Monday 3 September 2012

One More Thing…

Which is what Columbo always said as he walked away from the murderer – but it is also the theme for this year’s National Zero Waste Week

zerowasteweek

And before you think your one more thing can’t really make a difference; if every household in the UK recycled ‘one more thing’, the total amount collected for recycling could increase by more than three quarters of a million tonnes.

So what are you going to do? Could you recycle just one more thing in your daily routine? You can choose anything you like such as:

  • Find out what can be recycled at your kerbside and make full use of facilities
  • Check your local recycle banks to see what you can recycle locally
  • Start a compost heap
  • Take home your recyclables instead of using litter bins when out and about
  • Check out the helpful website

We are very fortunate here in the village with the recycling available to us via our regular kerbside refuse collections – glass, cans, some plastics, paper, card, textiles, batteries, garden waste – and I was impressed by the food waste recycling collection available to Mags in Belfast and Liz in Southwark.

Our local Council Waste Site [I don’t think we are allowed to call it The Tip anymore] will recycle all these things

plastic bottles

plastics

tapes and discs

 

 

aluminium foil

food and drink tins and cans

spectacles iconclothes and textiles

shoes

cardboard

paper

glass bottles and jars

garden waste

household batteries

fluorescent tubes

low energy bulbs

tvs and monitors

mobile phones

fridges & freezerssmall electrical appliances

white goods

car batteries

engine oil

whetstone recycles

wood

wood

cooking oilpaint

plasterboardand probably more! and even the non-recyclable hardcore, rubble and flat glass (such as window panes, mirrors, fish tanks) which goes to the Waste Site is sent to landfill sites, where it is used to form a protective cover to prevent landfilled waste blowing away and creating litter.

The Great Loft Sort continues in this house – and I have just found a box of ancient video tapes which can be recycled, rather than just thrown away. I know I have been back from holiday for almost a fortnight, but I am being super diligent about not putting any boxes back up unless I have checked that the contents are worth keeping. There are so many boxes that this is taking rather longer than I had hoped.

5 comments:

  1. I'm having a stage by stage clear out to. Slow and steady wins the race as they say.
    x x x

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  2. You'd be proud of us for all Bill's focused recycling lately! With my room shift, I gave two heaping boxes of books to charity and then we dropped off a working television at the Good Will Collection Center yesterday. We also gave our Jenny an old antique dresser for soon-to-be-born Elizabeth Jane. My friends gave it to me when Jenny was born!
    How do we end up with so much STUFF? Happy loft sorting!

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  3. My "one thing" will be to put a bin for recycling in my husband's office. When you're two floors up it's a long way to the recycling bin in the garden!

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  4. Naked we came into this world, and naked we shall be when we leave. Too bad we have to accumulate so much stuff in between! It's so easy to get lazy when it comes to recycling. Sometimes I just don't want to take the few extra steps required to put something in its recycling bin. There are no excuses for this.

    One thing we're working on is reducing the amount of plastic in our lives, by purchasing in bulk when we can and using glass or metal containers as much as possible. We have a filter to our water tap, and fill our own reusable stainless steel water bottles when we want to carry water with us.

    Thanks for this inspiring post.

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  5. Good to know there are lots of friends out there Doing Their Bit!

    ReplyDelete

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