Jen Gale: Hello, hello, Jen here. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for downloading. Today it's a little solo episode for me. I'm still not convinced how I feel about these. Whether anyone actually likes them, please do let me know. the holiday one seemed to go down quite well, as did the People's Emergency briefing one. So let me know if you like hearing me just whitter on for Anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes. Let's see how long this one lasts. Today's episode is in celebration of, in recognition of, Zero Waste Week, because this episode is going out on the Friday of Zero Waste Week here in the UK. I'd love to say I'd done my research and looked at how long Zero Waste Week has been going. Embarrassed to say I haven't. At least 10 years, I would say. but I wanted to do an episode on it because people really bloody love bins. I did a post about Zero Waste Week on socials earlier on this week. one of my most popular posts, 45,000 views, on Instagram talking about my bins. And when I posted a couple of years ago. about the fact that we'd just put our bin out for the first time in nine months. An actual journalist got in touch and then there was an article in the actual independent, it might have just been the online version, with the headline, and I had to look this up, Zero Waste Mum puts her bin out for first time this year. with a really awful picture of me with the dog. Now, I cringed at that headline I'm not a zero waste mum. we are far from zero waste as a family. And actually, you know, even though this is an episode in celebration or in recognition of Zero Waste Week, I think zero waste is actually quite a discouraging term. For a while it was very I don't know if fashionable is even the right word for anything within the eco-space, but there was a trend for a while a few years ago of people kind of showing their jam jar of their waste of all of the waste that they had produced in a year. We are not at jam jar levels of waste. And when we're talking about not putting our bin out for nine months or 12 months or wherever we're at, that's our black landfill. Or incineration, energy from waste. Incineration, I can't I not have to confess to not being entirely sure what happens to our waste in Wilkshire. but that's our black bin. So we have a huge amount of recycling and things that I diverted from that rather than actually producing zero waste. So I think the term is a bit discouraging. It implies that you know the only way we can win is by having a small jam jar of of waste by the end of the year, which I personally think is. unrealistic. Giving myself a get out of jail free card there. And and I don't, I'm not entirely sure anybody can be genuinely zero waste in our modern societies. I would think it would be incredibly challenging and would need huge kind of lifestyle shifts to be genuinely zero waste. But I think we can all be zero waste ish. Okay. Ish gives us a lot of wriggle room here, doesn't it? We can all be working towards reducing our waste. We can all be on that journey somewhere. And that's what I kind of want to talk to you all about. So given the popularity of all things bins on socials and we will find out whether it's a popular thing to talk about on podcasts as well, I wanted to share some tips here with you all, but with a few caveats first. So We had that headline where we hadn't put our bin out for nine months. And then after that, I think we went a whole year because I I was annoyed that it was nine months and I wanted to see if we could make it to a year. and then I think we had a couple of times where it was nine months, and then we've just done a year again where we've gone a year without putting our black bin out. As I said, we are far from perfect. And one of the big caveats with all of this is that it has taken us more than 10 years to get to this point. It has very much been a journey. It's been 10 years of kind of chipping away, of making changes, them becoming our new normal and then making another change and another. So it all has happened very gradually and obviously very, very imperfectly. I think it's also really, really important to recognize that some of the changes that we've been able to make are not accessible to everyone. So one of the things that really helps to reduce our packaging is getting a fruit and veg box from Riverford every week. And I fully acknowledge the privilege that allows us to be able to afford to do that. And I know that that's not something that everybody can do. We also have a garden where we have a compost heap for our food waste and we have space in our house where we can sort of collect and store different types of recycling and also where we can store bottles of things like shower gel and things like that. And I again, I know that not everybody has that. ability and that space or you know access to outdoor space and all of those sorts of things. So I really, really do accept that we're hugely privileged to be able to make a lot of these changes. And also I think it's really important to acknowledge that we live in a society that doesn't make it easy for us to produce less rubbish. If we're on a budget, then an awful lot of the even fresh fruit and veg and things that we're buying is going to come packaged in an awful lot of single use plastic. On that note, I think there are clearly there's lots that we can do as individuals, but there are clearly really big systemic changes that need to happen. In England, and apologies, I don't know what the rules are in Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland, but in England, there is something