Recycle Week 2009

Recycle Week is here!  This year it runs from 22nd to 28th June. 

Recycle Week is aimed at encouraging people to embrace new habits in an attempt to lead a greener lifestyle and cut back on the waste that we produce. 

There’s lots of ways we can all take part, many of them with the minimum amount of effort on our part. Whether its composting home and garden waste, growing homegrown veg, recycling old clothes or using a cotton bag instead of plastic, we can all do our bit.  Check out their website for further information.

My Zero Waste

My Zero Waste is the Green family blog all about reducing the amount of waste they send to landfill each week.  They created the blog after being inspired by Almost Mrs Average’s Rubbish diet and share their progress along the way.  There’s plenty of information available too in their blog and articles, on all aspects of recycling. 

A real eye opener as to what can be achieved if we really put our minds to it and well worth a read.

New Find – Green Metropolis

Yesterday I stumbled across this great website called Green Metropolis.

Here’s the setup. The site allows the sale and purchase of books. All books are listed as per their condition – e.g. excellent, good, acceptable. All paperback books are sold for £3.75 with free delivery on the standard size paperback.  Green Metropolis pay the seller £3.00 for each book sold and donate 5p from the sale to the Tree for All campaign run by The Woodland Trust.

If like me, you find you have piles of books sitting around, gathering dust, this could be a good opportunity for you to clear them out. Worth a try!

Recycling Postage Stamps

Have you been sent any postcards lately? Receive plenty of snail mail? Here’s an idea for you. RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) can raise money from both British and overseas used stamps.

The stamps are sorted by their volunteers and then sold on to dealers or collectors. They normally sell them by weight (generally £0.90 – £1 for a pound weight of stamps), with overseas stamps raising more and valuable stamps being sold for a higher price.

This is such an easy way to recycle and raise money! So rip your stamps off your envelopes and when you have a good sized collection pop them in an envelope and send them to the RNIB, Recycling, PO Box 185, Benfleet, SS7 9BH.

New Year’s Resolutions

With Christmas slowly fading to a memory, you may well find that your New Year’s resolutions will go the same way. According to a recent survey by Sky Real Lives (found through my daily binge on Sky news), green issues feature highly in people’s resolutions but 70% of those expected failure on their part.

Personally, I recommend not calling, or thinking of them, as resolutions. It guarantees failure in my books and those of many other people I know! Look on them as lifestyle changes and rather than trying to implement them all in one go, why not try and make a change every few weeks? If you make a small change here and there you won’t notice it so much and before you know it you’ll be well on your way.

So, what sort of changes am I talking about? It’s well reported that people are becoming more and more aware of living an ethical lifestyle and taking care of the environment. After years of living in a built up town, I now live in the countryside and I think the peacefulness of it, along with the wildlife surrounding me have had a positive influence and have definitely made me more aware of my environment.

Without sounding too self-righteous, here are a few suggestions that you could use to get started both in the home and at work. They aren’t all fair trade related but I’ll continue to add to this in the future (sorry about that!):-

1. Fair trade food.  With the amount of choice and availability increasing there’s bound to be something you love. Why not try and switch some of your “standard” brands to fair trade? Tea, coffee, chocolate, fruit, drinks, sugar, nuts, snacks…….. even if you switch one or two brands, you will know that the farmer and workers who have produced it have received a fair price and work in fair conditions. 
2. Fair trade gifts and items for the home. Well, this is an obvious one to come from me I’m afraid. Although I’ve been up and running for a few months now, I’m still encountering people who aren’t quite sure of fair trade.  Honestly, the quality is fantastic, the prices are nowhere near as expensive as you might think and it’s readily available! 
3. Support your local farmers. I dislike the way supermarket fruit and veg is all the same size and colour. They should be natural and that’s what you’ll find in farm shops. We also make full use of a local butcher where the meat is slaughtered on site and prepared to your order. There’s hardly any ever excess fat nor the watery excess that comes from some supermarket meat. 
4. Use recycled stationery. Refill and/or recycle your ink cartridges.
5. Reduce your paper usage – email where possible. Reuse all scrap paper.
6. Don’t leave electrical items on standby. So what if it only emits a small amount of energy? It all adds up. This is a big bug bear for me as it’s so wasteful. I’m always going around after people turning things off, it probably annoys them but I continue to do it!
7. Use low energy light bulbs. Save some pennies and the environment. Enough said!
8. Avoid excess packaging. Where possible I try to keep all fruit and veg loose and I try to check packaging on other items I use. This isn’t always possible to do but worth trying.
9. Following on from the packaging – ditch the plastic and switch to a reusable bag. Our cotton bags fold up tightly and will fit into your pocket/handbag easily so you won’t be caught short.  
10. Recycle! In our area, we’re extremely lucky that we don’t have to sort through all of our recycling. All tins, plastic, glass, cardboard, paper etc goes into one bin. Definitely makes life a lot easier for us.There are a huge amount of fabulous gifts available made from recycled items. Why not check them out? We have a selection of items made from recycled materials and there are many more widely available on the web.
11. Turn off the tap and conserve water. Need I expand?
12. Following on from above, only boil the water you need. I’m using the Tefal Quick Cup which heats the exact amount of water you require at 95 degrees celsius in 3 seconds.
13. eBay! Anyone that knows me will say I’m a bit of an eBay addict. I know it’s often seen as a way to pass time (skiving at work!), but its also a great way to recycle unwanted gifts, old furniture, clothes, books – pretty much anything! Not only that but it’s a great way of earning a bit of cash!

That should get you going.