Tag: Recycling

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Recycling Saves You Money

It’s a well-known fact that recycling is good for the environment. The less we throw away, the less rubbish ends up in landfill and bulk waste and the less harm we do to the environment. However, despite the proven benefits that recycling has for our world, too many people just don’t bother. Either they think it’s too much effort or they just don’t know what can be recycled.

Yet in today’s tough economic climate, with household budgets stretched to breaking point, we all need to save as much money as we can. Recycling is actually a great way to save yourself some money – just making a few simple adjustments around your home and when you’re out and about you can make some serious savings.

So, with that in mind, here’s 7 reasons why recycling saves you money.

1. Swap Your Clothes With Friends. Rather than splash out on new clothes and throw out your old ones, have you thought about holding a clothes-swapping party with friends? Not only could you make a fun evening of it with wine and niblles you could end up creating a whole new wardrobe for yourself! Give your friends a call and suggest they bring along something they no longer wear – if you’ve got your eye on a pretty summer dress what better way than to get it for free and save yourself a few bob?

2. Sell Your Old Mobile. Rather than chuck out your old mobile phone, why not sell it to an online mobile recycling website? There are plenty of companies out there who will pay you for your old mobile – you just search for your mobile and see how much you can get for it. Once you’re happy you’ve found the highest offer they’ll send you a pre-paid envelope and you just post it back – you’ll be sent funds in return. Your old mobile will then be sent to a third-world country to either continue its life or recycled for its gold components.

3. Re-use Plastic Bags. Rather than take a plastic bag or pay for one of those “long-life” bags from your supermarket or grocery store, the next time you go shopping why not take one you already have? In Wales, customers are already paying 5p per plastic bag and the law will be coming into force in England soon. With that in mind it’s time to get into good habits early – if you use 5 plastic bags per week that could add up to a saving of £1 a month or £12 (or more!) a year!

4. Recycle Food Waste For Compost. Rather than chuck leftover meat, fish, teabags, coffee grounds, vegetables, fruit and even old pasta and rice, did you know it can make excellent compost material? If you set yourself up a compost bin and have a waste management plan in place you will end up with rich, valuable compost for your plants in a few months. Just feed in your scraps and let it ferment – the resulting product can be used on your houseplants and in your garden – no need to buy expensive “premium” garden centre compost!

5. Keep Greeting Cards And Wrapping Paper. Rather than throw out Christmas cards and wrapping paper come the festive season, remember to keep them back for next year. With a bit of imagination and 10 minutes with a pair of scissors these cards will make excellent gift tags to put on presents, while your festive wrapping paper can make excellent craft material if you’ve got kids.

5. Re-use Bottles. Rather than buy expensive vases or candlestick holders, used wine bottles make nice alternatives. Filling up finished soda bottles with water or sand make great freeweights. You can even push the money-saving even further this with this neat ‘toilet tank’ trick. Instead of putting a household brick in your cistern, fill up a plastic bottle or two with water and drop them in. They will displace enough water to save a half gallon to a gallon with every flush. Most toilets flush just fine with a little less water. Based on a flush-per-person a family of 4 could save 16 gallons a day – or around £50 a year off your bill!

6. Re-use Newspapers. Rather than put all your finished newspapers in the recycling bin, they can save you money through a number of ways. Newspaper dipped in water mixed with a splash of white wine vinegar cleans windows a treat! No need for expensive cleaner! Instead of buying kindling, if you’ve got an open fireplace it makes great firestarter. Old newspaper is also great for wrapping up valuables if you’re on the move, so no need for expensive bubble wrap!

7. Recycle The Rain. Rather than go through the pain of having to pay an expensive water bill, if you are on a water meter you really can save a small fortune by re-cycling the rain. When the heavens open, if you get yourself a water-butt, you’ll build up a heavy store of completely free water. You can use this to water your plants, your garden and even wash and rinse your car with. With the cost of water rising and hosepipe bans in force, having a water butt can see you save some serious money.

May 25, 2012
7 Reasons That Carrier Bags are Baffling

The carrier bag might seem like a rudimentary bit of kit. Basic, functional, easy to understand. But it isn’t. Carrier bags are, in fact, among the most baffling things known to humankind. And by humankind, I mean me. Here are seven reasons why:

1. Because I Have Hands. People in shops are endlessly, needlessly trying to force carrier bags on me. But I don’t want one most of the time. Often, I’m just buying one or two items. And I don’t need a carrier bag in that circumstance. How many hands does it take to carry a single item? One. How many hands does it take to carry a bag containing a single item? One. So I don’t need a bloody bag, do I? It’s not difficult. And I already have a bag; it’s that thing I’m wearing over my shoulder that looks like a bag. But despite having both hands and bags, I am continually pestered to take the things. And I don’t know why.

2. Because They’re Everywhere. I always try not to take carrier bags, but despite this, my kitchen is full of the things. And every time I go in there, there are more of them. I don’t know how – or when – the rise of the bags began, but they are inexorably usurping our cooking space. We started off, like everyone does, with a bag of bags, and now we have at least a bag of bag of bag of bag of bags. Well, more than one, actually.

3. Because I Don’t Know What To Do With The Things. You might think this is the point where I’m going to make a few humorous and bizarre speculations on what one might do with a glut of carrier bags, but no, I’m not going to do that. This is because I’m totally bewildered and overwhelmed by my surfeit of them. I have no more idea of what to do with all the bags in the kitchen than I would have of what to do with a large, glittery, singing horse called Jemima in my dining room. Less, in fact. Or fewer?

