The Eglu has landed

Looks like we've now got some work to do. So it's time to start preparing the chicken run and get to know some more chicken folk before we go and select our brood.

It's so eggciting... I know, I know. I'm not known for my jokes. But at least I'm a "good egg". Boom Boom

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Make do and mend!

Being a stay at home mother, I spend many an hour doing the washing. You know how it is. With two little boys on the go and a husband, my life is surrounded by wet clothes.

And the one thing that has supported me through all this has been my trusty clothes horse, bought sometime last century from Habitat for just £12.50. I remember this detail simply because I only pulled the price label off last year. Life's just been too busy washing pants. Pants here, pants there. Indeed pants every-blimmin-where.

But with so much washing my poor clothes horse has begun to lean under the sheer weight of usage. Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, it was developing a penchant for the right, depending on how you approached it.

And I had to approach it with care.

Except on Friday, when all in a lather to answer the doorbell, I bunged a whole pile of heavy washing on its poorly side. I returned to see it crumpled at my feet. One of the supports had snapped under the strain. I don't blame it really - when it comes to all that washing who wouldn't?

But this time last year, this Almost Average Household would have got our fingers ready on the Internet or jumped in the car to go off and buy a replacement, dumping this one at the tip on way. After all it was only £12.50 and it wouldn't cost us much more for another would it?

But look how things have changed. We've experienced such a transformation even my own mother wouldn't recognise us. Arriving home to witness the collapse of his personal laundry service, Mr A came to the rescue with a screwdriver and a piece of wood and made a splint for the broken support.


It's amazing how things change when you consider a life of Zero Waste. I know the clothes horse would have been recycled if we had taken it to the Recycling Centre. But we would have had the journey and there would also be the hidden costs in buying a new one, including the resources, energy in manufacturing and fuel used in transport.

When you think about it in those terms it highlights that Zero Waste is not just about recycling, precycling or indeed reusing. It's about much more.

For me, the Make Do and Mend philosophy has been one of the hardest changes to incorporate into our lifestyle. In a modern age where NEW is seen as king and the LATEST GADGETS make their predecessors obsolete, the temptations for an easier and more sparklier life have just been too ..... er....tempting.

But at last, I am happy that I don't need a brand spanking new clothes horse to replace the one that's collapsed. Thanks to Mr A, it's still in good shape to last for many years to come.

But sigh...a woman's work is never done.

Well it did take Mr A two days to get around to finishing the repair so my Zanussi and I have got some catching up to do! I can hear the washing machine on its final spin. I think I need to load it with more pants!

Poor old clothes horse!

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As promised in the comments, here are a few links to suppliers of the old traditional wooden clothes horse:

Chumleigh Hardware
Lakeland
Pretty Practicals

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Ruby's Rubbish Surprise: reporting live from York

Today I am delighted to feature a guest post by my dear friend Ruby. If you've been following The Rubbish Diet for most of the last year, you may remember her own rubbish revelations when she had a go at slimming her own bin last summer.

After working hard to sort out her compostables in her brand spanking new brown wheelie bin, her recyclables in her old blue one and reducing her HUGE black landfill bin by an amazing 50%... she only went and boogered off to Yorkshire.

Well life's not the same without her in Bury St Edmunds. And as far as rubbish is concerned Ruby certainly got a shock when she landed in the beautiful city of York. Here she is to reveal all.

It's over to Ruby, reporting live from York...

"When I moved to York in August last year, I had a big rubbish surprise.

With a bag of trash for landfill in my hand, I went into the back yard, to find ... no bin!

I checked in the back access alley to the house - no bin there either! And not only were there none outside our house, there were also none outside anyone else's! Had the citizens of York all got down to zero waste already? Did no-one throw anything away?

Our bin-free back access alley in summer

"There are no bins," my mother explained. The council don't allow them in certain areas, because they look unsightly, all left out in the alleys.

"So what do I do with this?" I asked in horror, wielding my bag of stuff for landfill.

"Come this way, " she replied.

And I followed her to the dark recesses of the garden shed, where there sat a black bag.

"I keep it in here so cats can't get at it," she said. "They smell the food scraps, you see. They can make a terrible mess."

I shoved my rubbish inside the bag.

"And these are for recycling," she said, indicating a blue bag for paper waste, and a small green box for bottles and tins.

