Reducing weekly household rubbish – day five
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We seem to have produced much less waste today generally, but it’s been more of a ‘leftovers’ day, which results in less packaging:
paper – 100g
daily newspaper, given to us by our neighbour
metal – 16g
beer can
tetrpaks – 39g
1 orange juice carton
Food – 480g
Fruit and vegetable peelings (already in compost bin, so not on photo!)
plastic – 1g
seal from honey pot
TOTAL WEIGHT 637g
What happens to all the stuff?
- Paper and metal can be put out for kerbside collection. Find out what your council collect by contacting your local office
- Tetrapaks will be stored for taking to our local tetrapak recycling centre next time we are passing by. Find out where your nearest recycling centre is with the Tetrapak recycling bank locator
- Food is all raw food scraps such as fruit and vegetable peelings. These will be composted.
- The plastic seal from the honey pot will end up in the landfill.
All in all it weighed 637gs of which 1g (honey pot seal) will end up in landfill waste.
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Hi Mrs Green,
Your approach represent family living which is important as the standard household sistuation. My approach has exactly the same mindset. This is completely different from the norm where everything is just chucked in the bin. Which mindset is the future?
Every bit of waste has to be put somewhere, usually on a daily basis. A difference I have is food waste. Because food waste is banned from my 5 year binbag, for obvious reasons of health, every scrap is either composted or Bokashi binnned.
As there is little cooked waste, I collect all scraps in a freezer container until there is enough for the Bokashi. This can be weeks.
Hi Mrs G – what a fitting end to a wonderful week. Were you celebrating with the beer 😀
This is going to be very useful to so many folk. Great effort, with some fantastic links. x
What I can’t fathom is why flour and granulated sugar are sold in RECYCLABLE paper bags but other types of sugar aren’t? My current solution is just to use granulated thereby avoiding plastic waste when baking lunchbox goodies for the tribe but wondered whether there was a genuine reason for it?
Dormouse, interesting question!!
Maybe it just depends on the producer/supplier? Did you look at who the suppliers are?
Also, maybe it has to do with density of the plastic foil – just a wild guess? Though if flour is okay in recyclable..? It would be great to write to the people behind both sugars and ask, no?
Also, it would be really good to check if the recyclable ones are REALLY recyclable and recycled, or just say so (?)
/and how healthy all of them are-? which type they are etc/
Thanks for the Tetra Pak link. Since it was fir the UK I looked for one in the USA and found this: http://www.aseptic.org/ where we can find out where are tetra recycling plants are. Alas, my state does not have a single one, but I did find a mailing address via Reuters to send them for recycling for those who are so inclined.
“In places without a program yet, consumers can send flattened, dry cartons to be recycled at
Tidewater Fibers
12200 Old Stage Rd.
Chester, VA. 23836.
The outside of the box must be labeled “Milk Cartons & Drink Boxes” to be routed correctly.”
@John Costigane: Hi John, well lets hope that the ways represented by many of the readers of this site will become the norm pretty soon. That would be great, wouldn’t it? You have your food waste sorted; that’s a good thing and a problem for many people; especially those with young children. LMG has just left sandwiches prepared for dinner, but they have been put into an air tight container and she will be given them to eat again tomorrow 😉
@Almost Mrs Average: Thanks Mrs A – unlike most weeks, we’ll be carrying on until tomorrow, with a finale on Monday morning!
@Dormouse: I’m not sure doormouse, although the brown sugars do tend to absorb liquid more – they go rock solid within days in our cupboards once opened. I wonder if that has something to do with it. I’ve just looked at a pack of Sainsbury’s Fairtrade soft brown sugar and it is a number 7 with a note next to it saying ‘not yet recyclable’…
Like Layla points out; the only way for us to find out is to ask them.
@Ablissa: Ablissa; thank you for that – it will be a great resource for our friends across the pond. I’ll add it to our links