More and more of us are recycling these days, but we can make a bigger difference by reducing the amount of waste we produce in the first place.
On average, each person throws away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks. That's a lot of rubbish. There are things we can do in every home to reduce the amount of rubbish we produce, even before we think about recycling.
So, stop, think and decide if you really need to throw that plastic bag, bicycle, toy or whatever it is away. There could be someone out there willing to take it off your hands or there could be a way to avoid producing the rubbish in the first place.
Here are some top tips for keeping your rubbish down.
More than 150,000,000 plastic carrier bags are used on the high street every year, that's around 147 for each person.
Most of these bags are thrown away and take, on average, 100 years to rot away in landfill. There is a really simple way to reduce the number of bags in your life; use a bag for life.
You can pick them up from all the major supermarkets now for a tiny cost and they are stronger and bigger than normal carriers and don't tend to dig in your hands.
By buying loose wherever you can and avoiding over-packaged supermarket goods you can reduce your rubbish by a big amount.
You could also choose to shop at markets, scoop and save-type shops and local green grocers, butchers or fishmongers. Take boxes with you to the shops or markets and reuse the box next time! Go back to the milkman for milk, fruit juice and soft drinks; he'll collect and reuse the bottles.
Think about buying second-hand if you can. Choose charity shops for an outfit you're only going to wear once, buy reconditioned car parts, computers and printer cartridges and white goods. Consider tool hire, clothing hire and crockery hire for DIY projects and parties, anything as an alternative to buying new! Similarly, give your unwanted items to charity shops and second-hand shops. The chances are, there is someone who can find a home for your junk. Give clothes, books, toys to charity and even records, CDs and DVDs.
You can reduce your rubbish by reusing some of it in the garden. For instance, you can fill small plastic pots, like yoghurt pots with beer or milk and use them as slug traps in your garden.
Silver foil and milk bottle tops make excellent bird scarers and net curtains are useful for shading, frost protection and keeping flies off your favourite plants. Ice lolly sticks and strips cut from plastic bottles can be used as plant labels. Have you thought of using polystyrene flakes or broken crockery to aid drainage in plant pots or using plastic food trays for seeding?
You can also use abandoned items like old tyres, sinks or buckets as planters and paint them so they fit in with your garden backdrop. Your garden will look great with a bit of homemade compost. Put all your organic waste into a composter and treat your garden to a nutritious conditioner. Also, when you mow the lawn, leave the grass cuttings on the lawn. This is known as 'grasscycling' and is proven to feed the grass and help promote growth.
Reducing waste isn't all about household rubbish; it's about other waste that can harm the environment, like unused energy.
Being more energy efficient will not only help help save money, it'll reduce the amount of carbon emissions we all produce, helping prevent climate change.
There's a lot to take in here, a lot of things to remember. It's important that we all take responsibility and try at least three or four of these suggestions as our contribution.
Together we can make a big difference and when it comes to reducing waste, a little does go
a long way.
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This page last updated: 18/09/2007