The other day when I was downtown Copenhagen I saw this :

its a transparent container. I think it would rock if we could actually see our trash at all times so it isnt hidden away somewhere in the supply chain of the world.
I found something similar in a blogpost today which is a rubbish around the busshelter sign
Wouldnt you think that if we could actually see our waste we would relate to it more ? I love the idea of transparent trash!
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Book Review and Interview with Author Tracey Smith
As I took an over-ripe pepper and nearly full bag of mushrooms out of the fridge and set them aside for the compost bin I thought about the first few pages from Tracey Smiths Book of Rubbish Ideas. I dont feel good about wasting this food but at least I know it will decompose in a matter of weeks and will in the form of home made compost go towards growing my own next year.
But what about the other things Ive thrown out today? A plastic bag from the celery the coffee packet a chocolate bar wrapper and how many other people in this country in fact in the world have thrown away similar waste today? I need to think more creatively around the products that come into my home and how I deal with the waste from them and this is exactly what this book is about.
How we got where we are today
Tracey starts by educating us about how waste was dealt with historically and why some methods of getting rid of our rubbish might at first seem sensible but is in fact wasteful in itself. She describes the steps which have led to to the dire situation were in today and addresses the serious issues around waste (energy consumption landfill pollution and climate change) whilst giving solutions at the same time.
Room-by-room waste
The bulk of the book takes you room by room (and outside) through the home and shows us how to deal with our waste in a very practical way. Its not all about recycling but thinking about how we can reduce waste in the first place. Tracey highlights that its not all down to the individual but that other parties such as manufacturers sellers and local authorities have a great responsibility too. Throughout the book she provides excellent example letters to help us give supermarkets local councils and other bodies a nudge in the right direction.
This environmental book is very different from others Ive read recently which have focused on telling us which green alternative products to buy. This book questions why we have to consume in the first place and guides us in looking after the things we already have. And in the current economic climate thats not only relevant for the environment but for our piggy banks too.
Full of practical ideas
With the Project Box sections interspersed throughout Tracey provides creative tips which make you go

Every year my resolution is to get organised. Really organised. I mean super organised. I will know what Im supposed to be doing at every moment of the day and whats more I will be doing it!

Credit: matsuyuki
In my mind there was only one thing holding me back from this heightened state of organisation: the perfect personal organiser (PPO).
In the past freebie diaries generously donated by companies Id never heard of had conspired to distract me from my PPO search and childhood memories of colourful PPOs with cartoon stickers only compounded my confusion.
But this year I was determined. I would find my PPO. I could forgo the cartoon stickers. I did however have one other small criterion to be fulfilled (on top of its genius organisational properties) it must be an environmentally-happy shade of green.
Not much to ask in these eco-enlightened times I thought as I began to google. And within seconds I had recycled leather personal organisers plus a couple ingeniously crafted from recycled circuit boards.
Excellent! I thought. Job done. And of course a recycled personal organiser will have recycled paper inserts wont it?
Erm no. Fraid not. EcoCentric The Green Stationery Company they could give me the recycled organiser but not the recycled paper inserts to go with it.
Discussion forums confirmed it apparently Filofax (the Hoover to the vacuum cleaner of the personal organiser world) had tried recycled paper but it didnt work out sorry end of story.
No no no. This paper trail does not end here. I had come this far; the good folk at Filofax would have the answer. So I dropped them a (paper-free of course) email to find out why recycled paper inserts were no longer a part of their range.
I didnt have to wait long for a response
Filofax is a premium brand and consistency of quality of product is absolutely paramount across all of our white and cream paper ranges. The recycled paper products we used to market were more expensive than the standard range but looked inferior. Sales were poor and our retailers didnt want to stock the product.
It is difficult for us to offer an environmental paper product in one or two particular sizes or layouts within a range of sixty diaries and planners in the UK and many more worldwide without offering it across the whole range and this is impractical from a retail space and cost point of view. It would mean doubling up our offering and inevitably mean some small production runs in some formats which would increase the cost for the consumer.
Rather than focus on the environmental marketing direction for Filofax which is not easy to accommodate logically within our global range we have focussed on the charity direction where we saw that we could provide a real direct and tangible benefit to a great cause The Breast Cancer Campaign. Since 2005 we have generated over

