This year I am an ambassador for Zero Waste Week – which is all about trying to prevent the amount of things that end up in Landfill. All you have to do is make a pledge to reduce landfill in some shape or form for just for one week (Monday 1st – Monday 8th September 2014) to your habits. This can be completely tailored to you – from complete beginner to experienced pro. Do you always use plastic bags at the supermarket? Could you compost your food waste? Do you look at packaging when purchasing food? Do you meal plan to avoid food waste?
The theme this year is:
ONE MORE THING
I am shopping Naked for Zero Waste Week 2014
Did you know that 60% of supermarket packaging cannot be recycled and ends up in Landfill? With an estimated 30 million tonnes of waste thrown away by UK households every year! A quarter of which is from unwanted packaging. With just over a sixth of the price paid is to cover the packaging. We have got much better at reducing our landfill waste since discovering My Zero Waste blog. We made small changes such as making it so that our landfill bin was smaller, and we have a large recycling bin in the kitchen instead. We now have 2 compost bins in the kitchen (one for the garden compost, and one for cooked foods, cheese, bones, fats, that the council take away). We reuse our bags and generally try to buy items that reduce the disposable items we have. But for this year’s Zero Waste Week we are going to go a whole week cooking meals that have no packaging at all (well with the exception of those that can go in our outdoor compost bin – natural packaging).
I thought that this would help us to meal plan, to be more likely to eat foods in season, and overall help improve our diets. Not forgetting that it will also help the environment as no trucks will be required to take anything away. I am already aware of how having less packaging will result in less choice. Things I hope it will do is encourage me to shop locally. In fact I have already seen a house that I can walk to advertising that they have eggs for sale – fingers crossed they still do in September. Also that there is a shop which allows you to use your own containers to put the food in when purchasing. I am just hoping that the price difference is not too great.
So why not join in and make a pledge yourself.
It does not matter how big or small – it will all help.
And please if you have meal ideas that will use NO PACKAGING I need you to share them with me please.
Do you have any tips to help others take a step closer to Zero Waste?
You can follow the hashtag #zerowasteweek
What a great campaign. You have really got me thinking about the ways in which we could reduce our waste x
What a fab campaign! Will take a look at how we can reduce waste
That’s a fab campaign, really worthwhile. We try really hard to reduce our waste.
Love the idea of trying to have no packaging, it’s something that really annoys me too and I have been known to remove it at the till and leave it as a (pretty poor quality) protest 😀
You have picked such a HUGE pledge but I know you’re going to share some wonderful ideas during the week and I reckon you’re going to succeed 😉 Thanks so much for sharing with your readers; it’s heartwarming to see your audience inspired by what you are doing x
I think actually I am just going to starve. Asked in the town hall today if I could take food home in my own tubs – it was only in brown paper bags. I was met with (well erm odd woman, go and ask someone else) and then a no – sorry, we have to abide by the rules – and everything needs to be packaged. I have no idea why and no point getting at her.
Oh yes, this is the # I have to follow. I need to get more organized regarding our waste.
Great campaign! This is something I really need to look at in our house especially carrier bags! I have reusable bags but always seem to forget them when i go shopping and end up with countless plastic bags! Im going to make sure the reusable bags are in the car all the time! xx
Great campaign. I have supported this for the last couple of years. It is great at getting you to think about what you are buying. I leave the the shoe boxes at the shop when I buy the lads school shoes
You certainly made me look twice when I saw you were shopping naked lol!
*puts top back on sadly*
Great post Joy – we use the local greengrocers a lot, and pop all the loose veg into a cotton tote, feels so much better than all those little plastic bags that you get in the supermarket!
Wow your brave, I can’t think of many items that are naked!
I work at WRAP who’re all about reducing waste, but even we find it hard to do it ourselves. It helps if your whole household will oblige and recycle. Would also help if we could feed pigs scraps but you’re not allowed. I guess meat might be the hardest to not include packaging as unless you buy it separately, it would need to be plastic wrapped to keep it separate to other meats.
The taking containers is probably a good idea. Local deli/lunch place near our work agreed to do that – they supply us the dimensions of their standard takeaway boxes, so we know what size we need to take in.
Good luck with it.