Zero Waste Week - One Month On

Well, today marks one month since the end of Zero Waste Week and what you see on top of the bin is our family's landfill rubbish for the last two weeks.

I am extremely pleased with how we are keeping our rubbish down. I haven't put the black bin out for about 6 weeks. Well it just isn't worth it when you see what's in it.


The only bag missing from here is the one that I took to landfill myself, when I did the BBC interview a couple of weeks ago.

In fact, there is no longer any need to empty our kitchen rubbish bin every week or even every fortnight. It doesn't smell any more and I dare say that unless Mr A brings home some unrecyclable surprises, I probably won't need to empty it for a month. This is great when you consider that warmer days are just around the corner and we can enjoy the sunshine without the usual smelly bins.

Anyway if you've been wondering about the extra thing that I saved from landfill last week, I can now reveal that it was a polystyrene cup left over from a cup of tea made for me by the W.I at the Radio Suffolk Open Day last weekend. It may be that they have their own recycling arrangements but I wasn't going to take any chances, so I brought it home.

As it's planting time in the Almost Average Household and we've been busy planting some seeds and seedlings, I knew exactly what I would do with it. I put a few holes in the bottom and turned it into a small watering device for our seedlings.



I was dead chuffed with the transformation, especially as it will come in useful for the tomato seeds on our kitchen windowsill. However, after taking this photo this morning my three year old accidentally stepped on it and squashed it beyond use.

Oh hum....

...but not to be outdone, I just cut it up and added it to the rest of the polystyrene pieces that I rescued from Mr A last week. They'll be great for adding volume and drainage to our pots this season, so much better to be used than thrown away. As for my watering options, I'm sure we'll find something else.




Other ideas about recycling\reusing polystyrene can be found at Recycle This. Also if you work for an organisation that would like to recycle plastic or polystyrene cups, take at look at Save A Cup, which offers a regular collection service.

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