Christmas challenges on the Rubbish Diet

Feeling fairly daunted about trying to keep a lid on consumption over Christmas - any tips would be gratefully received. Here are a few things I am going to try and do.... Christmas cards: • It is so easy to buy charity cards and those made from sustainable sources – and sometimes I even make it in time to go to the charity Christmas card shop in St Marys Church!! • In our office we agree with work colleagues not to send cards but to put £2.00 in a pot to support a charity instead • We are famous in our family for keeping all our Christmas cards with the intention of making present tags and new cards - we do make a few but probably better to take all your cards to Marks and Spencers after Christmas for Woodland trust Christmas presents • One job this weekend is to give the charity shops a Christmas present by having a clear out - this feels like a present for me as well as we declutter a bit! • No doubt I will be looking for a special reuse gift while I'm dropping off the stuff! (must make sure I come home with less though!) • I love to give my family OXFAM gifts like latrines, water, chickens or school meals - presents that don't clutter up their house, produce no packaging, don't need batteries and have a practical, positive impact in the world! • At Christmas I love going to the Fairtrade Shop in town - beautiful things and food that taste FAIRLY good!! • It's great to be given gifts of time - dog walks, promises of house work assistance, cooking once a week! I wonder if that will happen this year - I might have to drop a few hints! Wrapping paper • My challenge is not to buy any wrapping paper at all as my "it'll come in corner" is taking over the whole room! I also have to use all that shiny chocolate wrap to decorate paper - I know this is just sending my rubbish to someone else's but at least the stuff is REUSED before it hits the bin. • I found this guide to make a present box which even I could manage with quite pleasing results! http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-gift-box-from-paper-without-glue-or-/ • I also have some pretty pieces of material that I can wrap things in. Christmas lunch • We are going to my mum's for Christmas lunch. It is always great fun to cook together and my boys eat loads - however - we have to coordinate to make sure we don't both buy stuff - panic food buying is a sure fired way to food waste in the bin. • Christmas tree dilemma - what should we do? plastic or real? Christmas Rubbish challenge • Having been on the Rubbish Diet for 6 weeks now, we will be trying not to overload our bin at Christmas. I dread the packaging - but never fear because as long as it isn't polystyrene it should be recyclable. Anticipating visitors makes me realise that my compost bin is pretty full already. Shropshire Council www.shropshirewaste.org.uk are selling them at £16 each and get second half price - does anyone want to buy one with me? I will be saving all our cardboard for Cardboard Christmas on 5th January! - got a dumpy bag out side to store it. Let me know if you would like a bag or can volunteer with us on the 5th. Christmas electricity Can I have Christmas lights? Please..... I think as long as they are LED they use very little electricity am I right? Hoping we packed them away carefully last year so they will be in good working order for this year. Found 3 sets of lights in Rubbish sort yesterday - if you find yours don't work - you can take them to a WII bank - there is one at HRC and another at Red Barn Pub on Longden Road. How do you keep a lid on the bin over Christmas? Best festive wishes ali

5 weeks into Rubbish Diet Shropshire and .....

