Category: Waste reduction

Christmas is a wonderful time of year, but it is also unfortunately a time of excess waste: packaging, gift wrap, food, and more. However, Christmas doesn’t need to be so wasteful, and it can be just as much fun without all the additional waste. These tips will help you get started with a zero waste Christmas you and your family will never forget.

Gifts

If you’re aspiring to live a zero waste lifestyle, or even to cut down on the waste you produce, Christmas gifts can be a minefield. This will involve tact and patience, but if you truly don’t want any gifts this Christmas, talk to your loved ones and explain to them why. Or, instead, you could request that people buy you presents that will support your zero waste lifestyle, such as:

• A stainless steel lunchbox
• Lush toiletries
• An e-book
• A plant
• A course or experience day
• An IOU for a task or homecooked meal
• Packaging-free consumables
• A donation to a charity of your choice
• Tickets for a concert, movie or sports event (these can often be emailed to the recipient)
• A spa day
• Fresh flowers
• Reusable glass storage jars for the kitchen

Continue reading How to have a Zero Waste Christmas

Children’s parties are generally synonymous with waste – they bring to mind piles of paper plates full of half-eaten food, broken disposable decorations, and party bags full of cheap plastic tat and sweets. However, this potentially highly wasteful situation can easily be turned around by a few simple changes that won’t cost you any more time or money. The kids won’t even notice the difference, but are perfectly capable of creating that party atmosphere whatever their surroundings anyway. Try some of the changes below:

The party invites

Paper invites aren’t necessary, and often get lost or thrown away before the party anyway. Instead, give all of the parents a quick call to invite their child, or send out a simple invite email. This will take less time than buying, writing and posting paper invites, costs less, and creates no waste. If you’d like to send out fun digital invitations instead, try a service such as Paperless Post.

Continue reading How to throw a zero waste kid’s birthday party

While many of us are becoming more conscious of what we waste at home, and are making efforts to improve on this, work environments are often left behind when it comes to environmentally-friendly practices. Offices in particular can be fairly habitual environments, where things don’t change very much from year to year, and waste-related actions are certainly included in this stagnancy.

In this article I’ll give you some ideas to suggest to your boss, or implement if you are the boss, for creating a low waste or zero waste workplace.

• Stop using the printer

Do you really need to print anything? Probably not. Stop printing documents out altogether, or if that’s truly not an option in your sector, then consider printing on recycled paper, and printing on both sides. Reduce your page margins, and print in black and white draft mode, unless it is an important document. Purchase refillable ink cartridges and you can sell your empties back to certain companies too, to be recycled. If you scan a document, save it as a file instead of printing it out. And if you post letters out, then switch to smaller envelopes: this will use less paper, and might also save the company money on postage.

Continue reading Top tips for a Zero Waste Office

The Real Junk Food Project (TRJFP) is a global network which up until this week consisted of over 120 pay as you feel cafes. These fantastic eateries divert food destined for waste and instead use it to create delicious and healthy meals, which customers can pay for in a variety of ways. This week, however, TRJFP set up its first food waste supermarket in Pudsey, Leeds, which is also the first of its kind in the UK.

The project’s founder is Adam Smith, and we have been lucky enough to steal a few minutes of his time to find out a bit more about TRJFP, the Pudsey supermarket, and his thoughts on the problem of food waste.

Continue reading TRJFP: The UK’s first food waste supermarket

24 million slices of bread are thrown out by households in Britain every day, and nearly one in five UK households admit to binning an entire loaf of bread before even opening it or slicing it, according to research conducted last year on behalf of the charity Love Food Hate Waste. Bread is one of our nation’s favourite foods, with almost half of adults eating it daily. However, it seems we are not eating anywhere near as much bread as we are buying, which is a food waste issue that needs to be addressed.

So, why do we throw our bread out? It has usually gone stale or mouldy. Today we are focusing on stale bread, and here are six suggestions of how you can use it up instead of throwing it in the bin.

1.      Toast it

This is a simple solution, but one that many people don’t consider. Toast your stale bread and you’d never know it was stale in the first place. Add lashings of butter and your favourite toppings.

Continue reading Six great uses for stale bread

Cling film – or plastic wrap, as it is known elsewhere in the world – is a thin plastic film which clings to itself or other smooth surfaces, meaning it can handily cover food without the need for any extra devices or fasteners. Cling film can be made from a variety of plastics, however the original and most popular material is polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Not only is there talk of this plastic being harmful to human health, it is also a single-use product, meaning it is ending up in landfill and in our oceans where it is causing harm to the environment and nature.

What is the threat to human health?

Plastic is made up of chemicals, and there has long been concern surrounding the leaching of these chemicals into the natural environment, and transference of them into our food and drink. This worry has led to the recent popularity of ‘BPA-free’ plastics for food and drink storage. However, the main problem with cling film occurs when it is heated up:

Continue reading Why and how to ditch Cling Film

It is a common misbelief that home freezers are in our kitchens only to store ready meals, oven chips, ice creams and ice cubes. In fact, if you check inside the majority of British freezers, I imagine that list won’t be far wrong. However, what most people don’t realise is that the majority of foods can be frozen. Not only is this convenient, time-saving and money-saving for us, but it also means we can freeze foods before they go off, therefore dramatically cutting our chances of producing food waste.

Armed with the information below, you can now happily save money by purchasing food whilst it’s on offer (hello, buy one get five free offers!), safe in the knowledge that you’re getting a great offer, and you won’t be wasting a scrap of it.

So, let’s get started on cutting food waste. What can be frozen?

Continue reading Beat Food Waste with your Freezer!

When thinking about a Zero Waste lifestyle, we often consider what we do inside our homes but we should also consider our outdoor space, and what we can do in our garden to reduce or eliminate waste too. Below we have compiled a list of tips for cultivating a Zero Waste green space you and your family can enjoy for a lifetime.

Make compost

Save money, reduce packaging waste, eliminate your food waste at home, and know exactly what you’re putting on your garden and into the environment by making your own compost. Don’t know where to start? Our handy Guide to Composting will explain all. Continue reading 10 Zero Waste garden tips

Father’s Day – just like Christmas, Birthdays, and many other annual celebrations – can be an occasion of excesses, where the issue of waste easily gets forgotten by most. But this need not be the case. This year, why not treat your Dad whilst also treating the environment, by not creating any waste? It’s a lot easier than you’d think. Take a look at our seven ideas below for inspiration. What would your Dad like most on Father’s Day? The chance to spend some quality time with his child or children is probably high on the list.

Take Dad to a festival

As Father’s Day falls in June, there will no doubt be a selection of summer festivals on in your local area. Festivals are increasingly popular, and now, aside from the classic music festival, there are festivals for food, beer, cider, wine, gin, specialist diets, film, board games, sports, and much more. There’s bound to be one your Dad would love.

Continue reading 7 Zero Waste gift ideas for Father’s Day