Our wheelie bin is almost full, for the first time since I moved to my new house last October! Here’s how we managed that:

Reducing

Well, its hard to ‘reduce’ in this country, but we do what we can. When I buy veg I usually forego the plastic bags if I can manage it (they only get chucked anyway). I bring my own shopping bags like everyone else, but other than that, there just aren’t too many ways to reduce the amount of rubbish one accumulates without simply reducing the amount of stuff you buy. If anyone has suggestions of course, I’d love to hear them. You often hear green blogs in the US and elsewhere talking about getting ‘refils’ on things, but its not something thats really been embraced here.

Reusing

We get the most use out of fast food containers – ie the plastic boxes you get from takeaways. Great for freezing, reheating, taking lunch to work, putting screws in – infinitely reuseable. We use larger plastic packaging (from things like bags of potatoes) as bin bags for the kitchen. When the container is smaller, you will put less into it. If you have a giant bin in the corner with a big black bag in it, it will fill up in no time. We reuse plastic bottles where possible, jars of course get reused a fair bit, especially honey jars with plastic screwtops.

Recycling

Cardboard, glass, paper, plastic, tin, steel, fabrics. All recyclable. The trick to getting the most out of recycling is to clean food containers before dropping them in the recycling bin – that way you can store them in a shed for the inevitable weeks before u get time to go to the recycling centre. And DO go to the centre if you have one nearby. A lot of stuff is not accepted in the collection bags despite being recyclable. Our local recycling centre even accepts soft plastic packaging and wrapping.

Composting

My folks have a large compost bin to which I make a weekly contribution. All the leftovers that don’t feed the dog go to the bin (although to be honest she spends a lot of time trying to dig a tunnel through the compost pile anyway, looking for rats).

The biggest impact has been the composting and recycling. I’d love to do more re-using, and I’m always on the lookout for new ways to use things, but most of the containers end up being recycled. Composting and recycling handles between 80-90% of our waste. The contents of the wheelie bin thus far are mostly things which are (to my knowledge) non recyclable, such as broken cups or plates, light bulbs, aerosol cans, etc.

A bin bag for a wheelie bin costs around €10, and without composting or recycling i’d say we would need to put out a bin at least once every month. So far thats a saving of €100, and a saving of a couple of tons of landfill every year. It’s also been very educational, seeing what can be recycled, seeing how much waste a household creates, and how much can avoid the wheelie bin.

Tags: blablabla, eco, green