Infographic: Recycle your electrical goods

Have you got some old electrical items gathering dust? Well, the good news is many of them can be recycled, including at Dorset recycling centres.

Every year we create enough electrical waste to fill six Wembley stadiums. Amazing, huh? (And why are these things always measured by Wembley stadiums? Or ‘something the size of Wales’?)

Anyway, this and many other fascinating facts can be found in this infographic illustrating the scale of electrical waste in the UK – and what we can do about it. Read it… then get recycling!

Use your loaf!

Every day in the UK we throw away around 24 million slices of bread.

To put it another way, that’s 29 per cent of all the bread we buy!

But stale bread doesn’t necessarily mean ‘gone off’.  There are lots of ways we can use bread even when it’s past its best.

Love Food Hate Waste have teamed up with Great British Bake Off champion Nancy Birtwhistle for a video showing some creative ways to make the most of your leftover bread.

Watch the video and get more tips to make your loaf last.

iPad competition winner

Congratulations to our iPad competition winner, Claire Liddiard from Verwood.

Claire signed up to the Recycle for Dorset garden waste service online and was entered into our prize draw. She said:

”I was really surprised to win the iPad as I never win anything. The garden waste service is really handy and signing up online was very quick and easy.”

Congratulations to Claire, and thank you to all those that signed up for garden waste service online.

If you don’t yet have a garden waste collection and would like to sign up for the service starting in September you need to apply before 31 July.

 

Keeping your food waste bin clean this summer

During the summer months food waste bins are an excellent breeding ground for flies and maggots.  In order to prevent these, here are some steps to make sure your bin does not attract them-

 

Flies are attracted by Smells:

• Double bag or wrap in newspaper, food waste such as meat and bones and pet

waste, this will help to reduce the smell and stop the flies laying eggs on the food

• Rinse polystyrene food trays, yoghurt pots and other food packaging that cannot be

recycled to reduce the smell of your refuse.

• Sprinkle vinegar in your bin to neutralise odours.
• Rinse your bin out regularly if possible and keep it clean by bagging everything

before putting it in the bin.

• If possible store the bin away from direct sunlight to reduce smells.
• Keep the bin lid shut, if it’s broken or does not shut contact Recycle for Dorset.
• Hang an insecticidal strip inside your bin.
• Home compost your kitchen vegetable waste in a home compost bin.
• If nappies are included in your waste double bag these also, or consider using real

reusable nappies – take advantage of Recycle for Dorset Real Nappy incentive scheme.

 

 

In the Kitchen:

• The easiest way to sort your refuse from your recycling is to separate as you go.

You may find it more convenient to have two small kitchen bins, one for recycling

and one for your refuse.

• Keep all food covered up and bag and bin waste straight away
• Try not to prepare too much food, so reducing the amount of food you throw away

and saves money.

• Try using the fragranced bin liners that can purchased from some stores

 

And finally if you do get Maggots.

 

Maggots are the larva stage of the common housefly. Flies are attracted to food and

other rubbish. Maggots only exist if flies have been allowed to have access to your

rubbish. So if flies settle on your rubbish they may lay eggs, which turn into maggots.

Use insecticidal spray that kills crawling insects, purchased from supermarkets or DIY stores, to kill the maggots and then rinse your bin with disinfectant if possible.

Food for thought at the Seafood festival

Over 55,000 people attended the Weymouth Seafood festival last weekend and the Recycle for Dorset team were there handing out Love Food Hate Waste cook books. The team were on hand offering advice and helpful tips on reducing food waste as well as giving away tasty recipe ideas for using up leftovers. Plus ways to save money by being freezer savvy.

Thank you to everyone visited the Recycle for Dorset stand on the Saturday. It was great to talk to so many local residents as well as visitors and hear so many people already making the most of their food waste!

Reasons to turn to the tap not bottle

Drinking tap water is a really easy way to cut down on waste, save money and reduce your carbon footprint.

Here are the top five reasons you to turn to the tap:

1. It’s clean, safe and always fresh
2. It has a far lower carbon footprint than bottled water
3. Tap water generates no packaging waste
4. Really cheap – it costs around 0.2p per litre
5. Tastes just as good

Turn to the tap and see how much you could save.

Top tips for improving your recycling at home

At home is where you can make the biggest difference to the amount you recycle. 

Here are some simple tips for improving how you recycle at home – some may seem like “common sense”, but just one small change can make a world of difference.

