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Win on Waste Sessions in June 2025

10 of our sessions are up and running this month – details below and on the linked pages.

As previously advised, the plastic lunchbox/bottle programme has now sadly closed, so we are unable to take this waste any longer.

Win on Waste Sessions in May 2025

All of our 11 sessions are up and running this month – details below and on the linked pages.

As previously advised, the dental waste programme has now been closed, and this has now been joined by the programme collecting coffee and tea waste. The coffee waste can now be widely recycled in supermarket soft plastic collections.

Chatting with Little Green Prom Dress

We thought we’d chat to different groups in our area who are promoting different ways of reducing waste and the rubbish we send to landfill.  First up Little Green Prom Dress Wimborne.

How did you get interested in the problem of prom dresses?

When my daughter was thinking of going to prom I was horrified to discover just how much money some prom dresses would cost and along with the other expenses of tickets etc. it made me realise that this was just going to be unaffordable for many people.  Then the realisation that a lot of these dresses were being worn once and then hung in the back of a wardrobe for years.  In 2020 I decided to buy no new clothes for a year (and basically just kept going!) so I have a lot of practice buying secondhand so it was relatively easy to help my daughter find a secondhand prom dress to wear.

We bought her dress online and the only problem with that is you can’t try on easily so I thought it would be great to have a local option where people could borrow dresses and I wanted to make it super affordable so that everyone can afford a great prom experience.

How does Little Green Prom Dress work?

Basically I started out buying some secondhand dresses (spoiler if you look just after prom season has finished you can get some real bargains) but also I asked for donations and people locally have been so generous. So now I have around 70 dresses from a size 2 -20 that people can borrow for a hire fee of £5 plus a £15 deposit.

The dresses are available all year but in the run up to prom season I start running try on sessions which are often held at the Fair Ground Shop in the Corn Market in Wimborne  –  Fair Ground and Wimborne War on Waste have been super helpful for me to get going.

How can people borrow a dress from you?

All the dresses are on the facebook page – I’m working on better photos but this is all being done on a shoestring!  If people are interested they can come along to try one on at one of our sessions or message me and we can make some alternative arrangements.  I sometimes take dresses along to local schools as well.

Where else can people look for prom dresses and accessories?

There are lots of options – I quite often see some lovely dresses in local charity shops at this time of year and I think Julia’s House in Creekmoor have had a good selection previously.  Alternatively look online secondhand outlets – such as Thrift, Vinted or Depop are good places to look.  I would recommend trying not to be really focused on a specific style and start looking early as it may take a few items to find what you want.

What to do if you have a dress you no longer need?

I’d like to say donate it to me and must admit I find it hard to say no but I’m really struggling with space now so I am trying to be more selective in what I can take – generally smaller or larger sizes are what I look at.

Also if you’ve spent a lot of money on it then you might want to try and recoup some of that – I’d try and sell it on – you could try FB marketplace, or second hand sites like Vinted, Depop or Ebay. Fun fact – it’s actually really sustainable to sell your secondhand stuff – you know it’s going to someone who really wants it.

Remember sometimes it’s tempting to hang on to things just in case – but be realistic is this dress ever going to be worn again – the older it is the more difficult it can be to sell – also a lot girls generally start looking around February/March so this might be a good time to list something for sale.

Are you doing something to reduce waste, recycling or promote a circular economy in Dorset – email us we’d love to chat and share your story.

Win on Waste Sessions in April 2025

Due to the Easter weekend, our Corfe Mullen and Southbourne sessions will NOT be running in April, but the remainder are unaffected – details below and on the linked pages.

As previously advised, the dental waste programme has now been closed, and this has now been joined by the programme collecting coffee and tea waste. The coffee waste can now be widely recycled in supermarket soft plastic collections.

A Successful Fortnight for Win on Waste!

Poole-based environmental charity, Win on Waste, is celebrating after success in two local awards programmes over the past two weeks.

Marion Burton (Trustee) and Stacey Woods (Business Manager) accept the Green/Eco Business Award at the Wimborne Business Awards.

