We love Too Good To Waste

We caught celebrity chef Thomasina Miers on BBC 1 Breakfast TV yesterday. She's owner of the Wahaca Mexican restaurants in London and has thrown her stylish eateries behind the Too Good To Waste campaign.

The campaign was launched by the Sustainable Restaurant Association towards the end of last year and is designed to make diners feel more comfortable about asking for doggy bags or boxes and encourage an increasing number of restaurants to offer them. Celebrity backers of the idea include Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Giles Coren the restaurant critic for The Times, and food writer and broadcaster Matthew Fort.

The doggy bag concept comes from the United States and most of us probably associate it with huge American portions that are just too much to eat in one sitting. But the fact is that for every meal eaten in a UK restaurant, nearly half a kilo of food is wasted – through preparation, spoilage and what’s left behind on the plate. We’re throwing out 600,000 tonnes of food waste from restaurants every year.

Here at Make it and Mend it we launched our Thinking Outside the Bin campaign last week. It's all about the joys of upcycling things that would otherwise end up in the waste bin. You can find out more about our campaign here.

We're all for reducing the amount of waste that finds its way into restaurant bins. How many time have you left part of a delicious meal on a restaurant plate and then suffered an attack of the munchies later? Today's doggy bag is tonight's snack or tomorrow's packed lunch.

BBC presenters this morning were a bit concerned about re-heating things, but as all Make it and Menders know, you just need to follow some common sense rules when making tasty food from leftovers

But perhaps we could come up with a better term than doggy bag or box? What do you think?

You can find out more about the scheme at Too Good to Waste. Sadly their interactive Where to dine map only covers London.

Anne Caborn

MIAMI at Kew Gardens

Hilary and the Two Clares escaped from MIAMI Towers on Friday to spend a great day at Kew Gardens, despite the grey skies and the endless rain. We were invited there by the lovely people at START UK to demonstrate how you can make a contribution to sustainability by upcycling instead of buying new stuff all the time. (see more about START UK and the Start@Kew Festival in the post below)

Clare O shared some scary statistics on the amount of perfectly good furniture that ends up in landfill, then Hilary showed how she turned some very shabby old dining chairs into swanky new ones. You can find out how she did it on the MIAMI website.

Here she is with the before and lined up below are the afters - three very different treatments, including a decoupage chair made from old comic books. Each one is explained in more detail on the MIAMI website.

There were some fantastic people at the event, which was a real gathering of movers and shakers in sustainability - and we'll be sharing with you in the future some of the great things they're doing. People like Clay Swift aka The Green Marine, Edible Bustop, and the schoolboys from Savio Salesian College Bootle who make bat or bird boxes - called the BoBBox, as well as the people from Morsbags, Project Dirt,  Carbon Leapfrog, Gustavo Montes De Oca from the Golden Company, my old friend Amy Cooper from the Secret Seed Society  and many more. Lots of them have agreed to write guest posts for us so look out for more on here and our website about the wonderful things they're all doing.

We hope we passed on some inspiration - and we certainly came away with much more! Thanks to Michael, Catherine, Laurena and everyone at Start Uk for a great festival.

Clare F

Recycle Now Christmas Competition

We just got this email from Paul at Recycle Now:

"I'm emailing on behalf of Recycle Now, England's national recycling campaign, to let you know about the competition we've just launched as it may be of interest to you and your readers/users.

The Recycle Now campaign is trying to make people aware of the waste
created at Christmas and remind them that most of it can be recycled.

We've built a stunning one-off 6ft Christmas tree sculpture made from recycled cardboard  and are giving it away in a competition >> Enter here. 

We made the tree in three days using over 200 pieces of rejected cardboard stuck together with water based glue so it can still be recycled. >> See video on making the tree

We also commissioned the artist Michelle Reader to upcycle common household waste like aluminium cans, carrier bags and plastic bottles into beautiful Christmas tree decorations. >> Have a look

We've also illustrated some surprising facts about the amount of waste created at Christmas >> Festive Facts.

