Waste Weigh In

So far the current running totals for rubbish over the last few days are:

Wednesday: 50gms – mainly milk bottle tops, jar lids and a pasta bag

Thursday: 40gms – more milk carton tops and a couple butchers bags

The biggest distinction between this week and last is that there is no dog muck going into the bin, due to the new dog poo digester, I have got photos of this to post with the instructions on how to make one using an old bin, but things are a little busy here right now, so I’ll do that when I have more time one night.

The uncooked food waste either goes into the wormery or the fire, as at this time of year the worms ability to eat large amounts of kitchen waste diminishes with the cold weather. If we didn’t have the fire we would collect it up and take it to the allotment compost heap – there isn’t enough garden for one at home.

I (being the main cook in this household) have made fantastic inroads into reducing the amount of cooked food waste that we have. What we do have left over is more often than not possible to recreate into a new meal, and what doesn’t generally goes into the dogs dishes, but even then there are certain things that they can’t eat – or won’t eat – which as we are having fires is wrapped into newspaper and burnt. Its not a great amount but we are working our way towards not needing to find other ways to dispose of it, although I’m sure that there’ll always bit a little left over for the hounds. At some point (nudge nudge the DH) we will have our rayburn fitted, and that will be our main source of heat and cooking in the house so waste can be dropped into that as it is a solid fuel one, so a few scraps won’t do it any harm.

As a family we aren’t big consumers so waste in regards to purchases is pretty minimal, although the Tallest had a friends birthday, we managed to find a toy in a cardboard box, Tallest drew a picture on her own card, we recycled the envelope and wrapped the gift using an old paper bag decorating it with coloured paper and the Tallest did some more drawing on it. So when the friend gets it home, everything bar the envelope can be recycled (they have an open fire so thats that dealt with I think).

All in all we are doing pretty well, although that bar of chocolate I had yesterday added to the pile – you can’t recycle the foiled paper – so for yesterdays sin I had better be saintly today.

Inadvertant Rubbish – The Post

….and here was me thinking that we were doing so well…. typical!

Well you see my point!

These are all from companies/organisations that we have bought from or are members of, so they will need to be contacted and either asked not to send it or to send a paper-free version if they have them. I think that that may be impossible with the Campsites book though.

It was all going so well and then along came the post….Damn!

Waste Weighs in…

After weighing in my non-recyclable rubbish last week (10.5kg – 8.4kg of this was dog muck ehw!) Yesterdays total weight is 100g, this comprises mainly of food wrappings and milk container tops – we have the milkman, but with a three year old and a Coeliac in the house we get through an awful lot of milk.

The dog waste; the main offender of our black bin (in more ways than one) is being gathered in earnest(!) for the grand openning of the dog poo digester which I will post the making of at a later date.

The most obvious area of our day to day lives that needs addressing is when out and about shopping. We are not big consumers, we use a shopping list, have a budget and use our own bags, but still the occasional slip up is still had. To be honest I am the main culpret when we are at sales or car boots and
I see things that would be nice for the girls, as far as toys go, Tallests collection while small is 95% second-hand, and the Smallest who has only really discovered them in the last couple of months has all hand me downs. The same goes with their clothes. It’s food shopping that causes the most amount of grief.

We try to buy local, we get our beef and pork from a local door step supplier, where everything is wrapped, is this better than sealed plastic meat trays I don’t know?

What veg we don’t grow is bought from the local butcher, which is portioned into a plastic bag, I suppose I could take the veg out and give it back to him, but does this reduce the amount he uses or does he just end up throwing it away?

So so far amount of waste definately reduced, but still need to address the shopping dilemma a bit more.