Zero Waste Week 6th - 10th September

 It's  Zero Waste Week 

This is a  post of random paragraphs!

Zero Waste Week is an environmental campaign to reduce landfill waste, and takes place annually during the first full week in September. It is a non-commercial grass-roots campaign to demonstrate means and methods to reduce waste, foster community support and bring awareness to the increasing problem of environmental waste and pollution 

 It started in 2008 from a blog by Rachelle Strauss.

Using the 5 R's............................. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot,  the organisation tries to help schools, businesses and individuals change the way they think. But despite 13 years of promoting the idea I'm not sure things have got any better. There's just as much packaging in supermarkets as there was years ago - if anything - after Covid there's even fewer things unwrapped. AND more packaging is used for all the on-line shopping we do now.

 

In Suffolk the waste in our grey rubbish bins goes to an incinerator which opened in 2014.

From the East Anglian Daily Times at the time...................................

 Every single bag of general refuge from households and businesses in the county is going to a £180million incinerator plant in Great Blakenham, near Ipswich – preventing any rubbish going to landfill.

The burning process creates enough energy for electricity to be pumped to 30,000 homes and saves taxpayers £8million a year through cutting landfill taxes, according to Suffolk County Council.

 

So I guess that means our rubbish isn't rubbish at all - but fuel -is that good?

Our green topped recycling bins are sorted and I hope things are sent off for recycling - who knows? There's also no way of knowing how much stuff is rejected although if what the previous owners here had put in the recycling bin is anything to go by then it's probably quite a lot. Rejected things are added to the  rubbish that goes to the incinerator.

 

I have a brown garden waste bin which costs me £57 a year but it's strictly garden waste only. I brought one 'dalek' compost bin with me which I've been using since moving in, but that will need to sit all winter so fruit and veg scraps will have to go in the general rubbish bin. Maybe that's why, back in March I went mad and bought a new book and I said I'd tell you if it was useful. So................

......I've hardly looked at it!! until writing this and I fished it off the shelf for a closer look. I'll try again and let you know if it was a useful purchase. (and the cover is meant to look mucky!)

 

In 2019, I wrote about reducing plastic HERE . Looking back at that post I can see that not having a cat has reduced my waste. But that's a drastic way to cut waste.

 

I printed off the chart  to fill in for Zero Waste Week. The heading says......... Item, Why am I throwing it away, Improvement, Where will it go.

I might do it just out of interest but won't worry too much about the stuff that goes in the grey (for incineration) bin.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

 

 

 

 

A Week into September

Blimey, what a gloomy week it's been here in Suffolk. Dull, dull, dull as Craig Revel-Horwood says on Strictly, which BTW,  starts on the 18th - good news indeed.

What have I been up to this week? ......... Apart, that is, from watching as much of the Paralympics as possible. There was Nana duty one day and then the dentist the next. That was the last of my 5 appointments ....................thank goodness. He told me I had coped with it all very well! 

On Thursday a man came to fill the chip in the windscreen before it got any bigger. It's been there since before March when it passed the MOT, so it was about time I got around to doing something about it. It cost me nothing as it was covered in my insurance.

 

A text message arrived inviting me to book the annual flu jab later this month. Might as well go and get it done. I'm afraid I don't go in for the conspiracy theories that warn us about vaccinations etc saying that it's just a way of controlling the people. Someone said at the beginning of the pandemic that it was  a plan to reduce the world population....I answered that it would take more than a few million deaths to make a difference to the world population as it is now. I even heard that Covid vaccinations included a microchip to track us...........really? They don't need to do that......we're already tracked by our mobile phones or online presence.

Anyway, that's getting too close to politics so I'll shut up. 

The small sampler I  started earlier in the summer is finished and put into a frame at last. It's been added to my "art wall". There's still room for a few more small bits if I come across something I like at a boot sale or charity shop.

     I've finished this library book below and agree with the plaudits on the cover. The thought of the Queen investigating a murder is ridiculous but somehow after reading this it seems entirely plausible!

Don't bother reading it if you want something serious - because, just like Richard Osman's first crime book, - you have to forget proper police procedure. Also just like The Thursday Murder Club this is the first of a series.

Yesterday I finally got some more soil shifted from the bag out the front around to the new vegetable beds, there's still plenty of time until spring to finish, but the bag sits there shouting at me every time I go out the front of the house!                                                         

This week I'm grateful for

• Having a day with Eldest Granddaughter before she started school, now I'll see her less often.
• More Paralympics to enjoy on TV
• Spotting a Painted Lady butterfly on the white Buddleia. First I've seen among all the Red Admirals, Peacocks and Cabbage White
  
• The forecast for a bit of warmth on a couple of days next week

It will be a quiet weekend here I think, need to get the breadmaker on, the ironing done and maybe some scones made.

 Have a good weekend, I shall be back Monday

Sue

September Country Days

 Thank you to everyone for some lovely comments and memories about Ladybird books. Sorry I didn't get round to replying. I was doing some Nana duty which involved a lot of driving and playing shops with the new cash register - which was a huge hit - especially the microphone bit. Certainly worth the 50p!

Luckily I'd already prepared today's post for the 1st September.....................

There are lots of poems titled 'September'. I thought it amusing that some see September as Brown.......

 SEPTEMBER

Now everyday the bracken browner grows,

Even the purple stars

Of clematis,that shone about the bars,

Grow browner; and the little autumn rose

Dons, for her rosy gown,

Sad weeds of brown.

 

Now falls the eve; and ere the morning sun,

Many a flower her sweet life will have lost,

Slain by the bitter frost,

Who slays the butterflies also, one by one,

The tiny beasts

That go about their business and their feasts.

                         Mary Coleridge ( 1861-1907)

And others see September as Golden...........

 

SEPTEMBER

Golden in the garden,
Golden in the glen,
Golden, golden, golden
September's here again!
Golden in the tree tops,
Golden in the sky—
Golden, golden, golden
September's going by!

                                                         

                                                                   Annette Wynne (writing between 1919 and 1922)

Both of these little poems are classed as children's poetry. I think that just means they are shorter and get their point across without waffle!

Fair on the first of September, fair for the whole month

 

 The 1st of the month marks the start of meteorological autumn, astronomically Autumn doesn't begin until Mabon or the  Autumn Equinox on the 22nd....................... So you choose.

 The word autumn comes from Latin autumnus and it's use dates back to the C14.  Both words..... Autumn and Fall...... were used in this country until the C18. Then we stopped using Fall while other parts of the world didn't use the word Autumn at all. 

The Anglo-Saxons called September Gerstmonarth meaning  'barley month'.

Below is a lovely colourful page from my little book mentioned last month HERE

 

It is said that the three days 20th, 21st and 22nd rule the weather for the next 3 months

(seems a bit unlikely!)

There are so many weather sayings for September........ many of them connected to St Michael's Day on the 29th. 

 

As many days old as the moon is on Michaelmas Day, so many floods s

hall we have after. 

 

If St. Michael brings many acorns Christmas will cover the fields with snow.

(also unlikely nowadays) 

 

 

As I'm now a bit short of ideas for blog posts - it's probably best to take a few days off rather than waffle on about nothing.

So back in a day or 3

Sue

 

 

 

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