How green is your house?

Nov 28 2007 by Sally Williams, Western Mail

As part of the Western Mail’s Environment Month, campaign group Waste Awareness Wales took a look inside the average Welsh home to show that it’s not just charity that begins at home – saving the planet can start within your own four walls too

ON average every person in the UK throws away their own bodyweight in rubbish every seven weeks – the vast majority of which could have been recycled.

And it seems the recycling message is clearly starting to get through – the current recycling rate in Wales is at an all-time high of more than 27%.

However, waste remains an important issue in Wales, with the national target of recycling or composting 40% of our waste by 2009-10 fast approaching.

Against this backdrop, there is a clear role we can each play in helping Wales achieve its recycling goals.

From making use of your leftover food to taking the empties to the recycling bank, there are plenty of simple ways we can all take action to help reduce the amount we waste. Whether it’s reducing, reusing or recycling our waste, in each room of the house there are ways to cut down on the waste we produce.

Anna Richards from Waste Awareness Wales said, “There are so many quick and easy lifestyle changes we can make to help reduce the amount we waste.

“Far too many people think there is little they as consumers can do that will make a difference – but if we all take action and make a few simple changes we can make a massive impact for the better.

“For example, if everyone in Wales reduced or used up their leftover food instead of putting it in the bin, we would save 350,000 tonnes of food from rotting in landfill sites each year – and in every room of the house there are plenty of ways we can reduce, reuse and recycle to help minimise the amount we need to throw away.”

The front door
Saving the world can begin the moment you step through your door by eliminating junk mail from your life.

For every tonne of junk mail we can prevent being produced, we save around 17 trees, 390 gallons of oil and 7,000 gallons of water.

Sign up with the Mailing Preference Service to get your name taken off the mailing lists at www.mpsonline.org.uk or www.wasteawarenesswales.org.uk

Kitchen
The kitchen is arguably the least eco-friendly room in the house – but it needn’t be this way.

The simplest thing we could change here is the amount of food we throw out; 350,000 tonnes a year in Wales.

This is likely to head straight for landfill, where without access to oxygen it rots and produces the harmful greenhouse gas methane.

And it’s not just the environment that suffers – binning this much costs us £400m in wasted food every year in Wales.

To try to reduce the amount of food we waste, take a look in your fridge before you go shopping to avoid buying food you already have – even better make a meal plan for the week before you go.

Use up leftovers rather than binning them – Sunday’s leftover roast chicken can go into risottos, stews and salads, or spare veg can become part of soups, pasta sauces or stir fries.

Make the best use of your fridge and freezer. If you find bread often goes off before you can finish it, keep sliced bread in the freezer – it can go straight in the toaster for instant toast. Most of our fridges are set too warm to be truly effective – they need to be between one and 5C.

Fridges can even bring tired food back to life – if you’ve got carrots or cucumber that have lost their bite, place them in cold water in the fridge to perk them up.

Other ways to reduce the amount we bin include using washable cotton cloths rather than kitchen roll which goes straight in the bin, and reusing plastic boxes as storage or freezer containers.

Bedrooms
Every year in the UK more than one million tonnes of textiles are thrown out – and 75% of this ends up straight in landfill sites.

But there’s so many ways to get rid of your old clothes it couldn’t be easier. As well as taking them to charity shops or giving them to friends and family, the latest craze is for clothes swapping parties, where you take your unwanted clothes and swap them with other people for a whole new wardrobe.

Clothes can easily be customised or altered to give them a new look, and the cost of having damaged clothes repaired will often be a fraction of the cost of buying new outfits.

Bedroom furniture such as wardrobes and drawers needn’t be thrown out if you give your bedroom a makeover – Freecycle them instead.

Freecycle is essentially a free version of online auction sites, as people offer for free items they no longer want, anything from wardrobes to books. People who want the item then get in touch and collect it.

Nurseries and children’s bedrooms
Any parent knows the bewildering array of toys and games children accumulate, so make sure unwanted or outgrown toys are given to friends, charity shops of “freecycled” rather than heading for landfill.

Make the most of other parents looking to pass on their child’s unwanted toys and save money by using your local library to source books, and passing any of your unwanted books on to charity shops or friends.

Save scrap paper and card for your child’s scribbling, and send them off to school with recycled pads of paper in their bags.

Using real nappies on young children makes a great difference to the amount you throw out each week.

A child will get through around 5,000 disposable nappies a year – and that’s a lot of waste heading for landfill.

Real nappies these days come in prints and patterns and fasten with poppers and fabric fasteners – no terry towelling or safety pins in sight – and will save you around £500 for every child you use them on.

Living room
Make sure you recycle your old newspapers and magazines. It may sound obvious, but paper and card can make up to one third of the average family’s bin each week. Check what materials your local council can recycle and find out if they run a kerbside recycling scheme to collect from your house.

Take a look at all your electrical appliances and think about how much energy they use. Recycling just one aluminium can saves enough energy to run your TV set for three hours – your entire evening’s viewing. Similarly a glass bottle will power a TV for 15 minutes.

When the batteries in our remote controls start to fade, they normally go straight into the bin. Yet apart from being one more contribution to the huge amount of waste we send to landfill, the batteries can leak harmful chemicals into the land – avoid this by investing in rechargeable batteries instead.

Books, DVDs and CDs can all be reused when you’ve finished with them, either by giving them to friends and family, or by donating them to a charity shop or placing on Freecycle.

Bathroom
A sparkling bathroom can often come at a price to the environment.

As well as questions over just how many chemicals products used in the bathroom often contain, their packaging can create a huge amount of waste, and much of it can’t be recycled.

However, sometimes the old ones really are the best, and homemade cleaners are just as effective as bought ones – at a fraction of the price. A diluted vinegar solution, polished up with newspaper can be used to get stainless steel and glass gleaming, and pastes made from bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice can be used to tackle soap scum and tough stains.

Garden
Composting at home can prevent many items from ending up in our bins – fruit and vegetable peelings, teabags, eggshells and even cardboard, such as egg boxes and toilet roll tubes, can all go into the compost bin. The trick is to get a balance of dry waste, such as cardboard, and wet waste, such as grass cuttings. The compost needs a balance of these to rot down, so if you find your compost is too wet, add more dry materials, such as egg boxes, egg shells and paper and vice versa. Some councils offer free or discounted compost bins, so get in touch with your local council to find out more.

Keen gardeners will know the value of protective cloches to young plants – and rather than expensive designs, plastic bottles cut in half and placed over the plant will keep the heat in and protect it during the winter months. Yoghurt pots, egg boxes and plastic trays can also be used as seed trays and even wooden lolly sticks can be written on and reused as plant labels.

- Waste Awareness Wales is a campaign established to promote waste reduction, reuse and recycling among all sectors of the community. The campaign is coordinated by the Welsh Local Government Association and Keep Wales Tidy and is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government.

For more details visit www.wasteawarenesswales.org.uk