Recycle Your Stuff
What may be surplus to you, may turn out to be essential to someone who is only down the street. Of course you don’t know everyone down the street – let alone what they need at any point in time. But you could start taking your surplus furniture, toys, electronic equipment etc to your nearest recycling centre – which might be the place your neighbour is looking in as well.
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GB , 15 Aug 2005
i give my stuff to liz london who lives in my street and works with people who are fleeing domestic violence
04 Sep 2005
We have recycling boxes provided by the local authority, which take glass, cans, paper, textiles, shoes, batteries, foil, engine oil. Green boxes for garden waste are coming soon.
Again, this predates Generous, but I’m putting it in to remind me to put in stuff I forget, such as batteries.
Cambridge, GB , 30 Sep 2005
We’re moving soon (lots of clearing out and sorting), so an ideal time to start this action.
04 Oct 2005
It’s worth remebering charity shops when you’re oruning books, cd’s etc, they’re almost always pleased to be given sellable stuff.
05 Oct 2005
we recycle card,paper,cans, textiles in wheelie bins from the council and it has cut our landfill rubbish by half.
07 Oct 2005
We did a day in our village where everyone put anything they didn’t want out on their drive. Anyone that wanted any of the stuff could just take it. Everything from old sewing machines to half used cans of paint and tiles.
Some people run swap centres online for their community, another way to do the same thing.
09 Oct 2005
Our local Council (North Somerset) are about to provide a better more frequent kerbside service. We now have three boxes laid out by the back door so that we can easily sort stuff ready to put out.
14 Oct 2005
My Local council also have started to do Kerbside collections and it’s great!! I can now recycle far more than I could previously as they take more material types than they had “Banks” for! Still can’t get rid of Cardboard though….
Midhurst, GB , 14 Oct 2005
Compost it!
New Malden, GB , 31 Oct 2005
I joined the freecycle mailing list and managed to recycle some stuff this way recently. It’s a way of making people know about stuff you’re giving away (or that you need), rather than selling it or dumping it. Go to http://freecycle.org/ and find your local group.
Plaistow, GB , 03 Nov 2005
Some parts of my borough have orange bags in which you can put paper,plastic and cans, and the council will collect it. I’ve asked for the service to be extended to the rest of the borough but no result yet. So it’s down to the paper- can- and bottle-banks still. Why don’t councils make it easier to recycle? Especially as London is covered in posters, saying “London let’s recycle more”! I’ve got a bag full of old clothes waiting to go to the charity shop but don’t know how to get it there. Perhaps I should split it into smaler bags. Don’t tell my family but a number of my Christmas presents end up as raffle prizes!
11 Nov 2005
We’re Freecyclers, too – can’t beat it
16 Nov 2005
Our Chapel has collection bins proided by our local council. It helps generate money for the church as well as helping the environment. It may be worth asking your local council if you church could raise money in this mannor too.
Plaistow, GB , 30 Nov 2005
Guess what! The council have now put recycling banks right at the end of my road – and we can put plastic bottles in it. It’s very pleasing.
06 Dec 2005
We couldn’t compost the cardboard as we don’t have a garden, but the council have finally added cardboard recycling to 3 of their ammenity sites – hooray!
Haverfordwest, GB , 11 Dec 2005
Have been recycling paper, bottles and cans for years, but I wish we could find somewhere that would take plastic and cardboard in our area. Even if we take it down to the council recycling centre, it just gets put in the “General Waste” compactor, which I presume then just goes to land-fills.
15 Dec 2005
I’ve been really lazy about recycling since I moved recently so this is a good time to spur myself back into action.
09 Jan 2006
Poole have a bi-weekly collection scheme – but being avid recyclers we also use collection points in neighbouring East Dorset. Like to keep general refuse bin less than full each week. Cans and plastic bottles take up the most storage space (please don’t ask us to give up Ribena or Stella) but can crusher from Lakeland plastics proved helpful avoiding unpleasant avalanches in the cloakroom. Recently discovered ‘Dorsetreclaim.org.uk’ for other items+furniture – can be a bit fussy with electrical and fire regulations on some things, but worth a try before using the dump
Plaistow, GB , 25 Jan 2006
And i thought the council didn’t listen. After asking them to extend the orange bag scheme to our area, we’ve recently received a leaflet saying we’ll be getting them. We can put paper, card, cans and plastic bottles into them, and the council will collect them, which is great.
Manchester, GB , 11 Feb 2006
We’ve had recycling boxes for metal, glass, envelopes and cardboard for about a year run by Emerge based locally, and also bags for paper. We have been nagging all that time for the facility to recycle plastic and have just had the news that they will start to collect plastic at Easter!! RESULT. It’s worth you guys who are needing these facilities nag, nag , nagging.