called, and this is fascinating, the Simpler Recycling Legislation from the government. And the idea behind that is to try and simplify recycling for all of us, because if you're in England and possibly other parts of the UK, you'll be very aware that different local authorities collect different things for recycling. And if you live close to a local authority border, It can be really frustrating because the house literally in the next street from you might be able to recycle far more than you can and all these sorts of things. So the idea behind simpler recycling was to try and simplify that, as it said, make it easier to standardize it across England. It actually came into effect in March, 2026, but several councils have got extensions. for example, food waste collections at Curbside should now be standard across England. But where I am in Wiltshire, they've got an exemption. I'm not sure when that is until, but some councils have been able to delay the start of this simpler recycling legislation or process. If you haven't seen any changes, it may be that your council have applied for an extension. We also need big shifts from supermarkets around packaging. So as I said, it's it's really difficult. depending on which supermarkets you're shopping from and what your budget is and all of those sorts of things to be able to reduce the amount of packaging that you're buying, especially associated with food. So we need some big shifts from supermarkets, from retailers, from food manufacturers around that. And that that doesn't sound like a particularly simple thing to try and tackle. The last, I guess, caveat to say is that When we think about reducing waste, we tend to think about recycling better. And recycling more. But actually, what we need to do is try and reduce all of our waste, including our recycling, which sounds a bit counterintuitive, doesn't it? We need to try and actually reduce the amount of recycling. So all of the waste we're producing, whether it's non-recyclable or recyclable. And really with an awareness that waste is actually quite a small part of our overall environmental impact. It's very visible, it's very tangible, but actually our consumption habits are going to be much bigger. So trying to address waste. through a lens of consumption? Does that sound a bit woo? ultimately, depressingly, pretty much everything we buy ends up being thrown away at some point. So in order to actually waste less, we need to consume more thoughtfully, more slowly. but with all of that, because waste and recycling are very visible, very tangible, people get it, I think that's why talking about something like waste it's very popular on social media because it feels very doable. It feels very accessible. It's something we can all do. So it's a really, really good starting point. none of this is to discourage people. It's it's a really great place to start, but it's a bad place to stop. Don't get stuck there, frustrated and overwhelmed by the complexities of the recycling system and the imperfections of the recycling system. The easy place to get stuck. start there by all means, but please don't get stuck there. And please recognize that there will be other actions that you can take. For example, looking at your transport choices, looking at your diet choices, looking at consumption, as I said, that will have a much bigger impact. So if you're getting bogged down in it, stick your head up, have a little look around and see what other things you can do. Okay, time for a quick ad break. if you're listening to this when it comes out, which is on Friday the 11th of September, there is a carbon literacy course starting the very next week. On Thursday the 17th and Friday the 18th, the Sustainable Ish Carbon Literacy course is running. So if you've been thinking about carbon literacy for a little while, please do come and join me. carbo literacy probably ought to tell you what it is it's eight hours worth of training, which sounds super daunting. It's split into two mornings, it's all online, so easy to access, covers the basics of climate science and the climate impacts that we're seeing, projections for what might happen, and really, really importantly then what we can all do about it. and there's two pledges that if you want to get your carbon literacy certificate at the end of it, you have to make an individual pledge and a group pledge to try and reduce carbon. it's it's lovely to get a certificate. It's really useful to get all that information. I would say that the biggest impact that I see from people doing it is that they just feel so much more confident talking about climate change to other people, whether that's their friends, their family, people in their local community, or really importantly, people at work. So it really helps people with their confidence around the knowledge. And I give lots of tools and tips and ideas for how we might be able to have climate conversations with other people, which is one of the most important things that we can do. So if that sounds like something that you would be interested in, I will pop a link in the show notes. There's dates, as I said, next week for September, and there's also dates on the website for October if you can't make the September dates. So I would love to see you come and join me, that would be marvellous. Back to the main show. Okay, so ad break and caveats over. Here are some top tips from me. Having said all of that about recycling just a minute ago, do check what can be recycled curbside with your local authority. It might have changed as a result of these simpler recycling legislation. So do check what