On 20th March, Win on Waste volunteers in Wimborne were awarded Gold in the ‘Green/Eco’ category of the Wimborne Business Awards and this was followed by the whole team being named winners of the ‘Green’ category at the CAN (Community Action Network) Voluntary Service Awards on 27th March.

Stacey Woods, Business Manager at Win on Waste said ‘These awards are a testament to the hard work of our volunteers across East Dorset’. She continued, ‘As a volunteer-led organisations, we rely on the commitment of our volunteers, plus their knowledge and expertise – we could not do the work we do without them – so to see them rewarded locally is fantastic!’.

Stacey Woods (Business Manager), Marion Burton (Trustee), Linda Bunting (Recycling Ambassador), Richard Burton (Trustee) and Harriet Sephton (Trustee) accept the Green CAN Voluntary Service Award.

Based in Poole, but working across 11 areas of East Dorset, Win on Waste provides community-based waste collection sessions, where local people can bring a range of hard-to-recycle waste. This is then sorted and diverted towards good causes who can use these items for their fundraising or projects.

Last year, Win on Waste welcomed over 4000 local households to 124 sessions, and kept 2.5 tonnes of common household waste out of general waste and recycling systems.

Sessions are ongoing in 11 locations across East Dorset, including in Southbourne, Wimborne and Corfe Mullen. Full information on sessions and the items collected can be found at www.winonwaste.org

It’s Food Waste Action Week

It’s Food Waste Action Week

Where to start, first of why does it matter – so many stats so little time but here a few of my favourites ..

  • The UK throws away around 9.5 million tonnes of food waste every year
  • The UK’s total food waste could feed roughly 30 million people a year
  • The consumable food we waste costs the UK about £19 billion
  • Households are responsible for 70% of the UK’s food waste, with each person in a household wasting around 70kg annually.
  • If UK households avoided wasting food for just one day, it would have the same environmental benefit as planting 500,000 trees.  (Are you serious reduced food waste by just one day has that big an impact!!)*

It’s pretty clear that reducing your food waste is one really easy way of reducing your environmental impact and saving yourself money. 

There’s lots of really good advice about how to reduce your food waste, but it never is quite as easy as it seems  – I mean none of us (I hope) ever buy food knowing we aren’t going to use it but life happens – that reduced pack of spinach seemed like such a good deal (mental note to self use – spinach in fridge**), an unexpected event or working late means no time to cook.

So my first tip would be to do an audit (sounds dull right well that’s life you have to do some dull stuff) – keep a track of everything you put in your food waste bin (or rubbish if you don’t have a food waste bin), keep a piece of paper and a pen handy and write it down.  This will tell you two things – firstly how much is actually going in there and secondly what sort of thing.  Is it meals that you’ve made too much of, is it bread that’s gone mouldy or potatoes (apparently bread and potatoes are the most thrown away thing).  Once you know what it is you know where to start.

My second tip would be to think about storage, I am guilty of getting back from the shops and stuffing everything into the fridge or cupboard without necessarily thinking about it.  Could that loaf of bread go straight in the freezer, should that pack of yogurts go to the back so that the oldest ones get used first.  Potatoes need a cool dark space – not next to onions apparently (which is annoying cos I keep my potatoes and onions in the same place).  I have a container in my fridge which I put the stuff that needs using up first or you could have a shelf – if you have forgetful people in your household – label it ‘USE FIRST’ simple but surprisingly effective.

Do you have a freezer? If so you have an amazing food waste prevention system right there – I’m not going to tell you what to freeze (lets face it I’m the sort of person who puts stuff in their freezer without a label and says I’ll remember what is!)  but you can get a comprehensive list at  Love Food Hate Waste  or check out The Full Freezer for a how to freeze stuff so you can use it easily and also some amazing tips on how to defrost and organize your freezer (which I fully admit I started but didn’t finish but it was still great) Link to the The Full Freezer.

Then there’s also understanding labels – use by, best before – basically use by dates are about safety and best before dates are about quality more info at Food Standards Agency Best before and use-by dates | Food Standards Agency there’s even a video with a little jaunty tune.

