Recycle at Home - Save Money and Help the Environment
If like me you've noticed the staggering amount of packaging every single item from the supermarket comes in these days, you may have become interested in recycling.
As the plastic packaging piles up it seems a terrible shame to throw it all out in the bin - with everything we hear about helping the environment there's a certain new form of guilt surrounding our household rubbish.
The fact is that plastic waste is practically unavoidable - each foodstuff comes individually wrapped in plastic, from milk and bread to fruit and vegetables.
Even the sealed cardboard box that tea bags come in is wrapped in plastic, as if it needs the extra level of protection from the atmosphere.
Perhaps it does, but humankind managed to survive quite a while without shrink-wrapping everything.
Luckily for us, nine out of ten households in the UK have access to kerbside collection schemes.
These are much like our ordinary rubbish collections, but if you've moved house recently it's easy to get left out - I know I'm meant to have a recycling box but I've never seen one.
To find out if there's a scheme in your area visit your local council website - you can request a recycling box from them.
Once you've got your special box it becomes very easy to recycle.
Simply look on the packaging itself for the recycling symbols to see if it can go into the box.
If you're buying supplies like party products, e.
g.
paper plates and plastic glasses, check from the manufacturer that they can be recycled (surprisingly, some paper products can't be!).
Some councils have access to wider recycling facilities than others, but should be able to offer you guidelines as to the types of rubbish they accept.
Some councils for example don't accept glass at the kerbside so you'd have to take those along to your local bottle bank.
Apart from recycling your rubbish there are lots of things you can do to cut down on the amount of packaging you use.
These small changes tend to have the effect of saving you money too so there's extra incentive to do it.
Start off with small changes like taking cotton shopping bags to the supermarket - this cuts out plastic bags which as we all know were invented by the devil himself.
Instead of buying bottled drinks all the time for the gym/work/hiking etc, buy one sturdy metal drinking bottle and refill it from the tap - water's good for you and you can survive without flavoured drinks.
Plan your meals each day so that you know how much food to buy and minimise waste - use leftovers where possible.
Water your garden with washing-up water and turn off lights when you're not using them.
This last isn't exactly recycling but every little helps! Once you've started to think about the resources you use, how much they cost and how much you could save, you'll find yourself thinking twice before getting in the car or turning on the heating.
You might even walk or put on a jumper instead, or recycle your old jumpers into a new woolly blanket! Maybe not...
but there's so much each and every one of us could do to recycle in all areas of our lives, and for the culture-conscious among us it's very much in vogue.
As the plastic packaging piles up it seems a terrible shame to throw it all out in the bin - with everything we hear about helping the environment there's a certain new form of guilt surrounding our household rubbish.
The fact is that plastic waste is practically unavoidable - each foodstuff comes individually wrapped in plastic, from milk and bread to fruit and vegetables.
Even the sealed cardboard box that tea bags come in is wrapped in plastic, as if it needs the extra level of protection from the atmosphere.
Perhaps it does, but humankind managed to survive quite a while without shrink-wrapping everything.
Luckily for us, nine out of ten households in the UK have access to kerbside collection schemes.
These are much like our ordinary rubbish collections, but if you've moved house recently it's easy to get left out - I know I'm meant to have a recycling box but I've never seen one.
To find out if there's a scheme in your area visit your local council website - you can request a recycling box from them.
Once you've got your special box it becomes very easy to recycle.
Simply look on the packaging itself for the recycling symbols to see if it can go into the box.
If you're buying supplies like party products, e.
g.
paper plates and plastic glasses, check from the manufacturer that they can be recycled (surprisingly, some paper products can't be!).
Some councils have access to wider recycling facilities than others, but should be able to offer you guidelines as to the types of rubbish they accept.
Some councils for example don't accept glass at the kerbside so you'd have to take those along to your local bottle bank.
Apart from recycling your rubbish there are lots of things you can do to cut down on the amount of packaging you use.
These small changes tend to have the effect of saving you money too so there's extra incentive to do it.
Start off with small changes like taking cotton shopping bags to the supermarket - this cuts out plastic bags which as we all know were invented by the devil himself.
Instead of buying bottled drinks all the time for the gym/work/hiking etc, buy one sturdy metal drinking bottle and refill it from the tap - water's good for you and you can survive without flavoured drinks.
Plan your meals each day so that you know how much food to buy and minimise waste - use leftovers where possible.
Water your garden with washing-up water and turn off lights when you're not using them.
This last isn't exactly recycling but every little helps! Once you've started to think about the resources you use, how much they cost and how much you could save, you'll find yourself thinking twice before getting in the car or turning on the heating.
You might even walk or put on a jumper instead, or recycle your old jumpers into a new woolly blanket! Maybe not...
but there's so much each and every one of us could do to recycle in all areas of our lives, and for the culture-conscious among us it's very much in vogue.