Waste Group

Contact:
Kristina Staley, 01273 483438, kristina_staley@yahoo.co.uk

Next meeting:
Next meeting 7th March 2008 4pm at the Needlemakers.

The waste group has been busy over the last few months looking at ways of dealing with food waste from businesses in Lewes. We had decided this was something which was not being tackled by other agencies at the moment and thought it was an area where we could raise awareness and make an impact.

The project involves collecting food waste from pubs, restaurants, shops and possibly institutions such as schools and composting it. There is plenty to do in working out the feasibility and best way to make this happen.

As well as wanting to work on some projects to show we're about action and not just words, we will of course be contributing to the TTL Energy Descent Plan. We still have many more practical ideas we would like to pursue given time and energy.

Some of the things we hope to tackle are how we can raise consumer awareness of food waste both at home and in restaurants, takeaways and pubs; getting takeaways to use compostable containers; encouraging the composting of food waste on a household basis.

There are other projects that we discussed at the outset which we would still like to pursue such as what would convince people to use washable nappies and stop using disposable ones; how can we make it easy for businesses in Lewes to recycle their waste; can we extend the types of plastics we can recycle; what we can do with all the waste we produce by making our homes more energy efficient such as what we should do with our old inefficient light bulbs and fridges; checking out what the new private waste collectors are doing with the waste they collect.

OUR VISION

Our vision for Lewes in 20 years time is that we become a zero waste town. We think this means that everything that’s recyclable is recycled (from building waste to yoghurt pots) and everything that’s compostable is composted and that attitudes change so we reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place.

We recognise that there are many steps between where we are now and achieving our vision and we will be working on plans on how to get us there. We’re also aware how much is already being done to tackle waste in the town and there are lots of people with many years of expertise who we can learn from.

Get involved: contact one of the Group contacts on the Groups page