Sunday Roundup
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Another week of rubbishy tales from zero waste towers
I can’t believe how quickly time flies by. Even Little Miss Green looked into the distance the other day and said wistfully “Time goes so quickly, before I know it, I’ll be ten!”
Bless.
So another week has passed here at Chez Green and we’ve had a wonderful week of reusing, recycling and composting our way to a zero waste future.
Plastic free chocolates competition
We began the week with a competition to win £35 of organic, fair trade, ZERO WASTE chocolates from Cocoa Loco. Over 300 chocoholics tried their luck to see if Valentine’s Day would be a sweet affair for them this year.
Waste free convenience food
Food waste is a big issue, amounting to more than 8 million tonnes over the course of a year in the UK. On Tuesday I shared some tips from my kitchen and I want to hear what convenience foods you make without the waste in your home.
Recycling audio cassette tapes
Little miss Green’s question was ‘What’s that?” when I dug an old tape out of the cupboard! I’m sure you all know exactly what I’m talking about. But what do you do when you no longer listen to your audio cassette tapes. Can you recycle them? Find out with our “How to recycle audio cassette tapes” article.
Say it without flowers
On Thursday, Gareth Mitchell from Tree2mydoor took centre stage with his post about trees and their astrological meaning. A tree from his collection makes a unique, personal and long lasting gift that has the added bonus of being zero waste!
What to do with silica gel
Our dustbin demon this week was some silica gel. Fortunately we have a cunning reuse for it, but we want to hear your ideas too. Leave your comments and see what food ended up wasted here this week too.
Coming up!
Next week we’re going to be busy bunnies setting up collection points in our local Tesco and Sainsbury for the Philippine Community Fund. We’ll be collecting much-needed crisp packets and toothpaste tubes to send to Manilla where they will be woven into bags and purses. This pays the mothers a good wage and means their children can go to school rather than having to scavenge on rubbish dumps. If you live in Gloucester, we hope you’ll find time to come along and support our launch; it would be great to meet you!
We’ve also found the solution to landfill friendly rubber gloves which was meant to come to you this week, but there we are. We’ll be discussing how restaurants can reduce their waste and discovering how well cardboard paint trays work!
In the meantime, you can watch myself and little Miss Green unpacking a box of goodies from the Philippine Community Fund. You’ll be able to see that not only can they recycle crisp bags, but you can recycle other items too. Have a peek to see what you can send to them for recycling and how they turn these things into useful, practical and beautiful things!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve07LKpU7sk
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I am so glad you’ve got your sunday round-ups back. I find them extremely useful. And what great news about the launch. Good luck this week.. P.S. a great video highlighting what can be made from what is otherwise discarded rubbish. x
That is great, that all those items can be made from the packaging we can send to them.
I’ve got my eye on one of those bags made from the crsip packets that LMG held up, I saw it on the website which is why I recommended taking a look.
The important thing is to look at supporting this charity not only by supplying the intial waste but by also buying the finished products; Closing the Loop.
Great to see the reuse of so much waste material via supermarket collections. Toothpaste tubes are my only contribution and a local store will be sought out. It will certainly ease the burden for crisp eaters who can now fully enjoy the crunching. I might even try the odd Salt & Vinegar pack, as of old.
Videos are a useful part of the trend. One idea you could try is a riposte to the unpackaged ‘slur’ in the recent Kenco/Terracycle promotion where cupped hands carried loose coffee granules: a travesty of the real situation. The first part would show the ease of purchasing, with and without containers, and carriage home. Filling of kitchen/fridge spaces would , ending with an empty bag/empty bin shot. Lastly, an ‘early morning’ shot, bin lorry noises in the background, followed by a lightly disturbed sleeper muffling – ‘ Zero Waste’, and returning to a comfortable sleep.
Must just sasy, the service from PCF is excellent, very personal and prompt. I recieved goods I ordered from their web site in no time – excellent. And of course the goods themselves are Fab!
Good luck with your collection days!
And Brownie points for Tesco for providing a venue!
Vicky x
@Almost Mrs Average: Thanks Mrs A – the Sunday roundup is solely for you 😀
@maisie dalziel: Totally agree, Maisie. I’m now using some of the products myself and have my eye on some of their smaller pieces of jewellery. Alot of it is really big, which isn’t my personal choice, but they have other more delicate pieces which are really pretty 🙂
@John Costigane: Hi John, As ever you are welcome to send your crisp packets and toothpaste tubes here. Sainsbury have the same vision as I do – if the toothpaste tubes are successful on a local scale, they will consider rolling it our nationwide; this would be fabulous!
@Vicky: Wonderful Vicky – thanks for sharing your positive experience and for helping spread the word 🙂 Enjoy your products.
@Mrs Green: Thanks for the offer for used toothpaste tubes in particular. I will collect a few beforehand, which will take about a year. The chances are that this will become a standard feature in supermarkets since the reuse of plastic waste saves the otherwise negative outcomes of landfill and EfW Incineration.
With the recent developments on the site, your Zero Waste for 1 year target has started really well.
My own recurring waste items are disappearing fast which makes the 5 year target ever more straightforward.