What’s it mean to be green?

Here, she explains why. She will chart her progress in future columns IF YOU read my Saturday column, you'll know I have a bit of an environment thing going on.

I've mentioned global warming a fair few times, but talking about greenhouse gasses only produces more hot air. It is easy to pontificate about the state of the planet; harder to do anything about it.

And what can we, as individuals, do anyway?

Even my environmentalist friends haven't wanted to go and see An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's film about global warming. Telling people that we have ten years - that's right, ten years - to avert global catastrophe makes you want to hide under the duvet and stay there.

But we can make a difference and the film shows how, if we all make changes, we can halt and even reverse the deadly build-up of carbon emissions. For that reason, I've decided to set myself a series of eco-challenges - real challenges that will impact on how my family lives. I plan to chart our successes - and, as importantly, our failures - along the way.

My challenges will mean:

• Getting to grips with alternative methods of transport
• Altering the lazy way I shop and what we eat
• Making ours an energy-efficient home
• Reducing the waste we throw out
• Cutting our water use
• Reassessing how and where we take our holidays - and even how we celebrate Christmas.

If I am to succeed, it will also mean converting my often-reluctant husband and daughter, who don't see why they can't leave everything on standby and won't go near the compost bin. We are also on a tight budget, so any changes have to make financial sense, too.

It won't be easy. I'm rubbish at DIY, I don't do gardening, I'm far too fond of shopping and I haven't ridden a bike for 20 years. As far as saving the planet goes, I'm hardly Superwoman.

Realistically, I'm more Supermarket Woman: an ordinary person, doing normal stuff, trying to live my life and juggle work and a family who relies on quick consumer fixes like most of us do.

Can I change my ways and live a greener life? I'm going to give it my best shot. And I'd love you, if you don't already do these things, to give it a go with me.

Over the next year or so, I plan to devote some of my regular Saturday columns in Life & Times to updating you about how I am getting on.

Email me with your own experiences and I'll try to include your comments in future columns, or in my blog (http://blog.klockworks.co.uk).

The composting challenge

ONE eco-challenge I can claim to have made real progress in is composting. I was contacted by York Rotters after I wrote a column on recycling a year ago. As a result, I agreed to do a composting trial with them.

Initially, I had some bad experiences, but I persevered, with help from the Rotters, and I now have a model compost bin. It made a significant impact on how much rubbish we threw away. But I was still concerned about all the cooked food, dairy products and leftover meat and fish that went in with the regular rubbish. These can't be composted because of the smells and the vermin they would attract.

That's now changed, thanks to the Kitchen Composters or Bokashis I have been trialling for York Rotters. They are squat lidded bins (you need two) which, together with a special compost activator, effectively neutralise odours and make it possible to safely compost all food scraps and leftovers, prepared foods, stale bread and even meat bones.

I have to admit, I was sceptical at first. Bunging in a chicken carcass, some festering Feta, toast crusts, soggy cereal, uneaten spaghetti and mashed potato, as well as the usual vegetable peelings and apple cores that I'd collected in my kitchen caddy, I didn't see how this lot could not whiff after a fortnight.

To this I added two scoops of Bokashi bran as instructed, sprinkling it over the entire surface so that all the food was covered. The bran is the magic ingredient. Bokashi is a Japanese term meaning "fermented organic matter", but the bran looks just like regular bran except that it contains friendly bacteria called EM or effective micro-organisms that aid fermentation.

It's important to squash the material down as far as it will go, because the system is anaerobic - the opposite of normal composting - and you need to get as much air out as possible. Once you've done that, the lid goes on and you can leave it in the kitchen or wherever is convenient. A full bin needs to stand for a further two weeks to allow fermentation, during which time you can start filling your second bucket.

You also need to drain off excess liquid produced by using the tap at the bottom. This can be collected in an old jug or plastic milk carton. I made the mistake of leaving it a bit too long - about 10 days - before collecting it, with the result that I drained off half a litre of straw-coloured liquid that smelled like - well, not to put too fine a point on it, baby sick. If you do it more regularly it doesn't pong, it just smells a bit cheesy.