Whats in a day?
When a day is designated a special day the intention is to honor the theme of it. On our annual calendar there are some holidays that have turned into a hoopla diverting us from the original intent. Often we witness a kind of build up that requires planning and promotion parties and events sales and give-aways. Unfortunately it leads to driving picnicking carbon emissions and trash. We now have special days dedicated to nature days that inherently and logically call for an occasion to slow us down.
Earth Day was last month and I stayed in my PJs all day and took a break. I gave the earth a break by not stepping on it. A pseudo off-the-grid performance where I read wrote made art and foraged in my own fridge while in my robe and slippers. My plan includes treading increasingly lighter by reaching beyond one day. (

Crafters or at least the crafters I know are usually a thrifty bunch making the most of their fabric and yarn stash minimising on waste and re-using as much as they can.
Over the past couple of years Ive been learning crafting skills with the aim to make more things for my wardrobe and our home. When I began I decided I wanted to make as little impact on the environment as I could. It would defeat the point of making my own things if I started buying materials that had wasted energy and caused lots of pollution in its production.
So here are 5 handy ways to craft green that Ive picked up along the way:
1. Charity shops make good craft shops too
If you buy new fabric from the shops or market do you know what went into making it? Conventional cotton for example is extremely polluting and resource hungry so unless you buy organic then you cant be sure that your pretty hand made item hasnt contributed to putting all kinds of chemicals into the environment. Thats why charity shops make good craft shops.
You may not always be able to buy fabric on the roll or by the metre at your local charity shops but you can get great fabric from other items like curtains sheets and duvet covers and turn them into other things like cushion covers skirts and napkins.

If youre lucky you might find yarn embroidery threads cottons and needles in charity shops too!
2. Look after the odds and ends
Youve probably heard the saying

About one year ago I completely stopped wearing contact lenses as my eyes had become so sore and sensitive that I was unable to wear them without being in pain. It was at first difficult for me to feel comfortable / confident socialising in my eyeglasses (spectacles) as I had become so used to wearing contact lenses every day.
I first started wearing contacts aged 11 as I competed in lots of sport and eyeglasses were not suitable especially for gymnastics. As I got older (and unfortunately less sporty) I mainly wore contact lenses for vanity reasons however I am past vanity these days and I now feel good and attractive when wearing my eyeglasses.

(Images above: Glasses can be cool just look at Johnny Depp and Lisa Loeb)
As I stopped using my contact lenses I started to think about all of those lens cases that I had used over the years the large bottles of solution and the general production waste and energy used to create contact lenses. It then occurred to me:

I got a bokashi bin for Christmas. Two actually.
And yes I did ask for them!
When they finally arrived in January I ripped open the package full of excitement to find two black bins some bits of plastic and a large bag of bran. Somehow all this was supposed to turn our cooked kitchen scraps into something that would feed the garden.
The place we were renting wouldnt allow a compost bin (short term rental and who wants someone elses potato peelings when they move out?!!) so bokashi seemed the perfect solution.
In case youre not familiar with bokashi composting you basically get an indoor composting bin (the specially designed ones have a reservoir for draining of the liquid which you can use to clear blocked drains. I never knew last months porridge could do that! Scary thought) and the bran stuff.
The bran is a mixture of bran molasses and these special micro-organisms called

Im reading a book at the moment called Confessions of an Eco Sinner Travels to find where my stuff comes from by Fred Pearce.
It goes into everything from wedding rings to jeans computer parts to green beans and its a really interesting read as you follow the author on his journey around the world finding the human stories behind our stuff.
One of the bits that particularly caught my attention though was the section on recycling. It feels so virtuous putting the paper in the recycling box rather than chucking it in the bin (I hesitate every time I put something in the bin these days asking myself if theres anything else I can do with the item dangling over the waste abyss or whether the god of recycling is about to strike me down!) but the book reveals (in a measured and sensible tone not with any sense of anti-green glee) a number of recycling fiascos that had me questioning exactly where my stuff goes
So I decided to email Worthing Council to find out thus:

How many material possessions do we need to be happy? How much space do we need to live comfortably? As a society can we escape from the western vision of what the perfect life should be thus improving the environment? These are some of the questions I have been thinking about lately whilst I have had to downsize my life.
In general over the years I have been going through a slow and steady downsize from getting rid of unnecessary clothes to getting rid of my TV (as I wanted to stop wasting my life watching other peoples lives).
Now I have had to downsize from a spacious three bed roomed house (which I was living in my own in the end not good for the environment) to a cosy compact one bedroom flat which I am sharing with my fiancé.

