Household recycling tips for Christmas

Christmas is a wonderful but often wasteful time of year. It can be easy to forget about the importance of recycling when you’re so busy seeing friends and family, cooking, partying, and having so much fun. However, it’s actually more important than ever to consider your waste, as there’s more of it being produced! 

So, how can you make the most of recycling opportunities this Christmas? 

Continue reading Household recycling tips for Christmas

How to recycle your shoes

According to a study conducted by Oxfam, every person in the UK owns seven pairs of unused shoes, on average. In fact, there are so many unworn or unused shoes in British households that, put heel to toe in a line, they’d stretch all the way round the world. So, what happens to these shoes when we do decide to throw them out? Sadly, most still find their way to landfill – even those which have plenty of life left in them. These shoes then take a very long time to decompose. Running shoes, for example, can take 1,000 years to break down on landfill.  

How can you avoid this and recycle your shoes instead? Find out below. 

Continue reading How to recycle your shoes

Wardrobe recycling tips: clothes, bedding & accessories

Many wardrobes are fit to burst, and some of us put off having a sort-out as we’re not quite sure what to do with each item we’d like to get rid of. Instead of putting it off any longer, or resorting to chucking it all in the household bin, take a look at our wardrobe recycling guide below and do the best you can by your old clothes and accessories.

Continue reading Wardrobe recycling tips: clothes, bedding & accessories

Coca-Cola ad made entirely from 100% recyclable packaging

Beverage retail giant, Coca-Cola Great Britain has released a new advert made using its 100 per cent recyclable bottles.

Entitled Love Story, the new advertisement follows the tale of two plastic bottles who are able to fall in love thanks to being recycled over and over again. The aim of the ad is to highlight the value of packaging, the importance of recycling, and to reinforce the fact that Coca-Cola’s packaging is 100 per cent recyclable and can therefore be recycled many times over.

Continue reading Coca-Cola ad made entirely from 100% recyclable packaging

England’s recycling rates have dropped

England’s household recycling rates have dropped for the first time ever, prompting calls for drastic change, and no doubt ending the UK’s chances of meeting the EU recycling target of 50 per cent by 2020.

The amount of waste being recycled by English households had been heading in the right direction, steadily increasing for a decade, however it had flatlined for three years more recently. Now newly released figures have shown that the amount of waste recycled between 2014 and 2015 in England had decreased, from 44.8% to 43.9% respectively. This is the first drop since the country began tracking recycling figures, and means England has fallen back to pre-2012 recycling rates.

Continue reading England’s recycling rates have dropped

What is your waste recycled into?

We all know that it is important to recycle (and even better to reuse, removing the need to recycle altogether). However, have you ever thought about what happens to the things you recycle once they leave your house or business premises, and what they get turned into once recycled? Focus is always on how important it is to recycle what you can, but not so much on what your waste gets recycled into. Today we thought we’d share that information with you, as it’s pretty interesting. What will the next glass bottle you send for recycling be turned into? How about that can that used to house the baked beans you had with your lunch? Prepare to be surprised.

Continue reading What is your waste recycled into?

Recycling tips for Halloween

Halloween gets more popular every year in the UK, and it can be great fun to get involved with, but also fairly wasteful with its various aspects; the tasty treats, the crazy costumes, and the dastardly decorations. So, you may be wondering how you can celebrate Halloween without creating a load of extra waste. Whether you’re throwing a Halloween party at home, or you’re off out trick-or-treating with the kids, our tips will help you cut your waste, recycle more, and enjoy a guilt-free Halloween.

Halloween decorations

Photo: Subbotina Anna
Photo copyright: Subbotina Anna

In the past you might have bought a bunch of decorations from your local shop, then chucked them all out after Halloween. This year, a little bit of planning will make all the difference. Here are some great ideas on how to cut waste and recycle your decorations:

Continue reading Recycling tips for Halloween

Fast fashion & the destruction of developing countries

It’s a little known fact that us Brits wear just 70 per cent of the clothes that we have stored away in our wardrobes, which leaves us with a total of 1.7 billion unused items. On average, a consumer keeps their garments for three years, but even more shocking than this is the fact that something might be frequently worn in the first year, and then phased into the stockpile of unworn clothes later on. That is why the average British closet is so overstuffed: we don’t wear all of the clothes we own.

The spending habits of the average person in the West have changed dramatically over the last hundred or so years when it comes to buying clothing. Between 2002 and 2003, for example, people in the US spent, on average, four per cent of their income on clothes, whereas back between the years of 1934 and 1946, clothing used up 12 per cent of people’s incomes. The current average expenditure per item in the USA is $14.60. Don’t go thinking that we are all consuming less though. On average, just one person in the UK will produce 70 Kg of textiles waste per year – that is a lot of clothing. Cheap, fast fashion means we are spending less yet buying more.

So, what will happen after you clean out your closet? Continue reading Fast fashion & the destruction of developing countries

How to get kids into recycling

Statistics tell us that adults in the UK are slowly but surely getting better at recycling – especially since the introduction of the fairly recent plastic bag charge, which has forced people to think about their actions – but what about our children? Waste and recycling is tackled by the National Curriculum in schools from Key Stage 1 now, but we all know that kids tend to learn some things better through example rather than simple spoken word. Meaning, if you don’t engage your child in recycling at home, they are less likely to be interested in it, or do it themselves when they are older.

So, how can you get your child into recycling at home? Follow our tips below.

Lead by example

Children love to pretend to be adults, so if your little one sees you reusing and recycling at home (and when you are out and about) they are far more likely to want to do the same, and learn more about what it is you are doing. Pique their interest early on, and normalise your actions.

Make recycling fun

Help your child to learn about recycling in a fun way by setting up a home recycling centre, with different boxes for each type of recyclable. This will be a great game for a small child. Label each box, and let your child explore the world of recycling through learning about the different types and choosing which box to place each item in. Why not make up a song about recycling which you can sing when you’re doing this? Continue reading How to get kids into recycling