Festive Recycling and Reducing Tips

We all enjoy festive food and drink at Christmas but avoid wasting your money by buying too much and throwing it away. Observe the ‘Use By’ date on food rather than the ‘Best Before’, which is for quality rather than indicating when a product is unsafe to eat.
To find out useful tips on food storage, great leftover recipes and advice on portioning this holiday season visit Love Food Hate Waste
Buy your fruit and vegetables naked (without packaging) – that way you avoid having to dispose of the packaging and you can pick the best ones too!
Remember to put fruit and vegetable peelings or any food waste in your brown bin. Fruit and vegetable peelings can also be home composted.
13,350 tonnes of glass are thrown out in the UK during the festive season – from champagne and sherry bottles to mincemeat and cranberry sauce jars. Recycling these could save 4,200 tonnes of CO2 - the equivalent of taking around 1,300 cars off the road for a year or 630 around-the-world flights. So keep your black recycling box handy!

Re-gifting is when you give a gift you received to someone else - a good way to save money and reduce clutter.
Give the gift of time, such as a voucher for an evening’s babysitting or helping someone with their garden.
Give a world gift by donating money to charity for a specific item, such as a goat or a mosquito net for a place in need in name of your loved ones.
Look out for presents made from recycled materials or those that have recycled content.
The amount of wrapping paper thrown away in the UK at Christmas could stretch around the equator nine times. As long as the paper is not metallic or plasticised it can be recycled in your brown bin or, better still, kept to reuse next year!
A good way to reduce wrapping waste is to use furoshiki – a Japanese style of wrapping presents with material which can then be reused. Watch the video on Recycle Now .
Buy rechargeable batteries for all new toys and electrical gadgets - for every 500 charges you will save 499 batteries from being thrown away.
Electrical or electronic goods are often given as Christmas presents. Do not place old electricals in your grey bin - recycle them at your nearest Household Waste Recycling Centre or bring them along to our WEEE collection events in January and February 2012.

Use your local kerbside recycling service to recycle your paper, glass, cans, food, cardboard and garden waste. Visit the recycling sites webpage to find out what else you can recycle near you.
Take unwanted toys to a local children’s centre or charity shop where they can be enjoyed again.
Make a new year’s resolution to reduce, reuse and recycle more and more often! Get your children involved in the household recycling routine as a valuable educational activity.
Remember to tell guests where your recycling bins are and what goes in them when they stay over Christmas.

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