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.