I don't waste food because I want to. No-one does.

Naturally, as it's Zero Waste Week, I've been thinking a lot about food waste and yesterday delved into my cupboards and fridge-freezer to see what I needed to rescue from being chucked away this week.

Not that we waste a lot of food these days,  However, I know that I can still be a tad careless.

After all, I don't buy things thinking, 'Oh, that'll end up in the bin.'  I don't like wasting food and I've never met anyone who does.

For me, food waste is mainly an accidental consequence of my busy and chaotic life.

And with four different appetites in the house with their different routines and culinary dislikes, it can be tricky to find a balance to provide a healthy diet and reduce the amount of stuff that ends up in the bins.

The trick that I've begun to use when shopping for perishable produce is to actually ask myself about the likelihood of that item going to waste.  If I can't categorically say there's less than a 10% chance, I won't buy it.  This is so different to the way I used to shop, when I never actually gave it a single thought.

Consequently, I've avoided hundreds of BOGOFs, hundreds of wasted yoghurts and countless slices of unused ham

And although I still use it in emergencies, I try not to depend on the freezer as a back-up, because I am never that organised to benefit from it - except for storing sliced bread before it goes on the turn as well as unusual flavoured ice-cubes (more on that later).

My technique to fresh produce is normally to have a back-up plan, knowing for example that any fruit that ends up looking worse for wear can be brought back to life as a smoothie, just like the one I made yesterday from a dodgy looking banana, some veteran melon, squishy strawberries, blackberries & last week's apple juice. 

It's a five minute job that requires no faff.  I'm far too busy for faff - and if I dare confess, I can sometimes be a total lazy-arse too.

But to think I just used to bung that stuff in the compost. 

It's a far cry from how I now look at a banana and almost egg it on towards the dark side so I can bash it up in the blender.  Until you've tried it, you won't know how satisfying such fruity alchemy can be.

Now back to my chaotic side - which is my normal setting.  You can see what my perishables are up against.  Even with the best laid plans to use up the open pot of greek yoghurt with some dollops of mango chutney and tomato puree, to create a base source for a sweet and sour Balti Chicken, I totally forgot to set free the coriander from the fridge to add to it.

I only made it so I could use the bloody coriander!

So to avoid it becoming fodder for the compost, I'd now better freeze it with some water in the ice-cube tray to create what Jamie Oliver has turned to calling a 'Flavour Bomb'!

It can sit alongside the juice that I squeezed from an aging rock-hard lime.

One day, I may become a zero food waste genius.

I hope so.

I don't waste food because I want to.  No-one does.


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More information about Zero Waste Week, can be found at www.zerowasteweek.co.uk.  There are also lots of tips on shopping, storage and cooking at www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.

Zero Waste Week 2013. Preparing for a bountiful feast.

And here it is.  Zero Waste Week 2013 has finally begun. 

And I'm joining in, starting with a Monday morning excavation of my fridge, freezer and cupboards in a mission to use up the contents and create zero food waste.

Many like to call it an audit - but for me it's more like an archaeological dig, especially when it comes to the freezer.  For instance this morning's expedition uncovered a leg of lamb, chicken breasts, fish steaks and a mysterious lasagne whose packaging I used for a radio broadcast earlier this year and accidentally recycled afterwards - oops.

And as for the fridge, as you can see my haul has revealed a cacophony of pleading fruit & vegetables, wailing at me to use them up first to create a veritable feast.

But the most miserable looking felons that have been imprisoned in the fridge for far too long are those poor fruity yoghurts - still unopened and, ahem,  past their use-by date - and all because their biggest fan has gone off them.  In other words, he's become yoghurted out and being too busy, I hadn't noticed.

But I refuse to waste them without further investigation, and with my disclaimer of 'Don't try this at home' and looking all 'innocent-faced', I shall be delving deep with my exploration tools, i.e. a spoon. I will of course take full responsibility for my actions.

It's also probably time to confess too that even after 5 years of talking rubbish, I am still absolutely crap at planning.  All that food hasn't been bought for a recipe.  Instead I shop with my imagination, buying things that I know I can make use of and blend with various herbs and spices. 

So when I look at the ingredients above, I can already see a sweet and sour chicken balti, a fish pie, fruit smoothies, roasted vegetables and possibly a green salsa.

But that's all very well when my imagination is working on full power,  However when you're tired and busy, culinary creativity can be buried deeper than that leg of lamb in the freezer.  Then Beans on Toast becomes the highlight of the day.

That's why Zero Waste Week provides a good kick up the backside to put great food back on the table of priorities.   And after dragging the contents of my kitchen out into the open, I can already see that I won't need to go shopping this week, except for perhaps a top-up of cereal and some bagels.

