Next week (25th September to 1st October) is officially Recycle Week, and Zero Waste Scotland (a government-funded organisation that aims to create a society where nothing is wasted) have challenged me to become a Waste Warrior by doubling the amount that I recycle.
Over the next week I will really be educating myself about why it’s so important to recycle at home and when out and about, and I will be starting a recycling routine that doubles the efforts I currently make. I would like you to join me and do the same. You can follow my progress here on my blog, and on my social media channels too. Let’s do this together! It doesn’t need to be a lot of work – even a little bit can make a whole lot of difference. It’s a fact that over 60% of items found in a regular non-recyclable bin could have been recycled, to help the environment, reduce waste and save a lot of money that could be better spent elsewhere. Last year £57 million was spent landfilling items that could have been recycled instead.
I wanted to publish this post ahead of Recycle Week, to show you what a difference just a little bit of recycling effort can make. If everyone recycled just one newspaper or magazine per week, we’d save enough energy to boil 2.2 billion cups of tea – that’s 518 cups for every adult in Scotland. Similarly, if everyone recycled one simple toothpaste box, it would save enough energy to run a fridge in over 2,000 households for a year. Recycling properly also saves nearly 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 per year – the same as taking half a million cars off the road.
There are two ways that you can recycle – at home, and via public recycling centres and bins. Every region has different at-home recycling policies, but if you’ve noticed that you’ve been supplied with different-coloured waste bins by your council, take some time this weekend, ahead of Recycle Week, to familiarise yourself with what they are for. Most major Asda and Tesco supermarkets also have public recycling bins, and you may find them in other locations, such as your local library, too. Take some time to think about how you could use them also – maybe you could collect all your empty plastic bottles for a week and then make one quick trip to drop them off? You can even recycle clothing in these public bins – if you have items that aren’t good enough to be donated to a charity shop, it can still be recycled and used again.
At my house in East Renfrewshire, I have a blue wheelie bin (and white sack) for cardboard and paper; a green wheelie bin (and green sack) for plastic bottles, plastic packaging, metal packaging and glass; a brown wheelie bin for garden waste; a food waste container for everything from bones and peelings, to tea bags and dairy products; and a general grey bin for non-recyclable waste – things such as disposale nappies, food contaminated cardboard and foil, polystyrene and cat litter. If you have been supplied with different coloured bins, it’s important that you only use your non-recyclable waste bin for things that can’t be recycled, as the contents of this bin go straight to landfill.
I hope you will join me in using next week to start off a regime of increased recycling. It really does benefit everyone! To find out what you can recycle and where, visit your local authority website or the Recycle for Scotland Recycling Locator.
This is a sponsored post with Zero Waste Scotland, but all opinions are my own.
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