Surviving a Zero Waste Week: Rethinking Rubbish

Damn, blast, splidgery flip flops...I've got some blimmin' rubbish!

Look at it. An annoying piece of desperate-to-pop bubblewrap, discovered last night in an empty strawberry carton, which my husband had bought at the weekend.

And there I was, thinking I was all prepared for Zero Waste Week, but I'd forgotten about these pieces of cushioned plastic that are now pretty ubiquitous in the soft fruit packaging department. It just goes to show even old hands at this zero waste business can get caught out.

Now as you are probably aware bubblewrap is pretty tricky to recycle and it'll be a top notch council that allows you to put it in your recycling bin. Ours is good, but it doesn't take bubblewrap. So if I'm going to survive a Zero Waste Week, especially a National Zero Waste Week it's time to think like a crafty old weasel.

I'm going to have to think of this bubblewrap as a valuable resource and not let it become a piece of rubbish.

Well rubbish is so last century isn't it? These days, if you're throwing stuff in your bin, you're also throwing away resources, wasting an opportunity to save money, energy and virgin resources. It really is the equivalent of throwing your small change into landfill. And who in their right mind would do that, especially if they need all the pennies they can get?

So where does that leave me with my tiny piece of bubblewrap?

On the edge of finishing that bottle of gin, with the kind of week I've had!

But seriously. If you're faced with the same problem during your Zero Waste Week, be assured there are a range of solutions out there.


Option No 1: Reuse It!

Yes I know, there aren't too many applications that call for a 8x13cm piece of bubblewrap but if you put your thinking cap on and pray for inspiration, you might be able to find other uses around the home.

For example, if you are blessed with a small child who owns a dolls-house, you might be able to get away with a few make-shift duvets for the dollies to keep warm at night. You could even unleash your inner seamstress and throw in a range of duvet covers while you're at it.

Keen gardeners amongst you can use them to insulate mini seedling pots (especially those made from old newspapers and toilet rolls).

Also, if you ever send very small and delicate items in the post you can use them as protection. And if you're making plans for the festive season, one of my fellow Tweeter @henryandjayne came up with the suggestion of craftily using them to create Christmas decorations. So you see, there are lots of ideas out there if you scratch your top-knot hard enough.


Option No 2: Recycle It!

Regardless of whether you find a reuse for these darn things, there'll come a time, where you'll be shouting "No more", depending where you are in the divorce proceedings. So you could consider recycling them.

Recycle them?!

Yes, I know I said that it would be a rare super-duper council that would take such a thing off your hands. But just because your council can't recycle it, it doesn't mean that your fruity bubblewrap has to be lost to landfill.

Because if you need a helping hand on your road to Zero Waste, there is a mailing film company that will happily take them off your hands. Based in Norfolk, Polyprint is the only film company that accepts waste polythene from the general public for recycling. And the great news is, this includes bubblewrap, even the small pieces that come in the bottom of fruit punnets. You can find their full list of acceptable items here.

So even though this is one of the few items that I've been bunging in my bin since I did my last Zero Waste Week, 18 months ago, I can now confirm that my zero waste fruitaholic lifestyle is now pretty much future-proofed.

However on this particular occasion, I'm not going to recycle this piece of bubblewrap. I've got other ideas and I've decided to upcycle it instead, to highlight a process that adds value to a material that is at the end of its original life cycle.

So as a memento of National Zero Waste Week, I've created a miniature work of art entitled: 21st century savings. Titter ye not, I bet even with a "face value" of just 39p it's the most valuable piece of 8x13cm bubblewrap in the whole wide world.

21st century savings

Hmm. I wonder if that could be true? The most valuable piece of fruity bubblewrap ever? If it is, what are the chances of getting my money back on eBay?

I am almost tempted to go and investigate.

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Can it get any better than this?

One week's rubbish, two year's on.

I’ve often wondered what life must be like several years after doing a Zero Waste Week. So you can imagine my excitement in discovering the Baker family from Bath who took part in a similar challenge two years ago

Judith and her partner Simon signed up to the challenge, along with their teenagers Matt and Laura, when Bath and North East Somerset council launched their first Zero Waste Week in 2006, a concept which had just been introduced to the UK from an idea that had already been spreading around New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk to Judith about her thoughts on waste and what initially attracted her to the original challenge.

“As a post-war baby, I had grown up with the waste-not-want-not message.” She told me, “My family were already behind the idea of leaving a smaller footprint on the earth and the Zero Waste Week supported both these ideals.”

Before their Zero Waste Week challenge, the family weighed their rubbish, two bin bags (swing bin size) which came in at 4.5 kilograms. By the end of the week they had reduced this by 80% to an amazing 900g, amounting to just half a bin bag.

Judith was already used to recycling, sorting newspapers, magazines, greetings cards and scrap paper, as well as glass bottles, jars, tins, cans for their kerbside collection. They were also lucky to have plastic bottles collected too along with batteries, textiles and shoes. Everything was sorted into plastic bags for their fortnightly collection. They generated very little food waste, so this wasn’t a problem. They also composted their peelings and whatever scraps were left would always be put out for the birds.

With excellent recycling facilities and with a garden waste service to boot, which also accepted cardboard, it might have seemed that there was nothing else to tackle. However this was not the case.

