What's this all about then?

Some of you will remember my blog from 2012, entitled 'Finding Richness in Less'  I attempted to journal my year of trying to be less of a consumer and trying to challenge myself and where I put my trust.  The year had a great impact me, and I can honestly say that lots of my day-to-day life and thoughts changed during that time.  2013 has been a year for consolidating a lot of that, and as we start 2014 I felt the need to take one of the issues further.

During 2012 one of the things I focused on was our household waste, and I spent time

weighing our bin sack before trying to make some big changes.  The result was a bokashi system which is now deeply embedded in our household's life, so much so that my 2 year old always wants to help me with compost and a month or so ago his daily catchphrase was 'Mummy, I love bokashi & minis'.  (People could understand the mini fascination, but often thought he'd made up the word 'bokashi' :-)

We've also greatly reduced what we buy, so naturally have less waste, and we recycle as much as possible.  But recently I realised we appear to have reached a plateau.  I reckon that our sack is now half to two thirds full each week, and the majority of what remains in it is plastic related.  So little can be recycled in our city, and I don't blame our council for that, but the manufacturers and packagers, and us for being happy to have the convenience of the shrinkwrap, tidiness, hygiene, presentation etc.

So one of my challenges for 2014, and the subject of this blog, is to see how we can reduce the plastic that goes into our rubbish bin each week.

I'm pretty terrified of where it's going to lead and how frustrated I will get at times.  Over the past few evenings as I've pondered it, I've realised the irony is that even the black sack, and the bins around the house are all made of plastic!  I did an online food shop earlier this week and realised that probably 95% of it came in plastic.  Where am I a going to find toilet roll that doesn't get packaged in plastic?  Squash, marg, cheese.....the list goes on.  And how am I going to reconcile these hunts and inevitable decisions in relation to my other objectives of fairtrade, organic and local.  Let alone the time involved and the cost.

So let me be straight with you from the start!  Nothing is going to change over night.  My aim is to make one change every fortnight and update this blog with the journey of researching that, and the additional (or not) cost implication of the alternative, as well as the time involved in sourcing it.  I am also not going to get rid of anything that we already have and use that is made of plastic, e.g. storage containers, the laptop upon which I type this!  Some plastic can be recycled, but is can only be downgraded in it's use, so while it's still got life in it, we'll be using it.)

And for those of you reading this and interested in following the blog, I'd really apprecaite your help & ideas.  I've already had one lovely friend deliver some homemade yoghurt for us to try, with the promise of the recipe to follow and the revelation that it's cheaper than the product we currently buy, involves no plastic, and pretty importantly, tasted delicious!!!  So all ideas and knowledge appreciated.

Plan for Week 1: I'm putting a large piece of paper above the bin and will make a tally of exactly what gets put in it over the week.