In 2021, 63.2% of UK packaging waste was recycled. Sounds good right? What about the other 37% which wasn’t or couldn’t be recycled?
In West Sussex, we recycle 53% kerbside recycling, above the national average of 44%. When you recycle, you stop manufacturers using new raw materials and which also uses less energy too. However, many products can only be recycled a few times before they aren’t fit-for-purpose.
Find out where and how to recycle at home, and at local council centres. You’ll also find out what to do with hard-to-recycle items and alternatives to recycling.
Sussex Green Living volunteers sorting the single-use plastic recycling
These Earth’s natural resources are key to our Western lives: water, air, oil, gas, coal and minerals. Perhaps we could be thinking about recycling as another resource that is about reusing these over and over again? Here are some tips as to how and where we can recycle.
During the weekend of Saturday 6th to Monday 8th May, there will be celebrations and parties all the country. Local town, Eastbourne, has put together a guide to help with the preparations and create eco-friendly events. We’re sure that King Charles would approve.
Ashington Youth Club
Well what a year 2022 was for Sussex Green Living. As we reflect on the last year and plan for the future and 2023, we thought it was worth taking a moment to share some of our achievements…
Demand for Sussex Green Living environmental education services in schools and public events has never been higher, so much so that requests for our help vastly outstripped the grants we had been awarded to be able to deliver the work in schools.
“The battery won’t charge…” We hear these words very often at the Horsham Repair Cafe. It’s true that batteries don’t last forever, but we can make a drastic difference to its life expectancy. The original hybrid car, the Toyota Prius, uses a large traction battery. Many are still running 20 years later. So, how can the Prius keep the battery working efficiently for 20 years when some phone batteries only last three? Why do some household battery devices (vacuum cleaners for example) sometimes become useless after two years?
Green Hub Map
You might be feeling the world is not making enough progress with serious action to address the climate and ecological crises, especially with attention being diverted to the energy and cost of living crisis. Crisis after crisis, hey! However, we are seeing a rising of communities coming together to show how being leaner and greener helps save money and the planet.
During the first lockdown in 2020 many people felt isolated. Sussex Green Living (SGL) thought it was important to connect people and to continue its work improving the environment. SGL’s Carrie Cort organised weekly online Horsham Climate Café events. Some of these attracted over 150 people, both local and from further afield. One of the aims of the café was to introduce people ‘virtually’ from the same villages and this is when the seed of Billingshurst environmental group BilliGreen was planted.
The group was started by Mela Davidson and Melanie Holliker who both wanted to create a network that boosted the local community and had a positive impact on the local environment.
In West Sussex, 58.8% of an average household waste bin’s contents could have been diverted from general rubbish. Shockingly, 12.9% of the contents are items that could have been placed in kerbside recycling, and 40.5% is food waste. West Sussex County Council (WSCC) are asking us to reduce what we use, and re-use where possible. If items can’t be re-used, then recycle or compost. But what happens to the rest of our waste?
As managing our environmental impact becomes increasingly important, this is a question on many peoples’ minds. In West Sussex, all household waste is processed at two sites managed by Biffa, West Sussex Ltd. A team of our recycling volunteers recently organised visits to Brookhurst Mechanical Biological Treatment Facility and Ford Materials Recycling Facility to find out more.
As mentioned in last week’s blog, a jolly band of Sussex Green Living’s recycling ‘wombles’ enjoyed a tour of Biffa Mechanical and Biological Treatment Facility at Warnham recently.
And when I say ‘enjoyed’ I really mean it! If anyone had told me even a few years ago that I would be excited about a tip trip, I would have been very sceptical – but there we are, that’s how life rolls.
Go Greener Rudgwick (GGR) is a group of local volunteers who meet regularly to sort single use plastics that can’t be recycled at home, but can be left in the Rudgwick Youth Centre recycling bins. We work in conjunction with Sussex Green Living in Horsham to sort and box items to be sent to Terracycle, a recycling company, to make into new products.
