Tag: GuestBlog

Guest Blog: 15 Unexpected Items You Didn’t Know Could Be Recycled

GUEST BLOG: You might be surprised to discover some of the more unexpected items that can actually be recycled, if you know where and how…

When we consider recycling, we usually think of paper, glass and cans. However, recycling is continually evolving. In this SustMeme Guest Post, Rebecca Currier, Marketing Manager at CarTakeBack, the largest scrap car recycling network in the UK, reveals lots of other unexpected items we can actually recycle. It shows the huge progress made over the past few years with recycling and helping to sustain our planet. Plus, just because it can’t be recycled now, doesn’t mean we won’t be able to soon. 

RC: Every year in Britain, we throw away over 22M tons of rubbish – and the majority of our unwanted goods end up in landfill. We know we can recycle our plastic bottles, tin cans and old papers, but what unexpected items can we also recycle to reduce thisimpact?

In fact, there are so many other everyday objects that can be reused and recycled…

Furthermore, by optimising opportunities to recycle, we can also take steps to cut carbon emissions, save energy and reduce pollutants into our environment.

So, join the war against climate change today — ask yourself, have you got any of these lying around the house that you could recycle… ?

Wine corks

Wine disappears surprisingly easily! However the same can’t be said for the cork in the bottles. Corks won’t break down in landfill, but you can recycle them with Recorked UK.

When you do so, they can re-sell them – and for each donated cork, they give a percentage of profit to nominated charities and also provide free corks to schools for arts and crafts.

Donate your corks for recycling here

Cars

Even the best vehicles come to the end of their life. Did you know you can recycle your car… and get paid to do so? CarTakeBack gives you the best price for your scrap car, their licensed recycling centres safely remove all harmful materials from it and re-use or recycle up to a whopping 95% of the car.

I want to scrap my car

Trainers

Trainers can take a hammering, and once they can no longer hack another step, you can recycle them with Nike. Their Reuse-A-Shoe programme gives your running shoes plenty more miles.

Find a Nike store to drop off your athletic shoes

Bras

Do you have unwanted and unloved bras lying around? Don’t bin them, Against Breast Cancer recycle them and at the same time, raise vital funds for cancer research.

We can avoid bras going into landfill and give them a new lease of life in countries where bras are too expensive to produce locally.

Find a bra bank near you

Eyeglasses

‘Donate, Recycle, Transform’ – Vision Aid Overseas recycle donated eyeglasses so they can provide affordable eye care in isolated communities. Their incredible work reaches the poorest people in need of eye care.

Donate your glasses with Vision Aid Overseas

Bikes

One peddle turn at a time, Re-Cycle change lives by sending bikes to people in Africa who desperately need them. They recycle UK bikes and send them to rural communities – in some parts, it can take up to 4 hours to get to school or to a water source. Re-Cycle have helped to improve school attendance by 30%.

Find out where you can recycle your old bike

Inhalers

Surprisingly, you can recycle your old respiratory inhalers. ‘Breathe new life into your old inhalers’ with Complete the Cycle.

Some 73 million inhalers are prescribed every year in the UK, when they’re not disposed of correctly they end up in landfills and harm the environment.

Find your local participating pharmacy and recycle your inhaler

Clothes and tights

H&M runs a global Garment Collecting Programme. They guarantee ‘all clothes collected by H&M are either reused, reworn or recycled with 0% going to landfill’.

They’ll accept any unwanted clothes, in any condition. Plus, you can secure yourself a £5 voucher for each bag you donate.

I want to find out more about recycling my unwanted clothes and tights at H&M

Mobile phones

We’re always upgrading our phones to the latest gadget. But what happens to all your old phones? There’s usually a whole drawer full at home. If no-one wants them, most charities accept donated old phones.

There are a number of ways to recycle phones – find out more here

Writing tools

When writing tools dry up and can no longer form another letter, you can recycle them. The BIC programme accepts any brand of pen, highlighter, marker, felt tip, and mechanical pencil.