After that it’s about making things work for you, take leftovers for example, in my house my husband will eat pretty much anything, so any leftovers will be eaten by him for lunch the next day (to the extent I have put away label anything I don’t want him to use – I also have to hide nuts and dried fruit from him but that’s another issue!) But I know lots of people aren’t so keen and yes you can make something new from them (my mum’s potato cakes are a reason to have leftover mashed potato) but if that’s not your thing maybe try not to have leftovers in the first place – think about why, portion size is a great thing get to know how much you and/or your family eat. I’ve made recipes that say serve 4 but in reality it could serve a family of 4 for a week (I exaggerate but you know what I mean).  I always measure things like pasta and rice and be realistic.

Making a list before you go shopping is a no brainer for me, even though yes I regularly forget to take the list with me and yes I regularly buy extra things that aren’t on the list (hello bag of reduced spinach), sometimes I’ve even been known to write really useful things on the list like ‘dinner’.  It does though give me a starting point and makes me stop and think so I know how many meals I need to buy for, do we really need bread etc. rather than picking stuff up randomly (which can save you money as well).

Meal planning – I used to be a great meal planner with small children I would plan a week’s worth of meals do one big shop – job done.  Now I admit I struggle to plan more than 2 or 3 days ahead and to take this week as an example so far we’ve had pasta with random vegetables and rice with random vegetables – when I’m asked what’s for dinner on Friday it is (nearly) always pie (it rhymes – pie day) and quite often it is ‘leftover vegetables I found in the fridge pie’.  Fortunately I have mainly trained my family (my son’s not always convinced!) to eat my sometimes random collection of ingredients on a plate that I call dinner.  If that is not you and you have a more complicated life than mine you might prefer to plan, or at least think about ways you can keep ingredients ready to throw together without waste (PS The Full Freezer method is great for that)

Would be great to hear your favourite food saving tips.

Love Julia (your friendly eco geek)

*Food Waste Statistics for 2025 – Waste Direct UK

** don’t worry the reduced bag of spinach got used up in a random veg and macaroni cheese and there were only a few leaves that had gone a bit slimy!

Win on Waste Sessions in March 2025

We’re back in 11 areas of Dorset in March, with the details below and on the linked pages.

As previously advised, the dental waste programme has now been closed, and this has now been joined by the programme collecting coffee and tea waste. The coffee waste can now be widely recycled in supermarket soft plastic collections.

Going Greener At Work (first in a new series of guest blogs)

We can spend a lot of our time at work and sometimes it can seem not the easiest place to make ‘greener’ but there are some easy quick wins that can help. Have a quick look at our ideas and have a go at one or two.

Emails – I think we are all a bit more conscious of this but just in case only print if you really need to.  I found recently I needed to keep a record of some email responses so I screenshot each one and saved them in one document so I have a paper(less) trail if needed, (make sure you include the time/date.)

While we are talking about emails though, how many do you have in your inbox?  Deleting all those old emails is a good thing.  Firstly it will make you feel good, it will make it easier to find the actual important stuff and it is estimated that over 350 billion emails will be sent in this year and this could equate to .03% of the world’s carbon footprint*.  Will your emails make a massive difference maybe not but if everyone in your organisation does it well that’s different.

One last thing about emails – attachments, do you need to attach or can you send a link instead and definitely delete those emails with massive documents attached when you’ve finished with them.

Oh and really the very last thing about emails – do you need to send it to absolutely everyone and the cat – pruning that mailing list is great and whilst you’re there also unsubscribing from any of those newsletters you never read.

Can I just say one last thing about emails – thanks but not too many thank you emails – no I mean I know it’s hard but if you are just responding with a thanks maybe try not too, although yeah I know it seems a bit rude.

Ok I’m done no more about emails I promise.

Paper – anyone who’s as old as me remembers that we were told that computers would mean a paperless office and most people know this hasn’t really happened (yet!).  There is still loads of paper around, so a real simple win is a paper recycling bin if you don’t already have one.  Also though make sure you use both sides of the paper – handy for making notes in meetings and yes you can make notes on an ipad or phone but who can doodle on that and some meetings drawing doodles is what keeps me awake – or is that just me!  Also you could suggest that when you buy paper (and other office supplies) you get recycled products.

