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"Over six million electrical items are thrown away every year in the UK. It is estimated that over half of them are still working or could easily be repaired."
(ITDG, 2003)
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Reduce Reuse & Recycle
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The Three Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle – are strategies to reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfill.
Reduce is about asking whether you actually need to buy a new product. Do you need to buy a new product every year? Could you do without it? Could you borrow it instead, or even do without it? When you have finished with a product, it doesn’t have to go straight in the bin and on to landfill – perhaps it could be reused. Could someone else find it useful? If not, can it be recycled?
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Five reasons to recycle:
- We are running out of space in landfill sites.
- When electrical and electronic products are buried in the ground, they release potentially dangerous toxins into the earth.
- Rubbish spoils the natural environment and can harm animals’ habitats.
- The earth’s natural resources are limited, so we need to make sure that we preserve them and use them carefully.
- Every time we buy a new product rather than reuse or borrow one, we are using up the earth's natural resources.
Our daily decisions
We all make daily decisions that have a significant impact on the earth's natural resources. But there are many ways to reduce, reuse or recycle the products we buy:
Reduce the amount you buy
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Do you really need it? Will it make life better? Do you already have one?
Keep it for longer. Do you really need to replace your mobile phone now? Can you update it with new covers instead? |
Share. Can you borrow the product from someone else? For example, lots of councils have toy-lending libraries, where you can borrow great new toys for a small fee.
Hire. Many tools and types of garden equipment can be hired.
Virtual. Rather than buying a CD, you can now legally download music from the internet.
Reuse rather than buy new |
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Buy second-hand. Buying second-hand products saves resources. Try eBay, newspapers, car boot sales or charity shops.
Borrow. Can you borrow from a friend?
Mend. Is it cost-effective to repair the broken product?
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Donate. Can you give the product that you don't want to someone who will be able to use it?
Recycle old products |
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Take old mobile phone handsets, batteries and accessories (including plastic packaging and paper manuals) into O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone shops as part of their Fonebak scheme.
Participating Tesco stores operate a scheme that donates money to charity and/or awards Clubcard |
points for every recycled mobile phone. Special envelopes are available at participating Tesco stores or send the phone directly to:
XS Tronix
Freepost, LON1759 2
PO BOX 32343
London SW17 9ZZ
Recycle your printer cartridges (Apple, Brother, Canon, Dataproducts, Epson, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Kyocera, Lexmark, NEC, OKI, Panasonic, Sharp, Tinto, XEROX)
Find out more »
At the moment you there is nowhere for you to take your TV, video etc. – so why don’t you keep it for a bit longer.
Buying recycled products helps to close the loop and creates a market for recycled products.
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