A Summer Holiday Surprise

It's been a tad tricky getting to the blog this week as things have been far busier that I could have ever planned. Not only have I been enjoying the school holidays with the children, but I've been busy whizzing across the country attending a family funeral, celebrating a new pregnancy [not mine, I should add], speaking at a regional climate change conference, meeting a very important councillor, pickling beetroot for the very first time, enjoying a friend's birthday bash as well as another friend's hen night for whom I've also been busy making a gorgeous sparkly tiara.

So it is a welcome surprise to return home and find that the wonderful Baba has just entered The Rubbish Diet into the very yummy Dorset Cereal's Little Blog Awards and that a few folk have already started to vote. I feel very honoured indeed to be listed among some really wonderful blogs, so do pop over and have a gander and if you vote, you're in with a chance of winning something too.

So for just a few moments I can relax and breathe until...

I catch up with emails, with Twitter, with blogs and with friends who have left me some lovely messages, before it's time to pack for our big family holiday to Switzerland. I feel a huge multi-tasking exercise coming on, don't you.

But first things first...if you're missing the Big Green Gathering which was pulled at short notice and want to do the next best thing, then pop over to Emma Cooper's fabulous blog at coopette.com. Emma is author of the Alternative Kitchen Garden and is busy hosting the Big Green Blog Gathering, which is already brimming with lots of entertainment and thought-provoking ideas on water, energy and transport.

Tomorrow's theme is waste so it will be my turn to join the gathering and add my two penneth. And if you visit Emma's Blog on Sunday, there'll be plenty of discussion about the climate to look forward to.

Well it's all go isn't it but it's fun...and for anyone who read my last post, all I can say is thank goodness there is more to life than pants!

So I hope to see you back here tomorrow, when I will be catching up with your recent comments and doing my turn on the stage for waste.

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Valentine's Day Unwrapped

If you're celebrating this day of romance, I hope you've managed to do it with waste in mind. I think I've managed well, having bought nothing but a roll of red paper to cut out lots of red hearts to decorate the house. I promise that once their initial use has passed, they will be re-used or recycled.

Some people won't be spending this morning in such romantic surroundings. Instead you will find them here at a Sustainability Packaging through Resource Efficiency seminar in Lincolnshire, which has been organised by Envirowise, a government funded organisation that advises businesses in environmental awareness. Attendees will be given practical advice on how to reduce waste and packaging as well as the legislative responsibilities of packaging regulations and duty of care.

If you've wondered what happens to paper and card in the recycling process, take a look at the SustainPack site, which has a wealth of information including how paper is categorised.
http://www.sustainpack.com/aap_rwp.html

Other useful resources which outline why paper and card should be recycled include the Waste Online site.

http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/paper.htm

The following factsheet at www.paper.org also reveals recycling targets for major paper users, including Newspaper Publishers, the Direct Marketing industry and the Periodical Publishers Association:

http://www.paper.org.uk/info/pdfs/Recovery_and_Recycling.pdf

It's all interesting stuff. However, what's more interesting is the little free valentine's gift that came with a present that Mr A bought me from a very well-known store in Knightsbridge. It was already pre-packaged and the first that Mr A knew of it was when it was unwrapped and he is in complete agreement that it is probably the most useless thing ever for his happily married, average-sized wife.

Hmm, I am too embarrassed to put it on Freecycle and the ladies in the local charity shops would most definitely blush upon opening it. And of course, I can't send it to landfill. Perhaps the only thing for it is to send it back to the store, with a little note that says "thanks, but no thanks, who really needs such useless tat?". So if you work in customer services in Knightsbridge and you get a little package from Almost Mrs Average who's on a Rubbish Diet, you'll know why.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. I hope you have a lovely day, wherever you are.

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