Carbon Fast Days 13 & 14

Oops I’ve got a bit behind!

Day 13

Landfill sites are a major source of methane emissions in the UK. Today’s action is to reuse and recycle your waste and compost your food waste to reduce the rubbish destined for landfill sites.

Start here: www.recyclenow.com. If you don’t have somewhere to compost then investigate alternatives with your local authority. Some councils now collect food waste.

I am trying to recycle more. It frustrates me that most of my county has doorstep recycling, but my village doesn’t Apparently there are 2 schemes – one in the north of the county, one in the south, and my village is in between the 2 scheme!! Anyway, I shouldn’t let that stop me should I? We do have a village recycling point, and I should make more of an effort to use it. I haven’t really been thinking about composting, mainly because I don’t really do gardening and thought that as I don’t need compost there’s no point … I hadn’t really thought food waste was so much of a problem as after all it decomposes. But anyway, I’m sure I could make more of an effort there.

Day 14

The action today is to avoid buying products that have lots of packaging. Choose loose products and buy refillable containers where possible.

The average carbon dioxide emissions per person in the UK is 9.8 tonnes, in China 3.2 tonnes, in India 1.2 tonnes and in Malawi less than 0.1 tonnes. The poorest and most vulnerable people are being hit hardest by the impacts of climate change.(Source: The Little Green Data Book, World Bank, 2008)

Well, I shall try, but it is hard. I was thinking about this last time I was shopping and buying apples … I can see that I should avoid the ones where they have 4 nice apples in a kind of carton with plastic wrapped round, but I hope it’s ok to buy a “family bag”? Has a plastic bag but no worse than buying them from the loose apples pile – you’d still need to put them in a bag wouldn’t you? Anyway, this is making me think. When I come to get things for the children for Easter, I will be  thinking carefully about the Easter eggs I get, and hope I can get nice gifts but with less packaging.