Reduce My Rubbish
What can you do?
MoreSingle-use products are products that are only used once before they are thrown away or recycled. Our need for convenience has made the use of throw away items a normality. Huge amounts of resources and energy are used to create these products and some of them take hundreds, even thousands, of years to break down; this all comes at a huge cost to our planet.
Plastics are often used to create single-use products and, thanks to programmes such as Blue Planet II and Drowning in Plastic, we’ve all seen the devastating impact that plastic can have on our environment. Of the 320 million tonnes of plastic we produce globally every year – the same weight as every human on Earth! – around 50% of this is intended for single-use purposes. Although likely to have only been used for a few moments, these single-use plastics are destined to pollute for centuries.
We can all help to combat plastic waste by reducing the amount of single-use plastics that we use. From reusable cups to shampoo bars, there are lots of easy ways to reduce our plastic consumption.
Here are 3 simple ways to get you started:
For more ideas, please take a look at our Single-Use Simple Swaps sheet or visit the Less Plastic website for ‘9 Tips for Living with Less Plastic’.
If you have a plastic free tip or have reduced your single-use plastic why not let us know on Facebook and Twitter.
The average UK household uses around 500 plastic bottles per year, but only recycles just over half of them.
Bottles make up 67% of household plastic packaging collections, including soft drinks, cosmetics and household and cleaning products. That’s 21 million bottles collected for recycling, which is only 58% of the plastic bottles that are used in households!
ALL types of plastic bottles can be recycled, including those used for cosmetics, shampoo, shower gel, juice, water, fizzy drinks, squash and more!
In Norfolk you can also recycle plastic pots, tubs, trays and punnets, that’s packaging items such as yoghurt pots, ice cream and margarine tubs, meat trays and fruit punnets. Just remove any shrink wrap and film and any absorbent packing or bubble wrap material.
Norfolk’s PET plastic bottles and HDPE milk bottles are currently recycled to make new food grade rPET and rHDPE bottles – making it a closed loop system.
Please make sure any plastic container or bottle is clean, dry and loose (not bagged) before it goes in your recycling bin.
Recycling decreases the need for raw materials, which helps save energy and carbon emissions:
Plastics can be recycled into so many items! Clothing, t-shirts, toys, chairs and tables, headphones, kitchen utensils, paint pots, car parts, soft cuddly toys, filling for duvets and sleeping bags, pens and pencils, building materials such as fencing, flooring, piping, etc, garden furniture, buckets and of course, more plastic packaging … the possibilities are endless!
Did you know your favourite team maybe wearing football kits made from recycled plastic bottles?
How many bottles, on average it takes;