Week 2: reducing waste whilst shopping

Mark Murphy pondering my shopping

It was great to kick off Week 2 with the news that over 150 households have now signed up for the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet.  Thank you to everyone who's joined in already.  We're getting some fantastic feedback and it's wonderful to have started receiving so many 'rubbish weigh-ins' already.

This week's theme is all about how to reduce waste while shopping and if you listened into Mark Murphy's show yesterday you would have heard me scrunching and rattling some of the packaging as we talked about recycling labels and how packaging is changing to help reduce waste.

It is evident that labelling is still one of the things that still confuses people and in yesterday's show we highlighted that because facilities are so different across the country we should only use recycling labels as a guide, prompting us to check local facilities.  For example, most of the recycling labels say that film (e.g. pasta bags) cannot be recycled, yet in Suffolk we can recycle most film (even clean plastic yoghurt tops) at the HWRC.  Many labels also tell us that drinks cartons are widely recycled, yet throughout most of Suffolk we cannot add them to our kerbside bins and have to make a special effort to collect them for dropping off at the HWRC or other collection points.   It's a real reminder that to avoid confusion, the best place to start is always with your local council leaflet or checking the available facilities via  www.suffolkrecycling.org.uk.    And once you're familiar with that information, it really doesn't matter what the label says.


As well as understanding labels, there are many other ways that you can help reduce waste while shopping, including switching from pre-bagged produce to loose items, which can often be cheaper. 

Another trick to look out for are products where the manufacturers have actively reduced waste through redesign, for example you can now also find boxes of tea-bags that no longer have the film wrapper or inner bags and they remain just as fresh.

Other examples shown in the photo above include laundry liquid and squash which are now often sold in a concentrated form, consequently reducing the amount of water as well as the amount of plastic required in the packaging. 

Mark Murphy will be covering many more examples throughout the week, so it is quite possible that as well as your rubbish bin slimming down, the recycling bin has the potential to lose some weight too.

If you'd like more hints and tips, we'd love you to sign up to the Rubbish Diet online, where weekly topics will be delivered directly to your email.  If you want to catch up with Mark's show, the great news is that it's on iPlayer for the next six days, and you can even hear what local packaging technologist Glenn had to say on how some of the materials now help to prevent food waste.

And on the subject of food waste, we'll be delving deeper in the bins next week to get that one cracked.  Listen in on Wednesday 8th May as we celebrate Week 3.

Week 1 - Reduce Reuse and Recycling on the airwaves

And..... we're off!  Yes, rubbish dieters of Suffolk are now officially underway with Week 1, which is all about reducing, reusing and recycling.

The Rubbish Diet slot on Mark Murphy's show yesterday kicked off with a phone in, which covered a few key areas including:

1. Plastics recycling - with questions about plant pots.  A useful tip for plant pots is to see if a local school would like them.  One caller suggested taking them back to Notcutts and of course all HWRCs will accept them along with other hard plastics as shown in the above leaflet.   If you've ever wondered what happens to the plastics, take a look at Suffolk Waste Partnership's video, which shows how it is shredded and processed into a high quality polymer.

2. Drinks cartons - there is still confusion around the county about what to do with Tetra Paks and other similar cartons.  These are not supposed to go into the kerbside recycling bins and should be separated and taken to the HWRCs or any supermarkets that have a collection service.   To see which sites are available around Suffolk, visit the Tetra Pak recycling locator.  Remember to wash and squash so they take up less room.

3. Film - stretchy film can be included with the plastic bag collections within supermarkets, as it is made from the same material.  However, if you want to divert other film away from your landfill bin, in Suffolk all HWRCs will also collect other types of film packaging including cheese wrappers, clean cling film, film off the top of punnets or meat packaging, pasta bags, rice bags and the bags that you find within cereal boxes.  Just be careful not to include crisp packets, biscuit wrappers or confectionery wrappers.

4. Garden waste - oooh, well... it all kicked off with a caller complaining that in Mid Suffolk (as indeed Babergh) residents have to pay a separate fee for garden waste wheelie bins to cover the delivery of a bin and an annual collection charge, whereas elsewhere in Suffolk it is included in the reuse & recycling collection services.  It doesn't seem a huge amount annually, for anyone wanting to have their garden waste collected (£45 on joining, then each year thereafter £40 for an annual subscription).  After all, this cost would be hidden in the council tax paid in other authorities, where it is collected for 'free',  However in this age of austerity, figures like that can still bite.  It also strikes me as a wasted opportunity in that Mid Suffolk have trucks on the road collecting from subscribed households.  Meanwhile many other households they pass will put the green waste into landfill if they can't be bothered to take it to the nearest HWRC.  During our visit to landfill the other week, we saw lots of green waste being dumped into landfill, which is such a waste when it could be treated separately.

5. Off-air - afternoon presenter Lesley Dolphin asked about water cartridges.  The good news is that Brita have water filter collection points.  Use this map to find the nearest to you.

If you want the full rundown of what else can be recycled in Suffolk, either at the kerbside bin or via the HWRCs, visit www.suffolkrecycling.org.uk.

And if you haven't seen the fabulous Plastics: Know your Place video yet, which fully explains what we can do with the different types of plastics that enter our homes, do have a look below:

There'll be lots more coming up on Mark's show this week. If you have any questions, do keep sending them through.  And don't forget, next time you're 'tootling off' to your Household Waste Recycling Centre in Suffolk, pick up one of these fabulous Sort & Save bags.  They're marvellous.

The BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet goes live!

After months of preparation, today the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet was finally up and running.  And it started with Mark Murphy's early morning tweet just after he'd finished that banana!