“Things like plastic fruit punnets weren’t collected by our council,” said Judith “neither were yoghurt pots or margarine tubs. We would also have had a problem with Tetra Pak cartons and polythene bags but I found out we could recycle Tetrapaks, posting them to Perry’s in Bridgewater and we could send magazine wrappings, frozen vegetable bags and bread bags to Polyprint in Norfolk”.

After all this effort I wondered what did actually end up in their Zero Waste Week bin two years ago. Judith enlightened me.

“Just some miscellaneous plastic packaging, such as crisp packets, a plastic tray from a tiramisu and a croissant wrapper as well as some scrambled eggs and baked beans that went wrong, which in retrospect could have been put on the bird table”.

Having made a massive reduction to their household waste, I was also keen to find out whether this effort was sustained after Zero Waste Week. What was the impact of the challenge and how much does the family now throw away?

Judith revealed “We now throw out one swing bin’s worth of rubbish per week. We learned a lot from the challenge and I have continued sending my polythene wrappings to Polyprint. It costs £1.52 per month to post a package weighing just under 500g. It would make things so much easier if the council collected all types of bags and wrappings. We also continue to recycle Tetra Paks, but no longer have to send them to Perry’s thanks to a recycling service set up by the council.”

This is a fantastic example of how once an individual or a family experiences such a challenge, life can never be the same again. Admittedly the amount of rubbish went up after Zero Waste Week, but the reality is that there is a regular reduction of 50% that has been constant over the last two years. It really does demonstrate the longevity of the effects of such a campaign on a family’s lifestyle.

The great news is that Judith has signed up for the Zero Waste Challenge again, the one that is currently being organised by Bath & NES, which is taking place this week. The only change in the family circumstances is that son Matt has now gone off to university. I wanted to find out what she thought might happen this time.

“I know that plastic will be my downfall,” she asserted. “I will make an effort not to acquire certain plastics but I don’t have access to a street market which would help to reduce this. I also know the bathroom bin will be a problem. We all wear contact lenses, so there will be a mass of plastic pods. There is also the problem of new types of polythene packaging, such as the bread bags introduced by the Co-op which are labelled Oxo-degradable. These can’t be recycled so will have to go to landfill.”

I managed to catch up with Judith on Wednesday evening to get an update about how things were going this week. Just like in 2006, the first task was to weigh the amount of rubbish from the week before. Quite timely for the Bakers, Day one was also Bin Day. So how big was last week's rubbish?

"We only put out one bag, which weighed a shade over 2 kilos, well under half of what we used to put out before ZWW 2006. More than half that 2 kilos was one single item - a large tub of tile grout, nearly full, which had gone off since the last time we did any DIY and was unusable. If I treat the grout as one-off or exceptional item, I was putting out just under one kilo, or roughly the same weight as I did at the end of ZWW 06. So we haven't been backsliding too badly. "

That's a great starting point, just one bag! But how were things faring by Wednesday night, Day 3 of the challenge? I asked Judith to have a quick check on their current rubbish.

As she poked about her bin, this is what she had to say.

"OH NO did I really put the eggshells in there? Shame on me. Into the compost with you, my beauties, along with the tealeaves (a moment's inattention from someone who shall be nameless). The rest is crisp packets from packed lunches and a few of those pesky semi-degradable plastic wrappers, unsuitable for Polyprint. But there are notable absences: no yogurt pots this week because I bought a brand which comes in a re-usable clear pot with a cardboard stiffener, and the chocolate mousses came in earthenware pots which are eminently re-usable."

And is there anything else?

"There is still a bit of clingfilm but a lot less than usual. I have been trying to give it up, honest. It's just that it is so very useful for covering left-overs in the fridge in such a way that I don't forget they are there ...So half-way through, I can see that even now it won't be zero waste, but I am hoping for an improvement on last time."

Well, I think that's fantastic and I am looking forward to their final weigh-in next week.

If Judith does end up with any rigid plastic containers, she will save them up until she has a decent amount to mail to GHS Plastics in Portsmouth, which I recommended to her after seeing the company featured on MyZeroWaste.com.

I’ve also got some some more news for Judith and anyone else who’s participating in a Zero Waste Challenge. As well as GHS and Polyprint, I’ve discovered that Impact Recycling in Kent will accept deliveries of a whole host of household waste items, including the plastic punnets that Judith found tricky the first time round. The great news is there’s not a minimum requirement, just a simple request to sort items into separate bags.

So that's another source that will help the Bakers slim their bin even further, even if something odd pops up like a cracked CD.

There are still a few nerve-racking days until the end of the challenge, so while we’re waiting to catch up with the Bakers next week, you might want to find out more about the resources mentioned in this post. The links are listed below:


GHS: Tel: 0808-100-1456
www.ghsrecyclingltd.co.uk

Impact Recycling: Tel: 01634 255400
www.impactrecycling.co.uk/what.htm

Perrys Recycling (office recycling): 01935 850111
www.perrys-recycling.co.uk

Polyprint Mailing Films: 01603 721807
www.polyprint.co.uk

And please remember, if you're planning on sending items through to the companies concerned, please call first to check their current arrangements.

More information about the Bath and North East Somerset's Zero Waste Challenge Week, can be found at www.bathnes.gov.uk
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