can be recycled curbside and also what you can take to your local recycling centre. So there might be some stuff that you can take there that you didn't know that you could. So yeah. Have a little look, make sure that you are maximising the recycling that you can do. Tip number two is around soft plastics. So collect your soft plastics separately if you can, if you've got space to do that, and take them to the supermarket. Now we've been doing this for quite a while, and I don't necessarily have any huge faith that the supermarkets aren't actually recycling that soft plastic. So I think Dan mentioned it in the episode I did with with him from the Big Plastic Count. He said, I think that they'd put like little trackers or something into plastic bags at the soft plastic recycling collection points at some of the supermarkets and then being able to track them to landfill sites in other parts of the world, which is obviously not what we want and not what we are hoping when we take our recycling to the supermarket. However, I would argue that. If I put it in the soft plastics recycling, there is more chance of it being recycled than if it just goes in my landfill bin. And my main reason for doing it is that if I make all of this packaging a supermarket's problem and it's their cost to then have to dispose of it, I would hope, and this is probably incredibly naive of me, but I would hope that at some point they will start to do something about reducing the volume of soft plastic that is generated by their product. couple of things to kind of pick up on there. soft plastics takes up a huge amount of space. so we invested, this is how fun a family we are for Christmas. We bought ourselves this thing called a holy shrink, and I'll pop a link in the show notes to it. And it's it's gonna be really hard to describe on audio. it's like A big kind of sealed cylinder with a hole in the top, and you put your soft plastics in there, and then it's got like a a squashy, like the I never know which is the pestle and which is the mortar, but the pokey down bit of a pestle order, a big thing like that, that you squash down and then you sort of screw shut and it squashes, it compresses all of your soft plastics down. And then when it's full, you take it out and you've got this kind of almost Pringles tube-shaped. bag of squashed plastic. So we've been using one of those and it massively helps to reduce the volume that the soft plastics are taking up in our house. Someone did say that apparently at some of the supermarket soft plastic collection points they won't take bagged soft plastic. You have to tip it out. So they got in touch with Holy Shrink to ask about that and they said just you know make a hole in the bottom of the bag and empty it out if that's the case. I did also have some questions from people on socials around does the fact that the plastic is squashed make it harder to recycle? And in all honesty, I don't know. and I should probably get in touch with Holy Shrink to ask them about that. But we found it a really useful tool for reducing the volume and the space that all this soft plastics is taking up. the second thing that somebody shared on social media is that they decided that rather than take their soft plastics to the supermarkets with all the sort of caveats around we don't really know whether it's being recycled or not. that they pay for a terracycle soft plastics box. So this is a sort of almost like a subscription service that you pay for and terracycle collect it. And then it is technically what we call downcycled, which is what will be happening with our supermarket soft plastics if it is recycled, it's downcycled into things like plastic, park benches, like planters and things like that. the other thing I would say if you are taking your soft plastics to the supermarket, is just drop them an email and say, what is actually happening? Do you have any traceability around this soft plastics recycling? and last thing to say on this one, feels like we could do a whole episode on soft plastics recycling, is that local authorities as part of this simpler recycling legislation are supposed to be rolling out curbside soft plastics collections over the next, I think, year or so. I'm fascinated to see what happens with that. It feels like it's not going to be the simplest thing to do. It's as I said, it's very bulky, this soft plastics. It's very blow-awayable. That's not a proper term. But I think there's going to be potentially some more littering around because of that, because it will be, you know, whilst it's going into the into the bin lorry, there's lots of potential for it to the wind to swoop some of it away. and also, as far as I'm aware, we don't have a huge amount of soft plastics recycling infrastructure here in the UK. So Are we putting the cart before the horse in that we're collecting it all and we don't yet actually have anywhere that we can recycle it? I don't know the answers to those. if you do, please do let me know. Okay, onwards. tip number three would be food waste. So if you have a curbside food waste collection, please, please, please use it. You are incredibly fortunate. We don't have a food waste collection here yet in Wiltshire, still waiting. but what we have in our house instead is something called a green Joanna. So this is a hot composter, it's from a company called Great Green Systems. they do lots of different versions of hot composters in our old house where we didn't have a huge amount of outdoor space. We had something called a green cone, which kind of you dig down into the soil. this sort of almost looks like a a plastic washing