{news} Green actvist trying to live with just on bin of rubbish for a whole year

[Green Party-CT]

A GREEN Party campaigner has set himself the challenge of producing just one grey wheelie bin of rubbish – in a whole year.
  Environmental activist Rob White and girlfriend Sam Wade will attempt to limit their household waste from October 2007 to October 2008 to just one bin. 
  The couple will continue to use their red recycling wheelie bins as usual.
       
  Mr White, 28, of Mandela Court in East Reading, will start his challenge on Monday – a year on from the introduction of  fortnightly collections.
  Over the next 12 months the Evening Post will follow his attempts to reduce his waste and see how he gets along.
  He will write a monthly column called ‘White’s Trash’ detailing his trials and tribulations. 
  We will monitor the level of his success on the Evening Post binometer.
  With the row over bin collections still rumbling on Mr White said media attention always seemed to be on recycling, rather than reducing the amount of waste generated in the first place. 
  He said: “There just isn’t enough focus on waste reduction. To this end I’d like to set myself a target of producing just one bin of waste over the entire year – one year, one bin.
  “There is always a lot of coverage given to the topic of waste in the newspapers, but the coverage is mainly focused on recycling, the two weekly collections and the associated problems. 
  "You can reduce waste to a minimum by eliminating excess packaging and plastic bags for example.
  “Reuse items or pass them on to someone else to reuse rather than throwing them away. Recycle items which aren’t reusable into new items.”
  He believes a lot of electricity and energy is wasted by recycling waste which need not have been created.
  Mr White has come up with a number of ways in which he and Miss Wade will reduce waste. He is an avid user of the Freecycle website that allows users to share unwanted items.
  Mr White is also considering unwrapping goods in the supermarket before he buys them. 
  “This way the waste packaging is the supermarket’s problem,” he said.
  He has an allotment and grows a lot of his fruit and veg there, which will also reduce the amount of waste he generates. 
  But he admitted using one bin a year was not going to be easy. 
  He added: “I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
  First printed in: Reading Evening Post 
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(6 comments. Last comment 27/09/2007 at 17:55) 
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