Recycling is now a big part of our lives, as is working for a more sustainable future. We are encouraged to recycle our trash, and many of us participate in recycling and upcycling activities. It is now an accepted element of modern life, and the reduction of materials that wind up in landfills and, tragically, our oceans will only accelerate.
We’ve reached a critical juncture in our efforts to transform how we consume and dispose of waste. New materials, procedures, and behaviors are emerging. As a result, many of you reading this essay may be astonished to find that recycling was first documented about a thousand years ago in Japan. The Japanese industrialist nature was first recognized in 1031 when they discovered how to recycle paper and resell it as new.
Recycling is a big component of what we do. We are acutely aware of our responsibility in ensuring that very little from a house removal ends up in a landfill. For both ourselves and our clients, setting an example is critical. When you begin to comprehend the staggering amount of rubbish thrown each year, it can have a significant impact on your attitudes toward recycling. We hope that readers will take note of some of the fascinating (and, dare we say, scary) information we discovered.
So, let’s share some more interesting facts about recycling
- A typical average family will throw away annually approximately 40kg of plastic that isn’t but could be recycled
- Over 7 million tons of food and drink are thrown away each year in the UK
- It is estimated that more than 50% of the contents in our waste bins can be reused or recycled, but isn’t
- As long ago as 1875, the first household waste receptacles were established following the Public Health Act. The streets were certainly much cleaner from therein
- Waste per capita increases by 3% year-on-year
- On the positive, paper is the most widely recycled material. Over two-thirds of our waste paper is recycled here in the UK
- Work this one out. The power that is generated by recycling one glass bottle could power a laptop for 25 minutes. Obscure but imagine the upscaling possibilities
- A proper unknown fact around 50% of the renewable energy we use comes from the gases produced by landfills.
- You’ve heard about the excess Methane that melts permafrost and can be quite dangerous. Did you know that when waste was first dumped in designated landfills, it used to ignite spontaneously because of the high concentration of Methane?
- Each newborn child in its formative years will go through on average 3,500 nappies that end up in a landfill. A good case for reusable nappies
- Before the invention of aluminum, tin was the main material used to contain food. Tin cans were disposed of in the landfill and take around 50 years to decompose. An interesting one for any vintage tin can collectors wishing to explore landfills for their next find
- Glass bottles are the worst material for landfill, estimated to take up to 1 million years to decompose
Some, if not all, of these statistics and data, are rather alarming. It is now up to all of us, particularly companies like ours in the house clearance sector, to be extremely aware of our actions, change our habits, and develop a new attitude toward waste.
We provide house clearance services in London and the Home Counties, which include not only the removal of furniture and other unwanted objects but also the disposal of kitchen contents and other goods that might otherwise end up in a landfill. Recycling is vital, and we should all be mindful of our activities, wasting as little as possible and, when we do create waste, ensuring that recycling and upcycling are at the forefront of our minds!