basket. You dig that down into the soil, and then that works best for households, my understanding, who don't have a huge amount of garden waste to go in there and are going to have a higher proportion of sort of food waste to garden waste. So we had a green cone, but now we've got a green Joanna. which takes a mix of garden waste and food waste. because it's a hot composter, you can put cooked food in there. and you can also put things like meat and fish and stuff like that as well. because we don't have a food waste collection, Wiltshire Council subsidized the cost of the Green Joanna. So if your council don't provide a food waste collection, do have a look. There is a website where you can put your postcode in and it will tell you whether there are any council subsidies. Again, I will pop that into the show notes for you. Do have a look and see if there are any discounts on those kinds of things available via your local authority. I'm not convinced we are using our Green Joanna 100% properly. I I try really hard to you composting's quite complicated. Again, we could probably do a whole episode on it, but you need to have a mix of your sort of food waste, your sort of fresher stuff and like your le your green garden waste and things and then your browns, which is like your dried up leaves, but also shredded cardboard, shredded paper, things like that. I d I think we have far too high a ratio of food waste, but we still seem to have a a good number of worms in there. and it produces some I mean, it's not like potting compost that you get out of the bottom, but it produces brown stuff that looks like soil that we can kind of plant into the garden. So, and and it's remarkable how quickly and how much the food waste kind of shrinks down by, especially over the summer months. So, yes, please find something you can do with your food waste, whether that's a curbside recycling, something like a green Joanna. If you don't have garden space and you don't have curbside food waste recycling, There may well be schemes. Sometimes there are schemes locally whereby other people have got compost bins and will be happy for you to come and put yours in, that sort of thing. So do have a look and see if there's anything like that. There are a couple of lovely schemes that I'm aware of in the Southwest. So one in Froom, where they go and collect business food waste and take it to a they've got these big, enormous tumbler composters in the local park and they turn that into compost that can then be sold back to the local community. And there's another project in Bristol, I think, where they do similar with households. And you pay an amount each month, I assume, for them to come and collect your food waste. And then you then get compost, bags of compost directly back at no extra charge because you paid for the subscription, I think. That's the model. so I'll pop links again in the show notes to both of those because I think they're really fascinating and brilliant kind of examples of circular economy and local economy projects. Just doing those two things, the soft plastics and the food waste, cut our bin, our black bin rubbish, I would say, in half. So my or our whole journey to kind of reducing our waste started when we were doing our year buying nothing new. So that was back in 2012. So our we started, I think our rubbish journey started in 2013, because Wiltshire Wildlife Trust were doing a waste of reduction campaign. I think it was called Slim Your Bin, or it might have been Waste Watchers like W-A-S-T-E. And I joined in and I thought, yeah, we'll join in with this. We're already smashing it. We do all of our recycling. We're gonna, there's not really going to be much that they're going to be able to tell us to do. And just those two things, the food waste, getting the green Joanna and the soft plastics at the time it was only stretchy plastics that you could recycle and now it's all of your crisp packets and biscuit things as well. But just those two things, honestly probably half our bin waste overnight. So they are they are the the things that are making up a lot of the bulk within your bin. Another top tip and and I kind of touched on it in the sort of introduction is the waste hierarchy. Sounds super dull. Sounds like the sort of thing that people with clipboards might talk about at waste conferences, but actually like I really love it. So Again, this isn't going work very well on audio, but imagine a triangle, and at the bottom of the triangle you've got refuse. So you know, trying to slow down our consumption, buy less, all of those sorts of things. And it goes through all these different levels, and at the very top you've got rot, which is our, you know, our black bin, our landfill waste. So there are lots of different variations of the waste hierarchy. Some have the triangle upside down, some have the triangle the right way round. But the idea is you start at the widest bit of the triangle, which is is refuse. And then there's lots of R's basically. And you can include as many R's as you want. The most basic one would be reduce, reuse, recycle. So that's Bob the Builder, for those of you familiar. I've got a version that has refuse at the very bottom, then reduce, reuse, rehome, repair, recycle, rot. There's a version that Keep Britain Tidy bought out, I think it was last year, because they did some research and they found that people were familiar with the reduce, reuse, recycle concept, but that they thought that they all meant the same thing and basically they all meant recycle. So they bought out this sort of updated version of the waste hierarchy that instead