Monday 20 October 2008

End of day 1...

What a great way to start Zero waste Week....

BBC TV Coverage on Spotlight...great piece, just a shame about the interviewee! http://www.bbc.co.uk/spotlight/

BBC Radio Cornwall

Pirate FM

and plenty of local interest....the butcher, Charlie Harris & Daughter (http://www.thelocalbutcher.co.uk/contact.html) really came up trumps, not only allowing us to film in their shop, but they have also said, if the greaseproof paper works, ie keeps the meat fresh in the fridge, then they will phase out plastic and offer an alternative to customers...now that's what this is all about....no sooner as I had ordered my sausages in paper, then the next lady in the queue did the same!!

However, the dark side of day 1 is that things have already gone in the bin...one or two plastic tubs that were finished today (butter) that were left overs from previous shops, and some plastic film from a magazine subscription...gardeners world of all things. But what can you do...other things I know that are going to be a problem:

Yogurt pots - the kids love yoghurt's
Innocent Smoothies - the dreaded Tetrapak - could send it to Scotland for recycling but that kind of defeats the sustainability argument from a carbon footprint point of view
Cream pots

So, we're going to have to find alternatives....tips gratefully received...day 2 is looming so that's it for another day on Zero waste Street!!

3 comments:

rae-ann said...

Wahee! Another zero waster; I can't tell you how excited I am to meet you!

Re tetrapaks; have you checked out this:
http://www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk/locator.asp and for the packaging that your magazine subscriptions come in, can you stretch it without breaking it? If so, you have yourself some polythene, which can be sent to :
http://www.greenlink-berkshire.org.uk/Polyprint.htm

Well done on your antics in the butchers; that is fabulous. We're yet to convince anyone else to do as we do, but how wonderful that the lady after you asked for greaseproof paper too. We take our own reusable containers, which means no paper to compost either.

Good luck; this blog is great and please come on over to myzerowaste (http://myzerowaste.com/) and say hello. In the articles section, you'll be able to read more about polythene recycling and tetrapaks. We did a zero waste week at the beginning of September and are doing one with our council at the end of next jan

Have a wonderful week and ENJOY yourselves,
Mrs Green x

Almost Mrs Average said...

Hi Jon - you won't know what you've let yourself in for now that Rachelle and I have caught up with you. You've officially joined a happy group of Garbloggers from all over the world. Thanks for adding the BBC link so that we could see it from all the way up in Suffolk. Great piece. Re the butter, see if you can find one that comes in paper wrap. I know Waitrose blocks, but not sure about Tesco.

Jon Rolls said...

Thanks both...I'll check out Tetrapak locations, we used to send them all to Scotland when we had enough but the carbon footprint starts to come into to it then?? Oh the dilemma...re polythene, that sounds interesting. As far as margarine goes, we've started buying the blocks..unfortunatly we had some left over from last week...that's the problem with doing it for just a week...ideally we needed to prepare a month in advance and then run it for a month...that way we'd really see the difference...small things though!!