CHAPTER ELEVEN

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

WHEREVER YOU ARE, put this book to one side and go over to your waste bin. Now peer inside. What do you see? Packaging from last night’s dinner, maybe? Some of last night’s dinner? A few undesirables, a few unidentifiables, even a couple of unmentionables? Well what if I told you that the goal in recycling is to do away with waste bins altogether. No bins at home or in the office. Oh, sorry, you can come back now; there, have a seat, you haven’t missed a thing. I was just killing time until you got back. Now … oh yes, bins! How would life work without a bin? Here is where the future of recycling starts to get just a little bit fascinating.

The idea is to create a circular economy where there is no waste: where everything has another use or can be composted. Of course for that to happen we need to work out what to do with the recycler’s biggest headaches: plastic, glass and tin.

Thankfully in the UK a good portion of these are already recycled, but to reach our not-unrealistic goal, that must increase all the way to 100 per cent. One way of doing it would be through a deposit–return scheme, where, say, twenty pence would be added to the price of anything sold in a plastic, glass or tin container, and that money would be given back when returned. It actually already has government backing.

The truth is that money talks, and that works both ways. As a consumer, getting money back for our empties is a fab idea; but if you combine that with taxing every producer on packaging at source before it even leaves the warehouse – something that would seriously eat into their profit line – suddenly you can see how there would be less packaging coming out to us, and that which does we’re only too keen to hand back so it can be reused and we get our bit of bunce.

Another cool innovation would be to link all packaging with mobile phone technology, so when you pass your mobile across it a message would pop up telling you how to reuse or recycle, and that could easily be funded by advertising. From there it’s a short step to track and trace, which would end littering and fly-tipping overnight.

It all feels very positive – at least it does if you live in one of the countries that take recycling seriously. Come on people, we live on one planet, we all need to work together on this – and from a self-sufficient point of view we’re already onboard as it’s in our DNA and often happens out of necessity anyway. But this chapter aims to help you go even further by looking at inventive ways of reducing what comes into our workplaces and homes, practical ways to reuse what we can, and recycling everything else and doing away with waste bins forever. For help with this chapter I reached out to Stuart Foster, CEO at Recoup, the UK’s leading charity on recycling (www.recoup.org).

SECOND TIME AROUND

‘Reuse’ can mean two things. It can mean being creative with your own once-used items and reusing them for things other than what they were designed for; and it can mean taking something that someone else was throwing out and giving it a new lease of life – put simply, buying second-hand rather than new.

Reusing within the home and garden

Our grandparents and great-grandparents were thrifty, reusing and mending whatever they could. And goods tended to be well made, built to last. Today’s mass-manufactured products are all too often shoddily constructed out of poor-quality materials and quick to fall apart. But more and more people no longer wish to live in a completely disposable world, and, in recent years, some manufacturers have responded to the growing sensibility among consumers that goods should last and not break a few days after the warranty runs out.

The really enjoyable, creative part of reusing goods in self-sufficiency is looking for alternative uses for things that otherwise might have been thrown out. Use that old handbag as a clothes-peg holder; empty cereal-packet liners as freezer-bags; old, washed tin cans as stylish pen-holders or cutlery containers. If you have left-over tiles after tiling the kitchen or bathroom, they make original coasters, or second-hand roofing slates could be used as splash backs in the kitchen and bathroom. Interestingly shaped jam jars or small glass yoghurt pots can be used as tea-light holders in the garden on summer evenings. The possibilities are endless.

If you have a garden, cardboard loo-roll tubes and empty yoghurt pots can be used as seed propagators (cardboard can be buried directly in the ground, where it will decompose naturally – oh, how’s this for a really cool idea: paper, such as business cards, impregnated with meadow seeds, so when you’re done with it simply plant the whole thing); cut-down plastic bottles can serve as cloches to protect delicate young seedlings. Old tyres can be filled with earth and used as planters. Old CDs can be strung together and hung up among your runner beans and tomatoes as bird-scarers. (See pages 47–8)

If you have a smallholding or livestock, numerous items can be given a new life as something different. Old freezers make excellent feed stores that are rodent- and weather-proof. Old bits of carpet are ideal to lay over a vegetable bed to keep weeds at bay, or as insulation tacked under the roof of a chicken- or pig-house. Old pallets have myriad uses, including as gates, temporary fence-pluggers, and (nailed together to form three sides of a square) compost-heap containers. Old paint buckets can be used as plant pots, feed containers or – buckets. Old scaffolding planks make great heavy-duty shelving or the sides to raised beds.

Reuse is a habit of mind. All you need is a little ingenuity and some imagination.

Reusing other people’s goods

Buying second-hand is ethical and saves resources. If you buy from a charity shop, your money is going directly to a good cause. If you buy from an individual, you are helping him or her recoup some of the original expense. If you buy locally, you are keeping the money within the local economy and cutting down on distribution miles. Some people even give away their unwanted items rather than selling them.

Online buying and selling

You can find practically anything you’ll ever need on the Internet. For online buying and selling, many people’s first port of call is the online auction site eBay (www.ebay.co.uk), where you can find both new and second-hand goods. Using this site is like walking through the biggest department store in the world while sitting comfortably in front of your computer, and you can lose yourself for hours just browsing. There are many genuine bargains to be had.

A slightly different take on passing on unwanted goods is offered by the Freecycle network (www.freecycle.org), preloved (www.preloved.co.uk) or of course Facebook groups. This is a neat concept, by which local groups of people offer their unwanted items online, or you can also advertise for something you need. Many are non-profit movements with a stated aim to help keep material out of landfill; by clicking on their main site you can find out if there is a community in your local area – and if not, you can always start one.