This liquid is highly nutritious and can be used in a variety of ways, either diluted as plant food or down drains and toilets to prevent algae build up and control odours. I was dubious that pouring it down the loo would actually improve things, but the kitchen sink is definitely less whiffy and my house plants are lovin' it.

After the kitchen waste had fermented for a fortnight, I opened the Bokashi bucket with trepidation. There was white mould on top, which is normal, but no maggots or nasty surprises. Moreover, it really didn't smell. Amazing.

You can dispose of the contents in your regular garden composter, or even bury it in the garden if you like digging. I put it into our Dalek compost bin (a 330-litre Compost Converter), forking it in and covering each couple of forkfuls with drier material. It came out in a sort of wodge, which needed breaking up and spreading around a bit. There is no point in being squeamish about this; com-posting has its yucky side, you just have to get used to it.

The benefits have been two-fold. My Compost Converter is now working extra-efficiently due to the EM bacteria, which carry on the fermenting process in your bin. Not only has it dramatically speeded up the composting rate but there are no flies, either. This is a major triumph: last October it was a stinky, fly-blown mess!

Best of all, by composting all of our kitchen waste, as well as our regular recycling, we've reduced our rubbish to one (often only half-full) bin bag a week.

A year on from the beginning of my composting experiment, my bin is producing sweet-smelling, crumbly compost, just like it should. I'm inordinately, ridiculously proud, but I think the Bokashis should take the credit.

Meanwhile, I've just started trialling a wormery, which is another method of composting kitchen waste. I'll keep you posted

URBAN COMPOSTING

IF YOU want to start composting your kitchen waste, but haven't got a garden, it's still possible.

Kitchen scraps and even cardboard can be easily composted in back yards or even flats using small compost bins, wormeries and bokashi bins.

York Rotters will be running composting demonstrations for city dwellers at Rowntree Park (beneath the caf) from 10am to 2pm tomorrow and Saturday, and at the St Nicholas Fields Environment Centre on Wednesday October 11 and Saturday October 14.

The drop-in events will offer advice on how to buy and set up composting equipment and have discounted items on sale, including Bokashi bins at cost price, as well as the EM bran, worms, biodegradable cornstarch bags and kitchen caddies.

The first ten residents to turn up will receive a free tub of worms - and if that's not enough of an incentive, the sessions will include, on Saturday, a fun worm-charming competition! Registration by 10.30am, worm-charming begins at 11am.

City of York Council's waste management team is also looking at rolling out a trial of the Bokashi system next spring, once the budgets for the next financial year have been finalised. The council is still operating its special offer until the end of the year that allows York and North Yorkshire residents to buy a 330-litre compost bin for £6, including delivery.

Composting versus landfill

In the UK almost a third of our domestic waste could be composted, but instead it's ending up in landfill sites. The organic matter rots and gives off vast quantities of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that's about 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide at creating global warming.

City of York Council's main priority for 2006-2009 is to decrease the tonnage of biodegradable waste and recyclable products going into landfill.

The fortnightly garden waste collections introduced last autumn have made an impact, reducing the amount going to landfill by over 300 tonnes, but home composting levels in the period 2003-2006 dropped by eight per cent. Currently, only 32 per cent of York households compost at home.

Information: www.york.gov.uk/waste has information on composting and a link to the compost bin offer. Or phone the order hotline, 0870 849 4866. Kitchen Composters are available for £35 from www.evengreener.com/Scripts/default.asp (search for Bokashi). York Rotters can be contacted at York Environment Centre, Bull Lane, YO10 3EN tel 01904 412861, or log on to www.stnicksfields.org.uk or email the Rotters on: rotters@stnickfields.org.uk To see how you can make a difference, go to www.climatecrisis.net