Sunday roundup 35
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We’re at the end of Gloucestershire’s zero waste week challenge. And what a week it’s been. Things have been busy on the site and lots of new readers have been joining in the fun. In case you’ve missed anything, now is your chance to catch up with this week’s roundupWe began this special celebratory week telling you what plans we had. During our last zero waste challenge we did things differently – we shopped for luxury items and dedicated a lot of time to cooking and preparation. This time ’round, however, things were different at Chez Green.
We were interviewed for our local radio station. We enjoyed a whole 8 minutes of sharing our experiences with listeners around the county! To listen in; click here.
I succeeded for the first time with making bread and just in time for our first zero waste breakfast too! Read all about it and find out why you don’t even need scales to make this particular loaf.
If you’re going to produce minimal waste, you need to plan meals. I took a ‘fridge inventory – what did I find lurking at the back of the shelves?
Rob Rees, our local Cotswold Chef stopped to have a chat with us about zero waste week. Find out what it meant to him and what he had been up to.
On to day two; and breakfast and meals today were…..You’ll have to find out.
Choosing to reduce rubbish going to landfill is carried out by individuals for many reasons. We share one of ours with this stunning video.
I made a bit of a confession / personal commitment on Tuesday afternoon. Find out what I decided to give up in honour of zero waste week and why.
1500 households took part in Gloucestershire’s zero waste week challenge. We caught up with one of them for an interview. Find out why Kate Edgar took part and read all about her experiences.
Do you ever forget to take your reusable shopping bags to the store? Here we share the secrets for success with our You Tube vid. In the comments section you can read lots of tips from our readers. Come along and add yours.
Day three and it was waffles for breakfast. Think they are hard to make? Think again! Use this post to come and share your ‘can’t live without’ kitchen gadgets and we’ll talk about some of them later on the blog.
Sainsburys think they have found the solution to the 80,000 tonnes of waste they send to landfill every year. The story caused quite a heated discussion with our readers. Why not come and voice your thoughts too.
Rob Rees shared loads of tips for reducing food waste. Have a browse through his ideas and come and add your own.
Mr Green and I went convenience shopping. This is a rare occurrence for us, but time was limited this week AND we were trying to reduce our landfill waste to zero. It may not have been the healthiest of choices, but we were surprised at what we found. Take a peek at our video.
Gavin McClafferty is a local artist who has been working with 6 families in the county throughout zero waste week. They’ve been having fun sculpting family heads from their rubbish. Read about Gavin’s views on rubbish and see if you can guess what this wonderful head has for a neck!
The biggest challenge for many people when slimming their bin is keeping food waste to a minimum. Find out what we ate during day four of the challenge and see what leftovers we had to use up.
Every family has its challenges to face. Sometimes it feels like the consumerism culture is against you when you want the simplest of foods. Find out what happened to us on Thursday and why we ended up a bit tired and hungry. Forget zero waste, we were almost zero waist……..
I read some of my favourite blogs on Thursday and shared a fabulous recipe for bread rolls, from Kristen at the Frugal Girl and found myself nodding in agreement with Di’s thoughts on Reducing waste.
On Friday, Mr Green got behind the video camera and we showed you how to make a fish pie from leftovers in less than five minutes. Take a look at our video and find out how to do it! Ready, Steady, Cook!
There was another heated debate taking part on the blog this week. Take part yourself and let’s get to the bottom of what we should all be doing with our plastic milk bottle tops.
To co-incide with zero waste week, The Love Food, Hate Waste folk launched a new campaign. Find out what they are up to and how it might help you reduce your food waste.
It was cherries for breakfast on Friday. Little Miss Green wasn’t hungry, but had spotted some cherries in a green grocer this week and ate them up. Find out just how amazing this new green grocer was and why we’ll be visiting again.
We finished the week with a short interview with Rosalind Cookson from the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. She told us all why we should be preventing things from going into the landfill and how bad litter was for our wildlife.
That’s all folks! Today is the last day of the rubbish challenge. Breakfast will be rice pudding and fruit and we’ll be having a traditional Sunday roast for lunch. Dinner usually consists of whatever was not eaten at lunchtime.
