Ho Ho Ho for the Carnival of Trash

The lovely Almost Mrs Average has very generously asked me to host the next Carnival of Trash on Monday 15 December.

For those of you who have no idea what a carnival is (I didn't until very recently), it's a blog post which brings together a selection of posts on a particular subject. In other words, a blog magazine. If you're still confused you could take a look at one or more of the last three carnivals here and here and here.

This next edition will be a special Christmas one so please ensure that your submissions have a Christmas theme. The festive season is a veritable minefield for zero waste campaigners so if you have any thoughts, strategies or tips to help us pick our way safely through this year please feel free to share them with us.

As ever the categories are Composting, Recycling, Reducing Waste, Rethinking, Reducing and Zero Waste. Submit your entries here.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Recycling Crisis

I read an article in today's Observer which claims that sites are desperately being sought to house the UK's unwanted mountain of recyclable rubbish. The financial crisis has led to a drop in demand for recycled raw materials. Thousands of tonnes of paper, plastic and steel are piling up and local authorities have requested government permission to store them on Ministry of Defence land until the market returns.

The danger is, of course, that this will discourage people from recycling. Our recycling or composting has increased by 10% over the last year but we still lag behind the rest of Europe.

What is does illustrate is that recycling should remain the last option and, ideally, only resorted to after reducing and reusing.

Easier said than done, I'm afraid. My last weigh in, 10 days ago, was 475g (ie about 240g per week), almost entirely made up of unrecyclable plastic food wrapping. Definitely still work in progress.

Zero Waist Goes Global

For those of you who read Chinese click here to read about my challenge in the Beijing Youth Weekend newspaper. I was approached through this blog by one of its journalists, Chen qimei, who interviewed me by email. It will be interesting to see what response, if any, it elicits. As I said to Chen qimei in my last email, we are all in this together.