of using kind of one word and lots of R's, it has things like. On each level, it will be kind of keep things in use for as long as possible, or buy things secondhand, or you know, it's much more explicit about the things that we can do. So I will share a link to that if anyone's interested in seeing that one, because they did lots of work with focus groups and things like that and found that it was the most useful way of helping people to recognize that there were lots of other things that they could do before they got to recycling. Regardless of which waste hierarchy you're using, the most I think. Pertinent point of it is that recycling is at the very top or bottom, whichever way around your hierarchy is. So it's like the penultimate thing in your hierarchy before you get to landfill waste. So, in other words, there were lots of other things that we should be looking at and we should be doing before we get to recycling, to my point, right at the very start about this isn't just about recycling better. This is about reducing all of our waste, recycling and non-recycling. So on that note, we've got refuse, which is, you know, trying to buy less. when we get to reuse, you know, reusable options of things like coffee cups, water bottles, we've all got those, haven't we? We've probably all got a cupboard full of those. remembering to to actually take them with you and use them is the key. So a reusable option is only better than a single use option if you remember to reuse it. And because of the additional resources that have gone into it, you need to reuse them a certain number of times before they actually end up then being kind of carbon neutral, if you like. So there's loads of different stats that I've seen for things like tote bags, you know, some saying a hundred times, some saying way more than that, that they need to be reused before they're better than a single-use plastic bag. So And we've probably all got a cupboard full of coffee cups and water bottles and a drawer full of reusable totes somewhere. So don't get any more would be the first thing to say. There was that phase, wasn't there, or fad, was it like a year ago about the the Stanley cups and you know, those reusable Stanley cups and people will have had like seven in different colours for different outfits and things. That is not the point of reusable stuff. The point is we have one and we reuse it and we reuse it and we reuse it until it dies. so yes, please go for reusable stuff, but remember to reuse it. other things that are sort of less obvious from a reuse perspective might be things like period products, so reusable liners and stuff like that. pads, that's the word I was looking for, reusable pads. also things like Moon Cup is the most popular brand, isn't it? Of like menstrual cup, but things like that really, really help. I bought a menstrual cup My eldest. My eldest is nearly 18 now, so probably 17 years ago. at the time, probably cost I think it was either 10 or 20 pounds, and haven't had to spend a penny on sanitary products since then. So they are a really, really good money-saving option as well. Also, the picture I put on Instagram when I was sharing this was some reusable party decorations that we've got. So we've got those sort of paper honeycomb things that we use instead of balloons. We've also got a happy birthday banner that we made. For our eldest, I think fourth birthday using sort of Lego font and it's homemade, it's using sort of Lego font and cardboard and things. as I said, he is now nearly 18 and that comes out every single year for everybody's birthdays. so there are things like that that you can do that are, you know, quite small, but there are things that you can reuse that you might not necessarily have thought of. another part of the waste hierarchy is refill. So again, there was a real rapid rise in the number of zero waste and refill shops in around kind of 2019, 2020. and they they had a real boon in popularity. And really sadly, quite a lot of those have had to shut just because of the challenges of being on the high street and retail and trying to compete with the might of the supermarkets and things like that. So if you have a local refill shop, please, please do support them. They are wonderful resources. They are really helping to reduce waste. They're a brilliant asset to your local community. The money that you spend there will stay in that local community rather than going and helping pay, you know, shareholders vast profits and things like that. So please do use your local refill shop. Again, doesn't have to be all of the time, but if you could do it once a month or once every couple of months, it all really, really does help. if you don't have access to a refill shop, then we, and again, with the caveat that we're lucky enough to have a garage where we can store some of this stuff, we bulk buy like five liter bottles of shampoo and conditioner and shower gel and things like that, and then have our own little kind of refill station. and we even when a sales on will we'll look out and see. Sometimes they have like big 20 litre things of things like washing up liquid and stuff like that. As I said, aware that you need the upfront money to be able to buy those things. So do look out for when sales are on. And also you need the space to be able to store them. So it's not something that's going to be accessible to everybody, but worth a go. Another R is repair. So I'm a huge fan of mending stuff, very, very inexpertly. I've probably spoken about this on the podcast before. We're very gendered in our household. My husband tends to do all the sort of electricals