How was your summer? I hope it was a good one! We had a good time in between rain showers! We stayed in the country visiting friends and relatives and spent a week in an elderly (i.e. basic, functional and cheap) static caravan in Cornwall. 

Some of the highlights of the summer included:

Meeting up with the lovely Emma of the Mommy Emu blog at the Eden Project, which my kids remember only as dinosaur land! I was struck by this WEEE man which was made up of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment we will each throw away in our lifetime.

Seeing the rather terrifying Bournemouth Air Show, which was on the day after the horrific events at Shoreham – I send out my condolences to anyone who lost someone that day. I watched the show with a mixture of awe, disapproval (do the Red Arrows really need to blow out all that rather colourful smoke) and fear. I couldn’t tear my eyes away though!

Going crab fishing – don’t worry we put them all back in and no crabs were harmed! It was great to see how many crabs were there – we pulled out around 40 crabs in a couple of hours, which I’m hoping indicates a healthy crab population!

Coming home to some seriously delicious tomatoes and figs growing in our garden, which had been watered by all that rain while we were away!

The bath full of cucumbers and courgettes (read more here) which looked so promising at the beginning of the summer didn’t produce anything while we were away, but we have a few courgettes coming through now and a butternut squash. 

I have to admit that we did not have a very zero waste holiday. There were no recycling or food waste facilities in the place we stayed with the static caravan. Standards slipped and I was a bit horrified at the whole bag of rubbish we had produced by the end of the week!

This week is Zero Waste Week and it is time to get back on track! I have an exciting Zero Waste Week event I am helping to organise tomorrow in my local community centre, where there will be a food, clothes, toys, books and DVD swap, a mural being made out of junk and I will be doing a Rubbish talk (the talk will be Zero Waste themed – hopefully it won’t actually be rubbish)! 

I also made a pledge for Zero Waste Week (read more here) to swap some of my reusables for longer lasting ones. My main problems at the moment are food containers – think lunch boxes and containers I can put in the freezer. The plastic ones only last so long and then they have to be chucked in the bin, plus I would rather go plastic free if I can! If you have any good tips and suggestions for me please let me know and look out for my upcoming blog post on the subject!

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