To be horrified at how much waste we produce but think food producers are to blame?

[malificent7]

Dp, dd and I live here ft. Dsd lives here pt. Our bins were collected on Wednesday and already on Sunday the recycling and wheelie bin are full again.
Main culprits are bulky plastic milk containers, things like mushroom cartons, pepsi/ fizzy water bottles..cardboard packaging etc.

However, the council only collect wheelie bins every 3 weeks. I think the reasoning behind this is that peopke will ve forced to recycle more. Great in theory. In practice many things can't be recycled.
Really i think food companies need to think of alternative ways of packaging food...quite what i don't know.

I agree, OP. I am really conscious about our wastage, especially our plastic waste.

I'm trying to make our bathroom plastic free. I've recently switched to shampoo bars and conditioner bars which are great. My son's hair (afro) needs a looser conditioner for the detangling though, so I've switched to buying that in 5 litre bottles instead of the 400ml ones I used to get.

The frustrating thing is that it's so much more expensive to do it the eco friendly way. The conditioner above for example, I got it on offer for £25, whereas to refill a 5 litre bottle at one of the refill shops would cost me about £60. Milk we use a lot for DS; four pints costs me £1.09 from Aldi, and our local milkman is 70p a pint, costing me more than double what I'd pay ordinarily. The same for things like fabric conditioner, there's a door stop refillery here but they charge £4 per litre, whereas I buy two 5 litre bottles for around £10 in Costco.

I really wish it was affordable to do more.

@ChrissyPlummer

A lot of the plastic used can’t be recycled as it’s film and so non-recyclable. I guess COVID has made people more cautious, as I’m sure mushrooms used to be available in paper bags.

A lot also says ‘check local policy’ (or similar). The Times did this a couple of years ago; one of their journalists rang several LAs to ask…none of them knew. He also pointed out how daft it was to have things like shampoo bottles and spray cleaners where the tops are made of different plastic to the actual bottle, but with some it’s impossible to separate them.

You can recycle these plastics in some supermarkets like coop and Tesco now.

Get milk from the milk man. It’s the best option as it’s closed loop recycling.
As for fizzy water and Pepsi then get a soda stream. I only by fizzy drinks in either glass bottles or cans.
Yes manufacturers are partially to blame but you can take some responsibility.

Excellent thread. Google the Zero Waste lifestyle and you'll be amazed at how little waste some people produce. We're a family of four and at our best were generating just half a small pasta bag of rubbish and a third of a sack of recycling a week. Now we produce a full carrier bag of rubbish a week and a full sack of recycling (no wheelie bins here) as we've got a bit lazier. It's not too difficult to cut your waste though - look in your bin and see what you throw away most, find an alternative, repeat. Over time, you'll be amazed by how much the volume reduces. You'll also discover the things you're really not prepared to give up, which is fine too. Good luck with it all if you take this route, it can be quite a fun challenge in a weird kind of way.

@TokenGinger

I agree, OP. I am really conscious about our wastage, especially our plastic waste.

I'm trying to make our bathroom plastic free. I've recently switched to shampoo bars and conditioner bars which are great. My son's hair (afro) needs a looser conditioner for the detangling though, so I've switched to buying that in 5 litre bottles instead of the 400ml ones I used to get.

The frustrating thing is that it's so much more expensive to do it the eco friendly way. The conditioner above for example, I got it on offer for £25, whereas to refill a 5 litre bottle at one of the refill shops would cost me about £60. Milk we use a lot for DS; four pints costs me £1.09 from Aldi, and our local milkman is 70p a pint, costing me more than double what I'd pay ordinarily. The same for things like fabric conditioner, there's a door stop refillery here but they charge £4 per litre, whereas I buy two 5 litre bottles for around £10 in Costco.

I really wish it was affordable to do more.

I agree 6 pints of milk from asda £1.50 6 pints of milk in glass bottles from milkman £4.86

Please can we go back to plastic straws . The paper ones just dont work.

@Audreyhelp or you could just learn to drink from a cup/glass/bottle?

We looked at receiving milk delivered in glass bottles but it worked out to almost double the cost. YANBU.

You can’t always buy a drink in a glass bottle or cup. Straws are great for children especially.

We buy the metal straws and use them for our drinking cups the paper ones are useless

@Audreyhelp buy a metal straw, a bamboo straw, carry a cup, carry a reusable drinks bottle. Anything, in fact, except expecting the rest of us to drown in single use plastics.

Sorry but I have to disagree. We're quite good at recycling - paper and plastics bins generally full for bi - weekly collection, and grey bin less than half empty.

What really winds me up is the way that we (me and two teenage DSs) waste bread. I try very hard to use what's in the bread bin before I buy any more but I have to admit that I usually fail dismally. I think the main thing is that we (I) lack discipline. Any suggestions very gratefully received.

I lost my milkman over lockdown (we live on the second floor) the deliveries became erratic and sometimes not in the builidng so sadly that was my glass milk bottle recycling out of the window.

