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Long time no blog...

How about an update of good habits and slippage? Where are we over a year after zero waste week?

Food buying habits are still pretty good I think. We still head to the local shops or market as much as we can, and we don't buy much processed food at all. There has been a bit of slippage on the baking front, and a few more cereal bars and similar snacks being bought, but we're back on home made cake this week. Yay! And we still fearlessly laugh in the face of Best Before dates and Consume Within advice, and trust our noses, with no should-have-been-edible food going in the bin. There are a few things that have gone in the compost when they've gone off too soon, pears and satsumas being a bit prone to mouldiness for some reason.

There has been a loss to the eco-shopping scene in Norwich. Wholefood Planet closed this month. I said when I originally blogged about it that it was out of the way, and I think that probably did for it. In an industrial unit down a dead end road on the very edge of town is not the place to open a shop, or a cafe (as they added later). It is a real shame, as it deserved to do well, but it also deserved to be better located for passing traffic and those who don't drive (presumably a fair proportion of their target eco-audience?). I will miss the large packs of wholefoods.

We have reluctantly moved away from the Bio-D washing liquid and softener that came in 25 litre containers and saved us lots of packaging. It was causing huge amounts of what can only be described as gunge in the washing machine. I don't know if it deteriorated because we didn't use it quickly enough, but there were grim mucus-y blobs in the softener, and a similar substance building up in the tray (and presumably in the pipes). We are trying some other eco alternatives including concentrated softener and, I'm afraid, wrapped tablets. Any comments on better-packaged things that work and don't cause gunge?

We had a new situation back in November - workmen in the house. Our old boiler went pop (more like dribble, actually) and so we replaced it with a more efficient one, requiring some changes to the whole heating system. The plumber took away the old boiler, feeder tank from the loft, and the insulated hot water tank from the airing cupboard. But he left behind cardboard and polystyrene packaging, broken tiles, leftover mortar/plaster stuff, assorted screws and general waste. Unfortunately he left it in the recycling bin, since that's outside the front door and the rubbish bin is tucked away behind the garage since we use it less often. So we had to tip up the whole wheelie bin and sort out the contents. Even when I mentioned it to him, MORE waste went in it the next day. ARGH.

There have been some changes to our Freecycle group in that it's become Freegle, but it still works just as well as ever. We had some great publicity in the November 2009 issue of Your Rubbish Your Choice (you can read it online from that link - page 16-17), and once again went to te Norfolk Waste Partnership conference to spread the word. In YRYC you can read about Recycle-PC, who collect all manner of old IT equipment through Freegle, make working systems, and give them away to those who need them - not to mention disposing properly of the bits that are no longer useful. I was really pleased (and not a little surprised) to find out that old PCs from work go to these guys, and passed on a whole vanload of computers to them at the end of the year. I'll be adding some bits of our own as soon as my husband's not looking ;)

Hubble, bubble, soil and trouble

Ah, spring. Flowers are blooming, leaves are unfurling, and bank holidays are in the air. And what do we do on fine, sunny bank holidays in spring? Sensible people go to the beach or for a lovely country walk. I quite often manage to fit in a bike ride, which usually involves tea and cake. But this time the garden called.

If you are imagining me wafting around the garden with a trug and a big floppy hat, doing a little light pruning, then stop. Our garden is not big enough to waft around, for a start, and far from in need of light pruning. Industrial lopping, maybe. But what was calling me was the conglomeration of pots and planters from previous years, now mostly sporting weeds and moss. They looked a mess, and were depressing me every time I looked out of the kitchen window. Time for a spring clean!

We grabbed some rubble sacks from the garage, and set to emptying the pots. I didn't want to reuse the soil, for various reasons. It's full of weeds, not to mention stones and crocks used for drainage, and we have nowhere to put it except the veg patch (which is not in need of more stones or weeds!). As we stopped for lunch, I quickly checked the excellent online recycling centre info and found that soil is not permitted with garden waste - it counts as DIY waste and is limited to one 80 litre sack per week unless you pay.

Oh.

I didn't really want my soil going to landfill anyway - I just wanted it out of the pots. It could be reused but I think it needs revitalising first, e.g. mixing with some of the compost from my bin, not to mention sieving to get rid of the stones. Where to put it in the meantime? Well, we have had a couple of pallets lurking in the garage for a while, with the idea we could make a compost heap enclosure when we fond another couple. You know what? No time like the present!

By 3pm we had decided to go ahead and make an enclosure. By 3:05 I had found some instructions online and by 3:15 we had dug out the pallets and a leftover chunk of kitchen worktop about the same size. By 4:20pm we had fenced off an area for our heap :)

Two pallets make the sides, and the worktop supports at the back. Old canes keep some cardboard pressed up against the pallets to keep things inside. We had to cut one of the pallets down, and the extra struts form a mini fence at the front. Garden wire helps keep things together.

It's not really a fully-functioning compost heap - the green bin will continue to take a mix of kitchen waste and paper/cardboard, plus some of the less-woody garden trimmings, and produce lovely compost. The enclosure is more for the tougher, woodier garden waste, and the soil from the pots. We also put in some bags of garden waste from a while back that didn't fit in the green bin but which we hadn't managed to take to the waste centre yet.

After all this we still took a tip to the recycling centre. In clearing for the enclosure we grubbed up a lot of ivy that had crept in, and knew that if we put that in either bin it would just grow and grow. So we took that, and also grabbed up any tetra packs, metal, foil and other things that don't get collected. Previously we have always gone to the waste centre in the city (Mile Cross), but this time we took a short journey south to Ketteringham. What a revelation. There was no queue of cars, and the skips were out in the open air, nothing was overfull, and there was no hint of that lovely "dump smell". The two workers there were very friendly and even the welcome/info signs were brightened up with flowers. It was 5:15pm on Good Friday and they were open for another 45 minutes. Overall we were in and out in a flash and everything was super-easy and very impressive.

The only thing that made me sad was a cooker fly-tipped at the entrance... *sigh*

So, our garden is now a bit tidier, and I think something like about 50kg of soil and stones have been kept out of landfill. Not bad for a day's work - just about worth missing a bike ride for :)

Note - the wooden box with the rope handle is a repurposed ammunition box now growing herbs :)