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  BBC News 9 Jul 07
My war on waste
By Alison Trowsdale BBC News

Today it's reduce, reuse, recycle. For earlier generations, make do and mend. Done assiduously, the result is next to no rubbish. With zero waste the goal for many councils, a life-long adherent shares her tips in the first of our week-long look at recycling.

It's been five weeks since the bin men last called at Betsy Reid's house in Waldingfield, Suffolk. It's not because her local council is trialling a radical reduction in service in a drive to cut waste - there's rarely any rubbish to collect.

Today a very modest black bag sits at the end of the drive, much to the 63-year-old's shame. Clearing an elderly relative's house of a lifetime's clutter has left her with more rubbish than usual.

Waste is an anathema to this retired school teacher. What she can't reuse or recycle is rotted down into fertile compost for her flourishing garden.

It's an approach once common in the austere days of rationing after World War II, and is once again gaining in popularity.

The Green Party is, unsurprisingly, a keen advocate of zero waste but it's an approach starting to gain ground among local authorities, as the UK seeks ways to dramatically reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill. Numerous local councils have experimented with "zero waste weeks".

Among them was Bath and North East Somerset Council, which last December invited residents to see if they could produce no "black bag" rubbish for seven days - many volunteers managed to reduce their waste by up to 75%.

Other local authorities are threatening to fine householders whose bins are too full. Since early January, Charnwood Borough Council in Leicestershire has introduced fines of £80 if residents leave bags of rubbish by their bin, as part of its "Zero Waste Strategy".

Consumer society

And zero waste is a key part of the environmental plan for the London 2012 Olympics, during which contractors will be required to avoid sending waste to landfill sites.

Born on a farm in South Africa in 1944, Mrs Reid grew up in a household where little went to waste and developed an early understanding of the damage humans could do to the environment through bad farming practices.

This understanding has turned into a passion for the natural world and an eco-friendly way of life.

"When I see a plastic mushroom container I nearly weep," says Mrs Reid. "What could I use it for? I could use it for lots of things - like plant trays - but I have got enough. Plastic does break down but it doesn't turn back into anything useful for hundreds, possibly thousands of years."

In the house she shares with husband Colin, nothing is thrown away that could be used again.

Waxed inner liners from cereal packets are used to wrap sandwiches. An outgrown jumper, which subsequently became a dog bed, has recently seen a new lease of life as elbow patches on another worn jersey. And she always cuts the tops off toothpaste tubes to get out every last squeeze.

She admits such steps may seem ridiculous, but over the years these will save money and resources.

Helping schools

"The best way of reducing your rubbish and impact on the environment is simply don't consume, but that runs counter to the whole way our society is organised," she says.

Even her husband, a more recent convert to the eco-life, sneaks off to the supermarket from time to time, returning with items such as the aforementioned packaged mushrooms.

There are some products even she can't avoid, such as the now ubiquitous Tetra Pak. She sends these, at her own expense, to a firm in Scotland for recycling.

Rather than add to overflowing landfill sites, the couple have given away coat hangers, shelving and an old cooker on Freecycle, a website which offers unwanted items for free.

When looking for a kitchen table - and reluctant to splash out on a new one with a puppy in the house - they found a "ready-chewed" table on Freecycle that was otherwise heading for the dump.

Grow your own

Ms Reid's burgeoning vegetable plot bears testament not only to her green fingers, but also her expertise as a composter.

Nestling under an old duvet in a tucked-away corner of the garden is one of a number of compost heaps dotted around. A peek under the cover reveals grass clippings, vegetable peelings and old newspaper. A quick stir in another compost bin reveals huge numbers of worms - and a half-rotten leather camera case.

Ms Reid has tried composting most things; she shuns synthetic fabrics for clothes and furnishings, because they don't break down. "I even take in other people's municipal brown bins because I don't see the need to send anything to be specially composted."

In her last job at an independent boarding school where Colin was head teacher, she set up a giant wormery to reduce the food waste produced by 550 hungry pupils into fertile soil.

She's now repeating the project at the village primary school, to teach the young about the cycle of life and hopefully cultivate a love of vegetables at the same time.

And she is continually on the look out for new ways to reduce waste. Keen to compost meat and fish scraps (which can attract vermin), on a recent trip to Amsterdam she came across bokashi, a bran-based product containing micro-organisms which break these down sufficiently to go in a compost bin.

Few things defeat Mrs Reid, apart from plastic bags.

But the few she can't avoid are always reused. With more stores introducing biodegradable carrier bags, these too may soon be destined for her compost bins.
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