has reduced her landfill bin by at least 50%. This means that it is now only half-full every collection day, which translates to roughly 120 cubic litres of rubbish per fortnight.

All her recyclables can now fit into her recycling bin too, which is sometimes only three-quarters full these days.

So hooray for the Ruby Household for such a fantastic effort.

Something tells me they won't be going back to their old ways, so a round of applause please!


Next, smiling at us from up north...or rather the Midlands, is the gorgeous Jo Beaufoix from Mansfield.



Jo is really enjoying The Rubbish Diet challenge, which she started in May, and has had some fabulous adventures with a new compost bin to help reduce her rubbish. Jo was getting hacked off with not being able to close her bin, let alone fit all her rubbish into it. You can read about her woes here. The aim was to reduce her big fat bin by 50% and the most brilliant news is that she is well on the way to reaching her target.

She's been changing the way she shops, buying loose products, washing out yoghurt pots and has found a whole new excitement in nipping off to the recycling centre. The whole family has got stuck in too, sorting out the papers, bags and tetra paks. The girl's doing well.

The other outcome is that her bin now has a name...Yes a name! My bin has a name too, but I never told Jo this. My bin's called Dave. Apologies to all the Daves out there who might feel offended. No offence is intended. It's just a Rubbish Diet needs the humour! I think we need to put out an apology to all the Simons too because Jo's bin is called Stinky Simon! Personally, I think anyone who's called Simon has now got a bigger problem than all you Daves.

Anyway Jo has written about the adventures of Stinky Simon's diet on her very entertaining blog jobeaufoix.com. It's an essential read, which follows Simon's relationship with the bin lorry. In a very surreal way, I can't wait to find out if Simon gets his girl.

So it's time to applaud Jo and Stinky Simon as well as Mr B and the little Beaufoixs for such a tremendous effort. Well done!


To complete the trio, give a huge wave to the wonderful Green Family, all the way from Gloucestershire.


It doesn't seem that long ago since the most wonderful Mrs Green was despairing about her rubbish and I volunteered to lend a hand. They decided to sign up for the Rubbish Diet treatment straight away. They only started a couple of weeks ago but are making astounding progress.

The Greens haven't got the all singing and dancing wheelie bin down in their neck of the woods, or should I say forest (after all they live in the Forest of Dean). They have had to rely on a battered but beautiful old dustbin, who has developed a character of her own, being full to the brim and always accompanied by saddlebags! Their other challenge is that they don't have a mixed plastics recycling collection, so are having to make careful choices.

However Mrs Green and the rest of the Greens have risen to the challenge in a way that goes beyond the dreams of possibilities. They're ditching the mixed plastics where possible, taking their own containers to the butchers and experimenting with all sorts to get rid of that trash. They are recycling everything they can and are managing the daily drag to the compost bin at the end of the very long garden. Within such a short period they have already hit their 50% target head on.

So there is nothing stopping the Greens now and they are absolutely on a roll. They've already been featured in their local paper and have even got a whole website dedicated to their mission...yes not just a blog, but a website.

If you pop along to www.myzerowaste.com you will find competitions, as well as offers and discounts on all things that they can get their hands on. There are newsfeeds to keep you up-to-date with what's happening in the world and of course an hilarious account of how they've risen to this mighty challenge.

And they have truly risen to it, because not only have they surpassed their own expectations, but they've accepted my suggestion to attempt their very own Zero Waste Week.

Yes....Zero Waste. That means trying to go for one whole week without putting anything in their landfill bin at all!

But we must remember Rome wasn't built in a day and it wouldn't seem fair to just thrust it upon them this quickly. So they've got a few more months to finish their rubbish work-out before attempting to go rubbish-free during the first week of September. So watch this space for news of their progress.

I have every confidence they will do well. They've pulled together some fantastic support from people who are encouraging them along the way. They've even inspired another blogger to join in, the lovely Sue who also lives in Gloucestershire, who you may have also seen contributing to the discussions on The Rubbish Diet this week.

Inspired by all the rubbish gossip, Sue's now set up her new blog too, Healthy Cheap Meals, Minimal Waste, where she happily shares her progress at slimming her bin and pulling together healthy meals on a budget. So do pop over and say hello. It's a sure way of saving some money too.

So it's time to put your hands together again and give a huge round of applause for the Greens for everything they have achieved and so quickly. And Sue, please take your bow too. What a fabulous effort and thank you so much for joining in the fun.

Blimey, what have I started? Is it a new blogging genre, a lifestyle makeover, or a revolution?

Chuckle...Who knows? I guess only time will tell. But whatever it is, it's wonderfully infectious and all the families who have taken part are absolute stars.

So what's next?

Well Ruby's at a level where she feels happy, Jo is looking forward to cutting Stinky Simon's rubbish a bit more and Mrs Green has got the most amazing project ahead of her.

How exciting!


But what about the Almost Average Household, here in Bury St Edmunds?

