Information on Recycling Bins

Reducing, reusing and recycling are important to the environment, can make you feel good and with an added bonus, can save money. Recycling is just as quick and easy as disposing of rubbish in an ordinary bin. Your rubbish will take up less space as you recycle more, and your community will benefit from it as well. CARDBOARD Reduce: - Try and avoid over packaged goods, but if you can’t, let the manufacturer or supplier know of your opinion. Reuse: - Non-coated, torn up cardboard such as toilet rolls or egg cartons are great for mixing in compost bins with lots of green content. Recycle: - Cardboard for recycling should be clean and non-coated. - Cardboard drinks cartons can occasionally be recycled with paper.

ELECTRICAL GOODS

Reduce:
- Try and buy quality, long life goods.

Reuse:
- If it's broken have it mended.
- Sell at car boot sales or on eBay.

Recycle:
- If you can’t reuse it, take it to a recycling centre.

PAPER

Reduce:
- Stop receiving junk mail by using the Mailing Preference Service.
- Cancel unwanted magazine subscriptions.
- Inform banks and shops if you no longer wish to receive newsletters, etc.
- Save money by using a washable cloth rather than kitchen paper.

Reuse:
- Save envelopes to use again.
- Give old magazines to local waiting rooms e.g. doctor, dentist.
- Books can be donated to charities or hospitals.
- Ripped up paper is good in compost bins.

Recycle:
- Charities can get money out of used stamps.
- Telephone directories can be recycled but should not be put with standard paper.

PLASTICS

Reuse:
- Buy a bag for life.
- Plastic bags make great liners for smaller bins in the bathroom or office.
- Ask garden centres if they need any of your unused plant pots.
- Plastics, unlike other materials, take a very long time to breakdown so any discarded items remain a threat to wildlife. A plastic bottle for example can take 400 years before it has finished releasing its poisons into the environment. 

ORGANICS

Reduce:
- Only buy what you are going to eat.

Reuse:
- Some leftover food will be welcomed by the birds and other animals.

Recycle:
- You can make compost using vegetable/ fruit peelings, tea bags, grass cuttings, egg cartons, egg shells and scrunched up newspaper.
- Offer to compost your neighbour's organics if they don't have a bin.

METAL

Recycle:
- Wash out cans to stop them from smelling bad.
- Crush cans with a can crusher.
- Aluminium foil used for baking is also recyclable.
- If you have unused metal, take it to a scrap merchant and get some money.
- Aluminium has the highest value of any recyclable packaging material.

BATTERIES

Reduce:
- Use solar and wind up appliances.
- Use mains electricity.

Reuse:
- Use rechargeable batteries.

Recycle:
- Batteries include valuable but dangerous materials including cadmium, lead, nickel and mercury.

GLASS

Reuse:
- If a bottle is returnable then return it.
- Use jars for storage.

Recycle:
- Remove corks, lids, foil from glass before recycling.
- Glass is theoretically infinitely recyclable as it doesn't degrade in reprocessing. Also, recycling glass uses less energy than to make new glass from scratch. 

I.T EQUIPMENT

Reduce:
- Don't print documents unless you have to.
- If you're printing as a backup just backup your PC instead.

Recycle:
- Recycle as a last resort.

FURNITURE

Reduce:
- If you don't need to replace then don't.

Reuse:
- Give away to charities.
- Try selling your unwanted furniture.
- There are many people locally who would welcome what you might be throwing away.

Recycle:
- Only recycle as one last resort before wasting.