Coffee breaks – tricky one as I know every set up is slightly different, you may have a kitchen or not, a fridge or not, so you’ll just have to take what works.  Firstly actual cups/water bottles – whatever your set up – whether you go across the road or brew up in the office no more disposal cups (I am sorry but there is just not really a good disposable option), you could invest in a fancy travel cup, you could repurpose an old jar and make a sleeve for it – or you could just use a normal mug (gasp!!).  If your office needs mugs for visitors etc take yourself to the nearest charity shop – trust me you’ll get plenty of choice of ask people to bring old spare mugs from home they don’t need anymore.  Maybe you have a fancy coffee machine, then there are some recycling schemes for those coffee pods (check out Podback for example) and a lot of coffee bags can be recycled in soft plastic recycling bins at a lot of supermarket.  You may well have someone in your office who would be happy to take used coffee grounds for their garden (teabags can also be composted but can be a bit more of a problem as most have plastic in).  Depending on who’s responsible for keeping any office kitchen area clean – you could think about eco friendly cleaning/washing up products as well.

Plants – a bit of actual green can really help reduce stress, improve air pollution (according to some) and just generally make you feel good, so a few potted plants can really improve your environment – just make sure someone is tasked with keeping an eye them (PS you can also get some really tough plants that can cope with a bit of neglect – don’t ask me how I know – I just do ok!)

Files – electronic and paper, both of these types of documents accumulate and yes if you work in a solicitors then probably you do need to keep everything and that’s fine – but I expect a lot of us do keep a lot of stuff we just don’t really need to – particularly electronically cos it’s so easy to bung them in a folder and they aren’t actually taking up room – but you remember they do still have a cost (not to mention making it more difficult to find the important stuff).  So every now and then have a little purge – I like to display files by size so I try and get rid of the biggest ones first (short time – big impact). 

With paper files I’m torn between filing as I go along (less messy) and saving up a big stack and doing it all in one go – the advantage with the latter is quite often you’ll find half of the stuff you kept you don’t need any more.  Otherwise I tend to work on the basis if there’s no more room in the file have a look and chuck stuff out before just reaching for a new ring binder (unless you do work in an environment where you are the one keeping all the important things).

Switching Off -we all need to switch off from time to time and that includes lights, other devices – remember to switch off and/or unplug when things aren’t needed – leaving things on standby rather than switching off can be wasting a lot of electricity (which is also costing money).  Whilst your thinking about lights try making the most of natural light where you can.

Donate or recycle old equipment – sometimes it seems like equipment, particularly IT equipment is constantly in need of updating but don’t just bin it – there are lots of way to make use of it – Win On Waste takes old mobile phones or check out DonateIT who take a range of IT equipment.  For non electrical items consider offering them on local recycling or kindness groups on facebook or try Dorset Reclaim for some furniture items.

*The Carbon Cost of an Email: Update! – The Carbon Literacy Project

Guest blog by Julia Carter, self confessed eco-geek.

Win on Waste Sessions in February 2025

We’re back in ten areas of Dorset in February, with the details below and on the linked pages.

In disappointing news, we have been informed that the dental waste programme (toothbrushes, interdental brushes, floss) will be closing in February, so we cannot accept any dental waste after 8th February. Many thanks for your understanding.

Win on Waste Sessions in January 2025

It hardly seems possible that we are heading into the New Year, but in January we will be back in 11 areas of East Dorset – our full roster of sessions!

See the posters below for what each session collects

  • 4th January
  • Christchurch, Druitt Hall – 10.00-11.30
  • Hamworthy Library – 10.00-12.30
  • Merley, Lantern Church Hub – 10.15-11.30
  • 11th January
  • Ashley Road, Makkah Foods –10.30-12.00
  • Lytchett Matravers, The Scout Hut – 10.00-11.30
  • Wimborne, Methodist Church Hall – 10.30-12.00
  • 18th January
  • Corfe Mullen, St Nicholas’ Church – 10.30-11.30
  • Poole, The Spire – 10.30-12.00
  • Southbourne, Immanuel Church – 10.30-11.30
  • 25th January
  • Kinson Library – 10.30-11.30
  • Oakdale Library – 10.30-11.30