4. Because Of Chavs. It seems that the only people that have any idea of what to do with used carrier bags are chavs. They put them over the seats of their rusty mountain bikes and tie them down to the seat-post. All of them do this. But I have no idea why. It’s not to keep their bottoms dry because they never remove the bag; even after rain. It’s a further level of bafflement.

5. Because They’re Not In The Same Condition I Left Them In. Occasionally, a rare and wondrous event occurs: I realise that I’m going to have to carry some presents to a friend’s house, or I’m going for a walk in the countryside and there might be blackberries to pick, and I find that I will actually need a carrier bag. And then I excitedly perform a brief, joyous dance – a bit like a jig – while singing repeatedly “I’m going to get rid of a bag, I’m going to get rid of a bag…” to the tune of A Life on the Ocean Wave. But when I come to use them, I discover that at least 50% of the bags are torn. But they weren’t torn when I put them into the bag of bag of bag of bag of bag of bags. So what the hell has happened to them in the meantime? Do they fight?

6. Because People Lie About Them. It’s not just that they’re all over my kitchen, mocking and taunting me, and confounding my every attempt to get rid of them that I find them baffling. It’s that people actively lie to us about the things. Don’t use carrier bags, environmentalists tell us; it’s wasteful; a lot of resources are used up in their manufacture; they don’t grow on trees. But this just isn’t true. Carrier bags do grow on trees. I’ve seen them. Just go outside and look at any urban tree and you’ll see the carrier bags growing on it. And we’re obviously using far fewer carrier bags than the trees are producing, because we’re not harvesting them with any regularity. That’s why there’s still a Woolworths bag growing in a tree near my house. Even though they went bust bloody ages ago.

7. Because Of The Holes. We all know why there’s a hole at the top of the bag. It’s to punish people that are stupid enough to try to put baguettes into them. But no one knows why there are holes at the bottom. Are they drainage holes? Is it a government conspiracy to prevent us from moving water about easily? Is it to prevent suffocation of animals, small children and Members of Parliament? Is it to stop me from inflating the things and then bursting them (with hilarious consequences)? Is it just to confuse us? Well, if it is, it’s working.

October 12, 2010
Guest Post: 7 Reasons That Recycling Is Rubbish

It’s fair to say that the 7 Reasons Sofa Tour of The United States (Manchester, Scotland and rainy streets) is well and truly over now. While we have enjoyed our foray over the Atlantic (Pennines, border and road) in the past month or so, there is nothing quite like being at home. Taking over sofa duties today is Richard O’Hagan, who, apart from being a fanatical environmentalist (if this post is to be believed) writes about stuff for The Memory Blog, the Daily Mail and Cricket With Balls. You can follow him on Twitter and get directions to his house here. Over to you Richard.

Don’t get me wrong here, recycling is a good thing. At least for the next couple of generations. After which time we’ll have recycled everything so many times that no-one will really care any more, because everyone will have forgotten how to make anything new anyway. No, what I really object to is my local council saying that I have to recycle stuff, then only collecting half of the stuff they tell you to recycle.

1. Rubbish In Car. The council have dustcarts to take the rubbish away. Recycling is still rubbish. Why the hell am I having to put it in my car and drive it to the recycling point. It’s bad enough that you are using me to do the job you should be doing, do you have to take my vehicle as well?

2. Colour Blindness. They insist that I divide my glass into clear, green and brown. Apparently you can never cross the streams and mix green with brown. But I am colour blind. I can no more tell green from brown than I can give birth. Which means that 2/3 of my trip is entirely pointless. No, more than that, because where’s the bin for this blue vodka bottle? Or this yellow lemon juice one?

3. Wasps. What do wasps like most? Sticky, sweet stuff? Like, maybe, the fermenting dregs of booze in a bottle bank? Yes, at this time of year, going to the bottle bank – if you can work out which bin to put which bottle in – is like visiting a giant wasps nest. So now I have a smelly car, am worried that I might be putting stuff in the wrong bins, and am now risking death by wasp sting.

4. Foil. The council also insist that I recycle foil. But only clean foil. Which is completely useless, because I need the clean foil I have to put over stuff that I am cooking with. The whole point of foil, in fact, is that it gets dirty. And have you every tried to wash the stuff? It is like trying to wash custard skin. So now I have to choose the lesser of two evils and recycle less-than-clean-foil. Which leads to

5. Dirty Hands. Dustmen get given gloves. If the council want me to do their job, surely they should give me gloves. So not only do I get confused and stung by doing the recycling, I also have dirty hands. Although my car is also dirty.

6. Boxes. And then there is the cardboard box problem. To get the cardboard boxes to the recycling, you need to put them in something. Such as a bigger cardboard box. Which you then put into a bigger cardboard box. And then a bigger cardboard box. Until you end up with a box so big, it won’t go through the stupidly small, letterbox-like, slot they have put in the cardboard container. So you leave it on the ground, along with the boxes left by everyone else who had the same problem, because

7. Mountains. The council don’t believe in emptying the recycling until there is a mountain of cardboard that even Sir Chris Bonington would baulk at. Which means I’ve got dirty, my car has got dirty, and I have been stung and confused, simply to create a small version of the very big rubbish tip I still suspect the council of carting the whole lot off to anyway. Pah. Recycling is rubbish.

September 4, 2010