Reduce
Minimise the amount of waste we create
Examples:
- Take your own bags shopping, and don’t accept extra carrier bags. Some supermarket goods such as toilet rolls or fruit have integral handles.
- Just buy the food you need, to reduce food waste.
- Remove heavy un-necessary items from your car so your journeys don’t consume extra petrol.
Reuse
Using an item again after it has been used, instead of recycling or disposing of it
Examples:
- Buy milk from a milkman – glass bottles can be returned and reused.
- Make your own jam and preserves reusing jam jars.
- Use ‘zero waste’ or ‘refill’ shops for food and household cleaning products, reusing containers.
- Have clothes, furniture etc repaired.
- Some irrepairable clothes can be used as cleaning cloths.
- Donate to and purchase from Charity shops.
- Reuse ice cream / margarine tubs for freezer storage or sandwich containers.
- Yoghurt pots – with holes put in for drainage – can be used for seedlings.
- Make old Christmas cards into gift tags.
Clothing repairs/alterations
- Available at ‘A Better Fit’ on Crookes and other places around the city.
Bicycle repairs
- Available at ‘Vernon Barker’ behind Broomhill library and other places around the city.
Clothing, electrical and furniture repairs
- All available at ‘Reyt Repair’ (a social enterprise powered by volunteers), 10-4 Tue-Sat at Abbeyfield Park House, Abbeyfield Road S4 7AT. Email [email protected] – Phone on 07543 745918. New volunteers are always welcome too!
Recycle
You can recycle paper, card, glass & plastic bottles and food/drink cans using your wheely bins. See the Veolia Sheffield website for full details. For other items, the council provides recycling centres across the city, and many local businesses also collect various recyclable items.
Recycling in Crookes and nearby
- Crookes Co-op will recycle clean soft plastics, e.g. crisp packets, sweet wrappers, plastic film, pet food pouches, plastic bags, bread and biscuit packets
- Co-op and Sainsbury’s can return used household batteries for recycling. (At the Co-op, give them to an assistant at the main counter.)
- Morrisons in Broomhill can recycle household batteries, and small electrical products when purchasing a like-for-like product.
- B & Q in Hillsborough – small electrical and electronic products can be dropped off for free. Also light bulbs, fluorescent tubes and household batteries. Larger electrical and electronic products may be recycled if you buy a like-for-like product from B & Q. A charge applies for collection of used products.
- Broomhill Library, Taptonville Road can take Inkjet cartridges (but not laser/toner) & household batteries
- Good Taste, Sheffield’s Fair Trade shop on Whitham Road, Broomhill can take Pens and other stationery items with a hard shell e.g. felt tips, highlighters, whiteboard markers, ballpoints, marker pens.
The income from pen donations goes to the charity TASTE which works in Nigeria, mainly providing clean drinking water by digging boreholes and often powering them with solar panels. - Freedom Road recycling site can take shoes (in bags), books & music, paper & card, plastic packaging including food trays & yoghurt pots, food tins & drinks cans, glass bottles & jars.
Did you know…? Recycling aluminium takes less energy than producing it from raw materials! So, separating aluminium food tins/drinks cans for recycling is especially helpful.
Recycling includes Composting
- Fruit and vegetable peelings become soil improver.
- When home composting, don’t put meat, fish or any cooked food onto your compost heap as these could attract vermin.