Today's photo is of our blue bag and green box, provided to householders in York for our fortnightly collection of recyclables. What could that have to do with exciting news? Bear with me, it's coming.I make sure that I use both the bag and box shown above, but also do more besides, such as avoiding excessive packaging in the first place, using my own bags and shopping trolley for my shopping, shopping locally, and on one occasion, I even left my excess packaging behind in the supermarket.
The changes I made were as a result of following my friend Karen's Rubbish Diet Plan - which is about slimming the bin, not the waistline! There is a hideous problem in the UK (as in other places) with too much rubbish being sent to landfil, and ensuing environmental problems.
Karen, who blogs as almost Mrs Average, started her blog The Rubbish Diet at the beginning of last year after a new year resolution to create less waste, and a decision to participate in the local council's "zero waste" week - where the aim was to generate NO RUBBISH as a household for a whole week. In fact the only thing she ended up sending to landfil that week was just one sticking plaster!
Anyway, back to the exciting news as advertised in the title of this post. Karen's blog The Rubbish Diet has just been shortlisted in this year's Guardian Media Awards! The award is an Innovation Award and you can see it for yourself on the Guardian's website here. Scroll down right to the bottom, you'll find it under the heading "Independent Media."
WOW! Congrats Karen, this is much deserved recognition for the Rubbish Diet, WOO HOO!
5 comments:
Congratulations to Karen! I've been following her blog for a while and she's really amazing! In East Riding of Yorkshire where I live the rules about recycling are slightly different compared to the City of York. For example they collect the blue bins only once a month, they want us to put plastic bottles into plastic bags as they collect paper and bottles together, etc. I've been complaining to the Council but nobody seems interested. So now I've got two blue bins: one is for the paper and one is for plastic which I put in a big bin bag to avoid all the plastic bags. But I really think that the authorities don't make our recycling life easier! In Italy we recycle everything, even the smallest piece of plastic! Ciao. A.
felicitation à ton amie, toute les initiatives sont bonnes pour sauver notre planète.
felicitation to your friend, all initiatives are good to save our planet.
That is brilliant (the nomination, not the bag and box!) Welldone Karen :)
Ruby - thanks so much for this post. You are a wonderful friend and I'm proud to have enjoyed the fun with you. xxx
Thanks too Antonella and how wonderful to be able to recycle everything. It was like that when I visited Switzerland too. I've never heard of a monthly collection for recycling before. I wonder how I'd cope with that. :-D
Merci Olivier. Thank you so much for your support. :-D
Thanks Marley. I have to admit the bag looks good too. :-D
I agree that there is too much packaging on products these days. There seems to be very little movement though in reducing it. Cornflake boxes are the worst.
Of course things are different here. We have a green wheelie bin which is emptied every other week & all paper, metals and some plastics go in. A glass collection service has just started which saves us having to go to the bottlebank.
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