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.

How to stop "to the Occupier" mail....

People have been asking how to stop mail that isn't personally addressed: James Thompson, Waste prevention officer at Shropshire Council has sent over this information about how to stop "To the occupier" mail... The Mail Preference Service only stops addresses mail for the named occupants www.mpsonline.org.uk You can stop 'to the occupier' by emailing royal mail optout@royalmail.com see http://www.royalmail.com/you-home/controlling-your-mail And you cant completely stop but you can try to reduce free newspapers and take away fliers / political leaflets etc by adding a polite no thanks sign to your letter box It's also about being a bit savvy with giving your address out and making sure you always tick the box to say no to future marketing or not tick the box when they try to reverse the question subtly You can also ask the yellow pages etc not to bother sending you one too https://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/about-us - I find this is a good site http://www.saynotophonebooks.com/ Also this is a really good website http://www.stopjunkmail.org.uk/ This is worth a read too http://myzerowaste.com/articles/household/yellow-pages-bt-directories/ Here's to paperless communication!! Have a nice day