Recycling Tips
Recycling tips... We all want to live in a cleaner, greener and pollution free environment. Our tips and advice will point you in the right direction, so you too can contribute to creating a greener world. Good housekeeping and homemaking shouldn’t just involve responsibility for the home environment; it should stretch to the environment outside the home too. This is because rubbish disposal from your home has a significant affect on the outside world. As the government's regulations on pollution are now getting tougher and tougher, it will soon be your responsibility to ensure that anything you dispose of, which can be recycled should be recycled. Our tips and advice will put you in a great position, if, or when the government’s environmental plans come to fruition. OPH Good housekeeping & Homemaking will give you a useful insight into the benefits of recycling and how you too can go about getting involved in the process.
Recycling Tips The need to recycle has never been greater. Successive governments have until now used the carrot and stick approach to make all more aware of the need to recycle, but recent figures show that this approach hasn't worked. Recent figures revealed that alarmingly Britain has approximately nine years of landfill space available which may prove to be a conservative estimate because the annual tonnage of waste has increased year upon year despite all the warnings. (Domestic waste accounts for 10% of this waste the remainder coming from building mining and quarrying. Britain recycles on average just 23% of its household waste compared to 53% in Germany and 70% in Belgium. Throughout the EU only Portugal and Greece recycle less than we do. What Can You Do To Help? Recycling has to start somewhere so OPH Good Housekeeping & Homemaking has listed several easy to follow recycling tips to get you in the habit: Shopping Bags Throw away plastic carrier bags can so easily be re-used. Try to establish a remembering device so that when you shop you take a supply with you. Suggestions If you generally shop on your way home from work why not carry a supply in your handbag. They weigh virtually nothing at and can be compacted into an umbrella cover or similar. Convey your shopping to your vehicle via the shopping trolley. If you have carrier bags or boxes ready for use in your vehicle then the items can be transferred in a way that will reduce unpacking time once you arrive home. As we all know the check out of a busy supermarket is not the best place to plan. Try to shop less frequently. This will not only save you money (see OPH Shopping Tips)but will also act as a form of damage limitation (excuse the pun) Particularly if you find it difficult to re-use carrier bags. Get out of the habit of using a freely available carrier bag at the check out. If for example you just have one or two items that you can easily carry. Unwanted Household Furniture and Ware STOP - Before you take your unwanted household items to the tip why not log on to FREECYCLE.ORG a website that specialises in finding a new home for your belongings. Its simple to join, has 2,400,000 members worldwide and above all it's user friendly. So turn your rubbish into someone else’s treasure and free up that valuable landfill space. Click on the link above and away you go!! Ever wondered what to do with odd socks, socks with holes in or socks you simply no longer wear, can be put to good use around the home. Suggestions Woolen socks make excellent dusters, trapping dust particles rather than just dispersing them. Socks can be soaked in water and placed in the bottoms of plant pots to retain moisture. Particularly useful if you are going away for a week or so. Clothing & Bedding Most fabrics can be recycled, so before you head for the skip, STOP. Natural fibers such as wool and cotton can be composted. They do take rather a long time to degrade so if you just have a couple of items cut them up into small pieces and mix them in well with other composting material. For larger loads seek out your local recycling site. The collectors will sort out what is salvageable and that will go to either charity shops for resale or be shipped to needy countries. The remainder will be used to fill mattresses, cushions and such. Cardboard Boxes Cardboard boxes such as cereal packaging can be quite bulky. A good recycling tip is to soak them overnight in used dish water or rain water, that way it will be easily compressed, take up little space and can be placed on the compost heap. Foodstuff Not all waste food is suitable for composting. Cooked food attracts vermin, so whenever possible use it to feed domestic livestock. Vegetable peelings, salad waste, teabags, fruit, will degrade without attracting too much attention from wildlife and can therefore be composted. Packaging Yes, you do have a say. Choose items that are not heavily packaged, concentrated products, for example fabric conditioners, use less packaging. Simply by purchasing items that come in refillable containers helps reduce the burden on our overstretched land fill sites. Rechargeable versus disposable? No contest rechargeable wins every time and is usually cost effective. Recycling Tips: The benefits
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