BuyMyTronics is a US company that offers cash for gadgets - wherever you are in the world. They promise to resell, refurbish, or ethically recycle your gizmo. Unfortunately, outside the US you have to pay for postage.
Surrey Waste Partnership are reviewing their Plan for Waste Management in Surrey and want you to help shape it. Please take part in their public consultation between 17 May and 12 August 2010 and tell them your views.
Do mention the need to encourage waste reduction, in the first instance, and the requirement for plastic recycling collection, perhaps in place of the now removed bottle banks. This could be provided by Recresco, who currently just collect Tetra Paks.
During April 2010 Mole Valley District Council will be removing all its bottle banks. According to waste and recycling manager, Steve Strickland, the move is in order to save money, and residents will need to use their green recycling bins. Unfortunately the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), in Randalls Road, Leatherhead, can't separate bottles by colour, so they're crushed and used in construction, rather than being recycled into new bottles.
Glass is 100% recyclable, can be endlessly recycled with no loss in quality and recycling two bottles saves enough energy to boil water for five cups of tea. For every tonne of recycled glass used, 1.2 tonnes of raw materials are preserved, which would otherwise have to be quarried from our landscape. On average, every family in the UK uses around 330 glass bottles and jars each year.
The one benefit from this move is that, with the space created, there's room for collecting items not currently taken in household green bins. Steve hopes that, in partnership with other organisations, additional recycling will be made available.
Precycling is all about cutting down on unnecessary waste, so you don't need to dispose of, or recycle, as much, thus saving resources, energy and the need to collect, sort and process recyclables.
Once again, the Woodland Trust are offering recycling facilities for your Christmas cards throughout January. There is a poster on the Epsom Tower noticeboard giving more details - cards can either be taken to WH Smith, Marks & Spencer or TKMaxx - or you can just leave them in the box in the Tower. The scheme ends on 31 January.
This is a great way of recycling your cards. Over the 12 years that the scheme has been running, 600m cards have been recycled. This has had two readily measurable benefits: firstly, 141,000 new trees have been planted, and secondly, 12,000 tonnes of paper and card have not been landfilled, thus saving 16,000 tonnes of harmful carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.
The Woodland Trust's website (www.woodlandtrust.org.uk) also has an important reminder about reducing and reusing things before we worry about recycling - these early steps in the waste process are even more effective ways of cutting down on landfill and reducing our carbon footprints. For reducing they suggest simply refusing plastic carrier bags wherever possible - something I'm sure that many of us do automatically now. For reusing we can support organisations such as Green Metropolis (an online second hand bookshop - www.greenmetropolis.com), but charity shops and high street second hand bookshops are non-online ways of doing the same thing. An "inhouse" way to reuse birthday cards is to either make "eco-cards" yourself, or pass them on to the Tots Alive! children who like cutting them up and sticking them - just leave any cards in the box in the Tower.
Another way to reduce, reuse and recycle is to learn how to knit or crochet, remodel your own clothes, or even just mend them by stitching on buttons and making repairs. If this appeals, Dorking Stitch Up could be the new group for you. They meet on the second Saturday morning each month in the Christian Centre in Dorking, see www.transitiondorking.org for more details.
October 21, 2009 15:51 by
dereksGreen Mole Forum has decided to form a group to look at the possibilities for installing anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in Mole Valley.
AD is a well established process for handing sewage, farm wastes, food wastes or combinations of these feedstocks to produce biogas and a solid residue that is a valuable soil fertiliser. AD keeps organic waste out of landfill, and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. AD plants vary from the very large (one AD plant handles all Stockholm’s sewage and food wastes for example) to plants the size of a large table. There are still not many AD plants in the UK, despite government support for them. The introduction of feed-in tariffs will give a big boost to all renewable energy technologies in the UK including AD.
A small AD plant is already being seriously considered in Headley to run on a mixture of horse manure and sewage. Local famers recognise the benefits of having an AD plant on farm land. Our new group intends to build on this existing local support, gather information, seek advice from experts, and come up with the most promising AD projects. If you would like to be part of this group or find out more, please send us an email using the ‘Contact us’ button on the website, or give me a ring on 01372-378914.
Derek Smith
This year's British Science Festival is focused around Guildford.
There are events from the 5th to 10th September including a large number of interest to visitors to this blog. For the full list click here.
Here are some excerpts:
Wednesday July 8th 2009 at 7.30pm in Capel Memorial Hall.
Permaculture (a contraction of the words - permanent + agriculture) seeks to follow practices that do not damage and exhaust the soil, nor to rely on fertilisers and pesticides.
Its principles are based on close observation of natural systems, and on studying farming traditions in countries where crops continue to be abundant despite growing year-on-year on the same soil.
A speaker from the flourishing permaculture movement in Brighton will describe in detail these basic principles and show how they can be applied to gardening and vegetable-growing.
Learn how to enrich your soil, reduce the hard work of digging, increase your mulching and conserve moisture.
Refreshments available. All welcome.
Tickets £4.00; members of Capel Goes Green £2.00
www.capelgoesgreen.org.uk
In a letter from Mole Valley District Council, dated 19th June 2009, it was announced that the food waste collection service will be resuming this week. This follows it's withdrawal earlier in the year when the trial's funding came to an end.
Due, in no small part I'm sure, to public outcry, new funding has been found and the council are now examining 'how food waste collections can be implemented across the rest of the district'.
If this happens let's hope it spurs Surrey County Council into building its digester, as currently food waste is processed in Dorset (the nearest licenced plant in the UK) and green waste is composted in Reading! See the article on the GMF's visit to Leatherhead's Materials Recovery Facility.
Richard Molyneux
Recycle week is an annual event to kick-start new habits that can help us all to all waste less and recycle more.
More at RecyleNow
What are you going to pledge?