• Flatten your cardboard boxes when you put them in the recycling – you can get more of everything in your bin that way.
• All your plastic bottles can be recycled, from mouthwash to salad dressing – so put them all in your recycling bin! You can recycle plastic bottles, tubs and pots, and their tops and lids too, if you are unsure what to recycle visit Recycle for Dorset.
• It’s more than just newspapers you can recycle as well. You can recycle your envelopes, wrapping paper, birthday cards and even phone books. All types of cardboard can also be recycled, even toilet roll tubes and drinks cartons.
• Most metallic items are also recyclable – It’s not just cans and tins you can also recycle, but kitchen foil and even empty aerosols.
• Keep a bag or a space in a cupboard in the kitchen for storing the recycling as you go. It also makes it easy to take things to the recycling bins that way.
• Why not try keeping a carrier bag in the hall for recycling your junk mail straight away?
• We all recycle but often, one person in the house is the expert – if you’re unsure what to do with something, who is the expert in your house?
• On your way to school, supermarket or work, stop off at the recycling point and drop your recycling. This allows you fit recycling into your lifestyle easily, and the kids will learn about recycling too this way too.
• Whenever you’re not sure what you can recycle, look on Recycle for Dorset for more information.
• Check the date you put out your recycling – Find out what day your recycling will be collected.

Salad days

Every day we also manage to chuck out around 1.9 million slices of ham, 1.5 million sausages and nearly 1.5 million tomatoes. All great picnic food, so why are we not enjoying it? Here are some tips to make things easier to keep fresh and crunchy:

• If your salad is tired and wilted, put it in a bowl of water with a couple of ice cubes for at least half an hour. When you spin it, you’ll find that it’s become nice and crispy again.
• Some lettuce keeps better than others – try “Little Gem and Cos” which can last longer because of their closed leaves
• To keep lettuce fresh in the fridge, break it into leaves, rinse in cold water, dry in a colander or salad spinner and wrap in kitchen roll, tea towel or newspaper, then keep it in a plastic bag and refrigerate.
• Keep watercress bunches in a bowl of water.
• When you come to serve salad, chill the bowl in the fridge and put kitchen paper underneath the salad. This absorbs the water and the salad will be snapping crisp. Remove the paper before you toss the dressing into the salad.
• To remove insects from salad or vegetables from the garden, fill a sink or bowl with cold water and add a couple of tablespoons of salt. Leave the vegetables or salad leaves to soak in this for about 20 minutes. The insects will sink to the bottom of the bowl and you can then clean the vegetables as normal.
• Too many tomatoes? To freeze tomatoes, remove their stalks and freeze whole in freezer bags. They can then be used in place of canned tomatoes, in a tomato or Bolognese sauce or chilli con carne. Just put the whole frozen tomatoes into the pan at the point when you would add the canned tomatoes.

For more ideas to liven up your left over’s and helpful hints visit Recycle for Dorset blog.

Recycling Around the Home: Top Tips

Everyday last week we posted ideas and tips to help you recycle more around the home as part of Recycle Week 2015. If you missed any of the daily posts you can catch up by visiting the Recycle for Dorset blog

 

Here’s a recap of some hints and tips:

 

• Put a bag or bin in your bathroom just for recycling.

 

• Remember to recycle baby products such as plastic talcum powder bottles and men’s toiletries like shaving gel aerosols.

 

• Put a bag or bin in your bathroom just for recycling.

 

• Remember to recycle baby products such as plastic talcum powder bottles and men’s toiletries like shaving gel aerosols.

 

And remeber…

• If everyone in the UK recycled one toothpaste box, it would save enough energy to run a fridge in 2,000 homes for a year.

 

• If everyone in the UK recycled one aluminium deodorant aerosol, enough energy could be saved to vacuum over 480,000 homes for a year.

 

• Plastic bottles can be recycled into footy shirts, fleeces and new plastic bottles.

 

• It takes 7 days for a recycled newspaper to come back again as newspaper.

 

• Cans and tins can come back as car parts, aeroplane wings and new cans.

 

• Drinks cans from around the home are recycled into new cans which can be back on the shelves in just 8 weeks.

 

For more helpful ideas and tips visit the Recycle for Dorset blog

Recycle Week tips: in the bedroom

This week is Recycle week and the theme is recycling around the home. Every day this week on the Recycle for Dorset blog we are looking at different rooms and looking at what can be recycled.

Today it’s the Bedrooms

In the bedroom,

• empty tissue boxes
• old magazines
• empty deodorant aerosols can be recycled.

If everyone in the UK recycled one aluminum deodorant aerosol, enough energy would be saved to run a TV in over 151,000 homes for a year. Also, did you know that it takes seven days for a recycled newspaper to come back as newspaper again? You could be reading your favourite newspaper on recycled paper in no time at all!

 

For more ideas on recycling and hints and tips to save money and help the environment visit the Recycle for Dorset Blog