Radio Interview- #1bin1year

Radio interview to promote #ZeroWasteWeek campaign and explain our own personal #1bin1year challenge. Click here for the interview (Spanish)

(English) We spoke to Ander Zabala about the "Zero Waste Week" campaign in the UK. He works as a recycling manager for the London Borough of Hackney. Ambassador of the Zero Waste Week tells us how he works to raise awareness in the community in which he lives for the need to reduce the consumption of packaging, increase awareness of zero waste shops to buy food without packaging and to look out for creative alternatives to minimise waste.

Becoming a Zero Waste Week 2020 Ambassador

This year I am one of the #ZeroWasteWeek ambassadors, it runs from 7-11 September. What it used to be an English campaign has spread to all parts of the world to become an international campaign to raise awareness on preserving resources, reducing consumption, minimising waste/recycling and empowering people and organisations to shift to a circular economy. I can't yet announce the theme of this year, but I know you will all love it...

How did I become an ambassador?

It all started in 1990, when I was 10 years old, I lived in Bilbao, Basque Country, and my brother came from university one weekend to tell me he could take our paper waste to be recycled in his university. I was a little nerdy, member of local green youth clubs and Greenpeace Spain, so his 'announcement' made me so happy. From that day, I hoarded and rescued all the paper from our family flat under my bed, not the best fire safety measure, but you get to learn.

2020 me to the left, and 1985 me to the right!

Fast forward to 2018, where I had been working in the recycling sector for two decades, and an email or tweet or Instagram post about Zero Waste Week showed up in my phone. I went through our rubbish at home (2 adults, 2 dogs and 1 cat) and decided to challenge myself to reduce it to ZERO. We were already good at recycling, but I had ignored the zero waste mindset, as "it just got recycled, so it is fine". I opened our waste bin for two weeks, I found a lot of plastic and multi fused materials packaging in there, with the odd tea bag . I spent a week going hardcore in changing our shopping habits, and went down to hardly any waste left, it could fit on the palm of my hand.

One weeks worth of waste in August 2018

I didn't stop after a week, I was a bit hooked to generating little to no waste, so I carried on and challenged myself and my partner to fill our waste wheelie bin (120 litre capacity) only once in 2019, this is where the #1bin1year started. Remember I told you I was a young nerd, well I carried on being an adult nerd and I weighed all our waste and recycling at the end of the month for the entire year and uploaded it onto a spreadsheet. Who doesn't love graphs of their waste?

I will be posting tips, but I know between us , we can get #ZeroWasteWeek 2020 to be the biggest year, please share your tips and use the hashtag! Visit the Zero Waste Week official page for more.

Documenting our waste for 2019

My Loop-Tesco, reusable shopping online, experience

I first heard of Loop last year, when we were doing our #1bin1year zero waste challenge. I was excited to have this in the UK. But in the end I found refillable and reusable local shops, as the big supermarkets didn’t offer zero waste options. Then, Loop UK launched in July 2020, and I signed up to it.

How does it work?

1. Log in to Loopstore.co.uk, add products to basket;

2. A deposit is paid on each piece of packaging (between 20p and £5) and the Loop Tote (£10);

3. Order before 2pm for next day delivery (Free delivery until September);

4. DPD courier email you a time slot, receive order;

5. Open Tote bag, either decant contents into your own containers or use theirs. Keep all containers and Tote bag until next delivery;

6. Order again and give back your empty containers and Tote and receive a new one, or schedule a pick up and receive the deposit back.

What was my experience?

• Order online: The website was fine, it worked, and it is clear how much you pay per product and deposit. One small thing, the images for the products take about 2 seconds to load, in my phone and different browsers in the laptop. It’s noticeable when browsing between pages. Some products are discounted, labelled as ”Too Good to Waste”.

• Delivery: On time, no time slot option, one given by DPD by email. on delivery day.

• Unboxing: I ordered 5 items, and the Tote bag isn't small, it was more than half empty. If you order more items it makes sense to have this size, but it seems too big when ordering a relatively low number of products. I suspect they will encourage customers to order more products per delivery. When folded it takes less space, but you will need to find a place to put it before next pickup. The idea is that in the not long distant future we replace our recycling bin for a reusable packaging 'bin', but at the moment you need space for both, your recycling and the reusable containers. I didn’t receive the Porridge Oats, I wasn’t charged for it, but I didn’t notice. They send you an email order when you pay, and then another email on delivery day. I wasn’t made aware that they didn’t include it. I had also ordered a discounted price labelled as ‘Too Good To Waste’, but I was then charged the full price for it. The glass containers come in polystyrene wrapping and the containers come with a small amount of plastic film to seal it. No instructions on what to do with this ‘waste’.

• Cost: Some products are more expensive than Tesco’s recyclable product equivalents. Others are similar in price. It all comes down to what type of products you tend to buy, eg £20 for liquid hand soap or £6 for each hand soap bar. If you buy white label products this isn't for you. I paid a total of £28.40 for 5 products, £13.90 for deposits and £20 for the products with a 20% introductory offer of £5.70. See image below for my bill.

Positives

Super easy to use

Clear how much you pay for the deposits

Sturdy reusable containers

First reusable online shopping from a supermarket

Clear instructions on how it works

Lower environmental impact when packaging is reused after 4 times

Negatives

Some products are 100% more expensive than the recycling equivalent in Tesco (not all)

Online product image loading lag

Not a full range of products (yet)

Water in reusable containers available at £3.80 for 0.5 litre, (is this even needed?)

Polystyrene wrapping for glass containers (to be reused or disposed by customer?)

Not obvious when a product is not available after ordering

No time slot delivery option

Is this for me?

At this point, no. But when they add more products (Bulldog moisturiser!) that I can’t buy locally, I would definitely revisit it. However, I have access to refillable and reusable products literally 3 minutes walk from our home, but the rest of the UK does not have this option, and I can see a market for this. Overall, I am genuinely excited to see it grow and for supermarkets and product makers to learn from this trial and bring a true circular economy mainstream. To make this go big, we will also need support from government legislation which will incentivize manufacturers and packaging producers, a carbon tax for example?