Saturday 2 August 2008

Reduce, reuse, recycle

It is becoming easier and easier to recycle. Our council has just increased the number of materials it will collect for recycling. We now have a fortnightly collection for paper, cardboard, glass, cans, some plastics, textiles and garden waste. This is a big step forward and will reduce the amount of stuff going to land-fill. However it does mean that recycling has become an easy option and it can seem ok to produce waste as long as it will be recycled.

Rather than concentrating on recycling, reducing the amount of stuff and its packaging coming into the home is the first step. Using reusable bags is something that seems to have caught public attention and people are becoming more aware of the amount of packaging used, especially food packaging.

Reusing seems to be the stage that gets neglected.

I have been trying to find new uses for things that I usually throw in the recycling bin without thinking, so here is a new (semi - serious) use for an old can.


I lined it with absorbant paper and am growing rocket sprouts to add to salads. Not a great deal of salad from one can but now my mind is thinking about a range of different salads in cans along the kitchen windowsill!

4 comments:

Heather L. said...

I really need to start trying to grow sprouts. Maybe it will be a goal for this winter.

walter and me said...

How I agree about recycling being easier, and therefore people think packaging's fine, so long as you recycle. Kind of bypasses the reduce and reuse aspect. I love the sprouts in the sardine can. Great idea, and visually appealing, too.

Simply Authentic said...

How neat! I think this is great! And what are the recycling requirements for textiles...I'm intrigued! I agree with you-reuse is so much better than recycle, yet it's so much harder to get people to do so. I knock heads with my grandmother all the time about reusing vs. recycling produce bags from the store.

Tilly said...

My parents came to visit this week and my mum is really hot on the recycling. Unfortunately she's not as good on the 're-using'. She went through my daughters bedroom like a dose of salts and produced six bags of 'rubbish' and I narrowly stopped her from sticking it all in the waste bin. When I looked through it we ended up with just a half bag of actual rubbish and everything else went into my study for 'crafty' re-use or to the charity shop!
Our local council wont take glass at all and will only take plastic bottles. I find it really difficult to recycle all the other plastics as there aren't any facilities where I can get to easily with the Nipper in the pram.