How low can you get your waste

THE KEY ACTIONS
I can sum up the key ways I have used to get my waste weight down in a few points.

1. Question everything that is about to go in the bin.
2. Find a way to deal with the waste food both uncooked and cooked.
3. Find a way to deal with garden waste.
4. Make full use of the kerbside recycling and household recycling sites offered by the local council. Use the recycling centres in local supermarkets or car parks and charity shops for items that could be sold on.
5. Bring less packaging into the house.

THE RESULTS
The average bin bag in my house used to weigh about 1.8kg. We had between two and four bags per week. There are four people in the house but only two adult so I will half all the figures to get my total for the year which would be 94kg at best and 187.2kg at worst for the year.

Once I had removed the cardboard, food and garden waste, more of the paper, wood chip from the hamster, etc. Having a sort through the bag it consisted mostly of plastic wrapping (from the likes of newspaper and food) and plastic like yoghurt pots that no one seems to recycle. The bin does not smell and sorting through it is much easier now that food waste is not going into it.

My average bin bag now weighs only 700grams per week. So over the year my portion of the rubbish will only amount to 18.2kg per year. I started this exploration into my waste weight after reading a Defra figure that quoted a figure of 511kg of waste per person per year.

I have not undertaken hugely heroic measures to get this low - a bit more sorting, a few trips to the household waste recycling site, creating an outlet for my garden and food waste, so I am pleased with the results - I'm going to get a much smaller bin for the backyard.

I'll describe in more details the recycling methods that I have used in future blogs.

But for now does anyone know how to make their own yoghurt?