GO GREEN -How can you do to protect your environment?

We humans create such a lot of rubbish! Between 1992 and 2008 household waste increased by 16% and we now produce just under half a tone per person each year. Most of this is taken away by dustmen and buried in enormous landfill sites or burned in incinerators – both of these actions can be dangerous for the environment. Is all our rubbish really rubbishes? If you think about it, much of what we throw away could be used again. It makes sense to reuse and recycle our rubbish instead of just trying to solve the problem of where to put it! Encouragingly rates of recycling have increased so that we recycle 35% of our household rubbish, although we could recycle up to 80%. Much of our waste is made up of glass, metal, plastic and paper. Our natural resources will one day be completely used up. We must cut down on energy use.
• Sort out your rubbish. Organic matter e.g. potato peelings, leftover food, tea leaves etc. can be transferred straight to a compost heap in the garden and used as a good, natural fertilizer for the plants. Aluminums cans, glass bottles and newspapers etc. are often collected from our doorsteps these days, but other item such as plastic bottles, juice cartons and cardboard may not be, in which case they can be taken to nearby recycling banks. Find out where they are by
• Chlorine bleach is usually used to make newspapers and this pollutes rivers. It’s better to use unbleached, recycled paper whenever you can.
• Take your old clothes to charity shops. Some are sold, others are returned to textile mills for recycling.
• Try to avoid buying plastic. It’s hard to recycle. One way to cut down on plastic is to refuse to use carrier bags offered by supermarkets and use strong, long lasting shopping bags instead, or re-use plastic bags over and over again, until they wear out and then recycle them.
• Don’t buy over-packed goods. Many things we buy have unnecessary amounts of plastic and paper around them.