The Three ‘R’s- “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”
On average, each person in the UK throws away more than their own body weight in waste every two months!
Just think for a moment - you won’t have so much to dispose of, if you don’t buy or produce so much in the first place.
Reduce
Reduce Water wastage
Each person in the UK uses on average 150 litres of water a day taking into account cooking, cleaning, washing and flushing an amount that has been rising by 1 per cent a year since 1930 and this consumption level is not sustainable.
Two Ideas on Saving Water
- Turn the tap off when you brush your teeth – a running tap wastes 6 litres of water a minute
- Don’t use your toilet as a dustbin – an unnecessary flush uses another cistern full of water. Put your face wipes, cotton wool balls in your dustbin rather than down the toilet.
Reduce Food waste
8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households in the UK every year.
Love Food Hate Waste is the ‘Waste Not Want Not’ of the modern day, providing advice and recipes for leftovers to help everyone waste less food. See http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/
Reducing food waste is not just about good food going to waste; wasting food costs the average family with children £680 a year and has serious environmental implications too.
If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact could be the equivalent of taking a quarter of the UK’s cars off the road.
Reuse
Stuff you don't need or Stuff you want?
These groups enable you to give stuff away when you need to get rid of it but don’t want to throw it in the bin.
Or you can save something from landfill by asking for it; perhaps someone has just what you need that they were about to throw:
- Freegle it! on ilovefreegle.org
- Freecycle it on http://www.freecycle.org/
Recycle
Find out just how much you can recycle on http://www.recyclenow.com/
If you are a housebound Hayfield resident and have items that need collecting for the recycling centre please let us know.
Please send us your ideas and information on Reducing Waste in Hayfield