Over the past few weeks I have worked hard to reduce and reuse as much as my waste as possible by composting more, carefully planning my meals and reusing my old clothing for craft activities.
This week has been the hardest challenge yet: buying recycled and drastically reducing the packaging I consume. After the first two weeks I commented on my conscious effort in my weekly shop to choose items with less packaging or packaging that is recyclable. I expanded on this in the past fortnight by challenging myself to only buy items in packaging that could be recycled or items that had no packaging at all!
This is not always easy and can be more time consuming, as I found out by having to go further afield in the search for sustainable packaging!
Instead of buying my fruit and vegetables from my local supermarket I visited the market and local fruit and vegetable shops.
A few weeks ago I commented on reducing plastic bag waste at supermarkets, however by using local traders I found a lot less surplus packaging and by using my reusable bag cut down further on carrier bag wastage.
When it came to buying my cosmetic products I encountered a problem. These products always seem to come with extensive packaging, often a plastic container with a plastic film sealing the product. An answer I found to my usual soap and shampoo was buying it in bars.
These products often use minimal packaging; the product I bought only had a cardboard box around it which I could put in my green bag straight away.
There are a lot of online shops that are offering eco-friendly alternatives with less packaging, which are delivered in fully recyclable packaging.
As I experienced this week, finding these products is not always easy, but it has helped me evaluate what I am buying and what packaging it comes in.
My biggest problem this week was finding biscuits in recyclable packets!
So far I have managed to reduce not only the rubbish I throw away in my black bag, but also that which I put in my green bag.
This is important as reducing the amount of waste you create is the most eco-friendly approach to reuse as energy is not required to recycle or reuse it.
After week six of my bin slimming challenge my green bag weighs in at 3.0 kg, slimming it down by 0.5kg and my black bag is down to 1.4kg from 2kg.
Total bag slim after six weeks = 1.1kg.