Well we had a good chat last night - only a few people were able to make Rubbish Diet meeting but a big welcome to Gill, Katharine's mum who is now on board with us. The feedback from you all has been great over the last 5 weeks .... James is managing to reduce each week and was down to 520g for week 3 - any more data James? Tina has noticed a huge reduction in volume and is homing in on those awkward items. Howard brought up a really good point - we both realised very early on that getting down to one plaster was not an option for us. BUT both our households have managed to reduce volume by three quarters and weight by at least 50% from where we started. Does it matter if we don't get down to a plaster? My feeling is that we are showing that without wearing a hairshirt we can reduce our waste significantly and still make a difference. Shropshire is already doing quite well when you compare average bin weights - 16.4kg per household per fortnight with national averages. The average household size is 2.4 people in our area which makes an average of 6.8 kg per person per fortnight. The Shropshire rubbish dieters have completely smashed those figures! Even when things go slightly wrong our fortnightly weights are way lower than these averages for example, Anna with 3 adults in her house has just turned in a weight of 1.21 kg compared with an average of 20.4 kg for a fortnight. My first fortnight weighed 5.4 kg for 5 people instead of an average 34 kg!! Last night we talked about how the process is making us change behaviour.... Lots of discussion about leaving black trays on the shelves - Anna left a bargain on the shelf because it was in a black tray And we agreed that it is ok to not feel guilty about everything! It's ok to eat crisps and catfood in foil-lined packaging occasionally! Overall, people seem to have found the process interesting, a challenge and rewarding - my highlight has been putting the wrong bins out and it being no big deal! Incidently, 4 of my neighbours tried to tell us that we had got it wrong - they were so worried that we would be left with overflowing refuse for another fortnight! little did they know!!! Would love to hear your highlights - and Katy is devising a simple online survey for us to put down our thoughts. I am really glad to have made myself and my family go through this process and thrilled that you guys have done it too!! We have proved to ourselves that it is possible and indeed straightforward to slim your bin in Shropshire. So armed with the findings of our trial I am really keen to roll it out to more people in the New Year. People thought we should produce a ten point guide to the Rubbish Diet Challenge The Guide would start with all the benefits: No more smelly bins No more worries about missing the bin men Saving money by not wasting food Less money spent on bin liners! Council Tax going further if less has to be spent on landfilling stuff As well as the overall impact of using resources more wisely saves energy, saves landfill space and saves raw materials All leading to a happier planet! Then we can take the Rubbish Diet challenge to different people... Tina and I are thinking about trying to get Meole Brace School on board in the New Year. Gill is thinking about getting her choir on board Katharine had a great idea of taking it to a Young Professional Forum Could you get a friend, a neighbour, work colleagues on board - or would your club, guide pack or football team be up for a challenge? Have a think and let me know if you have any ideas, suggestions, comments or bin weights.... Many thanks and best wishes ali

Bin confusion in Shrewsbury!

Just got back from recycling at the Ludlow Medieval Christmas Fayre - a fantastic event set inside the beautiful Ludlow Castle!! We had a fine time squelching around in the mud and bin diving but.... we managed to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill dramatically. We first worked at the event in 2011 - in 2010, the event had sent 37 skips to landfill - last year we reduced this to 7 simply by putting in a waste separation system and capturing recyclable materials. This year all the event landfill waste went into 2 mini skips - a great result given the very wet conditions. It will be a couple of days before I know weights. Anyway - that's just to explain why I haven't been blogging this past week. So what was happening at my house while I was away? well, being quite a control freak and obviously totally obsessed by rubbish I was a little concerned about whether we could adhere to the Rubbish Diet without me standing over the bin. However, imagine my delight when on Tuesday morning - bin day - my husband put out the recycling instead of the refuse because there was hardly anything in the bin and he thought it must be a recycling week!! www.shropshirewaste.co.uk On closer inspection there was one bag in the bin full of sweet wrappers from the boys bedrooms and the kitchen bin contents weighed 2.4 kg. In the past it would have been a disaster to miss the bin men - but under the Rubbish diet it's no big deal - no fear of having an over flowing bin and no foul smelling rubbish because there's no food waste in it! So it seems that my family are quite happy to keep on with the rubbish diet even if I am not here and treading lightly with regard to waste is getting easier and easier.

safe dates for food

Karen Cannard - the creator of the Rubbish Diet sent over this link from love food hate waste campaign.... "Re food, it's also worth remembering that even up to its Use By date, certain food can still be frozen. Here's a great link that you might like to share around your community:" http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/content/know-your-dates-londons-love-food-hate-waste-campaign I think I just need a 30 hour day - then I would be really organised! The chickens next door are enjoying my attempts at getting rid of food waste and the dog is getting fat! This has got to stop - no more food waste from now on!

