The seven-day war on waste

Slim the Bin: Can a family live without producing any non-recyclable rubbish? Liam Reid tries zero waste tolerance for a week

Saturday

It's less than half an hour into our week-long experiment and already we're in trouble. A toddler is refusing to finish his porridge and one of my Saturday newspapers has a sneaky plastic bag hidden in its innards. This is not going to be as easy as it first appeared.

In a country just waking up to pay-by-weight or volume bin charges, my family and I are trying to live without producing rubbish for a week. The introduction of the new system of refuse charges this month has brought the amount of waste we produce into sharp focus. It is not just fuzzy contemplation of the ecological footprint we all leave on the planet but the very real sound of bills dropping through doors that is making people think about their bins as never before.

I was quietly confident that, by recycling and adopting a few simple rules, our small family of two adults and one child would avoid having to put anything into our black bin for seven days.

A family of our size would be expected to produce in the region of 20 to 24 kilos of household waste a week. If we didn't recycle, this would mean facing costs of up to €600 per year, depending on which area of the country we live in. In Wicklow, where we live and where a pay-by-bag system has been in place for some years, we could expect to pay more than €500 if we recycled nothing.

Before this attempt at a waste-free week we were already recycling with gusto, leaving out a modest amount - a 15-20 kilo bag every three to four weeks, saving at least €15 a month. So what steps would we need to take to reduce that to zero? There were to be three simple rules: we would reduce waste where possible by simply avoiding heavily packaged food and goods; we would also reuse items if we could; the remainder of the waste would be recycled.

It sounds simple, but modern life is not geared towards a waste-free existence. It soon emerged, as with the porridge incident, that we had a problem with cooked food. We have a compost bin in operation, but do not put in cooked food because of our natural antipathy towards having rats in the back yard.

Help was at hand from next door, in the form of a black Labrador called Bru, (or the Broover as she is known, due to her skill at clearing food scraps from floors). Her owners graciously relaxed her diet for the week to allow her to accept certain scraps from our house.

However, the plastic wrapping problem could not be solved by a perpetually hungry dog. By the end of day one, we were already downgrading the expectation from producing zero waste to producing as little waste as possible.

Sunday

Although he had created the porridge incident, the toddler is very much playing his part in the zero waste week by wearing reusable cotton nappies for the entire week. An audit of the previous week's bin - not a very nice job at all - showed that disposable nappies were a significant part of the black bin, accounting for nearly half of it. We have always used reusable nappies, but not at night, and there is usually a minimum of seven in our weekly bag of waste. The toddler doesn't notice, it is good to say, although the washing of more nappies at winter time does make the bathroom take on the look of a laundry.

We also realise our zero waste drive is saving money. The reusable nappies will save an estimated €10 a week on disposable nappies.

Monday

Grocery shopping is an altogether different experience when on a zero waste drive. The decision about what to buy, food-wise, is normally based on considerations such as taste, price and health, but when worried about waste, the issue of packaging comes into play.

The rules to be followed on a zero waste week are not to buy products with packaging where an alternative is available. Or, if the item is a necessity, to choose the one with recyclable packaging or with the least wrapping. The other choice is, of course, not to buy it at all.

What soon becomes apparent on a trip to the shops is that many manufacturers have put little or no thought into reducing the amount of packaging on products. It is almost impossible to buy sliced bread, for example, that does not come wrapped in plastic, or plastic-coated paper that cannot be recycled.

Tuesday

Despite all our efforts, the carrier bag that is acting as a bin for the week is beginning to fill up, and the single biggest problem is excessive plastic wrapping on food products. A clear-out of the fridge results in a post-Christmas hangover we had not taken into account - packaging waste from various seasonal treats. It appears that food producers and supermarkets wrap expensive goods in superfluous and often non-recyclable packaging.

It's simply infuriating, in that you are paying double for a product's packaging, by paying over the odds for it in the first place, and then paying to get rid of it.

I'm becoming somewhat obsessive at this stage, I'm afraid, finding myself using the kitchen scales to measure the packaging of products and comparing them with the actual weight of the product they encase.

We also have another problem is that, while Bru the Labrador is doing a fine job, there are some things she cannot, or should not, eat. Our house needs help, so I call in the experts.

Wednesday

Moira Byrne, the environmental awareness officer with Wicklow County Council, and manager of the Murrough Recycling Centre, smiles when she hears what I am trying to do. "There's no such thing as zero waste," she explains.

The recycling centre she runs is one of the best in the country, which makes our little experiment possible in the first place. It takes almost everything: from various types of plastic to clothes, bottle corks, old lights, batteries, mobile phones and milk cartons. There has been a huge increase in recycling activity, even since the start of the year. There were 1,000 cars counted at the centre the previous Saturday, as the post-Christmas clear-out got under way in many houses.