The blue bag is for paper – but not cardboard. The green box, for bottles and jars, and tin cans

Brilliant that there's a bottle collection from the doorstep - but not so good that cardboard can't be disposed of via the refuse collection - after all, it accounts for quite a lot of food packaging. And the box for recyclables is so small!

What a shock to the system. Coming from Bury St Edmunds where at the bottom of my garden sat my array of three wheelie bins - blue for recyclables, black for landfill, brown for garden waste, this was quite a change around. I am now, just about, getting used to it.

Here are a few pics from round and about the area I live:

Rubbish bags are out in a nearby street – is this cat ready to pounce?

Hmm, this street looks like there might have been a cat attack recently. The bags here were out way too early though. They are officially not supposed to be out before 7pm of the night before collection.

Look! Not even the doctor's has a bin! These are special bags for commercial waste.

I really don't know what to think though about the fact that we have no actual bin. Good or bad? I'm still not sure. What does anyone else think?"


Huge thanks to Ruby for pulling this post together so quickly. I only asked her yesterday after discussing her latest entry on her own blog.

It really does highlight the differences across the country in how our household rubbish is managed, something that we all so easily take for granted. And it's interesting to consider the aesthetics of street-scene as an element to waste management decisions. It is true that wheelie bins can "lower the tone" of an area as indeed can rubbish bags that are left out too early.

So what's it like in your neck of the woods? Are you a wheelie big fan of wheelie bins or are you happy with your plastic sacks? And how does rubbish collection impact on your neighbourhood? I'd love to know.

To see what Ruby's up to in York and indeed the photo that inspired today's post, visit her latest blog yorkdailyphoto.blogspot.com.

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Carnival of Trash Time

Welcome to the January edition of The Carnival of Trash, celebrating the new year with lots of ideas and inspiration to help you reduce your waste. Thanks to all the bloggers for their submissions. To see what's coming up next month, check out the details at the end of the post.

Recycling

Cindy presents The Green Shopping Bag posted at My Recycled Bags.com, saying, "I'm here this carnival to offer a free pattern and picture tutorial to crochet a green shopping bag. My green shopping bag is made with at least 80 recycled plastic grocery bags that I cut into strips and crocheted them into this handy reusable tote. It's real roomy and holds lots of items."

Cindy who also presents Recycled Christmas Gift Bag Ideas posted at My Recycled Bags.com, saying, "Recycle some old plastic bags into cool Christmas gift bags this year. I offer free patterns to create several alternatives to the traditional gift wrapping for your presents."


Jim presents The Five Reasons Why I Recycle posted at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

Reducing Waste

Wenchypoo presents An All-Day Sunday Peeve-a-Thon posted at Wisdom From Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket, saying, "Why make just a 2009 waste-busting resolution when you need to do it ALL THE TIME!"


Jen presents Day 185: Happy Waste-Free New Years posted at The Clean Bin Project, saying, "We aim to start off this year by cataloging, for a week, the actual amount of trash and recycling we are still producing after 6 months of trying to slim our bins."


Mrs Green presents Happy New Year - it’s the countdown to Gloucestershire zero waste challenge week! posted at MY ZERO WASTE, saying, "We've made two trashtastic resolutions for 2009; have a read and find out what we are planning!"


Almost Mrs Average presents New Year's Resolutions in the Almost Average household posted at The Rubbish Diet, saying, "This year, I'll be digging my way out of packaging!"

Rethinking

makingthishome presents Switch to Cloth Bags posted at Making This Home, saying, "Thanks for hosting this and sharing everyone's ideas!"

That concludes this edition. The February Edition is calling for bloggers to promote local stores or services that help reduce waste. So please take time to applaud your favourite businesses. They could be shops that sell nearly new items or recycled goods. It might be a grocery store that sells unpackaged produce or a skilled tradesperson who repairs items. Please give them a huge shout-out to help spread the word and encourage people to shop wisely and locally.

Please submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of trash using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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In 100 days, drive left and then turn right to landfill

If you're the kind of person who regularly berates the amount of over-packaged, over-blinged and over-rated crap to swamp our planet, I've got a real treat for you tonight as it's time to stand up and reveal the worst offenders.

Created by John Naish, author of Enough, The Landfill Prize is inviting nominations for the most needless, wasteful uses of our planet's precious resources that you've discovered in the last year.

