Packaging

Landfill in Calgary - Courtesy of D'Arcy - Flickr Creative Commons

Yesterday was 'Rubbish & Recycling day': due to good work by the council our recyclable waste is collected weekly but the black wheelie bins containing non-recyclables is only collected fortnightly. This has improved recycling rates in the county, all good stuff.

While I lugged the boxes out to the roadside ready for collection I noticed our green recycling bin was only a quarter full and the wheelie bin was empty. We only had half a bin bag to get rid of from our kitchen bin. This is great, we haven't really put any effort into reducing waste, over and above the normal that is, with a little bit of effort I think we could probably get to effectively zero waste.

Undoubtedly the biggest factor contributing to this improvement has been the food buying group, buying in bulk has reduced all the silly little bits of packaging that small quantities inevitably lead to, and with either Fair Trade or organic the producers and vendors have usually reduced packaging to that which is necessary.

The veg box we share with Becky & TCO helps too, it is slightly surprising to find that the natural state of a cucumber is not to grow covered in shrink wrap plastic...