Resolutions for a Green New Year
Take old magazines to your local doctor's surgery. Whether it's Cosmopolitan or The Economist, someone out there would like to read it. Doctor's surgeries don't have the budgets to spend on magazines, and while sitting waiting for the doctor we all could do with something to keep us occupied.
Recycling just one glass bottle saves enough energy to power a TV set for an hour and a half. The 6000,000 tonnes of glass recycled in the UK last year saved enough energy power every primary school in the UK for a year. For every tonne of glass recycled a saving of 135 litres of oil and 1.2 tonnes of ash, sand and limestone is made. If we recycled all our glass we could save four times this amount of energy and resources. Go to www.recycle-more.co.uk to find your nearest bottle bank.
Make your own, environmentally friendly glass cleaner. Most commercial glass cleaners contain isopropyl alcohol - a strong chemical that kills aquatic life when it gets into river water. Instead of using commercial glass cleaners, mix a tablespoonful of vinegar with a pint of water.
Say NO to shopping bags. UK shoppers use eight billion plastic carrier bags a year (that's 134 per person). Consolidate all your shopping in one bag rather than getting a new one at each shop. Best of all take your own shopping bag with you.
Recycle your Christmas Tree. Five-and-a-half million Christmas trees are bought each year, most of which are thrown out after their use, creating enough tree waste to fill the Albert Hall three times over. Local Authorities run schemes which chip Christmas trees to make a park and garden mulch. Phone your council to find out if there is a local scheme.
Rip up the plastic rings from packs of beer. Plastic rings are invisible in the water, so pose a real danger to aquatic life. Seals get their heads trapped in the rings, small seabirds get their wings trapped, and large ones catch the rings around their bills when they dive for food.
Recycle old spectacles. There are thousands of people in the developing world who are handicapped by short sight because they cannot or don't have access to glasses. Next time you get a new pair of glasses, take your old pair to be recycled. Vision Aid Overseas is a nationwide scheme that sets up eye clinics in developing countries and supplies patients with second-hand spectacles. Many local opticians collect spectacles for Vision Aid - if yours doesn't, tell them about the scheme and meanwhile you can send old spectacles to Vision Aid by post. Find out more at www.vao.org.uk, or call 01259 353 5016.
Clothes don't just have to be worn - put old clothes to new uses. Once a jumper has been worn by all members of the family and looks beyond use, its life is till not over. If not a draft excluder, how about using it for cleaning-rags or patchwork.
Hang your clothes up to dry instead of using the tumble dryer. Tumble dryers are the most energy-consuming appliances we use in the home. If you do buy a tumble, remember that gas appliances cost half as much to run as electric ones and produce 33% less greenhouse gas.
Donate your leftover paint. Of the 300 million litres of paint sold in the UK each year, 6.2 million litres remain unused. The community Re-Paint scheme run by Save Waste and Prosper runs paint collection schemes. It sorts the paint and redistributes it to local community projects and housing services. Find out more at www.communityrepaint.org.uk
And don't forget to register or volunteer for a Whitbread Action Earth project!
