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