The @bbcsuffolk Rubbish Diet is up and running! You can join in too by calling 01473 212121 and signing up. twitter.com/MarkGlennMurph…
— Mark Murphy (@MarkGlennMurphy) April 15, 2013

Following the launch on Terry Baxter's breakfast show, listeners were already calling into the studio to register for their information packs.  That was exciting enough but as soon as Mark's morning show kicked off numbers started to double, then triple, then quadruple.  The final numbers from today haven't come through yet but I am very confident that our first goal of 100 households across Suffolk will soon be in sight.  Now that is a really brilliant start to our county's Rubbish Diet challenge!

However, this is not just about numbers, it's about engagement too and Mark's listeners and contributors were great, with support coming in from businesses as well as households, including the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds, the Bury Free Press and Abbeycroft Leisure Centre.  We heard about our first Rubbish Diet blogger too, BFP's Lesley's Anslow's very own rubbish diary, which you can find at www.lesleyrubbishdiet.blogspot.co.uk.

Although this week is focusing on getting the word out and encouraging sign-ups, we also got a taster of the questions that people have and the things that confuse residents the most and we'll be tackling these in Week 1 of the challenge, starting next Monday.  There was also feedback from one resident who highlighted that their communal refuse area didn't even have any recycling bins, but that was soon resolved thanks to a link up to their district council. 

If you missed Mark's show today, you can catch up on iPlayer.  Please do have a listen!  With recordings of us standing on landfill and of me delving into the Murphy-Dolphin bin and the station's very own kitchen bin, you'll be glad the wafts don't carry down the radio airwaves.  Stinky bins - ewwww!
 
And do tune in tomorrow.  You won't want to miss EADT columnist Lynne Mortimer.  That is sure to be comedy gold!

If you want to register, you can do so at our website www.therubbishdiet.org.uk - even if you don't live in Suffolk.  However if you do live in Suffolk and want to share your news with the show, email Mark Murphy or call the studio while he's on-air on 01473 212121 (weekdays, 9am-12:30pm).

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The BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet is also featured in today's BBC Suffolk online news, where you'll read about one of our residents who doesn't even have a landfill bin.

Mark Murphy's getting ready to slim Suffolk's bins

BBC Radio Suffolk presenter Mark Murphy is passionate about helping to make Suffolk the cleanest and greenest county in the country.
 

He's the man behind the multi award winning anti-litter campaign called “Don’t be a Tosser”. It’s inspired thousands of people across Suffolk to get out there with their litter pick sticks and clear up the rubbish in their own communities. The campaign has also been great at encouraging people not to toss it down in the first place!

Mark who presents the Mid-Morning show is now getting ready to launch the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet on 15th April, where he will be urging his many listeners to take part. In preparation, he's spent the afternoon poking about the trash on Suffolk's landfill and checking out what goes on at Mason's recycling facility in Great Blakenham and where our recycling ends up. He'll be sharing his discoveries very soon.

We will be officially kicking off the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet on Terry Baxter's morning show from 7am, followed by lots more fun throughout the day, encouraging as many listeners as possible from across Suffolk to sign up and get involved!
 

Meanwhile, The Rubbish Diet's Karen Cannard is off to have a rummage around his bin!

So impressed, she joined the team. Introducing Kate Kelly.

BBC Radio Suffolk listeners may remember Kate Kelly being interviewed about her rubbish on Mark's show last year.

 

“The Diet transformed my bin” says Kate who took the 2012 Rubbish Diet Challenge. “I thought it might be a real pain, and that I’d need to make lifestyle changes to get my waste down. But Karen’s down to earth approach made it really simple.

I discovered I was throwing away stuff I could recycle – for example plastic bags! And I had no idea how many things could be recycled at the local Household Waste Recycling Centres even if they couldn’t go into the kerbside collection.

In eight weeks, I cut down from half my landfill bin to just a small shopping bag’s worth of waste in a fortnight. And although there’s the odd blip at Christmas, my waste bin is still largely empty when I put it out.” 

 

Kate is now such a fan of the Rubbish Diet that she will be helping Karen to support the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet.

Could you do the Rubbish Diet?

Karen Cannard at Great Blakenham's landfill site, filming with the One Show in November 2012

Karen Cannard, a mother of two,  from Bury St Edmunds, took St Edmundsbury's Zero Waste Week challenge in 2008 and blogged about it. By the end of an 8 week trial she threw away only one plaster! Now 5 years on, thanks to getting through to the finals of think-tank Nesta's waste reduction challenge, Karen is teaming up with Mark Murphy and BBC Radio Suffolk to launch the Rubbish Diet across the county Over the next 3 months we‘re inviting the whole of Suffolk to join Mark and his colleagues in the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet challenge –

Whether it’s a space issue and you can’t get everything in your bin, your wheelie bin smells because of rotting food or you just can’t stand our throw away lifestyle, the BBC Radio Suffolk Rubbish Diet challenge will help to solve your waste problems. The Rubbish Diet is like a slimming club for your bin, shrinking what you send to landfill, saving you money and once your bin is slim - you’ll never have to panic about missing bin day again!!

The Diet is really easy to do. All you have to do is keep track of what you throw away and then find ways of making that waste disappear by recycling it, finding other uses for it or just avoiding it all together. You’ll find solutions that work for you with the help of other Dieters around Suffolk, and from your local 'Bin Doctors', which include Karen Cannard and Kate Kelly, who took the Rubbish Diet last year.

Karen, Kate and Mark are busy getting ready for the big launch on 15 April, sign-up information will be available soon.