We hope you like what you see and will encourage people to enter the competition."
Paul Gill of recycle Now

Amazing, inspiring, recycled houses

You must take a look at this photo collection from the New York Times featuring the houses made by Texas builder, Dan Phillips. His firm, Phoenix Commotion, builds low income housing from entirely recycled materials. Dan builds the homes on donated plots using 80% salvaged materials, including wine bottle corks, old sidings, cattle bones, and shards of glass, mostly saved from refuse or found abandoned at the roadside.

Dan requires the future owner of each home to help with its construction. We love this idea, as not only will they have a huge emotional stake in their home, but helping to create it boosts an individual's sense of pride, purpose, self-esteem and self-efficacy. This can be particularly important for people struggling financially. Dan Phillips says:

"I think mobile homes are a blight on the planet. Attractive, affordable housing is possible and I'm out to prove it."

Please take a look as it is a great source of ideas and inspiration.
>> New York Times photo slideshow

Clare F

Waste Not Want Not

Did you know that according to Waste Watch, the volume of waste we produce in the UK in one day is enough to fill Trafalgar Square up to the top of Nelson's Column? When averaged out over a year this equates to 300 million square metres of land, that's the same as covering the pitch at Manchester United Football Club's ground, 28,450 times .

Or that the UK uses over six billion glass bottles and jars each year? It would take you over three and a half thousand years to sing "Six Billion Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall"! We produce and use 20 times more plastic today than we did in the 1950's! An average person throws away 74kg of organic waste each year, which is the same as 1077 banana skins and 900 million items of clothing are sent to landfill each year.

This is pretty shocking stuff and when you realise that on average, each person in the UK throws away seven times their body weight in rubbish every year. It is quite humbling that we are so wasteful, but what shocks me more is not just the amount we throw away, but the quality of what we throw away. Ok, we have schemes for recycling, but that is about plastics, papers and tins etc. If you want to get rid of larger items, what happens to them? Yes there are schemes out there that will relieve you of your items, but this sort of recycling is centred on somebody else doing the work. If you want something recycled you have to give it to somebody else to take away and deal with. More importantly it seems that a lot of people can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and organise it, a huge amount of perfectly serviceable items are taken to local rubbish tips every day and dumped.

Just think of all that wasted potential sitting on a tip, waiting to simply rot away. So many of these items are perfectly useable, just a little worn and faded or surplus to requirements. This throw away society that we live in means that we think it is acceptable to just dump things that we no longer want and buy something new. And yet all some of these items need is a lick of paint and a little TLC and they could have years of service left in them.

Your local tip is a great place to go bag a bargain. Take a trip and see what you can find. One note of caution though is that some local authorities will allow you to go and buy things from a specially designated site, but others refuse outright on the basis of health and safety, so do double check before you go.

Recycling Nirvana?

We often have heated debates at MIAMI Towers about how far we should take our efforts at sustainable living, as some of us only merit a "Could try harder" on our school report. On the other hand there's Anne, who is a black-belt Ninja recycler, so we decided to get her take on 'Recycling Nirvana' so the rest of us will be clear about where we are falling short!:-

Maybe it’s just me, but when you have a jolly good clear out – dispose of those old toys the kids don’t need any more, tear a hole in the garage clutter, find out what lurks at the back of the spare bedroom wordrobe... don’t you feel an enormous sense of release?

I find it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Cleaning may be therapy but a good clear out is Viagra for the soul.

But, do we deserve to feel that good?

Well the answer is ‘yes’, as long as we don’t approach our recycling willy-nilly:
• We’ve taken the clothes and bric a brac to the charity shop (but kept back several items to be made over and given a new lease of life).
• We've de-nailed some of the best wood from the old garden shed and taken it down to the wood recycling centre (assuming we can't find another use for it at home).
• Our cardboard is flattened and our glass bottles colour-sorted and rinsed (in dirty dishwater).
• We look at everything we might recycle and ask the question – ‘Yes, but is there something better I can do with this?’

Take the picture at the top of the page which shows a fence made from old skis. I find that truly inspiring!

