It’s hard to tell when the ‘zero waste’ bug hit the UK, but the earliest blog that I can find on the subject is the Cambridge Zero Waste Challenge. Some Cambridge city councillors volunteered to put themselves and their families through the rigorous exercise of seeing just how little they could put into their black bins during the month of June 2007 and then told the world about it on a blog.

Then back in January this year the St Edmundsbury Borough Council declared that 10 to 17 March 2008 was going to be ‘zero waste week’ in the borough. This led to a brave local family in Bury St Edmunds putting themselves out there for public scrutiny by blogging about how they reduced the amount of waste that they were sending to landfill.

The Rubbish Diet

Almost Mrs Average signed up to St Edmundsbury’s challenge publicly on her blog The Rubbish Diet and proceeded to document the slimming of her family’s waste up to ‘zero waste week’ when all they threw away was one sticking plaster. Her blog inspired others to put their households on The Rubbish Diet.

My Zero Waste

The Strauss family began to slim their waste in May 2008. They started their blog after being inspired by The Rubbish Diet. They are also using the platform of blogging to chart their progress and reach out to like-minded people as they embark on their mission of reducing what they send to landfill week on week, until they reach their goal of zero waste. They will be undertaking a ‘zero waste week’ during the first week in September, and have roped in 25+ sponsors who will be providing eco-friendly prizes to their blog readers, so why not pay their blog a visit and offer your support.

Rachelle Strauss (or Mrs Green as she’s known at My Zero Waste) emailed us recently to let us know some exciting news about their ‘zero waste’ project. Their local council (Gloucestershire) are so impressed with the idea of ‘zero waste week’ that they are also going to be holding a borough wide ‘zero waste week’ at the beginning of 2009.

Being a completely brilliant idea, there’s no doubt that ‘zero waste’ weeks and ‘zero waste’ lifestyles will continue to spring up and flourish and be blogged about, so if you know about the blogs of any active ‘zero wasters’, please add them in the comments.

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What started out as the Sierra Club’s solution to giving useful and entertaining answers to their magazine reader’s questions ended up being published earlier as a guidebook on how to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Hey Mr. Green column writer Bob Schildgen discovered after a couple of years of writing his column in the Sierra magazine that he had inadvertently written enough to make up a book. And that’s just what his collection of letters has become.

Eco-agony uncle Bob’s irreverent wit and humour makes the book an easy read and puts the fun back into finding everyday solutions to the environmental problems that we face. Being a Sierra Club publication, it is written with a US slant, especially as far as the recommendation of certain brands, but on the whole most of the advice offered is good all round counsel.

Between the letters to Bob, and his replies to them are articles on related subjects, including checklists, recipes and tips for living a greener life. The advice given is back up by extensive notes at the back of the book, so you can be sure that the solutions here are well researched.

This book will certainly help making to live a greener life just that little bit more lighthearted, and you’d be hard pressed to find a question about green living that Bob hasn’t answered.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]