The plastics collected include crisp & biscuit wrappers, toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, packaging & floss containers, biros & felt pens, household cleaning items such as marigold gloves, trigger heads, dishwasher flexible packaging, personal care & beauty products such as deodorants and empty foundation tubes, plant pots & trays, cheese wrappers and milk bottle tops.
We are delighted to report that a second reuse shop has opened in Billingshurst. The first being Horsham *
Background
Biffa have a opened a small Reuse shop at the Billingshurst Recycling Centre to save bric a brac, homeware, bikes (sold as seen) and furniture, including garden furniture, from going to waste. Items can be donated at this site as well as there being a shop outlet for patrons to purchase items which have been donated.
The goal is to take items that could potentially go to waste and give them a new lease of life at affordable prices, reducing the amount of household goods that end up wasted whilst allowing people to buy affordable, good quality furniture, garden items and homeware without getting into debt.
This venture has been soft launched by Biffa and has not been actively promoted to residents at this stage. Read more
Last month London Fashion week was held. There’ll be another in June.
Fast fashion is absolutely one of THE most polluting and damaging industries on the planet, second only to oil, and here in the little UK we are actually one of the worst countries in world for creating most waste clothing. The dying process alone uses huge amounts water that is sorely needed for food crops, and is often discharged into rivers without being cleaned up – much like our raw sewage is now being discharged into Sussex rivers.
Yes, we can donate clothes, but increasingly it is becoming like plastic rubbish- often “recycled” by transporting it to another, poorer country where it lies in a heap, unusable, partly because the cheap mixed fibres are unrecyclable. Natural pure fibres like linen, bamboo, hemp, wool and cotton can be re-used more easily (as can unblended clothes made only from polyester.) Read more
♬♫♪ We’ve got a Brand New Sussex Green Living Terracycle drop-off location in Southwater!* ♬♫♪
Here in West Sussex we’re very fortunate in that West Sussex County Council take a wide variety of materials in our kerbside bins for recycling. At present, however, there are a number of things they can’t yet take that can be recycled. This can be frustrating for those of us who are keen recyclers. A group of those frustrated parties, including Sussex Green Living, Southwater Church, Southwater Beavers and Southwater Scouts, (to name but a few), have got together with Terracycle to tackle some of this waste-that-isn’t-waste. In addition to the clothes bank already there, Southwater Church now has two more recycling collection bins up by the Church Rooms on Church Lane.
The first bin is for crisp & snack packets only – all brands and all sizes.
The second bin is for
• Ballpoint pens, felt tips, biros, correction fluid, markers, glue sticks and highlighters
• Plastic wrapping for; sweet biscuits, cakes, crackers, chocolate, popcorn & nuts
• Fruit & Vegetable baby food pouches – Ella’s Kitchen and other brands (no pet food pouches please!)
• Plastic Milk Bottle Tops
• All other plastic container tops (metal lids can be recycled in kerbside Blue Bins)
• Plastic Air fresheners: cartridges and packaging Read more
Local Locations for TerraCycle® recycling single use plastics
“The bins are ready and labelled. All bags (canvas for mixed recycling and large 300 litre black sacks for the crisps and snacks) are ready to go. I’ll bring them down on my way to The Horsham and Shipley Community Project to save an extra car journey.”
Thus sayeth the Womble.
Across the district, the Sussex Green Living partnership with TerraCycle® continues to increase local recycling points in the villages. Crisp packets, biscuit wrappers, toothbrushes, baby food, popcorn bags, disinfectant trigger pumps, pens and more are recycled to produce a wide range of products from park benches and road side bollards to children’s playground equipment. Read more
At our next Sussex Green Ideas online meeting, on July 21st at 7.00pm, we will be useing two books to help identify what Horsham District groups could usefully build now – and by 2030.
Chris Goodall – “What do we need to do now?” (discussed at Steyning Green Books 6/5/21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrxFSLl9tsw). Chris explained a number of uncomfortable truths relating to food and agriculture (one quarter of the world’s emissions), travel, domestic buildings and clothing (fast fashion)
He then identified what local groups could do, focusing also on working together and making lives better. We have chosen to focus on food, agriculture and clothing in our meeting*.
