Much to my astonishment, for each of the last 4 weeks I have produced only 1 (by no means bulging) supermarket plastic carrier bagful of non-recyclable rubbish. It used to be 3 or 4
This has been achieved mostly by a reduction in volume, rather than in mass. I ruthlessly squash all plastic – food trays, yoghourt pots etc. It involves sheets of newspaper on the floor & much stamping with my garden shoes on. Rather therapeutic, on bad days.
I remind myself of my mother – you could tell it was best to make yourself scarce when she was chopping wood (for kindling for the fire) or flattening cardboard boxes. We used to get rather a lot of those, back then, because they were used for transporting all sorts of thing, including the weekly order delivered by the grocer’s boy on his bicycle. We made good use of as many as we could – for example, storing apples for the winter - but eventually some just had to go
The other ways in which I have reduced domestic waste are by being more careful about food – anything in the fridge or the vegetable basket has to be eaten. Which has led to some rather interesting soups, stews, fried rice or frittatas. Not sure if I am going to keep that up.
And being a bit more careful about using tissues, kitchen towel & cotton wool pads.
And cleaning all aluminium foil, squdging it into a ball so that it can go with the recycling
Oh, and leaving more of my waste behind. It was an old habit, bringing my waste home with me, which dated back to the time when public litter bins were less common on the street, & much less frequently emptied. Now I leave any newspaper supplements or inserts which I will not read, cigarette packets, surplus packaging etc etc behind
So plastic, household paper, a small amount of vegetable peelings, egg shells etc - that is it
With agreement from my neighbour I take the double wrapped bag & put it in her wheelie bin, which saves me a chore & saves the bin men a few seconds. We shall have to stop that if they start charging for waste
