Baglady comes to Suffolk

Does anybody recognise this lady?  Perhaps not.  So let me introduce her as Shirley Lewis, veteran environmental campaigner from Northern Ireland.  If you are still drawing a blank, here's another photo that might help, especially for anyone who might have been in Bury St Edmunds today...when Shirley Lewis visited the town in her alter ego as Baglady.

Baglady is a well-known campaigner in Northern Ireland and works with schools and campaigners to promote the idea of living ASAP (as sustainably as possible), encouraging children and adults to take up pledges to do something positive about the environment.   Reducing waste is one of her key priorities and with the news of the huge anti-litter campaign that's currently taking place as well as the Seven Suffolk Streets project focusing on waste, she thought she'd visit the county to find out more.

And here she is making her grand entrance into Bury St Edmunds.

Of course with an outfit like that, it was no surprise that Baglady attracted quite a bit of attention during her official walkabout in the town centre, especially as it was market day.

She expected a few funny looks - and there were plenty - but as ever her personality shone through and she received a warm welcome from many local residents, including Sheila and Arthur from Thurston, who are regular listeners of BBC Radio Suffolk's Mark Murphy breakfast show and had heard her talking to Mark on his show earlier this morning.

And our local community officers were also pleased to have a chat. 

Apparently we'd missed the the Chief Constable by minutes, otherwise we could have got him in the shot too, which would have been great as Suffolk police are really behind the anti-litter campaign this year, aiming to tackle other anti-social behaviour such as grafitti and fly-tipping.

And with news of a  Baglady in town, it can't escape the attention of the local press.  It was fabulous that Laura and Roger from the Bury Free Press were keen to drop into the market for an interview. 

And that's how I left things, with Badlady going for a photoshoot with the photographer and a proposition to take him for coffee, while I disappeared out of the cold to write up this blogpost.

So now this is done, I'd better nip back out into the cold afternoon to see if I can retrieve Baglady from her official walkabout and find somewhere for a nice spot of lunch.

I think she'll be easy to spot, don't you? 

To find out more about the work of Baglady, aka Shirley Lewis, visit www.bagladyproductions.org.

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Don't be a tosser and other Suffolk rubbish news!

I interrupt this broadcast with the news that there will be a slight delay in publishing the latest guide to The Rubbish Diet Challenge, on account that I've been tied up in Suffolk all day.

When I say "tied up", I'd like to reassure you that I haven't actually been physically restrained or strapped to my wheelie bin and dragged around the county.  I've actually been busy floating between a whole range of exciting projects that have been launched today.

 

The morning kicked off with a live interview with BBC Radio Suffolk's producer Philippa Taylor, at my local bus stop, for the station's Breakfast Show.

The interview was part of Mark Murphy's annual "Don't be a Tosser" anti-litter campaign, which promotes the county's Keep Suffolk Clean project to raise awareness of the amount of rubbish that is dropped around Suffolk and to inspire local communities to tackle it.

Now I know that looks like my coat in the poster, but I promise you it wasn't me who dropped the litter guv!   It's just not my style to toss cans or bottles or indeed anything else in our street, so don't worry, I've not been up on a charge of being a litter lout.  I'm actually fully supporting the campaign and was being interviewed to help raise awareness of the litter in my locality and to see if I could pull together some community help for a local litter pick.  In fact, if you've been wondering what I'm doing in the photo at the top of the blog, I'm actually holding up a broken umbrella that was one of the many items that had been dumped behind the bus shelter. If only I'd had an old leather bag to accompany it, I'd have looked like a modern day Mary Poppins.

So having put out a call for some enthusiastic litter pickers and then sharing the good news that our council has ordered a bin for the bus stop, the next task was the Seven Suffolk's Street's Waste Reduction Fortnight, which also kicks off in my street today.   Hooray, after months of talking about it, it's finally here.

But there's no peace for the wicked you know and my first stop was to drop into our school's morning assembly, to see the Eco Team's presentation of new recycling and composting bins, which under their guidance will help the school reduce its classroom, staffroom and office waste.