Got to stop guessing on quantities

I have never been an exact cook - a bit of this and a bit of that for about that long. However - I find that my approximate approach to recipes means that I often over buy by a couple of portions. I carefully store the leftovers intending to eat them the next day - when low and behold they get forgotten behind something in the fridge and have to be thrown away or at the dog - what a waste of money!! But things are going to change!!! I have just discovered this great tool devised by the Love food Hate Waste campaign http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/portions/everyday It works out how much of different ingredients you need to buy. Now, I have 3 boys who eat way more than I do so I put in 5 adults rather than 2 plus 3 children and this seems to work for us. Over the next 2 weeks I am going to use it to see if I can eliminate food waste all together. I would love to hear your top tips for avoiding food waste

Landfills don't need calories

Talking of food waste - here's a bit of info to get us thinking.... "As its coming up to Christmas we could all do with a bit more spare cash in our wallet, right? Well did you know that the average UK family throws out approximately £550 worth of food each year! Shocking, isn't it? But it's true and most of that is simply because we buy too much or cook too much and then never get round to eating it. And of course when you've got a busy lifestyle with kids this problem is just magnified. Some kids can be fussy eaters too - we've all spend hours slaving over a hot stove only to see the little ones leave half the food uneaten on their plate. Well one way to help avoid this is getting your children more involved in meal planning and preparing dinner. This can be fun and may help them to appreciate the value of food and waste less. Simply by planning out your meals for the week ahead in a diary, you can reduce waste because you can plan out a shopping list, so that you only buy what you really need. Some ways of reducing food waste are really as simple as just storing food in a different place. Two-thirds of UK households are letting fruit go to waste, simply by keeping it out in a fruit bowl whereas fruit like apples will last up to 14 days longer if kept in the fridge. Another top tip is to make the most of your freezer. Try freezing any leftovers in individual portions and then you have a perfect lunch to take to work in the week. But make sure you wrap food properly before freezing to keep it at its best. Use freezer bags or plastic containers and minimize the air around the food helps avoid ‘freezer burn’. And it's not just all about money - by saving food waste we can all tread more lightly on the planet. Producing, distributing, storing and cooking food uses energy, fuel and water. All these activities result in greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming. Think of a pack of cheese for example. The resources that go into raising the cows, processing the milk, transporting the cheese, refrigeration, the fuel we use to drive to the shop to buy it - all this to put it in the bin at the end of the week. It's insane but it's happening all over the country right now - in fact in the UK we throw away the equivalent of more than three million slices of cheese every single day! In Shropshire around 20% of all household waste is food waste - so that means we're producing about 30,000 tonnes of the stuff every year. Of course now some of this will be composted or feed to pets and the like but even if it doesn’t all end up in landfill its far better to avoid this waste in the first place. Being frugal with your food is helping to ensure our environment is protected for the future generations." For more handy hints and tips and a delicious selection of family friendly recipes visit http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ Regards, James Thompson, Waste Prevention Officer Waste Management Shropshire Council

The results are in.... 1st fortnight on Rubbish Diet Shropshire

Well after 2 weeks of eating, sleeping and talking rubbish - tonight I have weighed our rubbish..... da da daaah 5 people and a dog have produced 2 and a half bags of rubbish weighing a total of 5.4 kg. My wheelie bin is one third full. Our wheelie bin at the last bin day was nearly full with 5 bags in it weighing a total of 10kg. So in both weight and volume we have reduced our rubbish by almost 50%. The reduction is great but is 5.4kg still high? What weight of rubbish does an average UK family throw away each fortnight? Can anybody tell me? My next question is can we get any lower? Well, we seem to be getting into a rhythm now - avoiding non recyclable packaging. Our recycling system has had an overhaul to make it more efficient and the boys are heeding the big notice on the bin that says NO PLASTIC, NO METAL, NO PAPER, NO CARD AND CHECK WITH ME FIRST!! Our biggest problem is food waste. A couple of errors on portion size or forgetting to use up leftovers and bingo you have another kilo of methane just waiting to happen! So my big push over the next 2 weeks will be to be much more careful planning meals, buying food - trying not to be drawn in by bargain buys and using my freezer more effectively. Check out www.lovefoodhatewaste.org.uk to stop feeding landfill!! And thanks to the grow cook share project in Craven Arms because tey are going to share their Bokashi knowledge with us.