The Zero Waster’s Travel Companion, aimed at visitors to a range of featured destinations, is an easy to use reference guide to local activities, shops, and restaurants. The guide recommends where to buy environmentally friendly products, shop without packaging, donate unused items, or shop secondhand, taking the guesswork out of reducing waste while visiting a new place. My home town of Leighton Buzzard features alongside 31 other towns and cities around the world.
The featured shops in Leighton Buzzard include The House of Coffee, Nature’s Harvest, Stratton’s Butchers, Selections Hardware, Ollie Vees, Oliver Adams Bakers and Pecks Farm as well as a variety of local market stalls.
The Zero Waster’s Travel Companion has been produced by the Zero Waste Bloggers Network* and is now available in Kindle and epub format at: http://zerowastebloggersnetwork.com
All proceeds will fund future Zero Waste Blogger’s Network projects to raise environmental awareness and help support the zero waste community.
Why reduce waste?
The extent of food and packaging waste has hit the headlines in recent months thanks to campaigns from TV personalities such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Did you know that a plastic bottle takes an average of 450 years to decompose – think about it, if they’d had plastic bottles in Tudor times, we’d still be storing them somewhere! Today, much of our plastic waste ends up not in recycling plants, or even in landfill sites, but in the sea, where it harms marine animals and can even get into our food as tiny plastic particles are eaten by unsuspecting fish. Plastic is also made from non-renewable fossil fuels. So, rather than focussing on disposal, the zero waste movement focuses on avoiding unnecessary waste by refusing it at source. There are several easy ways to reduce your waste that everyone can do, and which will also save you money:
- Remember to take your own bag to the shop. You’ll save 5p each time you do.
- Buy loose fruit and vegetables (or in paper bags – the market offers this unlike supermarkets.)
- Buy a refillable water bottle and fill it up at a tap rather than buying expensive bottled water.
- Buy a reusable coffee cup or flask to use when you want a take out coffee (some places offer a discount for this), or to save more money, fill it up before you leave the house.
* The Zero Waste Bloggers Network is a nonprofit organization with over 235 members around the world dedicated to promoting zero waste with online and offline strategies. Founded in 2015 by blogger Inge Echterhölter, who co-authored and edited the
Useful websites:
Zero Waste Week http://www.zerowasteweek.co.uk/
The Rubbish Diet http://www.therubbishdiet.org.uk/
Hugh’s War on Waste https://www.rivercottage.net/war-on-waste
Zero Waste Bloggers Network http://zerowastebloggersnetwork.com
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