In the first part, we will look at his suggestions for:
Food and agriculture – He suggested The Kindling Trust as a model of community horticulture.
Clothing. He suggested The Clothing Warehouse Ltd as a model for recycling clothes (and household textiles). And initiatives that improve sewing skills (like our Horsham Repair Cafe) and use alternatives to cotton. We are going to be joined by Karrie Mellor one of our trustees and the founder of Bags of Support, a West Sussex textile recycling initiative run for social and environmental purpose. Read more
Have you heard about the circular economy or the doughnut economy? It was the focus of the Horsham Climate Cafe presentation on Saturday 6th February 2021. The speaker, an expert […]
We are delighted to be working with BilliGreen an environmental group in Billingshurst in offering our 8th parish single-use plastic drop off location. BilliGreen have agreed a public drop off location in the The Chapel car park, we have supplied some council bins for local people to use to help recycle specific hard to recycle plastics. Sussex Green Living working with a company called TerraCycle have been collecting these waste resources since 2012, our largest drop off locations being the William Penn School in Coolham and the Quaker Meeting House, Worthing Road, Horsham.
BilliGreen’s recycling location is at The Chapel, High Street, Billingshurst, RH14 9QS – the bins are in their car park which can be accessed on foot from the high street or by car via Lakers Meadows near the library. The bins are available 24/7. Local people are able to collect and recycle: Crisp packets and non-meat savoury snack packets, Biscuit, cracker and cake wrappers, Cereal bar and rice cake wrappers, Confectionery such as sweet bags and chocolate bar wrappers, Beauty and personal care products such as pots, lids, pumps and trigger spray heads, roll on/stick deodorant, lip balm containers, lids from sun-care products, Baby food and yoghurt pouches (any brand) and Ella baby snack packets, Cheese packaging (any brand) of sliced cheese protective plastic film, flexible bags, pouches and netting and Plastic milk bottle tops with 2 or 4 printed in a triangle.
Posters showing exactly what can be recycled can be seen here, scroll to the bottom of the page. Read more
PRESS RELEASE
SUSSEX GREEN LIVING THANK HORSHAM DISTRICT COMMUNITY AND LOCAL CHURCHES FOR THEIR RECYCLING EFFORTS AND ANNOUNCE OPENING OF NEW RECYCLING HUB
Joy Carter, “lead Womble” at Sussex Green Living has continued to co-ordinate the sorting and dispatch of “hard-to-recycle” types of waste accepted by TerraCycle during the COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent period and would like to encourage local residents to keep on recycling.
Given the current situation with COVID-19 and the government’s restrictions to reduce the spread of the virus, our day-to-day lives have changed, and our priorities have shifted but it is not all bad news! Green issues remain a key topic, and Sussex Green Living, along with TerraCycle would like to remind everybody that recycling is as important now as ever before! By disposing of waste correctly or storing it to send to TerraCycle when things get back to normal, we can collect now and have an impact forever. Read more
Here’s What You Can Do.
In partnership with TerraCycle, a global leader in recycling hard-to-recycle materials, Sussex Green Living is now working with over fourteen parishes and schools to divert billions of waste resources from landfills.
Plastics are extremely durable and cheap to manufacture, making them almost impossible to overlook for manufacturers when it comes to product design and packaging. But their durability comes at the cost of slow degradation rates in the wild; upwards of 300 to 1000 years.
With about 380 tonnes of it being produced every year, by the time the plastic we have disposed of today begins to degrade the quantity in landfills, oceans and everywhere else will have become totally unmanageable. That is, unless, we can turn the tides.
Bisphenol A has been observed to disrupt physiological levels of sex hormones, negatively affect thyroid hormone gene expression in humans, and cause other detrimental effects. In marine life, issues with plastic entanglement and ingestion have been observed at a broad scale. Read more
In partnership with TerraCycle, a global leader in recycling hard-to-recycle materials, Sussex Green Living is now working with over twelve parishes and schools to divert billions of waste resources from landfills.
