Keeping it out of landfill

Landfill is one of the worst solutions to waste. Burying resources in the ground, impacting on landscapes, releasing methane over long time frames and wasting valuable resources... Without a doubt, the worst thing in all of this is when perfectly usable items end up in landfill. If something is valuable, then it’s worth the effort to sell through local papers or ebay, but it’s the low-value items that it can be more tempting to throw away.

How can we avoid this?

If you have furniture to get rid of, Dursley Lyons have a weekly sale, raising money for good causes...The Furniture Sales  normally take place at the Lions Store in May Lane, Dursley GL11 4JH, 08.30-11.30  every Saturday. If you have items to donate for a Furniture sale ring 01453 544471.

Charity shops are an obvious solution to disposing of still usable things, and are always glad of donations, so anything more portable can simply be dropped off with them. You get all the warm fuzzy feelings of helping a good cause, plus the feel-good of keeping items in use.

Stroud District has a Freegle -  A great place to give away unwanted things. Freegle is especially good if you have trouble moving things around – people simply come to you and take away the stuff you didn’t want, so for bulky items, this can be especially good. Get involved with freegle and you might pick up a few handy things you wanted, as well.

Last on today’s list, but by no means least, we have a jumble sale tomorrow (Saturday) 2-3.30 at the Maypole Hall in Stroud.

Zero waste

There is no such place as ‘away’. Everything we throw out winds up somewhere. Landfill is not a viable solution, and making things just to bin them is not a sustainable way to run a culture. We need a zero waste economy. There’s a lot we can do as individuals, with the whole reduce-reuse-recycle mantra, but that only works when you have the right materials in the first place. A disturbing number of important foods only seem to come in non-recyclable plastic packaging.

What to do?

Companies give us this stuff because they have convinced themselves it’s what the public wants, needs, expects. So we have to have clingfilm on cucumbers and re-sealable packets, and little plastic windows so that we can see the donuts inside look like every other fried confectionary we’ve ever encountered... it becomes normal so we expect it which justifies the idea that we expect it so they have to provide it.

We have to break that circle. I think we can.

I had a chat with @sainsburys on twitter recently. I’ve also started poking Quorn. I’m looking at companies I buy from and am commenting on how disappointing their packaging is. Doing it in the public domain – twitter and facebook are good – draws attention. I had a lot of support from other social media folk, out of the blue and with nothing organised. If enough of us tell them that recyclable packaging is what we want, they may listen.

We pay for this stuff, twice over. We pay to buy it. Then, we pay for our council to send it to landfill. With cuts eating into essential services, it is not acceptable that we should be spending any public money on burying refuse the supermarkets and others have forced on us. Rice, pasta, seeds, dried fruit – dried, basic, storeable things, are not reliable available in recyclable packaging. This has to change.

So, consider what’s in your bin, and who helped you put it there, and then drop them a polite and friendly line in a public space. ‘I am not happy’ is a good tone to take. At this stage its worth seeing if we can get some co-operation. If there isn’t much movement, petitions can work wonders, and we may have to consider posting clean waste back to the people who created it, explaining that as we can’t recycle it and don’t want to send it to landfill, returning to source seemed like a good idea.

Tis the season for lots of landfill

This came in from www.vision21.org.uk  so we’re sharing the bits relevant to Stroud with a few additional comments. All the opinion-based stuff in here can be attributed to me.

In Gloucestershire we generate nearly 30,000 tonnes of waste throughout the festive period, creating almost five extra sacks of waste per typical family household (Source: Recycle for Gloucestershire, Nov 2012).

Christmas trees - can be put out for collection with your refuse in the two weeks between 6th and 13th January. Christmas trees up to 1.5m tall can be left out whole and trees larger than this should be cut down before being put out for collection. Between 2nd and 20th January, large skips for tree recycling can be found throughout the district at the following locations -- the trees  will be taken for shredding and the material composted:

 * Berkeley-- Library Car Park
 * Bussage -- Village Hall
 * Cainscross -- Council Car Park
 * Cam-- Tesco Car Park
 * Dursley -- Dursley Pool Car Park
 * Haresfield -- Blooms Garden Centre
 * Leonard Stanley -- Pavilion Car Park
 * Minchinhampton -- Dr Browns Road
 * Nailsworth -- Wyevale Garden Centre
 * Slimbridge -- Royal British Legion Car Park
 * Stroud -- Cheapside Car Park
 * Whitminster -- Highfield Garden World
 * Wotton under Edge -- Chipping Car Park
 * Upton St Leonards**-- Perry Orchard.

Christmas cards - These can be put into the kerbside recycling boxes, or recycled at the cardboard banks at bring sites around the town. Some charities recycle Christmas cards as a way of raising money, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for those, too.

Wrapping paper - Unfortunately, wrapping paper cannot be accepted for recycling as it is often dyed or laminated, or contains non-paper additives such as gold and silver coloured shapes. Glitter and plastics cannot be recycled. If you want to be really green over the festive period, do consider how you wrap gifts in the first place.

We do not have special doorstep collection for food waste. Please consider composting where this is appropriate – uncooked vegetable matter especially. Please consider freezing and re-using leftovers. As a country we throw away a shocking amount of perfectly edible food.

The amount that we buy over Christmas just to throw away, is difficult to justify if you care at all about environmental impact. It is a season of outrageous waste. Anything you can do over the festive period to reduce your impact, through recycling, more careful shopping, and re-use, will help to make a difference. How much of your Christmas budget are you going to spend in order to send things to landfill? We can, and should do better.