13 Feb 2006
We use freecycle a lot – it’s brilliant & it’s amazing that things you really don’t need anymore can be of use to other people, even broken items which you don’t have the capability to fix, others often have. My parents just moved out of a 5 bed house & I encouraged them to freecycle around 35 items which they would otherwise have had to pay to have dumped in landfill! www.freecycle.org. We still don’t have facilities locally to recycle plastic bottles which is frustrating. I am saving them all up just in case facilities become available…
28 Feb 2006
do plastic, cardboard, paper glass, tins and composting from home, but have recently started a job in a family run cafe where they don’t recycle as they say the business rates are too expensive. It’s so hard for me to just chuck stuff, but I don;t want to be breaking the law either…any ideas?
colchester, GB , 02 Mar 2006
Colchester’s not bad for recycling with fortnightly collections for garden waste, plastics, bottles & cans, textiles, paper and card. Tried freecycling briefly but got a bit bogged down with the many emails I was receiving daily offering me stuff!
07 Apr 2006
If the council won’t take your cardboard add it to your compost heap! Compost heaps like humans need lots of roughage like newspaper & cardboard.
15 Apr 2006
A Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development box is supposed (according to the website) to be found over in Popeswood Bracknell near the Post Office
28 Apr 2006
Try logging on to freecycle.com and find your nearest group, it’s brilliant. It costs absolutely nothing and you may pick up a real bargain. Their aim is to stop so much useful stuff going to landfill. We’ve recently disposed of quite a few things after clearing out the loft.
Reading, GB , 08 Jul 2006
If you’ve got stuff for the charity shops but can’t make it down or don’t know how to carry stuff to town centre shops some of the larger supermarket chains have bins for Oxfam (clothes, books and records), Salvation army (clothes) and a couple of other charities. It’s amazing.
14 Sep 2006
Our council have now given us a small bin so we now put our rubbish we cant recycle in the the small bin and recyclable stuff in the big bin, well done Bournemouth council!
24 Sep 2006
We are just getting a green wheelie bin. We already do lots of recycling ourselves: paper, card, plastic, aluminium. I am a bit worried becuse someone told me that our council has recyclable waste shipped to the developing world to fill their landfill sites. Is this just a vicious rumour, or is there some truth in it? What does anyone else think.
Plymouth, GB , 20 Oct 2006
We are lucky we already have wheelie binbut it is limited the types of plastic it can recycle.I take some things to the charity shop or pass on to friends and family.
03 Feb 2007
Does anyone know anyone that takes/re-uses self-recorded Video Tapes, all films – nothing dodgy! We’ve got 50 to 100 to re-home or re-cyle. All labelled. Can’t bear to throw them away and have them landfilled?? They must be of use to someone? Tried the freecycle website twice and had trouble getting anywhere both times.
22 Feb 2007
Well done to Poole council… Just made arrangements to swop for larger recycling bin and smaller household rubbish bin. Shouldn’t be a problem now we are to have an additional garden waste bin.
Amersham, GB , 15 May 2007
For years we’ve recycled everything we can through the local authority recyling centres. We have recently started washing and saving our empty tetrapaks for recycling too. We bundle them up and post them off to the recycling depot (you have to pay the postage). I’ve since started lobbying our council to provide tetrapak recycling facilites alongside the glass, paper, can, plastic and textile recycling bins at our local recycling centres.
York, GB , 27 Jan 2008
We don’t get a kerbside box, as we live in a terraced house, but the local council recycling centre that we use currently takes glass, paper, card, foil, cans, tetrapaks, plastic bottles and textiles (and the bigger one on the other side of town does more stuff like CDs and engine oil). We can also send off old printer cartridges. We don’t compost at the moment though, as we do not have a garden.
Ribble Valley, GB , 14 May 2008
Have a compost heap!
If you have a garden, compost all of your green (Non meat, fat or oil content) waste (including shredded paper & card). Not only do you save landfill and asociated carbon footprint of dumping stuff. You also save the environmental cost of peat extraction and the carbon footprint of buyimg bags of compost when mulching your garden or potting plants up.
Ribble Valley, GB , 14 May 2008
Have a compost heap!
If you have a garden, compost all of your green (Non meat, fat or oil content) waste (including shredded paper & card). Not only do you save landfill and asociated carbon footprint of dumping stuff. You also save the environmental cost of peat extraction and the carbon footprint of buyimg bags of compost when mulching your garden or potting plants up.
Haywards Heath, GB , 27 May 2008
we’re lucky enough to have kerbside recycling, a garden large enough to take 3 compost bins, a pretty active local freecycle list and a fairly decent recycling centre locally. our local council also has a ‘scrapstore’ called ‘flotsam & jetsam’ where they give away the best of the recyclable stuff – we’ve had fabric for various projects, including the making of lots of fabric carrier bags, envelopes, computer paper for the kids to draw on, crafty items for the girls to put together pressies for the grandparents and the like
plymouth, GB , 11 Jun 2008
Freecycling is great. Some people try to abuse it, but the moderators are brilliant at keeping things running ethically. Good way to save the landfill and save on you money!