I always try to recycle and compost as much as I can, although I have to watch my errant family members, particularly the teens!

The talk about councils charging households according to the amount of waste they produce got me thinking - what exactly do we throw away? We quite often have more than one bin bag.

I have been watching it this week and it is mainly bits of plastic packaging, cotton wool (teens again) and cooked food that the dog won't eat and can't be composted.

I have set myself a challenge to see just how much I can reduce it. I have just taken delivery of two bokashi compost bins (delighted with these as I paid just £25 for them at our local green fair the other week - about half what they normally cost) so that's the food waste sorted. I am going to chop up an old towel into pads to use to remove makeup, etc instead of using cotton wool - the idea being to wash the pads until they die and can be composted! The other thing will be to try to avoid packaging as much as possible - this is trickier as I buy from the farm shop when I can but do use the supermarket too.

Anyway, I am determined we won't have more than one bin bag a week, and hope to have even less. I expect you are already there, with nothing in your dustbins except cobwebs...

Not much in ours now the fire's lit
most non-recyclables/noncompostables go into the fire - so the bin is pretty free of stuff
We've never filled the wheelie bin - and rarely the previous version of bin bag, even when the kids still lived here :)

but next door have six kids between them, some that come and go, some littler ones that stay - and they use our wheelie as 'overspill' in exchange for logs for the fire occasionally

actually this week i've been going through our bin (me and hubby live with my parents at the moment so they are not as thorough as i like), and yes its mainly packaging. although apparently you can send some plastics wrappers off for recycling its in the book Reduce Reuse Recycle by N Scott but my copy is in storage at the moment so i dont have details to hand.

most cooked stuff that the cats wont eat goes out in the garden and something or other has it.

in theory i shouldnt be putting my rubbish out at all! it must be packaging.

with 4 humans and 9 pets i think it takes about 6 weeks to fill the wheelie bin.

packaging mostly tho we only usual have about a foot of waste in the black bin each fortnight.

we only got wheely bins and recycling bins when we moved this time last year, and in the whole year we have only had a full land fill bin once.. and that was this week, and thats due to a quantity of the revolting 1950s style plastic wallpaper favoured by previous owner who obviously liked trapping damp into the walls.. we did not even manage to fill the bin the time we got the dates wrong after a bank holiday and ended up not putting it out for 4 weeks.
We do generate a fair bit of paper waste as I work from home doing 'office work' resulting in a alot of envelopes etc.. and that was going into the recycling.. but now the woodburner is installed.. its either firelighters.. or going into the paper log making production line.

The bin bag we have just chucked had a rat and a mouse in it. Not sure how else to dispose of them!

We usually put out about half a black binbag or less every week. Quite a lot of that is veg peelings etc, and I should be having a dalek delivered soon to take care of those. I try to avoid packaging, though it can be hard. I started buying dried pulses, but those come in non-recyclable plastic bags, whereas I used to recycle my cans. Some stuff in our veg box comes in plastic bags too. I've started buying juice in plastic bottles, even though it's more expensive, as we can't recycle tetra paks here, and I do try and reuse as much as possible, but there's only so many yoghurt pot seed trays you can use....

I did a kind of 'waste audit' last year, and wrote down everything that went in the bin or the recycling for a week. This thread might inspire me to do the same again!

Very good idea! We compost and recycle, but I think most is packaging anyway!

Nev

Non-recyclable plastics are the problem. And I'm not talking about plastic wrapping for food, but plastic bottles for farm disinfectants and detergents, plastic feed sacks, the plastic wrapping everything sent through the post now has wrapped around it, plastic bottles for engine oil, etc etc.

When I buy stuff from the shops, I deliberately say "no bags" please and while retail food outlets are becoming use to it (and my local DIY shop), everyone else has a big problem. Take the farm merchant the other day, I wanted 20 ear tags for the pigs - but the bloke at the till had to put them in a bag. I tipped them out, stuffed them in my pockets and gave the bag back - he looked at me like I was deranged!

I've been trying to persuade the feed merchant to supply feed in paper sacks (as used with some of the organic feeds) but they have two problems with that. One, not enough paper mills making paper sacks and, two, most people buying feed want plastic sacks as they don't store animal feed in bins, so they want something waterproof.

Grrrrr!

We've only just got our wheelie bins and I missed the first week cos I forgot to put it out. I hadn't bothered to put the bag out the previous week either cos it was only half full. So it's going to be another fortnight before my bin goes out. Still, it might be half full by then. But then there's only me and the animals so I probably shouldn't even have that much.

It helps that I now make my own yogurt. That cuts down on plastic. Like most other people, it's mainly packaging and dead mice in my bin!

Zoe

Dead mice and rats could go in the bokashi bin - it takes meat and bones...nah, maybe not!

Someone I know from school has 15 - yes 15 - full black binliners a week. We make a sport of counting them. She claims she recycles, but I can't see how. Granted she has 5 kids and 2 in nappies, but I look after and feed 4 that I childmind, plus my own three, and I only have 2 black binliners, tops.

I only have one in nappies at the moment, and they are reusables, but that might change in the future, and if their parents won't use reusables and the council starts charging per binbag I plan to make them take their used disposables home with them!

Jane

I don't have any dead mice. Is that something that comes with keeping cats, or am I just less rodenty than the rest of you?

Thomzo, you have helped me identify a concrete useful thing I can do to reduce how much packaging I throw away! I eat lots of yoghurt, so I am going to start making my own! Do you have any links or tips that you found particularly useful?

Yes. This poor little mouse evaded help from me when the rotten cat brought it in, then it hid under the sideboard. I found it 3 days later when it started to whiff, under the sofa!

The rat was trapped in the chook shed!

I'll bury my pets, but I draw the line at wild rodents!

Arrrggggh. I was halfway through typing a reply, complete with links when my stupid computer lost it.

Anyway, yes for me mice come from cats. I probably do have a lot of mice due to the chooks and the large garden with a field at the back. But the cats bring them in either alive or dead. If they are alive they go back outside to provide more sport for the cats. If they are dead they go in the bin. And if they are in my vacuum cleaner they get a big surprise once a week

Here is the link to the yogurt thread which started me off making yogurt. http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=67495#67495

Now I put the thermos in a cool bag which makes perfect yogurt over night. It is really lovely mixed with a small amount of vanilla essence.

my cat brings in lots of mice and other rodents both dead and alive... could do without having to catch the alive ones in the wee hours...

the dead ones are not usually a problem as he eats them... all bar that bit of intestine...

I'm happy because my cat brought another rat in - so far he's caught more than the many traps in the chook shed! Of course he left it on the rug in the living room as per usual - it's the place where he always provides goodies for us as well as where he always pukes..... oh sorry, TMI.