Christmas tree recycling - Contact your local council for facilities

If you are wondering what to do with your real Christmas tree after the festive season, you can visit the website of your Local Borough Council to check what facilities they have in place for recycling and reuse of used Christmas trees.

A number of local councils have designated dates which they have allocated for collection of Christmas trees. Some local councils will collect the trees as well as Christmas cards to be recycled. Christmas cards can be put in the paper and card recycling boxes or bags provided.

Real Christmas trees can be left on the side of the pavement next to your wheelie bin along with other recyclable items, which will be picked up at the allocated times or days specified by your local council. Please contact your local council for information.

Recycled Trees can be used for a number of things such as firewood, mulch, which helps to keep weeds out. Those are already two uses I can think of. If you can think of any more, then leave a comment in the comment section below the post.

Related Blog Links

Recycling your Christmas cards and other materials

Weeds - Mulching helps to control them


Related External Links

Directgov - Local Councils Directory - Find your Local Council

Christmas recycling and refuse services

The Co-operative Fairtrade Cotton Carrier Bag For Life

I popped into the Co-operative supermarket yesterday to pick up a few bits and pieces and at the till I spotted a nice Fairtrade cloth carrier bag, it looks quite cute and neat so I thought I would grab one. It's a nice cream and black colour, it also holds a nice basket of shopping quite comfortably too. You can fold it into your bag or pocket, and you can also wash it. The best part is that it only costs 99p.....What a bargain!

My shopping

On their website, the Co-op have this to say about the bag....

"Fairtrade Bags for Life, made from unbleached, biodegradable cotton, which is hand washable to prolong life. We expect this will eventually replace the 3.5 million plastic Bags for Life we currently sell each year.

As well as being less harmful to the environment, the Fairtrade cotton bags guarantee a fair price and a better deal for disadvantaged Indian cotton growers.

The production of the bag has created 300 new jobs in India, and for every one sold a donation is made to children's charity The Wings of Hope."

One blogger added this comment:

I saw the thread and wanted to let you know about our campaign for reusable bags.

Buying one of our Re-usable Bags at Tesco, CO-OP Fairtrade, Debenhams or Boots does not only help the environment, but provides a profession and livelihood to thousands of workers.

As the UK’s leading producer of Fairtrade and Organic reusable bags, a lot of work has been created at our own textile factory in Pondicherry, South India.
In fact, we now directly employs over 1000 local workers and provides them with on-the-job training to become stitching and printing professionals.
This indirectly helps support around 5000 family members.

For more information on our ground breaking work see our website www.supreme-creations.co.uk

We were pioneers in introducing organic cotton bags and now are manufacturing Fairtrade certified cotton bags.
Our factory is Fairtrade accredited, ethically audited and Carbon neutral.

It has been independently audited for:-

Freedom of association and collective bargaining with employees having the right to join a union
Employment is freely chosen
A safe and hygienic working environment
All employees over 18years of age
Living wages paid
48 hour working maximum week
No discrimination

To encourage the use of reusable bags we have recently launched an online webshop and hope to introduce more new products. Your ideas welcome!



Related External Link

The Fairtrade Foundation UK

Supreme Creations - Bag for Life Producers

Planet Earth's new nemesis

Reduce the volume of your waste and save landfill

A few ideas on reducing the volume of your household waste are:

1. Use kitchen waste to make compost with the skins of fruit and vegetables such as potato peel and the rind of fruits such as oranges. You can also use your garden waste to make compost as well. Take a look in your local garden centre and invest in a small domestic compost bin.
2. When recycling plastic bottles or water bottles, collapse the bottles by taking the lid off and squashing the bottle down, the grooves on the bottle will help with this. Once the bottle is fully collapsed, put the lid back on and it will stay in place allowing room for other materials.
3. Don't throw your old clothes or shoes away, give them to charity or take them to a clothes or shoe bank in order to be recycled or re-used by someone who needs them.
4. Cut up and collapse cardboard boxes so that they use up less space. You can also do this to small boxes such as pizza and other food packaging.
5. Re-use your padded envelopes and use them to send fragile items in the post.
6. Look for products that contain minimal packaging instead of unnecessary and excessive packaging, which only serves to drive up the cost of production anyway. Also look for packaging that can be recycled or re-used.
7. Re-use the packaging from products around the house, for example use empty ice cream containers to store food in the fridge or freezer or re-use plastic containers from takeaway or for storage in the fridge or freezer.
8. Instead of throwing out old cupboards and wardrobes, check to see if other people can make use of the wood in a building or DIY project. There are a number of websites online where you can exchange, swap or giveaway your unwanted items.