- We now have a rubbish bin and a recycling bin that is not full.
- We Compost as much kitchen waste as we can.
- We use the food we buy and grow and try not to throw any away.
- We are aware of food miles and check were any bought vegetables and fruit are from.
Growing my own fruit and vegetables has brought home to me, that it really is wrong to throw good food in the bin if you can prevent it. I never was one to discard good food but the skills of soup making from the vegetables that I grow and cooking up the fruits into something tasty have improved my coking skills
and ingenuity for using up gluts of fruit and vegetables in an enjoyable way. The one thing that has had me beat in the past is what to do with runner beans that grow faster than you can pick them, the solution is I guess to plant less of them in the future.
We never have wasted much, it is a family trait passed on through watching grandparents put everything to good use where possible. As children a saying we often heard was "Waste not want not." although it was boring to hear it was said in a kindly way. Luckily, I did not come from a family that made me eat food that I hated, but you were expected to take care of the things you owned. This is told to explain that to start with we did not waste much anyway, you know you replace it because it does not work not because you are bored with the look of it, that kind of attitude, partly as buying a house meant there was never spare cash to waste on such ideas.
Another way that we waste less is the things we can put into compost no longer go to landfill, so the amount of rubbish in our bin is reduced. The other plus side of this is that we eventually get some really useful compost to put onto the vegetable patch to enhance the soil. Brown cardboard boxes can be ripped up and added too or they can be used on the soil to help to cut back the amount of weeds that germinate when the soil is bare.