Tomorrow we’ll be revealing the contents of our bin and we’d love you to share your experiences over on our zero waste week page; which has over 120 comments already. Why not head over and tell us what you’ve been up to?
It’s been a fabulous week with lots of interest in the site and plenty of new readers leaving their thoughts. Next week I’ll be slowing right down and taking some much needed ‘me time’. But stay tuned for some more trashy adventures where you’ll find out why I got a bit cross in the library on Saturday and the response we got when asking in a shop to fill our reusable containers.
Until the morrow then……..
xxx
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Looking forward to those articles next week, but you deserve your rest Mrs G – the keyboard must have been red-hot this week 🙂
Mrs Green and Co – Thank you for a very interesting, entertaining and educational week 😀
As others have said, I don’t think I will be able to let this challenge go and will wince every time there is no other option but landfill.
I have the murmurings of an art project in my head for the weeks residual waste and will post you a photo if me and Master P are successful 😀
I came out of the closet for an article in yesterdays paper, but unfortunately (maybe!), it’s not on the website so I can’t link to it.
I’ll post our final weigh in tomorrow 🙂
Congratulations on a job well done, Mrs Green. I think it is amazing the range of topics covered during the week. You can look forward to a well earned break after the final tally tomorrow.
Which paper Poppy?
I saw you in the paper, Poppy! and thanks to you all for your comments and for taking part 🙂
Thank you very much for your help and support this week.
@Kris:
Our local rag Kris!
I’m doing my final weigh-in now as I have a few things on tomorrow that will probably keep me away from the PC and as we’ve (hopefully) finished for the day, nothing should be added to it.
Grand total was 114g!!
Of that total, 10g was unavoidable tablet packs, 72g was containers for special stuff I bought in for the animals and wouldn’t have been there is I’d stuck to tins, and of the other 32g, some was avoidable and some was not.
I have also kept some plastic trays to hopefully use for growing seeds and a couple of pieces that are currently decorating a potato! One of the local nurseries has a competition next week!
@Poppy: Waheeeee! Well done Poppy; that is **wonderful** I bet you are so pleased with yourselves.
A hearty congratulations from Chez Green
Mrs Green – I love your summaries. It’s a great way to catch up on what I’ve missed during the week. What a blast you’ve been having. Even though I’ve been out and about for most of the week, I’ve caught up with quite a lot…thanks to my mobile phone. The power of technology eh! And what a great week. Congratulations on some fabulous content including Little Miss G’s lovely video. She’s a true star.
Huge congratulations to Poppy too. That’s a fantastic result. 😀 xx
@Mrs Green:
lol! Even Mr P is impressed and can see that all that nagging was worthwhile 🙂
I relented this morning and let the kittens have pouched food, but when this lot has gone, I will *not* be buying anymore 🙂
The other issue to tackle is food that we already have in the freezer. As that goes, I intend to replace it with more zero waste friendly items.
I have really enjoyed this! Did I say that already!! 😉
Well done Poppy!
I’ve enjoyed it too – I think more so because I had the trial run earlier with the Green’s week so it wasn’t too daunting.
I’m looking forward to next week, because this week I eventually decided my goal was as near zero as possible, and so involved avoidances of certain problematic things. Next week my goal is to not play it safe, and see how much I can still do.
Mum is bringing round Echo’s for the last couple of days later on – hurrah 🙂 And we had a thorough discussion of composting (I am going to contribute to hers) and council pledges, plus swapped some tips 🙂 She had a guided tour of landfill on Friday too!
@Almost Mrs Average: Thanks Mrs A – I’m never sure how helpful the roundup posts are. Catching up on your mobile eh; I’m afraid I am centuries behind. I can just about make an emergency call on mine 😀
@Poppy: Glad Mr P enjoyed himself too. There can be a great sense of achievement when you all work together as a family. Looking forward to hearing about your new freezer purchases. We find a lot of stuff is in cardboard boxes or foil trays now; there is little need for plastics if you have time to shop carefully.
@Kris: Good luck for your continuing journey, Kris and it’s great than your Mum is on board with this.