Find out more about recycling your pens here

Paint

Post-DIY, any leftover paint can be donated to your local scheme with Community RePaint. They redistribute the paint so communities in need can brighten their spaces and lives.

Find out more about the Community RePaint scheme

Toothbrushes

Terracycle and Colgate have partnered so we can recycle oral care products and packaging. This also directly helps those in need too, you can redeem points you collect into financial donations for your chosen charity or school.

I want to recycle my toothbrush and oral care

Mattresses

Dreams don’t just bring you a new comfy mattress, they also pick up your old bed and mattress and take them to a bed recycling facility.

Find out how to recycle your mattress with Dreams

Tennis balls

When tennis balls can take no more hits and they’ve lost their pressure, they end up in landfill. However, Recycaball is a not-for-profit and they recycle them. What’s more, you can even get paid 25p for each one you recycle.

Find out how to recycle your tennis balls here

Fairy lights

Your festive and fairy lights are WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), so can’t just go into your normal black bin. They can actually be recycled, though, at your local household waste recycling centre. Some authorities across the UK even collect them from you.

Find out where to recycle your fairy lights here.

If you know of any more surprising items that can be recycled, feel free to Tweet us at @SustMeme and let us know!

More information on CarTakeBack can be found on the company’s website here.

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Website
https://www.cartakeback.com/
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Guest Blog: Are you an unwitting polluter?

GUEST BLOG: Eco-conscious consumers are cutting plastic, but confused about how they can help most…

When it comes to recycling, do you have the best of intentions, but not always the information or knowledge to match? Are you an unwitting polluter? In this SustMeme Guest Post, Yanyan Ji, SVP Marketing at Gazelle, a known leader in electronic waste, talks us through the findings of a representative survey of British consumers, which explored their environmental beliefs and lifestyle behaviours, plus, in some cases, the disconnect between the two…

YJ: New research finds 83% of Britons are doing more than ever to cut the amount of plastic they use and throw away. Women are leading this plastic-cutting charge with 90% saying their desire to use less is higher than ever.

However, the survey, which was carried out by the phone-recycling company, Gazelle, also found that over 35 million Brits (57% of those surveyed) are still risking dangerous chemicals leaching into the ground and contaminating our soils and waterways, by throwing away electronic gadgets such as old phones.

The ‘Attenborough effect’ as it’s becoming known is in evidence. Eight out of ten people (81%) who have watched shows like Blue Planet and Climate Change: The Facts say that the programmes have made them re-evaluate their behaviour and consider the environment more.

For example, when at the supermarket, 67% of shoppers now consider environmental factors when choosing what to buy, rather than selecting products solely based on price.

Yet despite Brits’ noble intentions, eight out of ten (81%) of us say that they want to do more to help the environment, but feel confused about what can and cannot be reused or recycled.

Over half (57%) of those surveyed admit to having put a phone, laptop, tablet, charger, or other electrical item in the household bin in the last year. And on average, just one third of us (34%) have recycled our phones or tablets.

Well intentioned, but ultimately ill-informed Brits tend to go online to find out how to reduce their impact on the environment, with nearly 9 in 10 Brits saying that would consult the internet on specific eco-advice.

It’s been estimated that only 15-20 percent of all e-waste is recycled, and the rest ends up in landfill. Our latest research suggests the cause of that isn’t consumers being unwilling to change their behaviour — rather, they don’t always know what to do.

When asked what they recycled, the top ten items were found to be:

  1. Plastic bottles: 92 %
  2. Cans: 88 %
  3. Newspapers and magazines: 86 %
  4. Cardboard: 86 %
  5. Glass bottles: 85 %
  6. Hard plastic containers: 70 %
  7. Batteries: 59 %
  8. Aerosols: 56 %
  9. Mobile phones and tablets: 34 %
  10. Televisions: 26 %

Here at Gazelle, we’re hoping to play our part by making it clearer and easier than ever for people to trade in old phones, get instant payment, and avoid contributing to e-waste in landfill. Our 26 kiosks across the UK will even take phones that are beyond repair, and responsibly recycle them, diverting them from landfill.

