Look At This Really Rubbish Photo...

As the title of this blog post suggests, it really is a rubbish photo and yet it is one of the proudest photos that I have taken, and the reason why is because it is the actuation of a resolution. It is the visible results of making a change that is important for our children's future.

Visible difference of the lifestyle choices
we are making as a family. We've got a
long way to go, but we've made a start and
the feeling of making a difference is powerful.

It was with a very heavy heart that we watched the BBC's Blue Planet with the gorgeous David Attenborough, and watched as the most incredible, noble, miraculous sea-life navigated our increasingly polluted oceans. We, all of us, have the power to do something about that in our own small way. 

There's a long way to go, there's no denying it but as a family, we hit our goal to only have ONE black bag of rubbish and to recycle all our other household gods. We SMASHED that target in our second week of trying. 

BREAKING DOWN PACKAGING.

We've always generally recycled, in as we've always had a full glass / plastic box and a full paper box, but being as this is an honest place, I was a lazy recycler - if it was easily one thing or another it would get put in the bag and if he was a sort of mash up of materials, it often, for the sake of what I thought was time saving, just got shoved in the main bin. 

NOT ANYMORE - nope, this just goes to show the impact of how taking that extra 1-30 seconds to tear apart packaging and separate the materials makes a massive accumulative difference.

This week we had three recycling boxes, a full food box from peelings, scraps and tea bags, and just one black bag of landfill. 

Our aim is to get down to just 1 black bag a fortnight - and being as there shouldn't be any smelly food items etc in the bin, that should work. 

MINDFUL SHOPPING. 

This result isn't just about better waste sorting, but of shopping more mindfully, of buying less packaging in the first place. By turning to a mostly meat-based diet and shopping at the green grocers,  using paper bags in that old skool way, the amount of potential rubbish being brought into the house has reduced significantly.