It happens to everyone: we decide to be committed and mindful about our effort to recycle, making our communities cleaner and contribute to making our planet a better place.
We pick up our rubbish, start sorting it out and then…there is no indication if something is recyclable or not!
How are we meant to know now what to do?
If you have ever found yourself in this position, you are not alone.
Despite the WRAP’s October 2022 Recycling Tracker report, found that 89% of us are committed to recycling, the same report also found that 54% of people admit that they often don’t know where to put certain items and then end up throwing things in the general rubbish bin that could have been recycled instead.
Or, placing non recyclable material in the recycling bin “because is plastic!” that is in fact not recyclable (not all plastic are, for example).
What makes recycling difficult?
I don’t know for you (and we would love to know!), but for us, there are quite a few reasons that make recycling now sure easy:
We have been speaking around our friends and people in our community and found that many people are not aware of what can and cannot be recycled, or how to properly prepare materials for recycling.
Yes, there is information on the package, but what about when there isn’t?
Many products we import from other country hare in different language and they may not clearly write how to dispose the material.
More often than not, those material then end up in the wrong bin.
We totally understand if after a long day you don’t have the mind capacity of sorting out recycling.
Some materials do take effort, such as when they are required to be separated, cleaned and disposed of in a certain way.
Some of the people we spoke to also think things will be much easier if they are given recyclable materials by society. If everything was recyclable, we wouldn’t need to make the effort (the dream!)
So why are the big names, brand, supermarkets, companies not doing this?
Well, all those point are totally understandable and we are not here to comment on the need for societal changes.
However, we can support you in making recycling easy for us, the individuals, which can make a tiny but significant (because we are many) difference.
Our tips to recycle better in less time
Print out the universal symbols for recycling material
Did you know that packaging, regardless of where they come from, often do not have universal symbols that tell us what materials they are made from?
For example, most plastic items will have a little symbol with an arrow, a number in the middle and often an acronym. For example, 1 PET(E) (Polyethylene Terephtalate) or 3 PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride).
Those material are generally either non recyclable or recyclable, so even if they come from China or the USA, if something has the symbol for PET, it will be recyclable no matter where you live.
This makes recycling so much easier!
You can use our guide (at the end of the post) for the most common type of plastic.
Have recycling bins in different location
Most of us probably have a recycling bin in the kitchen.
But what about bathroom products? They are more often than not the most confusing and a mixture of recycling and rubbish.
And the studio?
Having a pair of bins for each room we use the most of our materials in can massively increase recycling rates without having to pile everything in one place, only to separate things again.
Reduce the non-recyclable we buy
Reducing waste starts with what we buy.
When we go shopping, we often search for the products that have the most recyclable packaging.
Honey in glass instead than in plastic, for example, or fruit in paper instead of plastic bags, or pasta in a cardboard box.
This make recycling so much easier because you will know that most of the things you need to throw away are recyclable anyways!
Yes, we know that sometimes those items are more expensive but they really shouldn’t be, and as consumers we can push the market promoting and buying those products, so that as demand increases, the more they will become common things (and decrease the cost).
Make It a Ritual
It is very easy to mindlessly (because we are in a rush or distracted) just toss something in the bin without thinking about where it should go.
If this is your case, there is a very good strategy to avoid this: having a “I-will-sort-it-out-later” bin.
Toss everything in the same bin and then set a morning to revisit your trash and separate.
So that you don’t need to do it at the moment or if you just had a long day and you don’t feel like it.
It’s like cleaning the house: do we need to clean everything everyday?
Make it a habit to incorporate in your weekend housekeeping schedule.
Like this, you will probably become more focus on it and it will feel less like a burden.
Now we need you
We hope that you will take some of those tips and try them out.
Most of all, we would love to hear about your experience with recycling:
what are your struggles?
do you have any tips for us?
what do you struggle with?
what do you find easy?
By talking to each other and making recycling a communal point of discussion, we can help each other making our community, our planet, a much more cleaner and stress free place
Free Resources: our guide to the most common packaging symbols
Often when we start our journey into a sustainable life, we start by focusing on buying new eco-friendly items, eco-substitutions, eco-swaps, bamboo-made items, etc.
More often than not, by doing this we end up paying lots more.
For the sake of buying green products, eco-friendly products, tailored branded alternative, sometimes we even buy thing when we really don’t need to.
This happens even to long-term sustainability champions.
However, by doing this we forget what sustainability really means.
