Helpful Tips to Reduce Your Household Waste
Reducing household waste is an important environmental issue. The UK produces more than 31 million tonnes of waste every year and the recycling rate for waste from households was 45.0% in 2018.
Throwing things away is a huge waste of resources. It wastes the raw materials and energy used in producing the items and it wastes money.
There are some simple tips that you can follow to help reduce your household waste, meaning less environmental impact and fewer resources used. By applying them you can help to reduce the amount of waste that is taken to a landfill.
Sort Your Recyclable Household Waste
In order to reduce waste, we need to recycle wherever possible to do our part for the environment. We are recycling more than ever, but for recycling to be effective, it needs to be sorted appropriately. As you throw your waste away you should arrange it into different rubbish types, such as glass, cardboard and plastic. These should then be put into a recycling bag or box, which has been provided by your local council.
Compost Your Food Waste
Most of the weight in your rubbish bin comes from food waste. When food waste goes to landfill, it has trouble decaying properly and produces methane, which is a greenhouse gas and is bad for the environment.
Food waste can be discarded in either plastic compost bins provided by your council or composted in your garden. If you do not have a garden you may be able to join a local composting scheme.
Reduce Your Use of Plastics
Most food these days comes wrapped in plastic. Supermarkets seem to cover everything in plastic and if you were to look in your kitchen bin right now, a lot of the waste you would see is probably some kind of plastic that formed a wrapping your food. If you must buy food wrapped, try to find items that have some type of bio-degradable packaging. This will ensure that any waste that does get thrown away will decompose naturally.
Plastic bags are also a huge problem when it comes to plastic waste. Always try to bring your own bags from home. Reusing plastic bags is one way to tackle this issue, however, investing in a heavy-duty cotton bag or backpack to use on shopping trips will further help to save both money and the environment.
Avoid Single-Use (Disposable) Products
Try to avoid purchasing single-use or disposable products like disposable razors and plastic straws, cups, plates and cutlery. Even pre-packaged “on-the-go” food products such as sandwiches and salads can be replaced by better choices.
Recycle Bulky Household Waste
If you have some bulky household waste to dispose of, you may want to consider taking it to the local recycling centre. If you have a large amount of household waste, for example from a household renovation project, you should consider hiring a skip. At Canvey Skip Hire we provide fast and efficient skip hire in Southend and have fully licensed waste transfer stations at our two sites.
