Recycling is an important and central issue here at Fonte de Baixo and we take it very seriously.  One of the first questions we ask people to consider comes from our common everyday language:

"Throw Away the Rubbish"

The first question we need to ask ourselves is where is "away", exactly? Often this means "I'm not really interested as long as it's out of my sight and smell˜ Away, is always somewhere, and the somewhere is becoming more and more clogged up, like arteries become on a poor fat rich diet.

The second question is what do we mean by ˜rubbish"? According to the Oxford English Dictionary ˜rubbish" is: a mass noun]

  • material that is considered unimportant or valueless:

When it comes to recycling, we are big on talk and very small on action. We recycle the easy bits, about 30 per cent plastics, 80 per cent paper, and 60 per cent metal, but the greater part of our waste still goes into landfill. The environment loses out at every stage of production: fossil fuels are used, harmful emissions are created, and after an increasingly short life (planned and psychological obsolesce) most products are just dumped. The first step is to reduce the amount of waste in the first place and choose products that have a longer life span and choose products with less packaging. Watch ˜The Story of Stuff' and think about your own life style choices. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+story+of+stuff+full+version&aq=1&oq=The+Story+of+Stuff         

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Reducing waste

We think very carefully about what we buy, use and consume and have a criteria list we use – we ask our guests to also think about this too, not only during their stay with us but after they leave too. 95_190_lousa_market.jpg

  • We buy only what we need and try where possible to source it within a 150 kilometre radius of Fonte de Baixo
  • We veto throwaway items and opt for items that can be used repeatedly
  • We reduce the amount of packaging by buying local produce where we need to, bread from the local baker, fresh vegetables and fruit from famer’s markets – meaning food that does not need to be wrapped and packed for international transport
  • We try to reuse containers for herbs, jams and juices and buy products that are packaged in containers that can be reused.
  • We avoid plastic bags and always use our own jute bags or willow baskets for shopping
  • We write or talk to suppliers about using move recycled and biodegradable packaging.
  • We also cut back on packaging and global transport by growing our own food and always eating in season
  • All of our heating and cooking is supplied by burning wood which we harvest from our own and neighbours forest.
  • We are always on the lookout for salvage from skips and waste dumps – for example we collected over sixty green-glass bottles from a waste bin which have washed and sterilised and now use for making elderflower cordial
  • Any cardboard or paper is either used for mulching or is shredded and incorporated into our compost bins. We also have a paper compactor and when we find bundles of discarded newspaper we make them into paper bricks.
  • During the winter months we recycle cards and coloured paper into new paper products such as greetings card by mashing the old paper and then pressing between two hard wooden blocks to dry.
  • Old clothes are used for cleaning, shredded and incorporated into the compost or felted to make slipper, bags, etc. They can also be used for lagging pipes and tanks to either keep the frost out or keep the tanks cool.
  • We use all our kitchen waste either to feed our goats or add to the compost heaps.
  • All jars and bottles are reused for food storage but in the future we are looking into crushing the glass and using the ground glass in heat sinks in our poly-tunnels to keep the air warm during the colder months.
  • We have also used wine bottles in our walls to allow light through and add soft lighting.

95_191_kitchen-caddy.gif At Fonte de Baixo we have a central collecting point where have large bins for plastic, tins, glass and paper which we sort and then decide if we can use any of the waste again. The balance we take to recycling bins in Panedo. 

In the kitchen we collect onion and garlic skins for making gardening brews, the egg shells are collected to be dried and ground down to add the grit bath for the chicken. The balance of our kitchen waste is either fed to the chickens, goats, our neighbour's pigs or on our compost heap.

 

When you stay with us, please follow the recycling process and help us reduce our footprint.