INTERVIEW: Mrs. Green from My Zero Waste

If you follow the adventures of Rachelle aka Mrs Green and her family, you'll already know that this is a big week for the Gloucestershire based Greens who have been aiming to cut down their household waste to nothing since June. This is their long-awaited Zero Waste Week.

Inspired by the family's commitment to doing all they can to reduce their impact in an increasingly disposable world, I decided to put some probing questions to Mrs. Green.

Hippyshopper: Many people are very careful to recycle everything their local council will take. But I can't help worrying that not everything I send ends up being recycled and that some of it may just get dumped in landfill. Does this just require a 'leap of faith' or are there ways to make sure?

Read on after the jump for her answers!

Mrs. Green: You can write to your council and ask them specifically about what happens.

Interestingly, I've just done this myself after a couple of news stories made me question the integrity of our recycling system in the UK. I'm still waiting for a response. According to WRAP, it is more economical for us to ship plastics out to China, but I feel that the more the public show a support of recycling, the better the facilities will become for dealing with the materials. Then maybe we won't need to send our products abroad at all.

There are horror stories all around the internet and newspapers that would suggest we are wasting our time and that everything ends up in the landfill. But then I hear about companies like Recycling Cds and Polyprint mail, who are small concerns that appear to be genuine and passionate about what they do. Maybe we need to support these smaller companies where we can get to know for sure what happens to the materials we send them.

Hippyshopper: I'm trying to cut down on food waste at the moment but find it hard for various reasons: mostly, I'm concerned about the safety of storing food. Can you point me towards really reliable guide that will tell me honestly how long most foods will keep? I do wonder if many 'best before' dates are stricter than they need to be.

Mrs. Green: I think there is a danger of becoming too overcautious and throwing things away unnecessarily. We seem to have built in obsolescence with our food as well! According to WRAP we throw the equivalent of one in three bags of food shopping away every week. It's estimated that half of this is safe to eat.

There is an excellent site that I am sure you have heard of called the Love Food Hate Waste campaign. On this they have a section dedicated to this very issue. It talks you through storing all sorts of foods and has helpful information on things like the right temperatures for your fridge.

One of the keys to safe eating is to know the difference between a best before and a Use by date. The first is a suggestion, estimated by the manufacturer, but if the food looks, smells and tastes fresh it is usually still ok to eat. Use by dates usually appear on meat, fish and some dairy and should not be exceeded.

If you have any leftovers then refrigerate them and use them within 3 days. If you know you will not use them within that time, then freeze them as soon as they cool down.

A basic household rule is: don't let food sit at room temperature for longer than two hours (refrigerate it as soon as it is cool) and before eating leftovers reheat them until they are piping hot.

There is a great article on freezer storage here.

A good idea would be to borrow a Mrs Beeton type book from the library where you will learn all about food safety and storage. It was not so long ago that there were no use by dates and we all had to rely on our sense of sight, smell and taste more :)

Hippyshopper: Another problem is convenience. I frequently get home after 10pm, when a takeaway or packaged meal is by far the easiest option. What sort of suggestions would you make to city-types with hectic lives who want to cut down on waste but don't always have the luxury of visiting farmer's markets or local producers?

Mrs. Green: This is a common challenge for a lot of people. Our lifestyles have shifted to such an extent that a family gathering around the table and a home cooked meal early evening is no longer the norm.

I think there are many instances in life where waste minimisation is more realistic than zero waste. For takeaways, many pizzas come in cardboard boxes, some Chinese and Indian meals come in foil containers and burgers and fries come in card and paper. All of these can be recycled if clean or composted. And don't forget the nation's favourite - fish and chips! It comes in newspaper or grease proof paper that can be added to the compost heap.

Some establishments will fill your own containers if you ask. So this might be an option for some people and will help raise awareness to the takeaway trade.

For packaged meals at home, there are 'minimising options'. For example, you can't go wrong with a bread maker and bread mix. The mixes come in paper bags that can be recycled and all you have to do is add water. So it's become simple to make fresh bread - you can put the machine on late at night and wake up to fresh bread in the morning, or pop it on in the morning and come home to a fresh loaf after a day at the office.

Things like soup and beans come in tins which can be easily recycled and egg shells can be composted. So it doesn't take long to cook a meal such as beans on toast, soup and bread or boiled eggs with minimal waste; even at 10 o'clock at night.