Here at Southstainable we want to invite you to rethink what having a sustainable lifestyle really means.
For us, a sustainable life means a different way of sustaining your community, a way that starts from yourself, to your sustainance, so that we can be able to sustain something bigger without feeling it as a burden or something unachievable for everyone.
When it comes to making our lives more sustainable, this means ditching the expensive eco-friendly branded alternatives, which too often are not wallet friendly and not inclusive.
We can achieve this by just learning how to use what we have.
So here is for you 5 Eco-friendly but not budget-friendly objects that we really don’t need to buy and what to use instead as sustainable, low cost and easy to implement alternatives.
1# Expensive resuable water bottles
If you are still buying water in plastic, please stop. Really
Why would you do that?
And the main reason for that is not what you think.
Yes, plastic bottles represent one of the major pollutant on the planet, threatening not only biodiversity but also entire countries, communities and urban landscapes. That should be enough to stop.
But if it isn’t, let’s think about that.
Let’s think about it. Water. The basic the primordial needs of all biological beings.
Water is free.
No one is making water for us, it is naturally already there.
So why should be paying someone that to provide us something that already exist for free?
Madness.
And then, in the name of saving ocean from plastic, another madness appeared.
I am talking about “eco-friendly” refillable bottle that cost 20/30 pounds (and sometimes even more)
I am talking about those branded bottle that promise you to keep the water cool for 48 hours or so.
20 pounds for a piece of metal that contain some water.
Our ancestor are probably laughing now.
What we are buying is essentially a trendy fashion item, masqueraded as sustainable (for who? Not for us, certainly)
A way more sustainable solution for your pocket and the planet is to buy a normal bottle made of metal or glass.
And by normal I mean one that doesn’t cost a fortune.
Or even keep reusing a plastic bottle, which is one of the essential points of sustainability!
I’ve seen people use the same 1 pound bottle of coke for a year (it is sturdy and has a nice design).
So in the name of sustainability, when you think about buying a reusable bottle of water, think about what you are actually buying and what it’s for
Remember, water is free and the most natural thing to do is to keep it free and accessible for all, container included
#2 Fancy lunch box.
I love lunch boxes.
We have many lunch boxes of different shapes and materials, and we use them for various functions: storage, baking trays, plant beds and of course picnic lunch boxes.
However, none of them were originally a lunch box.
Again, why should I spend money (and often lots of) on something that I have already obtained and paid for?
You can obtain a free lunchbox from everywhere!
An example? Those take away plastic boxes that we obtain when we get our absolutely fantastic Jerk Chicken from our local carribean.
And we keep them.
And we bring them back to the shop and load them again with delicious jerk chicken.
Other example?
Glass oven trays, yogurt pots, jam or pickled jar.
Yes but they are not really for carrying lunch around, right?
Well, you will be surprise to know that they work even better!
Especially glass jars are amazing at avoid leakages. They are built for it!
Big olives or beetroot or pickled jar are the optimal solution if you want to carry your lunch with you and be absolutely sure that there will be no leakage.
They have a large capacity, are easy to clean after and cost almost nothing (you pay for what is inside, really!)
Go glass, sustain your pockets while sustaining the environment.
#3 Expensive “eco-friendly” cutleries
This is something I have been doing since the beginning and I really don’t understand why its not the universal solution.
Why should we buy fancy and expensive cutleries for your lunch box, sometimes even in plastic, when you can use your own home aluminium cutleries?
Ok, bamboo and reusable plastic is better than single use plastic.
I always carry my normal, home-looking but still very functional aluminium fork and spoon with me in my bag.
They are easily cleanable and guess what? They cost zero!
#4 Reusable coffee cups.
That’s another example of something that doesn’t need to be fancy and doesn’t need to be hyper expensive.
I believe the old purpose of reusable takeaway coffee cup is not only to reuse them and not send single use container to either landfill or to recycling, but also to enjoy a coffee on the go in a happy and uplifting way.
So, really, if I have to pay 15, 20 pounds for our usable coffee cup, plus coffee on top, I think it becomes quite unsustainable.
And that is, again, down to branding. Brands cost a lot with no porpose.
I do have a coffee cup, but despite being not branded, and with the sign of time (I have break it a few times and repaired as best as I can with glue) it is big enough and does the job of containing coffee.
And it costed 5 pounds.
Even better? Find a friend, order two coffee in ceramic cups, sit down, slow down, have a chat and enjoy the moment.
