eco goodies to be won on our site this week!

[starchild]

Hi all,

We're running a competition on our website next week (it's a family run, non profit website, so I hope it's ok to mention it here).

We have 22 prizes up for grabs - all recycled or ones that will help you reduce / recycle more.

All you have to do is sign up to pledge to reduce your waste http://myzerowaste.com/pledge-win/, carry out your actions and then come back to our site to comment on your experiences http://myzerowaste.com/pledge-win/competition-feedback/.

During the week we are aiming for zero waste - yes, we will be recycling, but our aim is to put nothing out for the landfill.

We started our challenge back in June as a very 'ordinary' household with 100 litres of rubbish a week - that was 1 metal dustbin and 2 swing bin liners. This week we put out just 55 gms, which I could hold in the palm of my hand. You can see a mug shot of me holding it here http://myzerowaste.com/2008/08/weekly-weigh-in-twelve/

The aim of our zero waste pledge and win week is twofold:
1- Firstly to allow people to celebrate what they CAN do, rather than focus on what they can't
2- Secondly we hope that people will do something for a week, realise how easy it is and then carry on the good work.

This will be the first of a National Zero Waste Week; so I do hope some of you will join in.

Our local council are watching our progress, and have come on board with a zero waste week for our county at the end of January - much like the ones done in St Edmonsbury and Bath and NE Somerset. We hope that by showing how much interest there is, we can promote reducing and recycling more so that it spreads across the country.

Anyway, enough from me. I hope to see some of you on the site and I hope it's ok to post about this here. I felt it would be relevant and of interest to some of you.

[Odsox]

I don't know if I'm a weirdo or not (almost certainly) but I haven't sent anything at all to a landfill site for many a year.
ALL our waste is recycled in some way, cardboard, paper, plastic, tins and glass goes to the council recycle facility, food waste is either fed to the dog, chicken or dumped in our 'green cone', compostable stuff is obviously composted and stuff that can't be recycled or composted goes on a heap that's used for hardcore in various building projects.
Electrical and electronic gear also goes to the council recycling centre including batteries.

[starchild]

Hey Tony!

You may well be a weirdo, but I'm certain you have a lot to teach people about a more gentle lifestyle.

I think it's wonderful that you haven't sent anything to landfill - what an inspiration you are. Our only challenge now is non recyclable plastic packaging. That is all down to a minimum, but with a 7 year old child who is at the mercy of peer pressure and marketing, it's sometimes hard to avoid - crisps for example and other occasional treats. Plus things that get bought into the house form other people - this week for example, dd was given a craft kit which contained loads of plastic made in China

Can I ask how you deal with the two conundrums that are still a little challenging for us? Brushing your teeth and shaving; if you wet shave?

Keep up the great work!

[Odsox]

Hey Tony!
You may well be a weirdo,
Can I ask how you deal with the two conundrums that are still a little challenging for us? Brushing your teeth and shaving; if you wet shave?

Not only am I a weirdo, I'm a bearded weirdo as well, although I do brush my teeth.
Also I do have an advantage over you (assuming that you live in the UK) as here in Ireland we can recycle far more things that you can.
I understand that plastic has to have a triangle with certain numbers stamped on them for you to be able to recycle them, but here they just have to have the "yin yan" arrow symbol to go into the household recycling.

So, in answer to your question, I dismantle the empty toothpaste pump tube and remove the metal spring ... the rest is totally recyclable plastic (washed of course). The spring in my case gets saved for other things, but 'normal' people can recycle this as well at the Council recycling centre.
There you can recycle all electrical & electronic goods (if it has a plug or a battery it is covered in the WEEE directive), plastic, cardboard and paper, other plastic like polystyrene, bottles & jars, food tins, drinks cans, CDs & DVDs, used cooking oil, flat window glass, scrap metal, green garden waste, paint cans, batteries, old mobile phones, old clothing, aerosols, light bulbs & tubes and probably other stuff that I can't remember at the moment.
While I'm extolling the virtues of Ireland, supermarket bags were effectively banned several years ago by putting a tax on them. You can still have them if you want but they are charged for. Now nobody uses them with the exception of bemused tourists, and it has made a really noticeable difference to the countryside ... no more red, white & blue flags flapping on tree branches and brambles.
So we just sit here smugly waiting for you lot to catch up with little 'ol us

[starchild]

that was really interesting, Tony. yes, we're in the UK and it's a postcode lottery over here that determines how good the recycling facilities are.

It seems you have the toothpaste thing down to a fine zero waste art!

The idea of the plastic bag tax has been really successful; I think it would be great to have that here, but I'm probably in the minority :)

[eccentric_emma]

Thats really interesting info about Ireland, I never knew recycling facilities there were so good. Ours are ok, we have kerbside collection for the basics (food/drinks cans, plastic bottles, glass, card and paper) but not a lot else. I am proud to say that I moved to my house in Feb and apart from putting out the wheelie bin which was full of rubbish from the previous tenent, we haven't put our landfill bin out at all. We reckon we might make it a whole year and OH wants to have a party or something to mark the occasion when we do have to put it out to give ourselves a bit of a pat on the back. I do get amazed when I see rubbish overspilling from peoples bins in our street, but then again I have a bit of a closer look and can see heaps of recyclables in their binsacks, which is a bit depressing given how easy it is to pop stuff in the recycling box.