Moira sits down with me to go through a checklist, to see if we can do anything better. According to her, our family is doing most of the right things. We're buying things based on the amount of packaging. We're composting. We're recycling as much as possible.

We might be able to recycle some more of the plastic packaging, she says. The centre will accept certain types of plastic wrapping (it has to be non-crinkly, and free of food). Most plastic with a recycling logo printed on it can be accepted as well. However, according to Moira, we could still do more. She goes into a back office of the centre and emerges with a small polystyrene box, and an instruction leaflet. "You need a wormery," she announces. By following the instructions, I will be able to make a wormery out of the polystyrene box.

This, she says, will be able to take most cooked foods, along with the raw compost material. And for a house with a small garden, a wormery will break the organic material down into much smaller and less smelly volumes than the current compost bin.

But first I need worms. The instructions include a list of worm suppliers, including one nearby in Co Wicklow, Growgreen Solutions. One visit later, and I have bought half a kilo of worms and received a detailed guide on how to make my own wormery. The worms aren't cheap, at €60 a kilo, and although you can buy ready assembled wormeries, the cost is high, anywhere from €150 up.

Thursday

We are very much back on track. The bin bag is impressively small and the recycling bin is growing by the hour. We have also been saving money on our shopping bill. Products with no packaging, such as loose fruit and vegetables bought in local shops, are considerably cheaper than pre-packed alternatives.

The savings are small, but over a year would mount up. For example, six loose tomatoes cost €1.20, whereas a packaged amount, weighing the same, cost €1.99. Other savings included buying two loose and less ripe avocados for €1.60, compared to the €2.80 I would have paid for the packagedvariety.

We have also saved money by not buying things at all, and actually led a healthier lifestyle. We have steered clear of processed or readymade foods, which usually have the most packaging waste.

Friday

Now that the experiment is looking as if it might work, a big question arises as to whether it would be feasible for many households to reduce dramatically the amount of waste they are sending to landfill, and subsequently their charges.

For the past year there has been a national campaign to encourage households to do what we have been doing, the Race Against Waste campaign. It is encouraging people to "reduce, reuse and recycle", but the fact is that the "reduce" bit of the message can be extremely difficult, while people feel they could do the recycling part if only they had the local facilities.

Elizabeth Arnett, an environmental consultant and expert with the Race Against Waste campaign, acknowledges it would be impossible, in many parts of the country, to do what we have been doing, due to a lack of recycling facilities.

"There are some local authorities that are great, but it's very hard from our point of view to defend the situation in some local authority areas," she says. "But things have improved an awful lot in the past couple of years." However, she says that most households could start a compost bin, and take other simple steps to reduce the amount in their black bins quite significantly.

Saturday

It's the day of reckoning, and it appears to have worked, by and large. The waste and the recycling materials are weighed and sorted. It turns out that we achieved a recycling rate of more than 90 per cent on the estimated 18 kilos of waste the family produced. This compares with an average recycling rate in Ireland of 10 per cent. The amount of waste we produced, including recycling material, is between four and six kilos short of what a family of our size would be expected to produce in a week. In total, the amount of waste we produced for the black bin amounted to 1.5 kilos. If we managed to do this every week, it would mean leaving a bin out every 10 to 12 weeks or, in our case, annual waste charges of under €30.

In other parts of the country, we would also be saving significantly on the old bin charges. In Dublin city, for example, where the pre-volume charges were just over €150, we would instead be looking at charges of €105 (€80 standing charge and €5 for each lift). In Cork we would be facing annual charges of €155.88 (€120 standing fee and 46 cent per kilo).

So how much did we save? It's impossible to say, exactly, but between nappies, cheaper groceries and bin charges, and less consumption, we saved between €20 and €25, compared with a similar family who did no recycling.

Was it worth all that effort, though, and did I learn anything? Well I won't go to the extreme of aiming at zero waste all the time, but things have changed. We will continue to shop for groceries with less packaging. The child now gets the odd disposable. The worms are here to stay, so the dog is back on her normal diet. And she's looking better for it.

Sin Bin: The total waste

Recyclable
• 5 kilos of glass, mainly wine bottles
• 4 kilos newspapers
• 2 kilos cardboard packaging, milk cartons and office paper
• 4 kilos compost material
• 1 kilo plastics
• 2 light bulbs
• 2 printer cartridges
• 2 aluminium tins
2 batteries.

Non-recyclable
• 1.5kg waste (half cooked food, half 20 items of plastic wrapping.