How it all began

As someone who spends a lot of time in the company of the lovely Almost Mrs Average both socially and work-wise, it has been impossible for me not to be swept along in the wake of the Rubbish Diet - her attempt to reduce the rubbish she sends to landfill to zero.

Both she and I made basically the same new year's resolutions for 2008, although one of hers was to reduce her rubbish - which wasn't on my list. Then when our council set people in the borough a challenge to work towards a "Zero Waste Week" to take place in March 2008, she took things further and started to work towards the goal in earnest, charting her progress by keeping a blog about it.

If you think I have been a role model for the perfect supportive friend all along, let me tell you that my main pleasure when she started off was doing stuff like purposely leaving empty plastic coke bottles in her car, and even, on one occasion, slipping a non-recyclable empty crisp packet in to her eco-friendly shopping bag when she wasn't looking.

But being with Almost Mrs A. so much, and witnessing what she was doing first hand, I was actually impressed right from the beginning. Which is why I agreed to let her come round and have a look at our own household's rubbish, and work me out an easy-to-implement rubbish diet plan that would suit me and and my family. Here is a post about me and my rubbish on her blog. And here's one with the rubbish reduction plan she did for me.

And a couple of things from her Rubbish Diet campaign so far have made the most impression on me, have been these:

- Almost Mrs Average's visit to a local landfill site. The post on this and photos are quite shocking, especially the one of the lorry tipping out its horrible cargo into the countryside. Almost Mrs A. said that leaving her own bag of rubbish here, which she took along with her, felt like littering. I could see exactly what she meant. The whole lot is like littering.

- Being with Almost Mrs A when she was buying flowers at the market. She asked for no sellotape on the paper which wrapped them, but the man was on auto-pilot and put it on anyway. "Why didn't you want it?" I asked as we walked away. She replied "Because there's no way you can dispose of it. No-where you can send it except landfill."

Well, I am now just over two weeks into my own rubbish diet plan and will be posting updates and bits and pieces along the way.