Further steps to reducing your household waste

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If you’re already doing a lot of recycling and your household waste is reducing nicely, here are our top ten tips for doing a little bit more.

There’s no need for overwhelm; just pick one suggestion and try it for a week. If it works for you, add another one!

Remember, lots of people taking small steps can add up to significant change.

1- familiarise yourself with the recycling symbols that you find on plastic. If you have this knowledge in mind when you shop, you’ll be able to make more informed purchases.

2- Remove your kitchen bin! This is the one step that made the biggest difference to our household. By removing the temptation, you’re more likely to remember to recycle, compost or reuse instead.

3- Find your nearest textiles bank and start using it. If you have clothes, shoes or linen that is not good enough for a charity shop then a textile bank will take your material and make it into cloths or stuffing for furniture.

4- Switch to a reusable rather than disposable option for a regular purchase. Suggestions include kitchen towel, razors, sanitary protection, silicone cake cases, biros and nappies.

5- Start taking your own containers when you shop. When you buy meat, fish or items from a deli, ask them to use your own containers instead of their disposable plastic ones.

6- Start recycling polythene. Either check with your local supermarket to see if they will accept it back with the carrier bags or save it up and post to Polyprint, GHS or Sefton Transmail.

7- Get creative with reuse. Use glass jars for making jams or chutneys, use cardboard toilet roll inners for making seedling pots and use the small plastic trays that you buy mange tout and mini sweetcorn on as drip trays for house plants.

8- Reduce your cooked food waste. A bokashi or wormery will take care of cooked food scraps including meat, fish and small bones.

Learn more about getting the most from your bokashi bin.

9- Create a zero waste meal. If you’re used to buying a curry in a plastic tray, switch to packaging that you can recycle more easily. For example curry in a tin, curry sauce in a glass jar that you mix with cooked meat or vegetables or making a curry from scratch.

Read more about reducing food waste.

10- Use refills where possible. Consider things like your ink cartridges, laundry supplies (see if you can refill your Ecover bottles) and cosmetics.

Find out more about cosmetic companies which recycle packaging and offer a refill service.

What further step could you take today to reduce your household waste?

If you’ve done them all and are hungry from more, then check out our article for ‘Recycling pros!
If it all seems overwhelming, then take a breather and revise our ‘beginner’s tips for reducing household waste‘ article.

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