Just Found This...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239389/Meet-ultimate-green-family-recycle-bin-rubbish-year.html?ITO=1708&referrer=yahoo

So come on then, is it anyone we know...

Yes, do yourself a favour and don't read the nasty comments made about them.

Vile Vile newspaper and its disgusting BNP readership, makes me shudder..

Badger wrote:Yes, do yourself a favour and don't read the nasty comments made about them.

Vile Vile newspaper and its disgusting BNP readership, makes me shudder..

Yes, I hadn't read the comments, I don't normally read them on articles that I find, there's too many idiots that are on the internet, if they aren't interested why read it, sad people...

On a somewhat lighter note the newspaper that I have calls it the Daily Snail...

Yes I know them personally and am glad to call them friends....the comments ARE vile but only to be expected in "that snot rag"...

They really DO , do all they say....

mind you, so do we.. .and so do a lot of other people around my area...not that I am trying to detract from Rae and her family at all with that comment...but just making the general point that it is NOT a strange or unusual lifestyle, as the snot rag would want us to believe... an awful lot of people actually DO live like this and we don't feel deprived or odd about it....

Before our doorstep recycling started last month we took all our recycleables to the HWS when we were going that way and our weekly landfill bin collection was around 150 g a week....

less on a good week

Now the recycling collection takes virtually everything we normally produce as waste packaging..so we are down to about 50 g or less per week in the land fill bin..

And yes we DO live a "normal " life..so if we can do it, and the Greens..and Almost Mrs Average......well I will leave it to you to decide on the next bit!

this is a personal passion of mine...I work as a sustainability consultant trying to spread the word that all this is very easy and do-able....

CW, I hope when you next contact your friends you will tell them that they have loads of admirers. As for the comments, well they do say ignorance is bliss, but I prefer If you can`t say somthing nice, say nothing. I think they are really great. :bigclap: I take my net bags for the veggies & the shop is impressed, that was after they laughed at the nursery net I used.

We are quite lucky on the Island as the rubbish is sorted at the reclamation plant. We do not even have to seperate our tins.

Ignoring the comments people have added to the article...

Good on them, but I do worry that the paper is making them out to be "special" if you know what I mean. I don't want to knock their achievement or anything, but as CW says they're not the only people doing something like this and once you get yourself organised it's not that difficult to do.

We found it hard in the flat due to lack of space to sort and store stuff, but here in the house we really have minimised what we put out for landfill. Not enough I hasten to add (and I'll be looking to address that in 2010!) but what someone should be running in response is an article on how everyone else could do similar.

We're lucky here in that everything except tetra packs is collected from the kerb for recycling. We now have a huge collection of tetra packs under the kitchen counter waiting for us next to drive to the part of town where we can recycle them. A six month collection has shown us just how much we use them though!

Mrs C

If you want to go and leave them a message their web site is MyZeroWaste.com

I think what makes them more newsworthy is they DIDN'T used to do all this until a year ago AND their website is amazing....

I think the comments are the most enlightening bit about the article. Was quite surprised by the number of positive comments among the nonsense actually.

The response by Mr Strauss to the comments was good, I thought.

Talking about waste and recycling seems to be a very emotive subject. Yes, I'm the guy in this story above. There are already too many comments here to reply to everyone, but let me say this:: We do not set ourselves up as a standard, or yardstick for anyone. This is our conviction that it's time we took personal responsibility for aspects of the world we live in. It's a small contribution to demonstrate that individuals can make a difference, with the possibility that collectively we can make a huge reduction on environmental contamination. It's so easy to blame someone else for the problems we see with landfill, incineration and the huge mountain of food waste. Ultimately, we the consumer drive the markets and producers, so we must take a part of the responsibility in sending a clear message back that something has to change with regards to non-recyclable packaging. All waste is a product of bad design and we are trying to change that, hopefully by inspiration, not by judgement.

- Richard Strauss, Gloucestershire, 30/12/2009 16:28

My prize for 'Daily-Mailist' reply goes to:

Can someone at least give them a new bin. The neighbours would speak about us if we put out a bin like that.

That really made me LMAO. Imagine someone actually read that article and felt moved to post that reply.

Just clicked through to their site and realised that I was on there just yesterday (from a link Brigit left elsewhere) and hadn't made the connection! It is indeed a very good site - worth a look if you haven't seen it before.

Mrs C

Why not leave a snotty comment to all the F*ckwits on the Daily Mail site ?
Like I just did !

Like it Gus

And only read the Daily Mash:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/section/news/

The Mighty Gusset wrote:Why not leave a snotty comment to all the F*ckwits on the Daily Mail site ?
Like I just did !

Well done Gus, I just gave you a green boost....!

Strangely the chap looks spookily like Trigger from Only Fools and Horses, who was a binman, IIRC.

Gus!!!

I take it you were Mr Sette from Essex ...

CW having read your posts, & looked at the article again I have just realised who it is, you can tell the lady that her book is good, & I've tried to reccomend it to as many people as I can & I hope a few idiots don't upset them...


by sparhawk on Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:47 pm

I have just started reading a new book in the Green Guides series "Compost" by Rachelle Strauss... £8.99 new published in 2009 bought from charity shop for 99p ...

Well done Gus - a green boost from me too!

Mrs C

Hi Everyone,

The lovely Compostwoman told me about your forum today, so I've come over to have a nose. Thank you for all the comments about our Daily Snail article.

MrsC - I completely agree with you about the 'special' things. I hate the fact we have been called the 'ultimate green family' - that is so not us! Sure we do our bit, but there are many people who do far more, only they do not blog about it or really tell people about what they are doing. So I feel highly embarrassed by the 'look at this special family' slant because there are so many like us.

Never mind; we're happy to get our message out there - no matter how misconstrued it might be! If you knew me, you'd know that I'm extremely shy and reserved about myself, so being in the limelight has been really difficult at times.

Wilhelm, Trigger :biglaugh: You scarily have a point LOL! I'd never seen it myself, but now I've been studying photos of the guy for the past 5 minutes and I have to hand all powers of observation to you (I'll just ignore the point that trigger is over 10 years older than my dh )

Angelina; great to hear you are going to try to take some more steps this year. Good luck with that and holler if I can be of help in any way.

Like Compost Woman has pointed out - we do lead normal lives (beer, curry, plastic crap toys from China - sigh) but we're just people who care about the impact of our actions; like you lovely people here....

Right, I'm off for a browse around the other forums.

Warm wishes
Rae x