Shrewsbury Friends of the Earth

Recycling

Objects we no longer want, turn into waste all too easily, and we expect someone else ‘to take it away and deal with it’ – the energy used up in the manufacture, transport, and whole life cycle of objects creates greenhouse gases, and landfill sites do too, that’s why it’s so important to: Re-Think Resources, reduce, re-use, refill, repair, rot things & reinvest and then recycle as a last resort.

DON'T THROW ANYTHING AWAY - THERE IS NO 'AWAY'!

Re-Think Resources - Get to learn what the materials you use are made of and to question and understand what’s involved in the object’s whole life cycle. We need to vote with our feet against badly designed products that create waste.
Reduce - Reduce the amount of packaging you buy (yes, we pay for it), refuse plastic bags (take your own bag) – buy in bulk, shop at markets, far less waste and purchase local.
Re-Use - buy second-hand, share your resources, refill containers, paint objects to change appearances.
Repair - use Shrewsbury’s shops to repair old bikes, TVs, washing machines etc..re-sole shoes, mend lamps or take to a Repair Cafe,
Refill - you can refill at Pomona,and The Herbarium, Green Options(all within Town Centre) or at Greyfriars Bridge shop called The Allotment
Recycle - Shropshire now recycles,re-uses or composts 53.3% of household waste, at time of writing, this makes us the 8th best county in the UK.
Rot Things - learn to compost, then use that compost to grow things!
Reinvest - to complete the cycle, buy recycled items, like computer paper, plastics and glass.
Re-manufacture (Caterpillar remanufactures all types of engines for re-use at its Shrewsbury plant.)
Did you know? Households in Shropshire produce around 150,000 tonnes of waste every single year – a staggering amount which costs the taxpayer around £30 million pounds a year to deal with. All this waste results in around 11 million individual collections and around 500,000 trips to the ‘tip’ every single year – it means that huge heavy refuse and recycling trucks drive over 2 million miles a year to do the collections (which is the same as driving round the earth 80 times!!) and it means each individual in Shropshire is producing about 550kg of waste per annum – about seven times their own body weight – the equivalent to a small car – more than one tonne from every single household! Shocking! Whilst its great that most folk are now into the habit of separating their waste out and so the majority (~53%) of this waste is now being recycled (or composted) it is clear that we still have a lot of work to do and with ever rising waste disposal charges and the “resource crunch” faced by some of our key industries we are going to have to improve on this and recycle more. Also whilst recycling is good it would be far better if we all just produced less waste in the first place!