Well it's been nearly three months since the end of St Edmundsbury's Zero Waste Week and the big question is have we stuck to it?

Er yep. It's not quite Zero or Zilch but we're still pretty close to hardly anything.

Apart from a couple of dead birds, a stinky old polystyrene tray and some half-term cat litter, our weekly rubbish still amounts to about a quarter of a carrier bag.

I'm not sure if I've ever revealed what we regularly throw away, so maybe the time has come...to show the contents of the Almost Average bin bag!

Cue drum roll.....

.......the bright lights...

...........and heightened suspense!

Ready?

...well, here it is!



You see, I still have SOME household rubbish, which is mainly the film from Weetabix cartons, small scraps of bubblewrap that are of little use to anyone and my junior saboteur's favourite cheese wrapper, or rather the wrapper from his favourite cheese.

Some weeks you might find the odd crisp packet too, as well as a few cotton buds (but those will soon be eliminated as I have now found ones with paper sticks, so they can be composted).

So what are our next challenges...well it's still rubbish related of course. One of my first priorities is to get myself organised so that Mr A can happily take a packed lunch to work. Call me a control freak, but I have got no idea what goes on outside these four walls as far as Mr A's diet is concerned, but I bet it's got something to do with packets of crisps, takeaways and other nasties. So you see, I've got to take control and it will bring benefits.

It's going to be hard as it means some forward planning, which is really tricky for me. What makes it more difficult is that Mr A has certain tastes, which exclude sandwiches. One might suggest that he is a fussy booger, but it could also be argued that I am a lazy apeth. Between us we might find a solution, so stay tuned.

However, the biggest challenge will be our household declutter. That's a project and a half, which will need patience and some careful management and a bit of bin defence!

You see, when my back is turned Mr A dons his crown to become the King of Declutter, whipping himself into action to bin all of the crap and clutter in his sight and if I haven't got my wits about me it will all be destined for landfill.

So I need to summon up the energy to tidy, sort and pass things on to good homes...

Now that for me will be a greater challenge than Zero Waste Week. So if there are any declutterers out there who can help me re-organise my chateau, (sorry my three bedroomed semi) you will be welcomed with open arms.

And on that note, I'm off to fight my way through the mountain of kids clothes.

I hope you have a great weekend. The fabulous Recyclettes and I are celebrating their fantastic progress in style and will be virtually partying all weekend (all waste-free of course). See you next week for some more rubbish updates.


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Introducing Mrs Green and family

Say a big hello to Mrs Green and her family.

She lives in a semi-rural village in Gloucestershire and together with her husband, their daughter and the cat, she has agreed to sign up for The Rubbish Diet challenge.

Yes, we did need agreement from the cat, as she is a key contributor to food waste but we took a purr and a wink as a sign of compliance before letting her settle back to her cat-nap.

The family are at home for much of the time as their daughter is home-educated. They often have the opportunity to cook from scratch, which means that they are able to keep unnecessary packaging down to a minimum.

Being environmentally-minded, Mrs Green has made previous attempts to slim her bin but also being human, the frustrations with taking the kitchen peelings to the compost bin at the bottom of the garden on wet and soggy days have often led to it being sent off to landfill.

Combining problems with plastics and issues with Tetra Paks, the Green's weekly rubbish collection regularly amounts to one old-fashioned dustbin plus two swing-bin bags of waste.



With concerns for the environment being a key motivator Mrs Green has decided to go for it big time, with an immediate decision to try and cut all that rubbish in half.

They are already keen recyclers. After recycling glass, tins and paper through their kerbside collection, they hold on to their plastic bottles and card to take to their village collection point and to recycling centres further afield. Since completing the audit, Mrs Green is also pleased that recently Tetra Pak recycling has been introduced in the village and is already seeing a positive impact on her bin.

However the key problem is food waste, especially as Mrs Green is vegetarian, Mr Green isn't and Little Miss Green is just 7, which means that Mrs Green has a huge juggling act to pull together the nutritional needs of all the family, including the cat who also eats fresh food rather than tinned meat.

There's not much the family can do at present to reduce the cooked food waste, except for reduce portion sizes or perhaps invest in a Bokashi Bin, but the great news is that Mrs Green is now very committed to making regular visits to their compost bin and is more determined than ever.

And I don't think composting will be particularly difficult anymore, thanks to a new visitor, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last week. He and his friend can be found regularly hanging out in the vicinity of the composter and are always ready to help. And NO, I am not talking about Diarmuid Gavin of WRAP's compost campaign. No, this visitor is just a little more hairy than celebrity gardener Diarmuid.



But with this kind of help, I don't think there's much hope for successful composting, do you?

So while I work on her Rubbish Audit, please pop over to Mrs Green's pad and say hello. Apparently, there's a bit of a recycling party going on in celebration of Recycle Week.

