Reduce
• This year email your Christmas greetings to your friends and family. You can often send e-cards for free on the internet and so saving money on postage and packaging.
• When buying drinks look for the larger containers instead of lots of small ones to reduce excess waste.
• Choose a potted Christmas tree that will live for years, then each year you can bring it inside to decorate for the festive season.
• Plan your meals and portion sizes in advance and try asking your guests to RSVP. You may find that you can buy less food than you thought - saving money too! Visit lovefoodhate.com for a handy portion calculator for Christmas meals and parties.
• When buying presents and food visit your local producers which will help you reduce your carbon footprint.
• Buy rechargeable batteries for children’s toys rather than disposable batteries.
• When filling the bin remember to squash everything down to make more room for the extra created waste.
• When shopping for Christmas treats, keep an eye on packaging. Try and buy food with as little packaging as possible – choose loose fruit and vegetables instead of pre-packed goods.
Re-use
• Serve drinks to your friends and family in washable reusable drinks glasses instead of disposable cups.
• Before recycling your old Christmas cards, reuse the front image and turn it in to a gift tag for next year’s presents.
• Compost your tree at home and make compost to reuse in your garden to feed your plants and flowers.
• Keep leftovers fresh by storing them carefully and keep an eye out for recipes designed to reuse them. Check out www.lovefoodhatewaste.com for more ideas.
• Chocolate tins are great to be used as storage as a new biscuit tin or for storing DIY essentials.
• If the wrapping paper from your present is still in good condition reuse it to wrap the gifts you give.
• If you have a clear out in the New Year take your unwanted gifts to your local charity shop.
• Help next years’ plants grow by making use of this year’s tired vegetation. Adding spent bedding plants to your compost mix will help to capture all the nutrients and will give your new plants a great start when you wake the garden back up in the spring.
• If you have unwanted furniture or electrical items why not donate them to your local Furniture scheme.
Recycle
• Make sure you recycle all your paper, cans, glass bottles and jars, and plastic bottles using your kerbside collection service.
• Remember you can recycle clean tin foil, biscuit tins, aerosols and aluminium packaging along with your cans.
• Take your Tetra Pak type drink cartons to one of the five recycling centres.
• Take your real Christmas tree for recycling at your local recycling centre. Small trees can be cut up and recycled through the garden waste collection service.
• Buy recycled wrapping paper and Christmas cards.
• A home compost heap or bin can recycle fruit and vegetable peelings, tea bags, egg shells and more. See www.recyclenow.com/compost for help and support.
• Cards without foil, plastic and glitter decorations can be recycled from home with your paper collection.
• For any unwanted Christmas jumpers look for your local textile bank to recycle the material.
Donald Macphail, Managing Director for Veolia in Shropshire said: “We hope that these helpful tips will give you lots of ideas on how you can reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible over Christmas.”
On 1 October 2007, Veolia Environmental Services Shropshire Limited began a 27 year contract to provide waste services for the County of Shropshire.
This means that Veolia has taken on responsibility for collecting, reducing, recycling, recovering and disposing of household waste on behalf of Shropshire Council. We will make a capital investment of more than £100m in waste infrastructure over the period of the contract to support a fully-integrated strategy for managing Shropshire’s waste.
There are plans for a number of proposals to enhance waste services across the county and to reduce the amount of household waste that is sent to landfill from 65 per cent in 2005/6 to just five per cent by 2015. There are a number of proposals which include:
- Increasing Shropshire’s recycling levels to more than 50 per cent by 2012.
- Introducing a kerbside plastic bottle collection service across the county by 2011.
- Construction of two new integrated waste management facilities (IWMF) in Oswestry and Bridgnorth which will include household recycling centres and waste transfer stations. The Oswestry facility opened in October 2009. The Bridgnorth facility opened in March 2012. Construction of an in-vessel composting facility, which will allow the treatment of all compostable wastes, including all food waste – turning it into valuable, peat-free compost whilst significantly reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill. A planning application is currently with Telford & Wreking Council.
- Provision of an Energy from Waste Facility at Battlefield Enterprise Park in Shrewsbury that will eventually produce enough electricity from residual waste to power over 10,000 homes each year. Planning permission for this facility was granted in January 2012 and the facility is due to be open by 2012. View the Shropshire Energy from Waste Facility FAQ's.
Veolia Environmental Services is the UK’s leading recycling and waste management company employing over 12,000 people serving local authorities, business and industry. We provide the full range of integrated waste management services to over a third of the UK’s population and serve more than 65,000 commercial and industrial customers.
We are committed to protecting the environment and improving the lives of the communities in which we operate and have been awarded Platinum Rating in Business in the Community’s Corporate Responsibility Index for 2012.
Veolia Environmental Services is part of Veolia Environnement (Paris Euronext: VIE and NYSE: VE), the worldwide reference in environmental services. The company has operations all around the world and provides tailored solutions to meet the needs of municipal and industrial customers in three complementary segments: water management, waste management and energy management. Veolia Environnement recorded revenue of €29.6 billion in 2011
Further information can be obtained by visiting the websites:
www.veolia.co.uk
www.veolia.com
www.veolia.co.uk/shropshire
Veolia Environnement is proud to be the title sponsor of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition