Recycling Articles : Reduce, Reuse & Recycle Your Rubbish

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With the introduction of many changes when it comes to household waste we have seen the end of weekly collections of just one rubbish bin and seen the introduction of the fortnightly collection, one week your regular bin, the next the compost bin and in between these the blue boxes for cans and bottles and bags collection for paper.

We have also seen the introduction of fines; penalties and around 500,000 in the UK have had micro chips embedded secretly into the dustbin lids. The latest is a scheme which teaches us the three R’s when it comes to rubbish, no not reading, (w) riting and (a) rithmetic but reduce, reuse and recycle.

This latest scheme is not just aimed at our rubbish bins, although this is one of the main things targeted, but also to make us more aware of the environment and what we can do change the way things are going downhill and to start help putting them right.

This doesn’t mean making vast changes to your everyday life but rather just taking a few minutes to stop and think where the rubbish belongs. For example previously we would just throw aluminium cans in the wheelie bin, now we should squash them and put them in the blue box provided.

If all the aluminium cans that we bough every year were recycled this way then there would be 14 million fewer full wheelie bins. By simply recycling just one aluminium can this way you can save enough energy to watch TV for three hours.

Reducing the amount of rubbish is also just a matter of giving it a little thought, instead of buying items such as throwaway plates and cups use the real thing, the amount of plastic carrier bags that are given out in the supermarkets each and every week is enormous, some of the larger supermarkets now offer reusable bags for your shopping which are stronger and can of course be reused time and time again.

In addition to this many have taken on a scheme whereby if you use your own bags then for each bag you reuse they will add extra points to your club card. These are all excellent ways of reducing rubbish.

There are many ways that you can reuse products around the home and work, when you have read your newspaper it can be shredded and used for bedding for your animals before finally being thrown away. The same applies for any type of paper or letters, junk mail and such, simply run them through a shredder and this will also hep the environment by being reused but will also save you pounds on animal bedding.

The tops from bottles can be strung together and made into bird scares to protect your precious plants and the bottoms can be cut from 2 litre plastic bottles and can be used to cover your seedlings as mini propagators.

Recycling isn’t hard once you get into it and is only really a matter of breaking bad habits built up over years. Just stop and think which type of material it is and can it be reused, recycled or what steps can you take to reduce it.

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