Sometimes a slight shift in lifestyle is called for if you want to reduce waste further. For example, spending your Saturday morning preparing veggies for the week or batch cooking something such as chilli, curry or shepherds pie can provide you with frozen meals for the week. Another great idea is to use a slow cooker. If you prepare veggies on one day of the week, you can throw them in the slow cooker, either with meat or pulses and come home to a freshly cooked casserole or stew.

Often takeaways serve huge portions, so keep the leftovers, store them well in the fridge and eat them the following day. This will reduce both food waste, packaging AND save you money.

Hippyshopper: Electronic gadgets break so easily these days, due to 'built in obsolescence'. But they are also really hard to dispose of: charity shops won't take them even if they still work, and they're often made up of so many bits and pieces it's hard to know how best to be rid of them. What do you suggest?

Mrs. Green: Electronic waste is a massive problem for the environment, with over 2 million tonnes of the stuff being dumped in the landfill every year in the UK.

The first thing we do is try and mend gadgets. Sometimes we're lucky, but other times it's impossible. Fortunately, my husband knows his way around electronic gadgetry from previous jobs, but you can usually find someone through LETS or similar who will check things out for you.

Worse is the situation where it's more expensive to repair than replace because then you're left with a real life scruples situation to deal with! In these instances we use Freecycle. If you can describe what the problem is, then there is a chance there will be someone, somewhere who can fix it, or make use of other parts for spares.

In the past I have sold 'broken' things on eBay with lots of photos and full descriptions. I once had over 40 bids on a camera that was totally defunct. But the person who bought it was thrilled because he was in the middle of a rebuild project, so this camera was like gold dust to him. Failing that, we've put things on the kerbside with a 'please help yourself' notice - everything goes eventually!

The WEEE directive is designed to help keep things out of the landfill. When you buy a new gadget, check with the retailer for ways to safely dispose of your old item if you cannot get rid of it any other way.

The most important thing though is your thoughts BEFORE you buy something. A good tip is to walk away from the item and think (or forget!) about it for a week. if you're still convinced you need the item then buy it, but I'll guarantee there will be numerous occasions in which you're realise you never really wanted it anyway :)

So often we buy things as an emotional fix - we've had a stressful week, a bad hair day, just split up with someone, so we substitute this emotional need for something material. Perhaps treating ourselves to a massage or a cup of coffee with a good friend would be a better idea ;)

Hippyshopper: Do you think the 'credit crunch' is helping people to get into waste reduction (buying less, saving more), or making it worse as they turn to buying cheap produce in bulk?

Mrs. Green: I think it depends on the mindset of the individual. There will be those who thrive on the idea of a challenge and will combine frugal times with environmental concerns with enthusiasm and motivation. Others will swing the other way and buy cheap convenience meals and still spend their money. We're all different.

Hippyshopper: Which waste solution you've found are you most proud of?

Mrs. Green: Taking our own reusable containers to shops. We now buy cheese from our local shop, meat from a butcher and get salady things from a deli in a supermarket; all without packaging. We've spent time talking to the owners or managers of these stores and found a lot of support and interest in our ideas. I'm even managing to feed the cat zero waste!

Hippyshopper: During the first week of September, you're hoping to reach the golden figure of absolute zero waste. How confident are you feeling at present?

Mrs Green: I have to admit, I'm having a crisis of faith at the moment! I'm feeling overwhelmed by the whole thing. Plastic packaging is *everywhere*, and you only need to be tired or stressed or worn down with pester power from our children to find yourself left with some kind of non recyclable packaging to get rid of. It's only the plastic I am worried about, everything else I can deal with and I feel is under control.

We've found that now we're down to around 150gms of waste per week it's really hard to get rid of those last few grams. It's like losing weight - the pounds fall off initially, but then things start to stick and get more challenging!

A few days before our weekly rubbish collection things look great, but then something comes along to add to our landfill waste. Last week my daughter was ill and then I was ill so in came convenience and up went the waste.

We're planning our meals for our zero waste week already, but you know, you make a stir fry and find your glass jars of herbs have plastic lids, or fancy some dahl and remember the lentils come in cellophane, or make gravy for Sunday dinner and notice the jar has a plastic lid. It's relentless.

I'm trying to control the week, in my true perfectionist style, but with a child this is not a realistic expectation! So I need to relax, let my perfectionist go and see where the week takes us. Most of all I need to enjoy the experience and learn from it. That's what I would tell someone else, so I need to take my own advice!

We have some wonderfully supportive people backing us and lots of people joining in with their own pledges so that it's becoming a bit of a national zero waste week. I'll be focusing on helping other people attain their own goals and in exchange we have some great prizes to give away.

Check out Mrs. Green's post here to find out how they actually got on!