5 Fantastic Facts About Waste!
- Supermarket plastic bags take 1000 years to decompose.
To put that into perspective, a thousand years ago in Britain, it was the Middle Ages, and we were only just ending Viking rule. Or think of it this way: if you throw a Tesco carrier bag thrown into a bin today, it won’t decompose entirely until 3016.
To avoid littering the world of the future, hold on to supermarket plastic bags and re-use them next time you go shopping, or buy an inexpensive tote bag and keep it folded in your car or handbag to avoid needing to buy (or pay for!) additional carrier bags.
- Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of waste per year.
Yes, that’s right. The household waste we typically accumulate over the course of a year (and by that we mean anything from banana skins and unwanted DVDs to broken TVs and garden furniture) weight of a small car or a hippopotamus.
On the positive side, research suggests that nearly 90% of what we see as ‘waste’ is recoverable.
This means that if we recycle efficiently, and think cleverly about other uses for discarded household products instead of throwing them in the bin, the UK’s household waste could be reduced by over three-quarters.
Here’s a tip: try using empty butter wrappers as baking paper to line cake tins!
- Waste is expensive!
Think about all the hidden costs that go into dealing with waste.
From paying hundreds of litter pickers in every borough an annual salary, to the costs of daily or weekly waste and recycling collection, each council spends an enormous amount of money on waste disposal. Where does this money come from? Income tax.
If each household in the UK thought more carefully about how much rubbish we throw away, a significant amount of every borough council’s budget could be diverted into public services like libraries and schools.
- Glass and aluminium can be recycled again and again without any quality loss.
Yes, that’s right: glass and aluminium can be recycled forever! Coke cans, baked bean tins, and empty wine bottles can all be taken to a treatment plant, crushed, melted and re-moulded into brand new products.
Don’t forget – glass and aluminium can only be recycled if you dispose of them correctly. Put them into a separate bin so that the council can collect all of your re-usable waste and recycle it.
- Recycling gives you power!
Thinking of throwing that glass Fanta bottle into the dustbin? Think again. One single recycled glass bottle saves enough energy to power a laptop for 25 minutes. Every tonne of newspaper we recycle saves 17 trees. Recycling one single aluminium can saves enough energy to power your TV for three hours, which is enough time to fit in three new episodes of Game of Thrones!
If you need a hand getting rid of any bulky items or household waste, call Kwik Sweep on 0207 624 9215 to see what we can do for you.
