This month I'll mostly be...reducing my packaging waste

Each month I attempt a different challenge with a green theme.  I'm taking one for the cause to start this month's challenge - guilt free wine!  

I was very happy when Borough Wines, with their wine bottle refill service, opened up near us in the summer.  OK, so it would be even more guilt free if it was organic, and maybe English too.  But that would make it more pricey and ultimately a more niche product that probably wouldn't sell so well - I'm all for making green options accessible to the masses!

Aside from wine bottles, there are a few other contents of our dustbin that have been playing on my conscience recently.  I won't go into detail as I'm sure I'm skating on thin ice already by blogging about rubbish!  One thing that irks me particularly is that our recycling bin seems to get really full.  It's great that Hackney Council collect so many things for recycling but, given I've spent almost fifteen years of my professional life advocating 'reduce-reuse-recycle', I feel I should see what I can reduce as well as cutting down on what ends up in our rubbish bin.  

If packaging free products are the way to go then, really, I can't moan that I can't get hold of them.  I can get LOTS of things without packaging within a 10 minute (walking) radius of my house.  There are plenty of official refills in local shops - everything from wine to washing liquid and olive oil to shampoo. And local shop keepers selling loose produce don't really bat an eyelid if you use your own bags. But often I don't bother to make the effort.  And I don't really have the habits or systems in place to make it effortless.  It needs to be easy or it's not going to happen regularly!  As my mind turns to creating systems and storage in our new kitchen (even nearer to being finished now the floors are being laid as I write, yay!) it seems a good time to think about what would make it easier to cut down the amount of packaging I use.

I definitely need to find a better system for keeping containers and bags for refilling.  I'm often having my carefully saved refill containers accidently recycled by my cleaner, Martin, little M and occassionally me! You need an empty one to fill while you start using the full container - I'm never organised enough to refill immediately. I would love to live near this shop. They're opening up a bit nearer us this year but it still won't be that handy. Think I will have to do a 'field-trip' to them to see if I can get any inspiration for hassle free refilling!

And I'd like to knock my Friday supermarket pizza habit on the head.  Partly because of the packaging and partly because now little L is starting to share our food, I'm scrutinising our food habits a bit more closely! Time to perfect my home-made pizzas and fill the freezer with tasty treats so take-aways don't seem so tempting when the girls bedtime starts to unravel into cooking time!

Comments

[Liz]

Love the wine idea, I need to see if they do anything like this in Sheffield, and if not then mention it to enterprising friends...

I'm trying to knock the Friday night supermarket pizza on the head too and just found this fairly easy looking pizza dough recipe which I plan to make this afternoon with E strapped onto me in her sling: http://m.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pizza-recipes/pizza-dough
Once you've rolled them out you can store the bases I the freezer. Good old Jamie.

[Fiona]

Hi Liz, good luck finding (or starting up!) some wine refills in Sheffield! Thanks for the pizza recipe link - freezing bases would definitely be a good idea in my book. We had a go at this one (minus the spelt as we didn't have any) on holiday http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/tv-show-recipes/the-fabulous-baker-brothers-recipes/pizza-dough-recipe - they suggest blind baking, freezing bases then grilling when topped - came out OKish in a pretty rubbish oven. Think I'll give both these a go and see which comes out best. Can't have too much pizza!

[Liz]

We blind-baked the leftover Jamie Oliver ones in the end, before popping them in the freezer. I really couldn't see how freezing the sticky dough would work!