Everyone in today’s world is aware of our need to conserve the environment and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. While world governments work towards encouraging business and industry to reduce their emissions, it is also important that small businesses and individuals play their part.
The good news is that minimising your own carbon footprint isn’t as hard as many people think. It involves a lot of small and simple changes to your routine rather than major adjustments to your behaviour.
Using an eco-friendly way of disposing of any waste you have is a good place to start in living a greener life. The below methods allow you to dispose of different types of waste without contributing to any environmental harm.
Recycling
It is estimated that as much as 75% of everyday waste is recyclable, yet uptake is alarmingly low. This is partly because of confusion about what materials can be recycled and how to best go about ensuring that waste is properly recycled.
Since 2010, everyone in the UK has had access to recycling facilities as local authorities are legally required to provide recycling facilities for every household. The recycling bins provided to households can usually be filled with any kind of recyclable material. Where sorting is required, the bins will be clearly marked according to what material they are designed to receive.
Composting
Composting allows you to turn food waste into fuel for the plants in your garden and compost can be formed to suit gardens of any kind. Even if you aren’t a gardener yourself it is worth composting and using it on any plants that are nearby, or even donating it to a public garden. This allows you to recycle food scraps, cut down on your carbon footprint, and help gardens to grow.
Making a compost is as simple as investing in a small container and filling it with suitable materials. You want to aim to fill it with roughly equal amounts of material that are high in nitrogen and material that is high in carbon. These are soft and green in the case of nitrogen-rich material, and dry and brown for carbon-rich material.
Nitrogen-rich material generally comes from food waste, in particular, from vegetables, whereas the best source of carbon is woody material. Within your compost bin, try to keep the woody material at the bottom, as this will help to aerate your compost and aid in the breakdown processes that make the compost useful for plants.
Keep adding to your pile until you fill your bin. At this point, the compost will heat up as chemical reactions proceed. Give it a week or two and it will cool down, at this point you should mix it up using a shovel or pitchfork. If you find that your compost is very dry then add some water. Be sure to shred material down as much as possible before adding it, the larger the scraps the longer decomposition will take.
Reuse
This is one of the simplest ways of cutting down on waste, but it is something we often overlook. If you regularly buy bottles of fizzy drink then you can save some of the bottles to use as water bottles on a hot day rather than buying a new one. Save shopping bags or invest in a bag for life, so that you can reuse the same one. Once you start thinking about ways to reuse waste you’ll realise there are loads!
Hire an Eco-friendly Company
There are now a number of different companies offering various eco-friendly waste disposal services. For example, the London skip hire company Envirowaste offer an eco-friendly skip service for construction and commercial services, as well as domestic needs.
Disposing of waste in an eco-friendly way is easier than ever. Be sure that you put as much of your recyclable waste in the appropriate bin at home. You should also encourage your place of work to sort their recyclables.
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