Reduce Reuse Recycle.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” There’s no excuse not to recycle any more. It’s easier than ever and almost the entire contents of your bin can have a second or even a third life.

You are already familiar with the idea of sorting. Really. You wouldn’t store your underwear with your cutlery, or your fresh and frozen foods together, or put your shoes in with your cleaning products. Well, probably not.

And recycling works in very much the same way: you sort your rubbish into three or four different categories and then pass them on to be used again. It couldn’t be simpler. Local authorities up and down the land – and all over the world – are doing their best to encourage us to recycle with kerbside collections, recycling centres and amenity sites where you can dispose of literally, anything.

It’s a great way to declutter your life.

In some countries, households are recycling as much as 60% of their waste so it is clearly possible.

If you’re not convinced try recycling for just one week. You’ll be amazed that a veritable mountain of newspapers, magazines, food packaging, vegetable peelings, garden cuttings, drinks cans, glass and plastic bottles can pile up and there’ll be virtually nothing left in your usual bin-bag at the end of the week.

The great thing about recycling is that the effects are immediate. Old CDs become drinks mats, wind chimes, scarecrows, funky wall art even…
Your old mobile phone can be reconditioned and donated to a charity. Plastic bottles can be made into garden furniture and even fleeces. So many good uses for our old junk.

The less we send to landfill and incineration the better. Recent – and startling – statistics claim that London will run out of landfill sites in just 7 years. And recycling an aluminium drinks can saves 95% of the energy used in making a new one.

Recycling is free. It’s a great way to declutter your life. It just a bit of getting used to. It’s about creating new or better habits.

Reduce

Try to only buy the right quantity of what you need, you’re not being tight, just eco savvy. Supermarkets are the worst with their BOGOF and 3 for 2 offers. It encourages us to think we’re getting a bargain but how often has the food gone out of date before you’ve eaten it? Oh, and did you compost it or recycle it?

• Choose products with less packaging and buy second hand where you can – the delights of Ebay.
• Buy fresh produce or grow your own.
• Reduce paper and ink wastage by printing only what you need, condensing text, reducing print quality and investing in a printer that will print both sides.
• Limit use of cling film and foil for wrapping and storing food – use resealable containers where possible.
• Get some rechargeable batteries – although more expensive they will save you money in the long run.
• Register with the Mailing Preference Service to stop getting junk mail.

Reuse

We’ve become a “throw away” society, with so many products easy to come by and relatively cheap. There’s disposable almost anything, from cameras to nappies, but of course, when we chuck it, it mostly ends up in landfill.

• Next time you go to throw away a jam jar, for example, even if it’s going to be recycled, just think to yourself: could that jar be used again for something else? Does someone you know make their own jam? Or do you need a jar to keep nails, paperclips, buttons, pens
• Lots and lots of items can be used again. Envelopes, jiffy bags, plastic food pots with lids, ice cream tubs, plastic bags, drinks bottles, the list is endless.
• And will you unwrap your birthday and Christmas presents carefully this year and consider reusing the paper? I used to tease my mother for doing this, but maybe the war generation had the right idea about “waste not, want not”.
• Find your creative streak and make your own cards and gift tags from used birthday and Christmas cards.

Recycle

As a nation, we are getting better at recycling. In 2006 14% of our rubbish was recycled. Now it is 33%.
But for recycling to work properly, people need to buy recycled products or all that recycling is a waste of time.
Recycling is all very well and important to do, but wouldn’t it be even better not to throw things away in the first place?

• Glass
  We are pretty good at recycling glass in the UK (we save enough energy each year to launch 10 space shuttle missions!), but we could do better. Only 50-60% of the UK glass waste is recycled at the moment.
  At the moment 14 million glass bottles and jars end up in landfill in the UK every year. Glass bottles and jars are often melted down and made into new bottles. But sometimes the glass isn’t suitable to be made into another bottle so it is crushed down and used as ‘glassphalt’ for road surfaces or the reflective surfaces of road signs.

• Plastic
  When plastic is recycled, it can be made into all sorts of new things, from ‘fleece’ jackets (one jacket can be made from 25 plastic bottles!) to picnic benches and car park bollards.
  As well as reusing plastic bags, invest in non plastic reuseable bags and get into the habit of using them for your shopping. Check out www.onyabags.co.uk Unwanted toys? Donate to charity or look into your local “freecycle” scheme – an internet community of people who trade goods for free – just to keep them out of landfill.
  Learn which plastics you can recycle – most plastic bottles can be recycled, but many other plastics used in the food packaging industry can’t be yet.

• Metal
  From drinks cans, food tins and foil packaging to cars, fridges, cookers, bikes….. most metals can be recycled. Aluminium is one of the easiest and best metals to recycle and it can be recycled over and over again. 20 aluminium cans can be made out of recycled materials with the same amount of energy it takes to make one new can.
  The scrap metal business is an industry in itself, and enjoying a resurgence spurred on by the rapid growth in the emerging markets of China and India.

Perhaps there should be 4 R’s – Repair! Many items are thrown out simply because they have broken and need a simple repair. Find the glue or get out a needle and thread and extend the life of items that can be mended. Sadly these days it can be cheaper and easier to buy some items but if something is broken, before you throw it out, just think whether its life can be extended by repairing it.