The staff were also keen to weigh my latest fortnightly rubbish in public, which at 700 grammes was unusually heavy thanks to Mr A bringing the bread-bin back into service - without my knowledge, I hasten to add - and consequently leaving half a loaf in there to rot..  Typical eh, but shows that food waste accidents can happen even in a waste aware household and despite my most polite suggestion, he didn't really fancy chewing on it for today's lunch!

So if you're wondering what 700 grammes of rubbish looks like, I can shamefully reveal it below, before proudly stating that at least the size of that bag is still a tenth of what we used to throw away in a fortnight.  Just over two years ago, this bin would have been full.

And no sooner had I wheeled out my bin, the refuse lorry arrived, along with the lovely recycling officers from Suffolk and St Edmundsbury \ Forest Heath councils, who'd come to monitor the launch of our street's waste reduction project.

As I had my camera, I took a few more snaps for the cause, both on my street...

..

...and at our school.   Just look at the size of that bin - it'd take me a good couple of years to fill that!

Now although I'm keen, it's not as though I'm like a groupie or anything so I quickly left the professionals to their work and scooted back home for the next appointment in my diary, which was an interview with the lovely Anna Makepeace from Suffolk's Creating the Greenest County project...and Chris, her very patient cameraman.

 
Despite being distracted by camera envy, I tried to answer Anna's questions as best as I could, without gurning too much and ensuring that I managed at least one big blooper for the DVD, which will feature all the candidates that have been shortlisted for the Greenest County awards.  You can see the full shortlist here at www.greensuffolk.org.

So amongst all this news I would also like to apologise for being unable to publish Week 8 of The Rubbish Diet Challenge today.  If you've been looking forward to the finale, I'm afraid we'll have to postpone that excitement until tomorrow, but I hope with the sparklers I've got planned, it will really be worth the wait.

What a busy day eh! I'm actually quite proud about what I've managed to fit in to help promote Suffolk's various campaigns.

The only irony of it all, is that I'm actually Welsh! 


So as it's St David's Day, I'm going to give a blimmin' huge plug for that too...and treat you to a retro look from my home village inWales, circa 1974.  Check out the little imp, third row up, second from left.  She's not looking bad despite having eaten the previous night's leftover Angel Delight for breakfast!

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Litter picking in Suffolk

(Photo: Copyright Flickr's hey mr glen)

I'd like to give a big thumbs up to Radio Suffolk's Mark Murphy for highlighting the issue of litter louts in Suffolk, with his Don't be a Tosser campaign. He's even put his money where his mouth is and has been out picking up litter that has been tossed around the county.

Now I really don't like the word "tosser", but I find it very appropriate in the context of all those people who drop bags of litter out from their cars whilst travelling around our beautiful county, or indeed whilst walking around our streets.

A report in today's East Anglian Daily Times revealed that an estimated 25 million tonnes of rubbish a year is dropped on UK roads. Apparently that's the size of 62,500 jumbo jets. With the amount of litter having increased by 500% since the 1960s, councils across the UK are now spending £500 million a year on cleaning up our trunk roads.

In Suffolk, operators are having to deal with anything from plastic waste and food remnants through to discarded underwear and bottles of urine. How horrible.

I'd like to reassure you that Suffolk is much more pleasant than this image portrays, but it is a problem that needs addressing in our local county and elsewhere in the UK. Not only does it make for an unpleasant sight, but it is a waste of resource both in manpower and in recycling opportunities, all of which leads to higher taxes.

The great news is that the organisation Suffolk:Creating the greenest county is raising awareness of the issue through its SUFFOLK SPRING CLEAN campaign, where it is inviting individuals and local organisations to organise a litter pick during the fortnight 31st March - 13 April 2008.

To get involved all you need to do is ring up your local council officers, who will be happy to help and will loan out relevant safety equipment. A list of officers can be found here. If you're taking part, remember that Mark Murphy at Radio Suffolk would like to hear from you. So drop him a line at mark.murphy@bbc.co.uk.

I'm up for a litter picking session in Bury St Edmunds, especially in Moreton Hall. So if you're up for joining me, just drop me a line at enquiries@therubbishdiet.co.uk. The more the merrier!
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