These are just some examples of sites dedicated to selling and gifting goods on the net, but there are many others; for example, Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk) now offers second-hand goods via its Marketplace section; and the Oxfam shop also has an online presence where you can pick up second-hand clothes and books just as if you were browsing in one of their physical shops (www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/).

Sourcing locally

In the UK there are many sources of second-hand goods. First of all, of course – once you’ve asked around all your friends and relatives – there are the classified ads in the local paper and the traditional cards in the newsagent’s window or on the supermarket noticeboard, in which people try to give away or sell anything from their old fridge or superseded laptop to their just-weaned-from-mum kittens or a ton of logs. Then you can have fun trawling round boot fairs on a Sunday afternoon, or visiting recycling centres and reclamation or architectural salvage yards. Charity shops often yield good bargains, especially clothes and books, and are clearly a particularly ethical method of obtaining goods.

For the smallholder aiming to be as self-sufficient as possible, if you had to buy everything new, life would be a great deal harder. Chicken houses, feed stores, pig arcs; wood, wire, tools, fence posts … The list goes on. Being able to pick items up second-hand is often the only way to keep it all ticking over.

A good place to find items for the smallholding is the farm clearance sale, generally held when a farm needs to be disposed of after a farmer has died, retired or moved away. Farm sales tend to be auctions and you can often find anything from a set of gardening tools to a nearly-new tractor, all being sold to the highest bidder. Keep an eye on local newspapers, rural estate agents and country auctioneer’s brochures for notices of upcoming farm clearance sales.

The other side of the coin

It may sound obvious, but the second-hand system only works if people are putting in as well as taking out. So, online or offline, do join reuse communities, and join in! Such forums will give you inspiration and energy. It may be a challenge for you to overcome the smallholder’s or homesteader’s natural urge to hoard. ‘That’ll come in handy one day …’ Sound familiar? When you’re having a clear-out, look at everything with a dispassionate eye and consider whether you really still need it. A good rule of thumb is, if it hasn’t been used in a year, pass it on to someone else.

RECYCLING AND WASTE REDUCTION

First reduce consumption, then reduce waste, and finally recycle what’s left over.

Reduce your waste at source

Reducing your waste begins while you shop. The packaging around food is the biggest culprit and one we’ve already touched on in the introduction to this chapter. As much as 16 per cent of the price you pay can be for the packaging, which is simply tossed in the bin. Where possible, buy concentrates or loose goods. For example, normal washing-up liquid is about 95 per cent water and thickened with hefty amounts of salt: in its concentrated form, the active ingredients are doubled, and the bottle costs less because there is less packaging. Remember to use correspondingly less of the concentrated product. (If you tend to forget, tip half the concentrate into another bottle and top both up with water.)

When selecting what to buy in shops, avoid individually wrapped portions where you can, and all products with excessive packaging. Many shops nowadays, especially independently owned local stores, sell loose goods by weight, so that you can choose the exact amount that you want and scoop it into a paper bag – muesli, nuts and grains are some examples of products that work well sold in this way. Some shops operate a refill system where you can take back your old liquid container and have it refilled with washing liquid, conditioner, shampoo or whatever it may have been.

Talk to cafes and restaurants next time you order a takeaway about supplying your own containers, and get into the habit of carrying your own travel mug for those cheeky Costas.

Compost

All your organic waste can be composted (the bits that you don’t feed to the chickens, the cats and the dogs, that is), although it’s best not to put cheese or meat on the compost heap as this is likely to attract rats. If you don’t have a garden, investigate whether your local council runs a composting scheme; food waste is now a big part of the council’s kerbside collections. If you do have a garden, then well-worked and rotted compost is worth its weight in gold. If you make too much compost for your needs, try selling or giving away the remainder (put it on Freecycle and you will have people knocking down the front door). For a gardening friend, a big bag of compost would be a perfect birthday present (though probably only for someone you know very, very well).

Recycling

Can your waste be turned into something else? The biggest impact on reducing your household waste is through recycling. Pretty much everyone is aware that aluminium cans, paper, glass, plastic, food and garden waste can be recycled. Contact your local council to find out what else they will accept – some recycling plants, for example, can now recycle the dreaded Tetrapaks, a great step forward. Batteries should never be thrown away into landfill as they contain poisonous metals and chemicals that will leach out into the environment, and the same goes for old mobile phones, computers and other technological items: shops will sometimes take these back, or your council will tell you how to dispose of them safely. You might even be able to get cash for some of them.

People are recycling things in ever more interesting and creative ways. Wool is reclaimed from old sweaters and knitted into funky new garments. Beer bottles are cut down to make attractive drinking-glasses. Circuit boards become mouse-mats and book-covers. Plastic bottles are melted down, spun into thread and woven into strong rucksacks or soft fleece jackets; plastic cups become pencils. Elephant dung is made into paper. Rubber car tyres are made into sandals, pencil cases and satchels. Old floorboards have even been made into guitars and violins. Truly, one person’s waste is another’s goldmine. In the world of self-sufficiency, this is inspirational.

3D printers

Although technology on this is relatively young and quite expensive, the thought that each of us could have a 3D printer in our homes is very exciting, and from a recycling point of view could be a complete game changer. Who would need packaging if you order something and it appears in the corner of your room? Okay there are a few problems to iron out, like what happens if you don’t like it and want to send it back? And, of course, it would lead to massive over ordering after a glass or two of vino, ‘Okay, where did all these pairs of shoes come from?!’ But that aside, 3D printers could still hold the key to eliminating unwanted packaging once and for all.