1The Carter family decided to spend one whole year trying to produce almost no rubbish at all.
2Their very first step was a careful audit of everything they normally threw away each week.
3Plastic packaging from the weekly supermarket shop turned out to be the biggest single problem by far.
4They began shopping at a local market where customers fill their own jars and cloth bags.
5All their food scraps went into a compost bin in the garden instead of the general waste.
6The two children gradually learned to repair their broken toys rather than immediately asking for new ones.
7By midsummer, their wheelie bin took a whole month to fill instead of a single week.
8Friends were curious about the experiment, and some even started copying their habits at home.
9The hardest moment of the whole year came at Christmas, with its mountains of shiny wrapping paper.
10In the end they wrapped presents in old newspapers and decorated them with string and dried orange slices.
11At the end of the year, their total non-recyclable household waste fitted inside one small jar.