So last week we told you about our quest to gather some positive stories about actions people are taking to reduce their carbon footprints.
This week we focus on waste. Did you know that UK households produce 106 million tonnes of waste each year? And 8.3 million tonnes of this is food. A lot of the time the food has to be thrown away as we simply bought too much and didn't get through it all (easily prevented by not going to the supermarket when you are hungry...). Biodegradable matter in landfill (food, paper, garden waste etc) produces methane when it breaks down, a powerful greenhouse gas (25x worse than carbon dioxide).
So what are people in Fruit Towers doing to tackle the rubbish bin...
Sustainability Lou sets a fabulous example by planning her weekly shop so as not to waste any food - although she did admit to the odd bit of lettuce going astray.
Clover not only works hard on finding recycled packaging for innocent products but when she is at home she recycles all her garden and food waste.
Annabel has bought herself a lovely shiny new composter (although a little less shiny now).
Fliss has ensured that her bunnies need not feel guilty - their droppings (a much nicer word than poo) go into the composter.
Dave keeps a beady eye on his housemates to make sure that they are doing the right thing at the recycling bin. Dave sits opposite Sustainability Jess and Sustainability Lou - so he really should know what he is doing.
Apparently Alan thinks recycling is fun - I got the impression there was some sarcasm being expressed, but I ignored it as long as he keeps recycling.
Julia has committed to improve her recycling performance, although to be fair it sounded like she was already pretty good at it. Always striving to improve seems to be a common trait in the finance team, must investigate that further sometime.
Charlie makes sure that she buys recycled loo roll - after all we need to buy the products that are made with all the materials that people recycled (with no market for recycled products the economic argument for recycling goes out the window). That's one of the reasons we use 100% recycled plastic in our bottles (and it halved the carbon associated with the bottle).
Want to know more about what to do with waste? Look here or some ideas to reduce food waste. Got a bit of left over smoothie? You can make some nice cupcakes.
Hopefully some food for thought.. I am off to find a composter for my shiny new garden.