founder of the UK’s Zero Waste
Week initiative, offers this idea for
visualising: “I challenge people to
come home with their groceries, and
– say they have six bags of food – take
two of them and throw them in the
bin, even before they’ve got in the
house … it’s a wake-up call to how
much the average family wastes every
month. Once you’ve seen it like that, it
can instigate positive change.”
According to Rachel, the most
common culprits are bread, bananas,
milk, cucumbers and salad. She urges
families to change their mind-set and
start thinking: There’s no such thing
as leftovers, only ingredients. “By that,
I mean don’t just throw foods away –
even if it’s a tablespoon of something
in the bottom of a tin or the end of a
loaf of bread. View all these foods as
ingredients and use them as a base for
another meal.” Inspired families can
find creative recipes at
.
Blogger Karen Cannard
who writes The Rubbish Diet
(therubbishdiet.blogspot.hk/) agrees.
“One of the easiest places to start
is food waste. Ensure that you buy
only what you’re going to use, store
fresh food correctly, and use it up as
planned.”
The dirtiest nappies of all
Every day across the world, 6,000
tonnes of disposable nappies are
thrown away. To paint a picture of
how much space that takes up, picture
1,000 adult male elephants.
Let’s be honest: reusable nappies
can be a tough sea change to tackle for
many parents. But by interchanging
just one disposable to a reusable a day,
over the course of your child’s nappy-
wearing years, you would prevent 912
nappies from going to landfills – about
the equivalent of 15 kitchen bins. Not
only are they huge space-eaters, they
leave a long-lasting legacy: disposable
nappies are said to take up to 500
years to decompose.
Guy Schanschieff, founder and
managing director of Bambino Mio
reusable nappies, sees it this way:
“When becoming a parent, you
suddenly reassess the way you look at
the world and how you impact upon
it. Your impact on the environment
suddenly becomes more important as
you look to the next generation. Using
reusable nappies, even some of the
time, will help reduce the amount of
waste you send to landfill.”
It’s a family affair
This is a family revolution, so mobilise
all the troops to reduce the size of
your family’s garbage. Younger kids
will delight in helping you sort the
garbage and recycling and learning
what products are made from what
materials. It’s also a great task for
learning colours and counting.
Get the kids’ creative juices
flowing by allowing them to repurpose
items for craft activities or new
inventions. You might be surprised to
find you have a budding engineer or
sculptor in your clan.
Older kids and aspiring Junior
Master Chefs will embrace the
challenge to invent new dishes from
leftovers.
Karen Cannard says, “Waste
reduction is a great learning
experience for children, not only
because it provides them with
good organisational skills and an
understanding of the bigger picture,
but it provides an opportunity to
learn other skills that will give them a
foundation for life and their education
ahead of them – problem solving,
creativity and a strong awareness of
resource management.”
Rachel from Zero Waste Week
agrees. “If your children are a bit
older, it can be a great family activity
to take a food audit. Note everything
that gets thrown away, try and work
out the monetary value of it. Then,
tot it all up and see how much you
are wasting. Perhaps you could set a
family target of reducing food waste
and increasing the holiday fund!”
It’s true, slimming your bin should
pay off. Switching from disposable
nappies can save up to $6,000 for one
child alone. Those savings increase,
of course, if you can use them for
more than one child. Experts say you
can easily save $10,000 a year just by
being more aware of your food waste
and switching to reusable containers
instead of disposable baggies. That’s
enough for a weekend retreat in
Macau for the family, or a well-
deserved parents-only getaway.
April 2014
65