Well that's a turn-up for the cook book.

So are you joining in the latest chapter in this Rubbish Revolution and committing to feed your belly not the bin? 

Yes?  Oh goody!  See www.zerowasteweek.co.uk for more info.

And if you tweet, don't forget that #zerowasteweek is the hashtag.  Wouldn't it be great if we could get that trending this week.

Well here's to the launch of Zero Waste Week.

I'll see you later, well that's if I survive the yoghurt and those dodgy looking plums that accidentally froze at the bottom of the fridge.

And as for that month-old leek, I shall be asking Mr C exactly what his intentions were when he bunged it in the trolley. 

That one's his responsibility.

Suffolk - Join me in a virtual flashmob!

Ahoy there Suffolk!!!

Yes YOU, over there.

Your Rubbish Blogger from Bury St Edmunds needs you!

Yes, that's me over here - whispering at you from my garden shed - not too quietly, just loud enough for you to hear.

I want to create a surprise virtual flashmob for a very important cause that is extremely close to my heart.

Suffolk still has a huge problem with food waste.  This Easter I read that it costs Suffolk residents £3.14 million to dispose of 35,000 tonnes of the stuff.  Shocking stats, I know - and figures like this can make you feel quite impotent, especially when you think of all the embedded energy and water in growing that stuff, only for it to end up in bins and carted off to landfill.

But we can do something about it and this is where you come in, even if you don't create much food waste yourself.

And it all starts with Zero Waste Week, which just as it happens, is taking place next week: 2-8 September.

So where do you come in?

The theme of Zero Waste Week this year is "Use it up", with lots of tips to cut down on food waste, with the key message to "Fill your belly not your bin".

And I'd love you to sign up, take part.  All you need to do is visit www.zerowasteweek.co.uk, click a couple of buttons, select a pledge and you're in!

But don't just let the buck stop with you,  encourage your friends and family too.

After all, our corner of the UK is aiming to become Greenest County and what a way to show our mettle, by creating a virtual flashmob on the Zero Waste Week site!  Oh yes, let's parachute in with pledges from wherever you are in Suffolk

Even if you prevent just a block of cheese from being bunged in landfill, that's a result.  For you it might be some cheese, but for others it could be £10 of shopping that would otherwise have ended up in their black bin.

Now I haven't told Rachelle Strauss, the organiser of the campaign - or indeed any of the team behind Zero Waste Week - of my plans.

I want it to be a right good old virtual flashmob surprise.

So remember, bellies not bins. Show your support now at  www.zerowasteweek.co.uk

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National Zero Waste Week, now in its 6th year, takes place 2-8 September.  No matter where you are in the UK, you can join in too.  So if you care about food waste, please sign up, pledge and tell your friends.  There's also a Facebook Events Page that you can join too.

Don't let the summer end without seeing this

The Clean Bin Movie: Coming to the UK - 23-30 August

Meet Jen and Grant, who have just arrived in the UK from Canada and are getting ready for a five-day tour of their documentary: The Clean Bin Project.

Forget the big budget Hollywood blockbusters that are hitting the screens this summer.  Whether you want comedy, drama or even a touch of horror - in parts - this is the film for anyone who wants to be inspired to reduce their waste.

I first came across the Clean Bin Project blog in 2008, not long after starting The Rubbish Diet. Jen Rustemeyer provided the running commentary to the challenges that she and her partner Grant Baldwin faced with entertaining accounts as they attempted a consumer free year to see who could create the least rubbish.

This was not your 'holier than thou' blogging, more a combination of escapades, frustrations and ingenuity at overcoming some of the regular hurdles that face us all.

And thankfully, they also captured it on camera, creating a very entertaining documentary, which is being screened at five venues across the UK, with a post-screening Q&A with Jen & Grant.

Launching in Brighton this Friday, the full tour list is as follows:

Fri 23rd Aug - Brighton - Brighthelm Centre. Open from 6pm. Starts 7pm.
Tue 27th Aug- Stowmarket, Suffolk - John Peel Centre for Creative Arts. Open 7pm. Starts 7:30pm
Wed 28th Aug - York - City Screen, Picturehouse. 6:15pm
Thu 29th Aug - Shrewsbury, Shropshire. The Old Post Office. 7pm.
Fri 20th Aug- Warminster, Wiltshire. Baptist Church Hall. 7pm.

Entry is either free, or with a small donation/ticket price depending on local arrangements and sponsorship.  Huge thanks go to Freegle, Mid Suffolk District Council, City Screen & John Cossham, Transition Shrewsbury and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust for making these events possible.

