A Load Of Rubbish

Here we are 4 days into Zero Waste Week 2017 and I feel totally out of the loop. Lots of my blogging friends have referred to it already and declared what they have done to help our planet. I am not sure I have done anything much. 

Do I have any excuse...well, no I don't, not really. I should have planned better and got my act into gear. I can blame last week's disasters [handbag theft, stained carpet] and this week's busy-ness with 4 days in school and a lot going on at church, but really I have not been very good. In fact, worse than usual...

• The replacement cards have been arriving from the bank and other agencies. Which has meant Bob cutting up his redundant cards [plastic to landfill]
• Much of this post appears to come in polythene bags, so that cannot even go into the paper recycling
• I have been disorganised about my home-made yogurt, and ended up buying some yellow-stickered plastic pots in M&S for our packed lunches [I did take a metal teaspoon in my bag not a disposable one]
• On Monday I was ridiculously tired when I finally got home, so Bob suggested we went out for food. We went to the KFC [that's something we rarely do] We both had a chicken salad - on the menu this is shown on a rectangular paper plate. It actually arrived in a domed plastic drinks cup  - along with plate to decant it onto, plastic fork and napkin. Our diet pepsi drinks came in plastic cups, with plastic lid and a straw [wrapped in plastic] All on a tray with a plasticised paper liner, and 2 plastic sachets of mayo, and paper sachets of salt. I felt so guilty tipping my trayload of debris into the bin.
• Tuesday we had a Prayer Walk round Ferndown [it is our special UCF Week of Prayer as we start a new year in the life of the church] On the way, a chap from Iceland presented Bob with a plastic box of grapes, sealed in a plastic bag. They were being given away because the wrapper said red grapes, when they were clearly green [ 'white' is the proper term I suppose]
• Yesterday [special treat] Bob took me to 37, the lovely coffee shop round the corner, for one last 'leisurely' breakfast before all these early mornings now school has started. My alarm went off at 6.38am on Monday and Tuesday, and experience shows it will have to be earlier because of the traffic on my school-route. It is only 7½ miles, but can take up to 45 minutes sometimes. 37 served us lovely bacon sandwiches, and a great pot of tea [china pot, cups, saucers etc] The brown sauce served in a little steel dish - not a sachet - but again, paper napkins. One of these never got used - so I folded that neatly into my bag for future use [shops cannot re-use them once they have been out on a customer's plate]

 

So this week I admit failure in terms of achieving 'zero waste' - but - I have been really aware of the amount of plastic that is around me. And I am thinking hard about things I might do to improve my situation.

As someone said at a training day I attended recently "There's no point in dwelling on past mistakes, learn from them, draw a line underneath, and move on..."