recycling tips

Recycling tips

1. Process waste as it's made, don’t allow it to accumulate and become a problem.

2. Store collected recyclables for a month in the zero-2-land wheelie bins, minimizing trips to your local recycling point. Try to include your recycled materials disposal with other journeys like shopping.

3. Have plenty of extra containers and bins available.

4. Start by keeping organics away from all other materials, this will mean starting your composting first.

5. If using a single composting bin, during winter when the composting process naturally slows down, use your compostor to store kitchen organic waste mixed with shredded cardboard. Start collecting and preparing the brown material while its more abundant, storing and keeping dry. When wormer months arrive and the green composting material flourishes make your perfect mix and add water.

6. Use your household wastewater wisely. Washing out used cans, plastic and glass containers in dirty washing up or bath water.

7. Separate and store materials by type ie; Organics, Metal, Paper, Glass and Plastics. Then subdivide into their relevant smaller sections ready for disposal.

8. Unwanted furniture can be passed on to community groups and low income families via a network of household furniture projects, most of these are small scale local projects, traceable through your local authority.

9. The most processed disposal route, already in existence, is your wastewater. You pay for the industry that cleans it and are charged by volume not solids content, so use it. The toilet can be a free and effective disposal route for small partials of food not suitable for composting, cigarettes and tissue like paper. Be careful not to overload and block your drains.

10. To reduce the space, stored plastic materials occupy, cut a plastic container to form an open top container and store cut up strips of plastic inside. Remember to store plastic by its compound type.

11. Check your disposal routes before you begin.

12. Think before you place any item in the waste bin.

13. Old clothes/shoes in good condition should be taken to your nearest high street charity shop such as Oxfam and Age concern etc, your unwanted clothing will help the homeless or be sent abroad. Even damaged un-wearable items can be returned, as charities have profitable disposal routes for these, if you’re too embarrassed then use the clothing banks at the recycling centre ensuring to tie the shoes in pairs.

14. Think before you purchase any items, sensible buying can reduce the amount or type of packaging brought into your household, thereby reducing the amount of waste from the starting point; ie buy carbonated drinks in easy to crush, store and recycle aluminium cans and not the widely used P.E.T. plastic containers, as these are awkward to store and have virtually no residual value to encourage recycling.

Remember the three R's Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.