It would be really great if you could make it to one of the screenings.  If you can't and would still love to see the documentary, copies can be purchased at www.cleanbinmovie.com.  There are also details of how you can host a screening for your local community.

The Clean Bin Project screenings are happening in time to whet the appetite for Zero Waste Week which follows the week after. Taking place,2-8 September, the theme this year is "Use it Up" and focuses on food waste.  Please do sign up at www.zerowasteweek.co.uk.  There'll be more on that from me soon.

Meanwhile, I hope that you enjoy the Clean Bin Project events, where you'll also get to meet some of the local waste-busters who are running some great projects around the country.

10 million items of furniture are thrown away each year in the UK – let’s change that with Give it for Good

Some of those clever people at Freegle are setting up a new project to increase the reuse of goods and materials around the UK and want to make it easy for people to NOT throw out usable stuff.

Currently in prototype stage for the Brighton & Hove area, Give it for Good offers an easy-to-use search facility showing all reuse options for any item, connecting members of the public with local facilities, including Freegle, social enterprises, charity shops, council sites, community projects, licensed recyclers, businesses. Once you've entered your item, you can decide if you want to give to a charity, to an individual, join a group, pay a collector and so on. Give it for Good will do the research, so you can do the giving. 

This isn't a replacement for Freegle or other online groups - it's an opportunity to attract new members.  Neither is it in competition for reuse organisations – it's a chance to drive more people to them all,  all helping to encourage people who currently just throw things away to re-home them instead by other means. And if you've been watching Kirstie Allsopp's Fill Your House for Free recently, you'll know there's a growing appetite for reuse.

I think it's a fantastic idea but to get the project off the ground Give it for Good needs your help, in the form of a little bit of crowdfunding.  I've dug behind my sofa and scrabbled together some coinage and if you're able to help too, that would be great.  They are trying to raise £15,000 by 30th August so they can run a pilot, which they will then expand more widely around the UK.  More info is available on their crowdfunding page: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/give-it-for-good

Please do have a look at the short video below and check out their prototype page at http://giveitforgood.com/

 The project team can also be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GiveItForGood and Twitter as @GiveItForGood

For more info, email Cat Fletcher at  GiveItForGood@gmail.com.  

The end of an era and the start of a new chapter

Well, there had to come a point when I pulled my finger out, pulled up my socks and opened my laptop to finally write a blogpost.

I know I've been utter pants over the last few months.

It's not as though I've had no news to share. I've probably had too much and I never even blogged about the impromptu moment I asked the legendary Michael Parkinson about his rubbish.

But now that the school holidays are upon us, this is the first occasion I've had to properly slow down since September last year and stay at home instead of gallivanting around the country.

And this holiday feels like a period of transition in more ways than one.

On a personal level, our youngest has just left primary school and is getting ready to start middle school in September.  Yes, that little man who was only 3 when I started this blog has just turned 9 and is growing up.  To watch him confidently leave one school and be ready to embark on the next stage of his life feels like a real milestone.

Elsewhere, I've spent the last 8 months coming to terms with my mother's unexpected death in December.  Nothing can prepare you for losing a parent and I'm very aware that the constant flow of activities and deadlines this year have kept me very distracted, so much so that when we completed the sale of her house last week, it kicked me so hard that it felt like she'd died all over again.  My mother taught me lots about what's important in life and much of that teaching was in her death.  One day, I hope to share her wisdom - not yet but soon - the wisdom of an average woman who would never have expected to have been considered remarkable but in many ways truly was.  I really wish she was still here to see what's around the corner.  I know she'd be one of the first to laugh at my misadventures and then, without me knowing, quietly share her pride.

For things are changing on The Rubbish Diet front and at a rate of knots too.  Remember that Nesta competition I entered last year in partnership with Cwm Harry and Rachelle Strauss from My Zero Waste?  We're still right in the middle of the challenge and following the success of running the Rubbish Diet in Suffolk and Shropshire (which even saw 22 households in one street taking part in Shrewsbury), the novel bin slimming action is spreading to Ludlow and very soon Powys, the latter of which will be launched during this year's National Zero Waste Week, 2-8 September.   If you haven't checked out Zero Waste Week yet, go and have a peek at its new website and do get involved, especially if you need to get tough with your food waste.

But there's lots happening between now and then.  Don't miss 'yours truly' helping a family slim their bin as part of the Throwaway Britain Tonight documentary, which is being broadcast this Thursday 1st August (9pm, ITV1).  Without giving away the final reveal, I can't wait for you to see how Sandra and her family tackled their waste. 

