大象传媒

A professional writer with an MA in Library Information Management from Loughborough University, Karen Cannard writes for a range of publications.

Her blog therubbishdiet.co.uk, developed in early 2008, started out as a diary of personal progress in a mission to cut down her household waste.

The rubbish diet blog

It is now a forum for inspiring others and harnessing an enthusiasm for changing life for the greener good.

Inspired by St Edmundsbury Borough Council's 2008 Zero Waste Week, Karen decided to re-address the amount of waste she and her family produced, and work towards slimming her 50 litre bin.

"It started because I was turning 40 last year and I had all of these new year's resolutions, and I never usually make resolutions, but I felt as I was turning 40 I needed to do a bit of catching up," explained Karen.

"One of those resolutions was to reduce waste because we had so much that we threw away even though we recycled quite a lot.

"I knew we had to do something to cut down on these three great big bags of rubbish that we were throwing away every two weeks, so I found out about St Edmundsbury's Zero Waste Week and set up a blog."

Karen had already been writing a column called 21st Century Mummy in the Suffolk based blog the Moreton Hall Directory, and her January column listed all of her 20 new resolutions.

"That was really what prompted interest from a friend who said, take on the challenge and see where you go.

"The blog started off as a diary charting the challenges we had as a family.

"We had the challenge of not throwing away food waste and I would diarise the challenges and people would come up with ideas.

Karen Cannard (courtesy of St Edmundsbury BC)

"The more people that got to hear about it the more ideas began to come in and we found that the best way to tackle our waste was to look at our bin, make a list of the things that we throw away and gradually knock them off the list as new things come forward."

Karen felt that every diet needed a toolkit and developed a waste sorting system for her kitchen which included a main bin and three other bins.

These were a small bin for kitchen waste, a medium one for glass and a large one for recyclable materials.

Through the use of her blog Karen began to seek advice on how to address her household waste and was grateful for any tips.

"The first thing I did involved being contacted by another blogger called 'Beansprouts' who is very green and very knowledgeable, and I offered to post some tips from 'Beansprouts' on my blog.

"That was a really good step because she actually sent through some great tips that I had never heard of before, even controversial things like re-useable sanitary towels which you can wash.

"When you think about the amount of sanitary products that go to landfill each year that was quite a major step for me and it took me quite a while to overcome my feelings about using such products but now I would never go back."

Sanitary products for sale

Environmental forum Big Green Issues estimates that the average woman uses around 17,000 items of disposable sanitary protection in her lifetime, creating thousands of tons of waste going to landfill or into the sewerage system.

Karen doesn't consider herself to be an activist and she is the first person to admit that some of the changes she made during the course of her initial challenge were a little difficult.

"As I've been writing I've actually woken up and realised where people that you would traditionally think of as being green have almost been custodians of the planet so far but there is a big role for everyday people who can make small changes.

"Starting with the bin, I found, is a really good way of moving into the environmentally friendly camp."

In 2007 the government's waste body WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), reported that homes across Britain are wasting a total of 3.3m tonnes of food a year.

The problems surrounding the disposal of household waste affect many of us, and Karen and her fellow bloggers were no exception.

"The challenge did give me a real opportunity to rethink the responsibility for things that we do throw away and take it to as many levels as we could.

"Food waste used to make up around 50% of our waste and I was so guilty because I never used to see any value in food.

Another unfinished meal goes to waste

"I would walk around the supermarket and buy things like pineapples and melons and yes they'd be great at the time and then something else would come up and gradually I would see those pieces of fruit decay and rot and then end up in the compost bin.

"I never thought about the money that we were wasting as a result and, for goodness sake, it would have been cheaper to buy compost at the garden centre.

"It woke me up to how much we were wasting as a family and that was the hardest part to tackle."

Karen changed her food waste situation by looking at the way she shopped and focused more on using vegetables such as potatoes which have a longer shelf life.

Doing this has not only slimmed her bin, but saved her family an average of 拢20 per week.

Since completing the initial challenge in association with St Edmundsbury Borough Council, Karen and her family have remained committed to reducing waste and have even introduced some chickens to the garden to produce eggs and help with the food waste.

"It was really interesting because even though during the week's challenge all we threw away was a plaster we've now kept a consistent level of just one carrier bag per month.

"It's just like any other diet which you need to fit around your lifestyle because everything I've done hasn't been inconvenient, it's just a case of thinking that just because we do things this way it doesn't mean it's the right way.

"For example I've been encouraged to take containers to the shops so that rather than buying pre-packaged meats you can actually take the containers along and they will put the products in there for you."

In April 2009, just over a year after the launch of the blog its popularity is very much increasing, with a band of regular visitors contributing to Karen's continued quest to be greener.

The blog has gained widespread interest from local and national media and Karen has听 been featured on 大象传媒 Radio Suffolk, 大象传媒 Radio 4's Woman's Hour and 大象传媒 News.

Karen recording for 大象传媒 Radio 4

The success has given Karen a new perspective on a range of green issues and introduced her to a number of ideas from all over the world.

"I came runner-up in the Media Guardian Innovation awards in the independent media category which was great in itself because here I am, a housewife who loves writing, being recognised in this big media landscape.

"The blog has connected me with a wider audience and an international group of people who are all looking at the same issue but just from different angles.

"I'm now in touch with people in Italy, Canada and even Slovenia.

"I've got a regular group of around 20 people which come and join in with the blog and across the year I've had around 50,000 unique visitors and people keep coming back.

"The beauty of the blog and the way it's being charted is that I've kept a record that shows every step of the challenge that I went through initially and when I look at the stats it's really quite lovely to see people looking through those links."

The shared online community expressed by the bloggers helps to inspire Karen's writing, and raise a few smiles.

"My latest thing has been about Earth Day and I noticed a crisp company in the USA had announced that by next year's Earth Day they will have produced compostable crisp packaging.

"This is amazing because at the moment all crisp packets have to go to landfill, unless you have incineration facilities.

Crisp packets

"I noticed that one cheeky monkey had commented on the blog that one way I could cope with the crisp packaging was to shrink them in the oven."

Karen hopes to build on the success of her first year on the rubbish diet and inspire others to not only become more green, but to try out blogging as a possible source of ideas.

"I do have a book which is 80 percent written so I just need to spend another couple of months working on that and then I'll be looking to publishers.

"The site isn't accessible to everybody and people do spend time in the bookstores so听 wouldn't it be great if someone is looking to reduce their rubbish and looks at it and says I could do that too?"