\n But told they needed to prioritise, members of the Build a Greener Swindon Committee opted to look at getting a discount on a zero-waste meal planning app for council staff and to make it easier for residents to put electrical items out for recycling.\n<\/p>\n
\n The council\u2019s Strategic Lead for Sustainability and Climate Change, Edward Jones presented the options to the committee.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said of the Sidekick meal-planning app: \u201cYou choose in what meals you\u2019re going to\u00a0cook, and there are vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and so on options, and it tells you what you need to buy, so there\u2019s no food waste.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s a real problem \u2013 statistics suggest we throw away about a third of what we buy – so for every \u00a3100\u00a0 someone spends, they\u2019re throwing away \u00a333.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Jones said the cost of the app went down the more people signed up \u2013 the minimum was \u00a32 per month \u2013 and staff would pay for it through a salary sacrifice scheme, also making it tax-efficient.\n<\/p>\n
\n Councillor Jane Milner-Barry said she had downloaded it for a month\u2019s free trial and it looks useful.\n<\/p>\n
\n Members were also keen on investigating a scheme where the charity Material Focus\u00a0can put out special collection bins in places like libraries for vapes\u00a0and small electrical items.\n<\/p>\n
\n Chairman, Councillor Neil Hopkins said: \u201cI know I\u2019ve got three or four items in my hall from before Christmas, and it\u2019s a matter of finding the time to go to the Recycling Centre \u2013 so this would help.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n But Green Party \u00a0Councillor Tom Butcher sounded a note of caution: \u201cI think we should do this whether with Material Focus.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of logistics of getting the things to the Recycling Centre and increasing the opportunity for people to recycle items is key.\n<\/p>\n
\n But, he added: \u201cI\u2019d want to see something else to encourage people to make more conscious decisions. We wouldn\u2019t want to encourage\u00a0people to\u00a0buy more and dispose of more.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe mantra is Reduce, Re-use and Recycle, and we don\u2019t want to focus too much on the last of those.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The committee asked Mr Jones and his team to work on the sidekick app \u201cas a quick win\u201d. It said\u00a0work to improve the eco-friendliness of\u00a0supplier packaging should also be progressed\u00a0but as part of the ongoing work for the council\u2019s new sourcing strategy.\n<\/p>\n
\n It said increasing the ease of recycling electrical items would be the next priority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But told they needed to prioritise, members of the Build a Greener Swindon Committee opted to look at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-234411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}