We'll all get a lot better at reducing our recycling if we try to do the following:
• Where we can, we buy loose (not pre-packaged) fruit and veg and use old paper bags we take to the supermarket ourselves, putting them of course into our own carrier bags and not the store's plastic ones.
• The garage still has one or two boxes full of ‘stuff’ but we know what’s there (it’s labelled) and we’ve kept it because we believe we will eventually find a really worthwhile use for it.
• And our recycling bins are ever so tidy. And there’s a lot less recycling in them.

Top tip: Get together with other families in your street and start buying in bulk and then decanting things like flour and oil into your own re-useable containers).

We’ve started a new recycling section in our Make it and Mend it store:

The aim is to group together things that help you get better at recycling, such as containers. Plus some inspiration – including a picture of that ski fence, because I couldn’t resist it.

And we’ve included a great book - Eco Books: Inventive Projects from the Recycling Bin.


>> Visit the new recycling centre in our store

Recycling tip of the week
Spend a little longer on the recycling process. Don’t sort it in a half hour frenzy. Take a little time to consider what you should hold on to and make sure you follow your recycling collectors advice on sortingand cleaning.
Related Links
>> When giving to charity is not really giving
>> A new lexicon for recycling
>> 229,389 tonnes of recycling ends up in landfill
>> Taking inspiration from the 3rd World
>> Our website tips on sorting your recycling

Wanted! - your unwanted building materials

We've been asked to spread the word on this appeal for building materials by the producers of a new TV series

"WE NEED YOUR HELP!!
We’re making a brand new TV series for Discovery Real Time called ‘Tommy’s Fix Your House For Free’. Presented by Tommy Walsh and featuring reclamation expert Liam Collins, the idea behind the series is to help five families complete a building project at their home by providing all of the materials for the job. The key thing is that the materials they supply are either recycled, reclaimed or would otherwise have been thrown away.
It might be perfectly useable bricks that have been thrown in a skip or timber that is left over from another job. Perhaps a builders’ merchant has some end of line stock or bags of cement that have been damaged in transit, or maybe a tile factory experimented with a new design of tile, made a batch of 1000 and then decided not to market them.
Whatever the reason, Tommy and Liam are on hand to collect these materials and make sure they’re put to good use. If you or your company are based in London or the South East, have any such surplus materials and would be keen to be involved in the series we’d be very happy to film Tommy or Liam coming and collecting them."
Please Contact : Hayden King
Tel: 0207 7136868
Email : hayden@flametv.co.uk

Old beds into bowers

Make it and Mend its Hilary Bruffell (our resident psychologist and all-round MIAMI superstar) showed us her homemade garden furniture last week, shared her top tips and really inspired us.

Hilary made "Titania's Bower' a garden daybed from her son's childhood bed that had lain neglected in the shed for years. She tells us how she wove her magic with a bit of hard work and a lot of imagination. Hilary loves sewing so the daybed has been adorned with homemade cusions and she is growing trailing plants over it to create a bower effect. At night it is lit up with tea lights. Truly magical!

Not content with that, she went on to make a fabulous Moroccan sofa for the patio out of an old pine bed her mother was throwing out.

It looked a bit like this before
By using the foot of the bed sawn in half and refashioned to make arms, Hilary created this sumptuous and inviting Morrocan sofa. She has piled it with more of her homemade cushions (made from remnant fabrics). The result is perfect for lazy days in the sunshine. Mine's a Sauvignon Blanc please.....


These gardeb seats are great testiments to the fact that living creatively and sustainably can also be done stylishly. Hilary explains how easy it was to do these projects and gives her top tips to wannabe make and menders on the Make it and Mend it website.
She also explains how to make cushion covers
Have you managed to salvage old furniture and give it a new lease of life? Please tell us about it.

10 Ideas for Inspired Recycling in the Home

1. Make compost - it's really easy. It's a source of great (free!) nutrients for your garden and you may be able to get a free or subsidised cost composting bin from your local authority. For easy steps to make compost, how to make a bin, and a handy table to show what to use and how to blend ingredients see our step by step guide to composting

2. Use toilet roll tubes or rolled newspapers as pots to grow seeds. We have an easy guide to show you how

3. Make fused plastic out of old plastic shopping bags. Threadbanger has a brilliant video showing how to fuse plastic as well as video guides to making things from it such as laptop bags or shopping bags.