We have boxes for paper and plastic and food waste.

However on the second floor and with a disabilty it is a struggle. System really not suitable for our situation.

So yes, it is half a dozen of one and six of the other.

Yes, we get eco dishwasher.laundry tabes SMOL with free trial in case anyone is interested.

OUr co2 emissions are down anyway as no car.

Re reycling refills...

I wait for Faith in Nature sale currently twenty per cent off coupon.

With dispenser thing works out cheaper.

@SisyphusDad

Sorry but I have to disagree. We're quite good at recycling - paper and plastics bins generally full for bi - weekly collection, and grey bin less than half empty.

What really winds me up is the way that we (me and two teenage DSs) waste bread. I try very hard to use what's in the bread bin before I buy any more but I have to admit that I usually fail dismally. I think the main thing is that we (I) lack discipline. Any suggestions very gratefully received.

I buy sliced sourdough and freeze it. For toast it goes straight into the toaster. For sandwiches it defrosts very quickly, end crusts are blitzed for breadcrumbs, or fried into croutons for soup. I never throw bread away.

Take the sticky tie off the packet straight away and replace with a clippit thing.

@SisyphusDad

Sorry but I have to disagree. We're quite good at recycling - paper and plastics bins generally full for bi - weekly collection, and grey bin less than half empty.

What really winds me up is the way that we (me and two teenage DSs) waste bread. I try very hard to use what's in the bread bin before I buy any more but I have to admit that I usually fail dismally. I think the main thing is that we (I) lack discipline. Any suggestions very gratefully received.

Buy bread, freeze half, eat half, get other half out of freezer when you run out of the first half.

I keep plastic bread bags from finished loaves to bung the other half in the freezer in, but you could use anything.

We have 2 weekly general household waste and 2 weekly recycling
I try and buy low packaging as possible which means my recycling bin (plastic, metal, glass) needs emptying 4-6 times a year
General waste is rarely more than 1/2 full but gets emptied every 2 weeks as smell and flies are an issue if left for a month plus

@JaceLancs

We have 2 weekly general household waste and 2 weekly recycling I try and buy low packaging as possible which means my recycling bin (plastic, metal, glass) needs emptying 4-6 times a year General waste is rarely more than 1/2 full but gets emptied every 2 weeks as smell and flies are an issue if left for a month plus

To avoid smell and flies in the general waste bin, we wash the little packaging we use before putting it in the bin, freeze any non-compostable food waste until collection day (no separate food waste collection in our area) and use reusable sanitary products etc. Our bin never smells as nothing smelly goes in it and we never have flies either. Hope this helps.

Supermarkets and producers will use packaging that people buy - they are interested in profit not the planet so always buy loose veg in preference to packaged if you can - the suprermstkets will move over to that way of selling, or use cardboard containers instead of plastic - force them to change.

Hmm it's a bit of both I think. Could supermarkets and food producers do more, and do they have some terrible practices? Yes. But we can't totally blame them either. For example, bin is full of Pepsi, fizzy water and milk bottles - those aren't exactly essential products are they? OK milk is a staple for most but a small serving each per day is enough. You* can't chug down litres of milk and soft drink, watch the trash piling up and be like "hmm that's a shame, the supermarket should do something about this".

*general "you", not specifically you OP, as this is the habits a lot of us get in to

I am not crushing the bottles!! That's one way im going wrong...but that dosn't take away from the dact thatbit's silly amounts of waste.
Dd and I don't drink fizzy drinks ...the other 2 do. I just started buying shampoo bars again. I will try to buy mushrooms loose.
Why are bananas wrapped in plastic...just why? I always buy loose. The council won't recycle those.
We just moved house which would account for the wheelie bin through...our sofa came in huge amounts of plastic wrapper which went in bin as can't be recycled.

I dont drink much milk either...black coffee till lunch...its the others....i might work on them...

Supermarkets really do need to stock excess packaging, I would buy celery yesterday loose so it had double wrap plastic!

However, I think it’s also what you buy in general and how much waste you have. Where we live bins aren’t collected anywhere near as regularly as back in uk. But now we are used to it, habits change and it’s not an issue.
Our general waste is now every 3 weeks in peak summer 3 months, and only once every 6 weeks the rest of the year. Even after 6 weeks our black bin is now only half full unless.

Compost what waste we can, buy milk/ cream/ apple juice locally in glass, all bottles we return and get deposit on them back. Break from bakers. Fizzy water from aarke soda stream thing, loose fruit and veg where possible etc etc.

@Audreyhelp

You can’t always buy a drink in a glass bottle or cup. Straws are great for children especially.

We use silicon straws for DS easy to wash and i just keep some in his bag just incase.

Personally I wouldn’t give metal ones to a child as they can be quite dangerous but their are plenty of alternatives to the plastic straw which aren’t paper and which are reusable.

Consumers can try to reduce the amount of packaging they buy where possible.

You don't have to get to zero waste home standards to make a big difference. E.g. milk delivery in glass bottles?