Saturday 27 June 2015

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #544 Ditch the Bin Liners

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #544 Ditch the Bin Liners


There are lots of people who are living their lives plastic-free and lots of people who are living their lives creating zero- or near-zero-waste. They are to be admired, because it takes conviction, effort, thought and a truly proactive life to live by those credos. One such woman writes a terrific blog at http://www.zerowastehome.com/p/tips.html, which I would encourage you to take a good look at for lots of wonderful ways to help make this a better planet.
Today’s challenge is to ditch the bin-liners. We all know they are made of plastic, and they are, in fact, ‘bags’, so while people are concentrating on reducing plastic grocery bags, let’s take a look at this other type of overlooked yet equally unnecessary bag: If you are doing the right thing with your food waste (wet waste) it is being composted or put in a biofermenter to be buried later or rotted down some way. Good. That means that everything else that goes into your rubbish bin / trash can will be ‘dry’ rubbish, which doesn’t need to be wrapped up in a plastic bag. If you ever have something wet that needs to go in the bin then wrap it up in newspaper. However, ditching the plastic bin liner is a device to make you more aware of what you actually ‘throw away’, and hopefully you will stop in your tracks and have a think about what you’re doing. This may lead to finding different ways of dealing with your waste, or better still, finding ways not to produce that waste in the first place. Try ditching the bin liner as a family exercise and take pleasure from the group discussion it will promote and the ideas you can brainstorm together as a family that cares for the planet. Less waste will go to landfill, you may very well end up saving lots of money, and the earth will breathe more easily.

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