Smart. Simple. Rewarding.

More information on Gazelle, what it does to reduce e-waste, plus how to locate a kiosk nearby in the UK, can be found on the company’s website: https://uk.gazelle.com/

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Guest Blog: Call for Big Ideas to Reduce Water Loss

GUEST BLOG: Have you got the next big idea to help reduce water loss?

Would you like to play a key role in helping solve one of the world’s major environmental challenges? In this SustMeme Guest Post, Katharine Teague, Head of Advocacy at AB Sugar, one of the world’s leading sugar businesses, outlines why the company has partnered with WaterAid and the Centre for Industrial Sustainability at the University of Cambridge to launch an ambitious worldwide challenge to provide new ideas on how to address water loss in irrigation. The invitation to innovate is open to anyone – from students to start-ups. So, if you have an interest in water and irrigation, read on…

KT: Global challenges call for global solutions and one of the biggest challenges the agricultural sector faces is that of water withdrawal. In fact, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO), agriculture accounts for 69% of the world’s water abstraction.

To help meet the challenge of water loss in irrigation specifically, we have teamed up with WaterAid and the Centre for Industrial Sustainability at the University of Cambridge to launch The Innovate Irrigation Challenge – and we want you to take part! It’s a global initiative that invites anyone with a new idea to help tackle water losses from irrigation in sugar, and beyond.

Get involved in The Innovate Irrigation Challenge

The winning idea will receive a £10,000 prize and recognition from an esteemed panel of judges, as well as the unique opportunity to work with some of the organisations behind the Challenge to test the viability of the idea. There is the potential for your idea to impact the future of sustainable agriculture on a worldwide scale and make a real difference.

Would you like to be part of this? Head over to www.absugar.com/innovateirrigation for all details, including an introduction to the judging panel. Make sure you register now to take part! All entries are to be submitted in a 48-hour period during the 19 and 20 June 2019.

Also, why not join our Facebook Group and get involved in the conversation or on social media using #InnovateIrrigation.

Commitment to growing a sustainable future

At AB Sugar, we have a sense of responsibility to continuously improve the socio-economic and environmental impacts of our operations. With operations across 24 plants in 10 countries and employing more than 30,000 people and producing around 4.5 million tonnes of sugar annually, we continue to ensure that we lead the way in our industry by investing and continuously driving change to have a real impact.

The threat of climate change is growing and with this increases the pressure on our water resources, even though we are already doing everything we can to reduce, reuse, recycle and efficiently store the volumes of water used across our operations. That’s why as part of our ‘Global Mind, Local Champions’ sustainability framework, which is centred around three pillars of sustainability – economic, social and environmental, we have already signalled our ambitious global commitments, which have been designed to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which includes reducing our end-to-end supply chain water and CO2 footprints by 30% by 2030.

We are, and continue to, use everything we have learnt over many decades as a sugar producer across three continents to empower our businesses to deliver positive change in their local market. Our commitments demonstrate this by:

  • Building vibrant, diverse value chains that increase the prosperity of our communities
  • Build thriving and healthy communities. To do this, we are committed to providing 25 million people worldwide with science-based information on sugar, the diet and health
  • Reducing our end-to-end supply chain water and CO₂ use by 30% by 2030 and ensuring all our plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, biodegradable or compostable

Achieving our 2030 vision will require collaboration across our entire supply chain and working in partnership with other like-minded organisations and businesses. One such example of this is The Innovate Irrigation Challenge’, by opening the door to new ideas and ways of thinking from people around the world to help reduce water losses further in irrigation. I am excited to see Challenge entries and it is a perfect opportunity to tackle one of the key issues of our time.

Good luck on entering!

 

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