Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Blogtober #21 Recycle Recycle Recycle

It amazes me how some people in this area/country/planet still dont recycle.

We put out two boxes of recycling a week and only one supermarket bag size of rubbish a week, sometimes not even that!

Our neighbours put out 1 supermarket bag of recycling and an over flowing green wheelie bin of rubbish!

On Oprah last week they were interviewing a family of 2 adults, 2 children and 2 cats. This family was creating 10 yes 10! huge rubbish bags a week! i dont even know how this is possible! Even if we didnt compost or recycle, we would struggle to fill even 2 big black rubbish bags. If we were using disposible nappies instead of cloth on top of that then maybe we could fill 5 but 10? no way!

Anyway back to this family on Oprah, after a week of "hard core" recycling they had cut their waste cut down to 4 big black rubbish bags and everyone seemed to think this was amazing................. i didnt ?!?!

Recycling isnt hard. At least not here in New Zealand. Where my family and I are living currently its even free. We just put out our 2 boxes with our rubbish and thats it! easy peesey :)

How easy is recycling where you are? Do you compost? What do you do to reduce your waste?

Leave me your tips and i will choose 1 to win todays "recycled" giveaway prize:

The Spring 08 edition of "World Sweet World"

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I LOVE this little magazine. It is packed full of beautiful things, stuff to make your self, how to "up cycle" things to make even cooler thinfs etc.

This issue has completly sold out of print so quite a "collectors" item :)
Inside it has how to make a solar oven, how to make dough, how to make a hoodie out of some old t-shirts, screan printing and how to make a bag out of old records. It also has articles on eco coffins, kiwi bloggland and a write up on what Raglan has to offer.

It has been read and re-read by me so in loved but still great condition :)

5 comments:

Jo's Place said...

I totally get what you mean about recycling. We have a small bag of rubbish everyweek but our recycling bin and paper bin are full. We compost and have a worm farm. I am however going to build a proper composting bin this weekend so we can compost heaps more. I must admit though, our local council only starting taking all plastics, up until last year it only took 2 numbers, not 7. Right pain in the butt.

humel said...

I agree!! I have been known to pick recyclable items out of bins to put into my own recycle bin at home...

I live in the UK, and in my particular area we have three wheelie bins per household. The brown one is for garden waste (but not including food scraps), the grey one is for recyclable items (paper, glass, tins, some kinds of plastic) and the green one is for everything else. Each bin is emptied fortnightly.

What drives me MAD is seeing the bins other people have put out, which are sometimes overflowing with the wrong kind of rubbish - cardboard boxes in the green bin, or plastic bags in the grey one. What drives me MADDER is that sometimes when THEIR bins are too full they dump some of their surplus rubbish in OUR bin - and if the binmen notice non-recyclable items in the grey bin, they won't empty it! Or on occasion, the bins have been emptied, and before I've had a chance to bring ours back into our yard someone has half-filled it with a load of their rubbish - how *&$!%"* rude is that?!

Ahem. Rant over. Keep up the good work - hopefully we can keep educating those around us!

PJS said...

Wow.... 10 big bags?? We only fill 2 small bin liners most weeks. We try to buy things with very little packaging, all our animals deal with leftoever food and peelings etc and our paper waste is used to start our fires (yes I know that isn't recycling, but still). We are using cloth nappies so not any waste from our wee girl either. it's amazing, we dont even fill our bin for bin day.

Vic said...

It ISN'T hard, I know, people really need to be educated a little more I think - some people don't realise what you CAN actually recycle for example & only put out the obvious things like milk bottles & news papers...

I have been eyeing off that little zine... perhaps you convinced me to actually, oh, I don't know... buy a copy...?!

DELiciousDesignz said...

We have a recycle bin that is bigger than our normal bin and we always have too much recycling to fit in it. Plus with the worm farm we really don't need to throw much out in the rubbish.
I love to upcycle objects in my jewellery creations too.

oh , and I found your blog via blogtoberfest!