The Book of Rubbish Ideas

The straight talkin woman - Kim Perry

Kim Perry is a hard-working, single mum, with 3 active children who really keep her on her toes. She works as a care assistant in her local community, which presents her with many physical demands during the working day, yet she still finds the time and energy to keep her house ticking over, with an eco-friendly emphasis on sustainable living and minimal rubbish production.

At the end of the day, Kim’s the one who has to put the rubbish out!

So how does she do it?

Here are Kim’s straight talking, top tips to surviving life and motherhood, whilst leaning towards the green:

• Rubbish! Put in clear and simple terms everybody, ‘Don’t buy so much of it’! It’s rather stating the obvious, I know, but sometimes it’s the things right in front of your eyes that are hardest to see. Take the packed-lunch situation for example and ask yourself whether you really need to buy individually wrapped cheeses for the children’s lunch-boxes? Of course you don’t! Just buy one decent slab of real cheese, cut it into cubes as required and store them in a re-usable tub with their sandwiches. Throw in some fresh fruit and a few tasty raisins that the kids will really enjoy eating and you’re also contributing to their 5-a-day needs too. If you go for reusable containers instead of kitchen film, foil or bags also means they’ll come home with an empty box, full of zero waste!

• Get cooking! Trust me, I’m no Nigella but I do love to cook. Buying fresh ingredients to make a meal from scratch from our local producers is actually a real pleasure to do. It can also be an entertaining half-day out taking the kids along to the farmers markets, where there are always plenty of freebies for them to experiment with and try before you buy. Cooking also fulfils my “Look kids, I made that” happy quota and by keeping us all fed this way, I generate far less packaging. If you have a big enough freezer, try to make twice as much of some dishes like spaghetti bolognese, chilli or even soups, then freeze the rest in recycled ice cream tubs. This will automatically halve the packaging of the ingredients you are using. For instance, buy a 1kg pack of minced lamb/beef/pork instead of two 500g packs. It also chops the preparation time in half too and reduces the overall price of the finished dish.

• School Newsletters! These used to arrive weekly in our house and generally consisted of two A4 pieces of paper, quite often only printed on a single side, multiplied by three kids! Thankfully, our schools have now sorted out an email opt-in system, so we can receive the newsletter via our computer’s in-box, which makes a considerable saving on all that paper. Just think for a moment, how much paper per school, per child, per week, per year it would save if every school adopted it. If your school doesn’t run a paper free scheme, take a look at the ‘Letter for Change’ on page 41 of The Book of Rubbish Ideas for details of how to implement one and get the other parents on board with a petition if necessary! It is not difficult to set up and the savings to the school, the environment and your rubbish bin, will be phenomenal.

• A Reading Matter! I’ve always adored books and I loved reading to my children when they were young. Over the first few years of their lives, we collected a vast amount of children’s books. But of course, as they get older they grow out of them and I’ve donated many to the charity shops, or sold them on at boot sales. Now, I take my kids to the library once a month. We all still love reading, but no longer clutter up the house with books and I’m not lumbered with the problem of their disposal once they’ve been read and enjoyed.

• Give it Back! Did you know that you are perfectly entitled to leave unnecessary packaging in the shop? I like to use a particular brand of hand lotion, which comes in a cardboard box with an inner cardboard holder to keep it still, then it has a large, multi-lingual leaflet inside and it’s all wrapped and sealed up in cellophane. I always take the hand lotion out of the packaging after paying for it and ask the shop assistant to dispose of the rubbish for me. And yes, sometimes I do get funny looks but it puts the responsibility of waste disposal back with the retailer. Can you just imagine what would happen if everyone did this? Take a look at the charged up ‘Letter for Change’ on page 57 of The Book of Rubbish Ideas - it’s bound to kick up a fuss and I’m all for it!

• Involve the Children! It’s their planet too you know, as mine regularly remind me! My children are all interested in looking after our planet and are trusty recyclers. They love coming to the bottle banks with me and we have a “smashing” time together. I have involved them at every stage of the process to live more sustainably and they constantly inspire me with their own thoughts of how we could do things even better still. They help me plant seeds in old pots and containers and no matter how old they get, I don’t think they’ll ever lose the thrill of seeing something grow that they’ve planted from seed. Talk to your children, properly engage them in open conversation and ask how they feel about all the rubbish that is produced, about how so much of it is needlessly disposed of in landfill and how it could be improved upon.

• Yoghurt. Most kids love yoghurt, in fact there’s often more shelf space devoted to it in the shops, than for milk! There are so many flavours to choose from all laid out in their shiny, tiny tubs trying to tempt us. If you don’t have local recycling facilities available for these pots, then please consider this. A family with 3 children all eating a pot a day equates to 21 non-biodegradable, plastic yoghurt holders going to landfill each week. That’s 1,092 pots a year, just for one family. The figures nationally are too scary to contemplate. So what’s the alternative? Easy - make your own! It is ridiculously simple and the end product is pure, free from all artificial flavours, colourings, preservatives and other unnecessary nasties. See the ‘Project Box’ on page 56 of The Book of Rubbish Ideas for Kim’s delicious recipe.) Alternatively, buy huge pots of inexpensive plain yoghurt and make them funky yourself! A tablespoon or two of honey or local jam will completely change the colour and taste. You can buy small, resealable circular plastic tubs to pop in the lunch box and you could sneak in some chopped fruit to make it thoroughly exotic!

Kim and her great green kids live in a beautiful little village on the outskirts of Chelmsford in the southeast.