A SOMERTON woman has gone 10 months without putting out her black wheelie bin.

Pilates teacher Gill Hampson, 62, avoided sending rubbish to landfill through extensive recycling and "thoughtful" shopping.

The mum-of-three used careful purchases from local stores to reduce non-recyclable waste and recycled everything she could - between January 7 and October 27.

She was "gutted" not to complete a full 12 months, but Gill and husband Len, 66, will try for a whole year in 2023.

She said: "I lived in Germany back in the 90s and at the time they were absolutely light years ahead of us on recycling.

"When I moved back to the UK, I was quite disappointed to find that there was no plastic recycling, only glass paper banks and no roadside collection.

"Somerset Waste Partnership though is really good and so at the end of last year when soft plastic recycling started to be accepted, I got quite excited about that.

"I thought to myself, 'If I'm really good and recycle everything I can recycle, I wonder how long I could go without putting out my bin'.

"I set myself a target of a year, but we recently installed a new shed, and so eventually the thought of sitting in a huge queue for the tip broke me and made me put out the bin.

"Ten months isn't bad though. I don't really think I've achieved much for the planet, but it's all about watching your consumption."

Gill's trick to keeping her waste so low was trying to use local stores selling products in paper bags and taking advantage of local delivery services.

She added: "I think it's difficult to get that kind of thinking across to people about saving waste without sounding like a sanctimonious old bat, and I'm very aware of that.

"I think it's definitely more do-able for some people than for others.

"But I think people sometimes feel it's always someone else's problem.

"The bins experiment really made me think when I went shopping, 'How am I going to get rid of that?'

''My generation has had the best of everything, so if I don't need to make all this waste, why not take advantage of the easy alternative?

"We're very lucky here in Somerton that we have really good local shops.

''We've got a fruit and veg shop that sells everything in brown paper bags, and a great local butcher too.

"Other ways to cut down on your waste are to get a regular milk delivery, it's not available everywhere but we are lucky here."