The Rubbish Diet Challenge - Before I Start

The guide tells me to weigh our rubbish (non-recyclable).  This will give me an idea of how much we throw away and help me set a target.

Our landfill bin is collected fortnightly.  The next collection is on Wednesday, so I'm going to wait until then before I weigh the bag.

I'm not overly worried about the amount of rubbish we send to landfill as we've cut it right back to no more than half a swing-bin-liner-full every fortnight.  My major concern is the amount of packaging we throw away.  Most of it's recyclable but I believe that, with a bit of effort, we could just not buy most of it.

The next thing I have to do is to identify the top 5 bin-fillers.  These are:

1. Crisp packets
2. Non recyclable plastic wrappers (the kind that won't stretch when pulled)
3. The plastic film that covers recyclable plastic containers (ie the ones used by supermarkets to package mince etc)
4. Black plastic containers (which our recycling service won't accept)
5. The plastic netting used to package onions, oranges etc

These are the items I'm going to be working on eliminating over the next few weeks.

Wish me luck!

The Rubbish Diet - Spring 2013

Here we go again!

This isn't the first Rubbish Diet Challenge I've undertaken.  In many ways it's a continual challenge to keep on top of the mountains of rubbish that threaten to bury us under their weight.

But every now and then it's useful to be reminded of the facts, resume good practices that we've been forgetting and learn new ways of reducing, reusing and recycling.

So a big thank you to Mrs Almost Average for delivering that all important kick up the proverbial!