The downsizing process
During the downsizing process I had to review all my personal belongings as they would not be able to fit into my new place. Whilst over the last couple of years I have not exactly been a shopaholic especially as I pledged at the start of 2008 to not buy any new clothes somehow I had accumulated many items. Many of which had been kindly given to me as gifts from family and friends (honestly when I say please dont buy me anything for birthday / Christmas etc I really mean it).

How many books?
My large collection of books was the first thing that I reviewed and whilst I sold some at a car boot sale many of my fiction books went to charity shops to raise money for good causes. Now I only have specific reference books that I refer to on a regular basis otherwise I am only going to use the library thus saving space money and in theory reducing the amount of books that need printing.
Overall I reviewed everything that I owned and I took into consideration of what items I could not live without such as the essential; clothes cooking equipment useful furniture etc. All unnecessary items were either sold via Ebay car boot sales (my mums car as I dont own one) Realcycle and charity shops.
So how many material possessions do we need to be happy?
The downsizing process was very cleansing and I felt that my life was less cluttered. Overall I felt happier getting rid of materialistic items that clever marketing and western values had convinced me (or convinced others to purchase for me) that I should own.
Now dont get me wrong my fiancé and I are not living pre-historic style! However we have cut down on electrical items. We no longer have a microwave or freezer. Still no TV and we only have one CD player as we do not need music in every room (in fact the walls are very thin in the flat so you can hear the music quite easily in the next room).
We have basic cooking items as who actually uses a million cooking gadgets? (ok I admit many years ago I went through a phase of having cooking gadgets such as a breadmaker steamer etc but sold them awhile ago as they were only collecting dust)
So overall we are currently living fairly clutter free and happy. Note to my family out there

The first week of September is zero waste week for Rachelle and her family in Gloucestershire.
Since June theyve been working on reducing the amount they send to landfill and in just 2 weeks time they are going for the big fat zero.
They started off throwing away about a kilo a week of rubbish already quite small compared to many households. And in an interview today Raechelle shared with me some of her top tips for keeping your rubbish down.
She started by making it clear that she feels fortunate to live just 3 miles from a recycling centre that takes all the usual recyclables plus tetra-paks and polythene which helps.
Shopping locally has a massive impact.
Moving on from that she found that the more she shops locally from small producers the more open they are to her requests to bring and use her own packaging.
For example her local butcher agrees to put the meat in the boxes she brings in rather than wasting non-recyclable plastic trays. She has a local grocer who allows her to do the same with cheese. And she buys her fruit and vegetables from a local organic farm shop where she can use paper bags or reuse her own.
All of this makes a massive contribution.
But she said the biggest challenge is the things you simply dont think about such as broken CD cases and other seemingly random items that cant be repaired.
Convenience is what fills up your bin.
Rachelle is pragmatic and practical in her approach and whilst passionate about inspiring others to reduce the amount they send to landfill she openly admits that convenience is what fills up your bin.
Sometimes she says when you just dont feel like cooking and get that take away you end up with plastic pots that have to go to landfill.She hopes that her Zero Waste Week in September will serve to inspire others to join in sowing the seeds that we can all do a bit more by shopping more consciously.
I see our zero waste week as a beginning not an end. Its the beginning of a new level of awareness. Until life changes and were all living off nothing but local produce with no packaging we will still produce rubbish but our aim is to keep our bin bag below 150g per week. We will have to be satisfied with that.One of the valid questions that Rachelle poses is whether what is collected by our councils is really being recycled or incinerated in a far-flung land. She is actively working with her county council in Gloucestershire as an ambassador for recycling and they have been inspired to launch a county-wide zero waste week challenge early in 2009! Rachelle would love us all to be getting in touch with our councils and MPs to help spread this initiative.
There is so much mixed information out there particularly as different districts within even a single county have different recycling policies. We need clarity of information to stop the confusion and allow people to have a go.If youd like to step up to the challenge and get involved with Zero Waste Week in September make sure you tell Rachelle about how youre getting on via her My Zero Waste website. Shes got lots of eco companies involved to offer prizes to those who really make the effort!

And a final thought: Rachelle was spurred into action by reading one MPs comments that It is our birthright to have a rubbish collection. Hmmm. What are your thoughts?
Clare

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