Waste

I have just been looking through the supplement to the September edition of Holyrood Magazine – yes I know it is November now, but Scottish politics magazines are not top of the priority list at the moment... The theme of the supplement was ‘waste’, a lot of the articles giving information on the Scottish Government’s ‘Zero Waste Plan’. Interesting stuff, although they obviously gave it the name ‘Zero waste’ because that sounds better than ‘15% waste’ or '30% waste', but as far as I can see they haven’t actually figured out when or how Scotland can have nil waste. Apparently the target is for 70% of waste to be recycled by 2025 – That is not exactly zero waste.

Anyway government plans or not, I have been thinking a bit about the amount of stuff we throw out. Our bin gets collected every 2 weeks and despite making an effort to recycle, to compost and to reuse it is usually almost full. That is worrying! How can we have so much stuff that just gets dumped? So I have been trying to suss out what actually ends up in the bin.

We never put stuff in there that can be easily recycled, so no paper, card, tins, cans, milk bottles, juice cartons and similar as that gets picked up by the council for recycling. We take all glass to the bottle bank. All clothing or material go either to charity shops or textile banks. Any other item that could still be used, e.g. old toys, baby equipment or books, goes either to charity, on Freecycle or occasionally on e-bay.

Obviously there is the much mentioned foodwaste, but even 1.5kg of waste every 4 days is not going to cause a full bin. Especially considering that some of the 1.5kg of waste would have gone in the compost rather than the bin.

Then there are the nappies. Yes, I have to admit it, I use disposable nappies for my 2-year old. Not very good for my green credentials, I know, but due to different circumstances this is how things turned out, and considering that my son is just about to be potty trained I don’t want to invest in washable nappies now. Even the nappies though are not going to fill the bin, he doesn’t pee that much!
Likewise the paper tissues we use for runny noses etc are not going to make the bin full, even when combined with the food waste and the nappies.

I think the majority of the stuff in the bin is packaging. It is all the plastic trays from the supermarkets. It is all the plastic and cellophane that various items get wrapped in. It is all the tubs that used to contain butter or ice cream or something similar. What is this thing we have about packaging, why is everything wrapped in layers of paper and plastic? Do we think our pyjamas are nicer to wear if they have been wrapped in plastic? Does the tea taste better if the teabags are individually packed in paper covers, then bundled together in plastic wrapping and then put in a card board box again wrapped in plastic (no I am not exaggerating – I have seen this myself)? Does supermarket meat make better bolognaise sauce, when it has been put into a plastic tray that could take about double the amount?

I want to reduce the amount of stuff we throw out, but how do I do it? Packaging seems to be such a big part of most things we buy. Apparently there is a law in the UK against excess packaging, and it is enforced by the Trading Standards. (http://www.which.co.uk/advice/excess-food-packaging/excess-packaging-tips/index.jsp) So we can complain about this, but interestingly enough the law is about whether the packaging is deceptive, e.g. made excessive to make us think we are getting more than we actually are, rather than being about unnecessary and pointless packaging.

As always I think the supermarkets are some of the biggest culprits, and frankly by now I should have become a lot better at avoiding supermarkets and buy more from the real local places, e.g. I am sure the local butcher doesn’t pack all his meat in massive plastic trays. But reality is that it is a lot quicker to get everything in the one shop, rather than going to several places, and many things I can only really get in the supermarket, so I would have to go there anyway.

Other than avoiding supermarkets I am not sure what to do? I certainly cannot think of any easy effortless solutions.
So here I am again – more effort needed! I start off by wanting to have less waste and end up needing to do more...

Maybe I should move to Berkshire, apparently they have started a scheme where you get money off vouchers for recycling. They are expecting that the average household can earn £130 worth of vouchers in a year, at least that way I could get something for my recycling efforts, and if it would mean money off at the local butcher’s I might even make it to the shop.