Reuse / Recycling
This site has lots of good ideas on how to reduce the amount of rubbish you produce, but however hard you try you will always produce some rubbish. So what should you do with it? Thinking about how you might use it in a different way is called re-use and you probably already know what recycling is. When you recycle your item it is broken down into raw material and used to manufacture something else. The councils across the Black Country are providing people with recycling bins and boxes to make recycling more convenient. Some things are not collected in these bins and boxes, but there are recycling facilities where you can recycle a wider range of materials such as clothes and timber. These are usually at supermarkets or at your local tip.
Clothes
Second-hand retro clothing is back in fashion and many people are visiting charity shops and rag markets to be in -vogue. The days are long gone when 'old clothes' meant moth-eaten cardigans complete with elbow patches. While reducing your rubbish you can also help less fortunate people across the world by donating the clothing you don’t want to charity. Oxfam, Scope and similar organisations are leading collectors of used clothes that they sort and sell to raise much-needed funds.
So, if you have clothes in decent condition that you know you’ll never wear again take them to a charity shop. For clothes that are past their best take them to a clothes recycling bank where they’ll be given a new lease of life as another product.
Glass
Every family in the Black Country uses around 330 glass bottles and jars each year: that’s nearly one every day. But the sad reality facing the average jar at the need of it’s life is the dustbin. Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly with no loss in quality. So it’s a real waste that we only recycle 38% of the glass we use in this country. But , before you recycle it you could use it again! Some people re-use their old jars for storing a host of things from their own jams and pickles to nails and screws. A great idea for enjoying the garden at night is to put a tea light into empty jars. Flickering tea-lights around the garden create simple but pretty outdoor lighting. So, the next time you finish off any of your jars, give them a new lease of life – if you can’t reuse them around the home or garden, make sure you recycle them with your bottles.
Paper and plastics
About one fifth of a household dustbin consists of paper and card – half of which is newspapers and magazines. So here’s some good hints for reusing paper.
- Re-use paper that has only been written or printed on one side as scrap paper for shopping lists, reminders or note paper.
- Playgroups and nurseries often welcome scrap paper for the children to paint and draw on.
- Re-use envelopes by using sticky labels to cover the old address and to reseal the envelope
- Re-use odd rolls of wallpaper or the end of a roll by lining a chest of drawers or the bottom of cupboards
- Re-use your plastic carrier bags for when you next go shopping
- Re-use plastic containers with lids to store leftovers in the fridge, packed lunch or grow seedlings in old yoghurt pots
- Re-use plastic bottles by cutting off the top and using it to protect your more delicate plants from pests and frost
- Re-use plastic bottles for a drink with your packed lunch
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