Cambridge City Council is running an Environment Fortnight, which is an expanded version of the highly successful Environment Week that was held last year. As part of this event, some of the city councillors have volunteered to put themselves and their families through the rigorous exercise of seeing just how little they can put into their black bins during the month of June. A similar exercise was done last year in Bath and NE Somerset (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/6076100.stm) which caught my attention - but this was only for one week. Reasoning that it is possible to make all kinds of sacrifices for a week, but that a longer period of time requires long-term and realistic life-style changes, the Cambridge volunteers are going for the full month.
The aims of the Zero Waste Challenge are:
1. Demonstrate by example that the City Council is serious about solving the landfill problem which is rapidly overtaking the city.
2. Demonstrate that a significant reduction in landfill can be made by some simple purchasing decisions.
3. Learn first-hand just what is possible and what needs to be changed in order to reduce landfill.
It is not a competition. It is a co-operative learning exercise (even though our unfortunate families are having to suffer too!)
Thursday 31 May 2007
The day before...
Thursday May 31st
I put the last bag of ordinary rubbish in my black bin. It is not a lot, and we are quite pleased with ourselves that our bin is usually less than half full as it is tonight.
The zero waste challenge begins tomorrow..........
It starts tomorrow!! (From Amanda Taylor)
Last day of May, and the Zero Waste Challenge begins tomorrow. My black bin was collected this morning, and from tomorrow, along with the rest of a small group of Cambridge city councillors, I am charged with putting as little waste as possible into my black wheelie bin over the month of June.
That means putting all our recyclables into our green bins, black tins&paper boxes and blue plastic bottles, but also trying to avoid buying or using products that cannot be recycled - I suspect that is going to be the hard bit.
As a parent of a toddler, I am amazed how many children's products, even the healthy ones, come in packaging that cannot be recycled - Capri Sun fruit juice, fruit smoothies, etc. Not to mention the other ephemeral paraphernalia that infants attract, such as stickers, straws, balloons etc.
Then there's all those free magazines and direct mail letters that come in cellophane, or which contain a mixture of paper and plastic non-recyclable stuff so that you can't throw it away without dissecting the contents. Even Cambridge City Council sends our mail in envelopes reinforced with Sellotape or with windows!
Wish me luck!
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