Plastics are extremely durable and cheap to manufacture, making them almost impossible to overlook for manufacturers when it comes to product design and packaging. But their durability comes at the cost of slow degradation rates in the wild; upwards of 300 to 1000 years.
With about 380 tonnes of it being produced every year, by the time the plastic we have disposed of today begins to degrade the quantity in landfills, oceans and everywhere else will have become totally unmanageable. That is, unless, we can turn the tides.
Bisphenol A has been observed to disrupt physiological levels of sex hormones, negatively affect thyroid hormone gene expression in humans, and cause other detrimental effects. In marine life, issues with plastic entanglement and ingestion have been observed at a broad scale.
Some ‘Wednesday Wombles’ sorting crisp packets pre covid
Bigger and better: Appeal for help to expand our single use plastic recycling operation and deliver a greener Horsham!
After a quiet start to the lockdown on the single use plastic recycling front, we are delighted to say that things are starting to pick up again and we are receiving increasing donations of single use plastics waste resources at the Quaker Meeting House drop off point. This is brilliant news as we want to make sure we’re diverting as much single use plastic household waste away from landfill and incineration, and finding new purposes for these materials through our TerraCycle recycling scheme.
We are extremely lucky to have our small but dedicated team of volunteers (affectionately known as the Wombles!) who throughout the lockdown have continued to sort through the donations on a weekly basis in a socially distanced manner. However as waste resource donations return to pre lockdown levels, SGL is in desperate need of support to expand its recycling capability. To give some indication of the quantities the team are working through, a staggering 120,000 crisp packets have been recycled by our team over the course of the last two years! Once single plastic donations are dropped off at the Quaker Meeting House, these are sorted through by hand by our volunteers, boxed up and sent to a company called TerraCycle who manage the recycling of these hard to recycle materials. Without these volunteers, crisp packets along with lots of other household single use plastic resources such as biscuit and snack wrappers would be discarded in waste bins, which currently are transported to Germany and Holland to be incinerated at significant financial and environmental cost. Read more
Press release – Help Sussex Green Living win prize through ‘liking’ recycling video
Sussex Green Living (SGL) volunteer Joy Carter has won Terracycle’s global #keepOnRecycling contest for her “how-to” film that inspires householders to recycle specific single-use plastics during the lockdown.
The film promotes the free recycling schemes run by SGL and Terracycle to avoid items ending up in landfill or being sent overseas by the Council to be incinerated.
Joy said: “Now that most of us are staying home we are generating a lot more waste than normal and it is an ideal time to learn what to do with items that can’t be put in our recycle bins”.
Help Sussex Green Living Go Global!
Joy is donating the £80 prize money to the Horsham Community Fridge but has set her sights on the global prize and needs your support. The funds would enable SGL to set up a storage facility for all the recycling they sort through ordinarily on a weekly basis at the Quaker Meeting House. To help SGL win, please watch, like and share Joy’s film on social media. https://www.facebook.com/SussexGreenLiving/
Carrie Cort, SGL founder, said: “We are delighted that the volume of recycling from the local community has increased so significantly – it shows how many people care about being zero-waste. However, we now need to expand our operation to avoid volunteers taking a bag loads of recycling home to sort through. Please support our film and help us win the Terracycle award”. Read more
In addition to the single use plastics we recycle mainly through TerraCycle, the following plastics can be dropped off for recycling at the major supermarkets:
– All plastic carrier bags, except biodegradable or compostable bags
– Breakfast cereal liners
– Shrink wrap & ring joiners from multipacks of water, cans etc
– Frozen food bags, e.g. bags for frozen vegetable, chips, etc
– Dry cleaning bags/bags covering new clothing
– Magazine and newspaper wrappers
– Bags for fruit and vegetables
– Bubble wrap
For online shopping deliveries, many supermarkets also allow you to hand your unwanted bags back to the driver for recycling. Read more