So, if like me you have a pet hate up your sleeve, it's now time to flaunt it. Just pop over to www.enoughness.co.uk to see how you can nominate. You'll have to be quick though as the judging panel is getting ready to name and shame the worst offenders in February.

I've got my nomination sorted, representing a whole host of novelty gadgets whose only purpose are to amuse or bemuse for all of five minutes before they end up abandoned in a drawer or even worse in landfill.

My nomination is none other than an irritating product called the Sat Nag, which at £6.99 mocks the more well know Sat Nav device, blasting its owner with 24 annoying comments featuring totally unhelpful commands.

Typical phrases include "In 100 metres, I’m going to ask you to move over to the slow lane, so I can fix my makeup" and "You have reached your destination - you may now throttle your passenger."

It's not just unnecessarily irritating, it's irritatingly unnecessary and is as funny as your mother-in-law sat in the passenger seat, poking an umbrella in your ear hole.

Well that's my rant over. It's always therapeutic to get something off my chest and huge thanks to John Naish and The Landfill Prize panel for allowing me the opportunity. So with my nomination sorted, I wonder what yours would be. Go on....have a rant and then go and nominate!

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It's time to SnaffleUp some new year goodies

Today I'm taking time-out from the garden to introduce you to Chris Toynbee, founder of SnaffleUp, a new free recycling website that's going head-to-head with Freecycle. Chris contacted me in December after having a chat with Mrs Green over at MyZeroWaste. It was a great opportunity to invite Chris to tell us more about his new site which has already reached almost 2000 members.

Of course, I couldn't let him go without telling us about his own rubbish. So here's Chris on SnaffleUp, recycling and slimming bins.



What was the inspiration behind SnaffleUp?

The inspiration came from my frustrations with another recycling site. I felt there was a need for a easy to use recycling site that could constantly improved with new features and information about recycling in the UK.


How does SnaffleUp stand out from the other sites?

Firstly it's a lot easier to use. There is a simple registration process. You can add an item with up to 3 pictures in a few seconds. You can also customise how many emails you wish to receive by setting up email alerts for items that interest you and are in your area. No need to receive emails of every item listed. You can also instantly see how far away items are from your home.


What's the most unusual item to be advertised so far?

Someone added a lobster pot to the site not long after we first launched. I'm guessing even fishermen are using the Internet to recycle!


What kind of things are you personally hoping to find on SnaffleUp?

I could definitely do with a microwave - if I find one I'll make sure I get it checked out by an electrician. We advise all SnaffleUp members to do the same with their electrical items.


Thanks Chris that's top advice...but let's start talking bins! I think it's time to reveal how much you throw away. Don't be shy now.

It's pretty small. I recycle all items possible such as glass plastic and paper. If I think something might come in handy it usually ends up in a cupboard until it comes in handy or a little later goes on SnaffleUp.


And what's the one thing you're going to do to slim your bin in 2009?

Make sure that nothing that can be used by someone else is thrown into landfill. I noticed a broken camera on SnaffleUp recently. Apparently it was snapped up by someone looking for camera parts!

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Huge thanks to Chris for taking some valuable time out for the interview. I thought I'd give SnaffleUp a work-out and have already put something up this morning. So why don't you pop over to www.snaffleup.co.uk to see if you can work out what it is. Here's a clue - they're brown and belong to Mr A.

Happy guessing!

Oh...and if you're a tweeter, twitterer or whatever...don't forget you can follow SnaffleUp on Twitter and find out the latest offers added.


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Plotting the plot

So after declaring my new year's resolution last week, Mr A has already been digging (or indeed double-digging) to incorporate all our lovely home-made compost into our brand new veg-patch.

The problem is, I've got grand plans for our garden but very little space and really will need all the help I can get. So I thought I'd put together a little (but wobbly) video-tour of our garden to reveal what we're up against.

You'll see that we're going to have to use every nook and cranny we can lay our hands on and I've got a feeling that we'll have to try our hands at vertical gardening in order to maximise our assets. And believe me... this will be tough so all ideas will be most welcome.

So while you're having a gander around the garden, my next task is to think about the veggies that my family actually likes as well as those that will be easy to grow and which will help reduce our reliance on packaging. And I mustn't forget, they'll also need protecting from the chickens. Oh my word. So much to do. Right, pen at the ready, it's time to start reading those gardening books.




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