Hello, my name is Marilyn Weston, and I live in Alresford. My interest in sustainability and becoming greener really started because of my daughter Rhia. She was always into sustainability and that increased post university. She has been my biggest influence: she made me feel guilty for not doing my bit!
A lot of the changes that we have made at home have focused on recycling. I’m really pleased that our general waste bin has very little in it at collection time as we recycle so much. It helps to get organised. We have a space in the garage where we can segregate our waste, and I have found out where items can go for recycling. Most things can be recycled locally, my mantra is recycle, repurpose, reuse, you will be amazed at what you can do.
Any waste produced locally is burnt and the energy is sold back to the grid. What is left is sifted to extract any metal for recycling and the residue goes into roadmaking. However, with the recent reports of the level of carbon emissions resulting from incineration, we all need to be more mindful of the number of plastic trays etc. that we put into our household waste
My experience is that once you get in the groove with it, recycling is easier and less time consuming than you might think. We recycle a lot of metal items including the caps from beer bottles and tea light cases. I’m also much more aware of packaging and what can be done with it and also how to avoid it in the first place.
There is a link here to how we eat as well. I try and source food locally wherever possible and use small producers to reduce food miles and packaging. It can be a bit more expensive, but I have the time to make nutritious meals from scratch, so I feel that I am doing us good as well as supporting the local community, even when I worked, I was never a big fan of convenience foods.
One of my tips is about using water. It takes ages for our hot water to come through so we catch everything in buckets so that we can use it on the garden or to flush the loo. We even stand in a big container when we shower to catch the water and reuse it! We have metered water, and I am sure we have reduced our usage by focusing on how and when we use water. We have a boiling water tap instead of a kettle and I think that is also more energy efficient. We have also changed our utility provider to a different company who were more sustainable.
We also have double glazing throughout the house and add a layer of clothing rather than turn up the thermostat: every little helps
When I travel, I use public transport whenever I can or walk if it is local: it’s a win/win!
My advice would be to do one small thing to get started and it will build from there. We all have our part to play in this and the New Leaf website has lots of useful information to help all of us.