4. Use empty plastic soda or water bottles to protect plants from frost

5. Make yarn and knit a bag with old plastic shopping bags

6. Use old tin foil to clean your silver jewellery. This is not only a great way to recycle but it also saves you a fortune on expensive silver cleaners and gives you fabulous looking jewellery or sparkling cutlery. We show you how here.

7. Use old ties to make bags, chair seats, iPod covers, quilts. One of our readers wrote to tell us she had attacked her husband's huge (now unused) tie collection and found that ties contain a huge amount of (beautiful) silk fabric when you pick them apart. She made a collection of ipod and cellphone covers. Since then we have come across people who make handbags, cushions, skirts and shirts and even upholster chairs. Tell us if you have some interesting uses for unloved ties.

8. Wrap parcels and gifts in newspapers instead of brown paper or giftwrap. This can look really impactful and effective.

9. Use eggshells to feed plants and keep slugs and snails at bay

10. Hold a Swishing party to swap unwanted clothes with your friends. "Swishing" is a great way to combine kindness to the planet with thriftiness and have good time into the bargain. We have lots of tips to help you make your Swish a success.

Making fused plastic from old plastic carrier bags

Lots of you liked the piece we did recently on knitting bags from old plastic carrier bags. Well here is yet another way to use these bags instead of chucking them in the recycling.

It's making fused plastic - a process that requires only an iron, some plastic bags, a couple of sheets of grease-proof paper and a few minutes. You can use the fused plastic fabric to run up a laptop bag or even an attractive 'permanent' shopping bag. Check out this video from Threadbanger (we love this site) - it shows you how to fuse the plastic and then how to make a laptop bag with the fused plastic, some waste fabric scraps or old plastic carriers (for the padding) and an old sweatshirt (for the lining).See the video

Make it and Mend it - a call to revolution!

For too long we have been accustomed to buying stuff and then when it breaks or gets a bit worn, chucking it away and getting something new.

This isn't just wasteful, it is also expensive and these days as we are tightening our belts, it makes sense to start making do and mending.

This blog and our growing website will chronicle the movement to make do and mend: helping you remodel that garment, shift that stain, or mend that light fitting. We will highlight inspirational examples, share tips and ideas and pass on useful information for living more creatively and sustainably.

Please check out http://www.makeitandmendit.com and send us your own tips and suggestions too.

The blog will focus on news and stories and examples of people who are living Make it and Mend it (we call it MIAMI). It is meant to be a source of inspiration on how to recycle, reuse, adapt, repair, make and refashion.

We heard an inspiring story this week, which shows it's not just women that are making and mending. This young man has shown that what Granny knows can turn into a lucrative business and set you on the road to becoming an entrepreneur.

Fraser Doherty, 19, dropped out of university to devote more time to his fledgling jam-making business. This started out as a kitchen table enterprise and grew from the passion Fraser developed for jam-making after being taught at age 14 by his grandmother. He got up to 1000 jars a week in his parents' kitchen before moving the business into a factory. He is now selling half a million jars a year, under the brand name Superjam and the business is growing fast.

Recognising what he owes to his grandmother, Fraser has launched a charity, "Superjam Tea Parties" to get old people socialising over tea (and jam!) at community centres across the country.

We really like this idea of acknowledging the contribution older people have made to society and can still make. One of our missions at Make it and Mend it is to tap into the vast knowledge and skill base of older people and find ways to bring this experience to the forefront. As part of this Jam Boy (as he is known) has supported the elderly folks in a nationwide Knitathon to knit squares to amke blankets for for Indian orphans. To find out more about Fraser and his Super Jam parties have a look at his SuperJam Blog.

Do you know of any inspirational role models? Do you have ideas on how to share the knowledge and skills of older people? Are you in touch with a local community group that is doing this?
Contact us below or on info@makeitandmendit.com
See also our website post on Knitting a square to help a child
Meet the MIAMI team