And to give you even further inspiration to reduce waste, I've been pulling together the first UK tour of the Clean Bin Project documentary, which will see my old Canadian blogging friend Jen and her partner Grant travelling around the UK, to attend screenings of their movie in Brighton, Suffolk, York, Shrewsbury (tbc) and Wiltshire.  The official dates and venues for late August will be published soon, but if you'd like to know more please email me.

But coming back to the most major thing that's happening in my life right now, although I'm taking time out to enjoy the events of the summer holidays and pause for reflection, it's also a time for significant change, especially as the success of The Rubbish Diet trials featured in the Nesta competition has led to much interest from a range of local authorities.

The Rubbish Diet has already travelled a long way from being just a random housewife with a blog.  In the last year, it has developed into a website and a team to support the Nesta Waste Reduction competition.  And now, still in conjunction with the 'Do Think' Tank Cwm Harry (the people who are also behind the People's Design Lab), we are preparing for the next stage, which will see The Rubbish Diet becoming a social enterprise, developed to help households and communities reduce their waste by 50% within as little time as eight weeks.  More info on the next stage will be available soon, as will the final results of the Nesta competition later in the year.  Meanwhile if The Rubbish Diet challenge launches in your neck of the woods, do join in and say hello.

With so much happening it really does feel like the end of an era and the beginning of an exciting and potentially nerve-wracking new chapter.

Thank you for sticking with the rubbish adventures of this Almost Mrs Average over the last five years.  I know there are lots more adventures to be had yet, but from now on it will be in a very different context.

I just hope I will still have time to blog about them.

Tagging along with Hadleigh HWRC to the Awards for Excellence in Recycling & Waste Management

The team from Hadeigh's HWRC, FCC Environment & Suffolk County Council with BBC's Susanna Reid

Yesterday, I had the real pleasure of tagging along with the Suffolk's Household Waste Recycling Centre team to LetsRecycle.com's Awards for Excellence in Recycling & Waste Management. 

The awards, now in their 10th year, and presented by the BBC's Susanna Reid, were held at the Landmark Hotel, London, a beautiful setting to mark the successes and excellence of the recycling and waste management industry, the kind of things that go on behind the scenes that help the UK recycle more and reduce wasted resources.

I've been singing the praises of Suffolk's recycling facilities as part of the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet, so it was great to hear that the Hadleigh HWRC was in the running for the category of Community Amenity Site of the Year,

With composting and recycling rates that exceed 90%, Hadleigh HWRC, managed by Suffolk County Council and FCC Environment, has been identified as Suffolk ’s top performing site, with successful and effective day-to-day operations providing an enhanced service to users.

Both Suffolk County Council and FCC Environment have engaged with local third sector organisations including the Ipswich Furniture project and ‘Re-cycle’ both of which are charities that have diverted items from landfill.  Ipswich Furniture Project provides an outlet for furniture and crockery, with ‘Re-Cycle’ giving unwanted cycles a new life.  This has enabled improvements on the recycling performance within the existing site footprint and moves more of the materials up the waste hierarchy, with almost no environmental impact.

The site only has two members of staff during the week and three at weekends to manage all waste streams and maintain the high recycling rate and excellent customer service. Much of the success of the site's recycling rate is attributed to the site staff and their relationship with the public. 

But these awards always bring stiff competition and this year the team was up against the Witchford HRC, in Cambridgeshire and Witley Community Recycling Centre in Surrey.

And the winner was...... well...  sadly not the team from Hadleigh HWRC on this occasion, but another worthy winner, Witley CRC, which is part of a network of 15 facilities managed by Sita, and which has been redesigned with sustainability at its heart and strong community engagement in its development.

Ooooh, so close!  They may not have won at yesterday's event but being a finalist in the awards and one of the top performing Household Waste Recycling Centre's in the UK, Hadleigh HWRC is most definitely a winner in my eyes and it was great to chat to Mel & Terry (pictured above with Susanna Reid) about their stories of what it's like being on the ground at one of our county's facilities. The passion for what they do is so easy to see.

Once again, in a good way, it felt like I was a bit of a recycling groupie following the band, and a very successful one at that.  Seriously, when you witness how the awards' nominees are changing the future of waste, their efforts, successes and enthusiasm really does rub off.

With wide-ranging categories such as High Street Recycling Champion, Commercial Recycling Champion, Best Community Recycling Initiative and Recycling Businesses of the Year, I wonder if next year, we'll see more entries from Suffolk.  After all, from our own Greenest Suffolk awards and some of the great things coming out of the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet, I reckon our county could offer up some stiff competition for next year's awards.

Huge thanks to Letsrecycle.com for letting me come along to support our fantastic team from Suffolk.  There were some great winners and finalists, all which can be seen either on the website or by following the updates on Twitter, using the hashtag #awardsforexcellence.