But before you go, here is the best news ever. I am very pleased to hear that Mrs Green is also hooked on talking rubbish and has set up a dedicated blog to track her family's progress. Called My Zero Waste, you will find her regular musings plus loads of other useful information and news items that she's found along the way. Don't miss it, it's excellent.

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No time to waste!

Apologies if I've been quiet on the blog over the last week.

It may have looked like the lights were on, but I am afraid that there was no-one at home, no-one that is except for two cats and about two hundred worms.

Following a last-minute cancellation at a rural hotspot we've had our eye on, we took the opportunity for a short break in Monmouthshire.

With family in the heart of Bristol as well as the coal-mining valleys of South Wales, Penallt (a little village just outside Monmouth) seemed the perfect base for visiting those close to us, nicely located in the middle of our two destinations but far enough away to feel like a real holiday.

And it was a holiday...even from blogging...as there was no access to the Internet! I was just glad that I'd organised the videos beforehand, knowing things would be busy.

However rubbish dieting aficionados will be pleased to hear that it wasn't a holiday from waste awareness and apart from the other personal stuff such as staying in a fab place, enjoying great food and celebrating Mr A's (waste-free) birthday, here are some of the less obvious highlights....

• Zero Waste Travel: Zero Waste Travel was Mr A's idea and at his request I baked muffins for the journey instead of buying snack bars. I also saved the fruit and veg from a lonesome week in the fridge and created some snack pots for the journey. I mustn't forget the invention of a new awesome snack of bananas in blankets, easily created by wrapping a slice of bread around a banana! Perfect for rumbling tummies en-route! But tsk-tsk Mr A. No sooner had we set off, I discovered Mr A discretely unwrapping some Cadbury's chocolate eclairs. Zero Waste Travel indeed! And as for the snack pot of chopped fruit, perhaps I should mention they tumbled out of my eldest's hands, coinciding with a very sharp bend ...oops...Gritty grapes are not nice, especially when squashed into a backpack!
  

• Not on your nelly! This time, it was Mr A's turn to "tsk-tsk" me. After all my hard work on saying "no" to the children, all it took was a weak moment on Tuesday morning. I took the boys on a tour of Tintern Abbey, while Mr A stayed outside to finish a work report. After just over an hour of wandering around the ruins about three times over and fifteen minutes of hide-and-seek, we decided it was time to leave and the only way out was via the shop. One ball-point pen and plastic compass later, we returned to Mr A's frown and look of dismay. I know, I know! After everything I said....BUT...the compass was educational AND the ball-point pen was excessively huge and so orange that it could never get lost and can be used for storing all sorts of things when it runs out...EXCUSES, EXCUSES... I guess it just shows how hard it is. However, in my defence, these were the only excesses during a week of half-term antics and is a huge improvement on previous times.

• Meeting Mrs Green! When regular commentator Mrs Green heard that we were staying in her neck of the woods, she kindly invited us over for a cup of tea! We couldn't refuse a lovely impromptu offer like that, especially as she has courageously just signed up to her own Rubbish Diet. Mrs Green is a talented lady. Not only is she brilliant at blogging, she's also great at biscuits and cakes, plus lots of other things. It's just a shame we could only stay for a couple of hours. There's more on Mrs Green tomorrow, so do visit for lots of exciting news, including my very unusual composting experience.
  

• Visiting St Arvans! As I told Mr A, it really was a coincidence that we were staying so close to St Arvans. "What's so significant about St Arvans?" you might ask. I'll reveal all later this week, but if you can't wait to find out, there's always Google!

• Realising our accommodation had a Food Waste collection! There wasn't any info in the brochure, the landlady hadn't even mentioned it and I am not that obsessed that I 'd checked out the recycling bins, but the sheer joy of opening the front door one day and seeing little food waste bins on the kerbside meant I found myself in recycling heaven. The only downside was trying to empty the remnants of the previous night's black bean stir-fry into the teeny bin, whilst fishing out the odd wine cork.....er, honestly I'm really really not obsessed!
  

Sorry, I've just realised...how rude of me not to send a postcard! After abandoning the blog and going on holiday for a week it's the very least I could do.

So without further ado, here's a lovely photo that I took of my visit....to none other than Monmouth's Household Waste Recycling Centre:



And as for the message:

"Weather crap and recycling variable....

Wish you were here... Well perhaps not exactly here as other HWRCs are available.

As today is the beginning of WRAP's Recycle Week a visit to your local HWRC will be even more timely. The theme of Recycle Week is "One more thing", so what a perfect excuse to rummage through your cupboards and pop along to your local HWRC to show your support. Your "one more thing" could be an aerosol can, a tetrapak carton or a few batteries... whatever they are able to take. And while you're at it, tell your friends just in case they can't find their way. And if they really can't find their way out of a proverbial paper bag the Recycle Now site will be of great help.

Oh I'm so glad to be back... even if it never felt like I was really away!

Lots of love,

Almost Mrs Average xx"


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