Action 086: Avoid Waste

Next week is National Zero Waste Week and this year the theme is 'Cooking for Victory' with a focus on food waste. Each year we throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink, which costs the average UK family £50 a month.

Loads more info on our friend, Mrs Green's site here:

http://myzerowaste.com/zero-waste-week/

Action 139: Recycle your charger

We've teamed up with Sainsbury's to collect and recycle all the unused chargers lurking in cupboards and under beds across the country.

You can take yours into your local store and deposit in the collection box until 28 August. Sainsbury's will still be collecting them throughout September too - just take them up to customer services.

More info on our website here, plus a tally to keep track of how many have been found:

http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/recycleyourcharger/

Introducing Jacques le Trash

Last week we unleashed a huge 12 meter long, 3 metre high, pink and purple dragon on picnicers at Victoria Embankment.

Jacques le Trash, is our brand new rubbish guzzling recycling dragon and he was there to help lunchers recycle their rubbish.

Paper plates, plastic bottles, tin cans and cigarette butts were collected from passersby and “fed” to Jacques, who apparently has a penchant for all things trashy. All rubbish was later recycled.

A team of mustachioed waiters accompanied the dragon, asking the crowd for donations to feed the beast and all donors marked with a dragon’s bitemark stamped onto their skin.

Kids, office workers, builders and even a traffic warden came over to gawp.

Jacques le Trash was on a sneak preview before his appearance at Bestival next month, where he will be helping festival goers recycle their rubbish. He will be collecting paper, cans and plastic bottles in different sections of his belly, plus cigarette butts will be stuffed up his bum.

Read his exclusive interview on the Bestival blog here.

We Are What We Do in South Africa

Introducing the Letsema Centre in South Africa:

They've been doing some brilliant work, to engage people in the We Are What We Do actions and we're really pleased to have them on board. You can read more about their activities here.

Action 132: Share a piece of your history

Thanks again to our new best buds at BBC click for the mention.

Back in March they featured our site, and at the weekend, our brand new venture with Google got some air time... click here to watch the clip. We start at 20 mins and 25 seconds.

And get involved here: www.historypin.com

What do old and young people look like?

Young people picture old people with sticks, and beards and think old people find all children too noisy.

As part of our new campaign to get people from different generations hanging out we have been running some events in schools exploring and challenging stereotypical views of young and old people.

First stop was Shacklewell school and Hampton Community College.

Our education team started by asking children to draw what they thought old people were like in order to reveal existing preconceptions.

Charlie drew a picture of a granny saying 'I want grandchildren' and 'I miss Nigeria'






















Orlando's picture of a grandpa shows him saying 'I must catch the next bus.'















7 year old Remi's drawing (top) showed an old man saying 'I wish I was 17 again'

Nicole Van Den Eijnde, Head of Education at We Are What We Do said: "These drawing are an insight into the fact that even very young children are aware of the cultural divide between generations and the loneliness that faces many older people."
When asked to draw what they think old people thought of young people, there were drawings of young people carrying knives, guns and graffiti spray cans.
There were a lot of pictures of young people speaking in slang and text speak that older people wouldn't understand including this one by Shefali.

















The most common perception of young people was that they were noisy: There were lots of bleeping mobile phones, noisy ipods, and even a very 80s ghetto blaster. Ryanne drew this picture:















The groups then went on to a range of activities to break down barriers to intergenerational relationships and explore our ten actions that we're suggesting to get young and old people spending more time together and getting to know each other better.

You can read Hampton Community College's blog about the day here.

Article about our Newham Walk Your Dad campaign

There's just been an article about us in the glamorous Stratford and Newham Recorder about our campaign in Newham to get children and adults more fit and healthy and spending more time with their families.

We've got a few events on the go, based around Action 102: Walk your Dad (which we've extended to the succinctly titled "Walk your Dad, Gran, Lazy Aunty Jan or anyone else you find lying around on the sofa").

Read the article here.