and things, and I tend to do the textiles, but that wasn't always the case. We we I don't think we ever really repaired anything until we did our year buying nothing new, and I called it my make do and mend year and then went, I'm gonna have to actually mend some stuff here. I didn't know how to sew on a button. Like I was scared of sewing on a button for some reason. the brilliant thing I found is that there will pretty much always be a YouTube video. For really obscure fixes. The number of things my husband sort of Googled, like our washing machine was making a funny noise and Googled it and found a YouTube video that somebody's made of some really obscure mend that that managed to fix it. but similarly with textiles, there will be a YouTube video of somebody showing you how to fix something. and it's already broken. So the pressure is off. You can, you know, you can you can't make it any worse. So have a go. And if you're if you're really scared of having a go or you don't have the kit that you need, have a look and see if you have a local repair cafe near you. These are volunteer run, tend to be sort of pop-up events where you can go and you can take your broken stuff, whether that's textiles or small electricals, and they will have a team of volunteer fixers on hand who can mend stuff for you. And if you would like to, they can show you how to mend it yourself so you can do it next time. what What else? In terms, I guess I've got two last tips. One I've already mentioned several times, but I make no apologies for mentioning again, is buy less stuff. And we have another hierarchy for that because we love a hierarchy in sustainability. but this one is called the Bierarchy, and it's by a wonderful, wonderful woman called Sarah Lazarevich. it's the Bierarchy of Needs, and she's Taken her inspiration from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So we've got the biararchy of needs. Again, it's a triangle. At the bottom, it's got use what you have, and then working our way up in layers, we've got borrow, swap, thrift, make, buy. So all of these things that we might be able to do to get the stuff that we need, or to reuse something we've already got in a different way, or to borrow it from someone else, all of those sorts of things before we have to resort to kind of buying and buying new. So I am a massive fan of the biarchy of needs. I will pop a link again in the show notes for you to have a little look at. And I've already mentioned several times we we did that year buying nothing new back in 2012 and 2013. That may be a bit extreme for most people, but have a go at a month buying nothing new. Have a go at buying no new clothes for a few months or no new tech. Or whatever your kind of particular vice might be, just have a go. It is a brilliant way to just slow down your consumption and make you really stop and think a little bit more about what you're buying, which is what all of this is about. So yeah, would really, really encourage that. And then my last tip is to embrace the ish, embrace the zero waste ish, the sustainable-ish. This whole thing, sustainable-ish, is not about. Creating a rod for your own back, creating more stress for ourselves, creating more things to beat ourselves up about. There are enough things to feel bad about. We most of us have massively long to-do lists that we never get to the bottom of. So it's about thinking about what might work for us and our family. And that will be different, you know, depending on your different family circumstances and setups and finances and all sorts of different things. So, you know, please don't Get to a point where you're constantly feeling kind of guilty about the stuff that you're throwing away or not understanding your local recycling system and things like that. as I said, if you're if you're getting your knickers in a real knot about recycling and finding it really difficult, like let's have a look at something else. Let's look at could you walk to school a couple of times a week with the kids? Could you have a veggie meal a couple of times a week? There will be other things that you can do. So really embrace that-ish. Yes, we want people to be pushing themselves out of their comfort zones a little bit and trying new things, but the last thing we want is for this to make life really, really miserable for everybody. So give yourself a bit of grace. allow yourself slip-ups and bad days or bad weeks or whatever it might be, and then get back on the horse and have another go and try a different thing. I think that's it. Was that helpful? feel like I've just talked to everybody for half an hour. I hope it was helpful. I hope it's useful. It's by no means a kind of comprehensive guide to zero waste or anything like that. And as I said, I'm very shaky on a lot of the technicalities and things. There are lots of better resources to be able to get all of that nitty-gritty detail and things like that. but yeah, let me know. Let me know if that was helpful. Let me know how you get on with your bin. Let me know how you feel about the term zero waste, all sorts of different things. just get in touch, be marvellous, be really love to hear from be really lovely to hear from you, or I would love to hear from you, either of those. and yeah, thank you so much for listening. I will catch you next time. Before I go, obviously you thought I was gonna go without saying please do leave a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts. or drop me an email with any feedback, jen at sustainableish dot co dot uk. And yeah, now I really will catch you next time. Have a good one. Take care, bye bye.