Smart Shopping your way to a greener lifestyle!

When considering environmentally-friendly ways to tackle rubbish, most people think of recycling. This is much better than throwing things away but still carries environmental and economic costs. For example, some materials have to be sent to other countries to be recycled. 

The most important thing we can all do to tackle the problem of rubbish is to reduce the amount that we create in the first place by smart shopping.

This means: -

Reducing:

• Making a shopping list before you go and stick to it and don't go shopping when you're hungry as you are more likely to buy stuff that you don't need or won't get eaten
• Check use-by dates - make sure that food will last until you need it
• Buy in bulk and avoid over-packaged items. Not only does this save money it also saves packaging waste

Re-using:

• Choose things that can be re-used over single use items such as rechargeable batteries, re-usable shopping bags, drinks bottles, real nappies etc
• And then re-use them as many times as you can before you recycling them or throwing them away
• Give unwanted clothes and bric-a-brac to charity shops instead of throwing them away – one person’s waste is another person’s treasure
• Buy second hand – there are lots of local charity shops, second hand shops, car boot sales, internet auction sites that offer a massive range of second hand goods at bargain prices.

Buy recycled:

• Buy things in packaging that can be recycled - look for plastic bottles or cans rather than Tetra Pak drinks cartons, cardboard packaging rather than plastic wrapping 
• Buy things that have been recycled such as recycled writing paper, toilet and kitchen roll, plastic bin liners, pens, tissues etc
• Buying recycled helps create a market for recycled goods and completes the recycling loop.

Together we can recycle more and waste less!