Crouching dog, hidden rubbish

Last week was national Recycle Now Week, and I was busy running neighbourhood roadshows on council estates, holding stalls at city centre parks and the Arbury Carnival, door knocking and taking part in a Sustainable Living Exhibition in the Grafton centre. For this exhibition we had invited Michelle Reader, an artist who uses waste materials in her work, to come and make a sculpture in-situ. Michelle did bring her own rubbish, but as you can see Marian and I took our bags of rubbish from the first week of Zero Waste to see if she could reuse any of it. Over the course of the day a fantastic transformation took place, as piles of rubbish were diminished and the sculpture grew into this wonderful dog! The County Council are now going to run a competition to name it.

We didn't get rid of all our rubbish unfortunately, but it has inspired me and I would like to make something out of what we collectively have left at the end of the month (maybe a trophy for the person with the least waste - ha ha!)

Things that are annoying me this week:

You used to be able to get yoghurt in a glass jar - what happened?

I can't find any margerine that isn't in a plastic tub

Overpackaged boxes of chocolates received as gifts (close to finishing one, eek!)

When I asked the girl on the fish counter to only use one plastic bag for my haddock, she said "I normally get told off if I only use one bag"

Boxes of ice-cream cornets that you assume will be wrapped in paper inside the box but the paper has a needless layer of plastic in it (best to stick to the brands you know!)