Recycling Advice

Christmas Recycling

How about buying a compost bin as a New Year’s resolution for 2012?
Home composting is good for your garden and will save you money when you mulch your garden next year. To find out how easy it is to compost, visit our home composting information page.

We all love our food, especially at Christmas when we buy extra treats! If you want some Christmas food tips, which could save you money, visit our Love Food Hate Waste page.

Recycling Tips

Think about what will happen to your Christmas tree after Christmas – it can be changed into bark chip in places throughout Cheshire East.
83 square kilometres of wrapping paper end up in landfill each year in the UK. Could you use recycled wrapping paper, fabric or colourful bags that can be reused next year?
What about using ribbon, wool or coloured elastic bands instead of sellotape? It will be easier to reuse Christmas wrappings next year.
Did you know that batteries contain toxic chemicals that can be a serious problem in landfill? Ask for toys with rechargeable batteries for Christmas.
Did you know that the amount of waste produced over Christmas would fill 400,000 double-decker buses and stretch from London to New York? Although half of this waste could be recycled, only 10% is. Can you help by recycling everything you can?
How about sending ‘e-cards’ to those friends you have an email address for?
Buying soft drinks in larger bottles means less plastic to recycle after Christmas.
Remind your family to take ‘Bags for Life’ when they go Christmas shopping. This will mean they use fewer plastic carrier bags which just get ‘binned’.
Can you complete the recycling loop – buy recycled items like paper towels, as well as remembering to recycle at home?
Remind your family to take unwanted toys, books and clothes to charity shops for another life with someone else!
Don’t forget to compost your fruit and vegetable peelings!
Send recycled, charity or homemade cards this Christmas. Afterwards the cards you received can go to Woodland Trust collection points in supermarkets and stationers, or you can save them to make gift tags.

Transforming Waste

Various Recycable Items The transformation that can take place when you recycle is quite amazing. For example:

In just seven days, your paper could come back as another newspaper
In just six weeks your metal can could be recycled and used as part of a fridge, a car, a plane.. or simply another metal can!
Your glass bottles could be recycled into house insulation
And plastic bottles could be made into a cosy fleece jacket!

The UK produces more than 434 million tonnes of waste every year. This rate of rubbish generation would fill the Albert Hall in less than two hours (source:Waste Online). Most gets dumped in landfill sites - but a lot could be recycled. And when the possibilities really are endless, why throw it all away?!