There are often several children going to school who live in the same area who are individually driven to school. Not only would this save you money on petrol but lots of time in the mornings and afternoons too! Consider fitting your car with a fuel saver, which reduces the amount of fuel your car uses to run, so that even the trips you do have to make are cheaper and healthier!

Energy saving light bulbs or rechargeable batteries may seem more expensive initially, but they save you fortunes in the long run. Items that are ‘Fair Trade’ mean that the people who put the work into producing your product, whether it is coffee, bananas or a fruit bowl are getting paid fairly for the work they have done, just as you would expect to be. So your purchase can benefit others. Purchasing organic, sustainable, or recycled materials means that in the long term, you will not only be benefiting your own health but also benefiting bio-diversity, sustainability, and the more of us that purchase these products, the more mainstream they will become.

If you would like to go one step further, look for recycled paper products. This re-uses discarded paper to make new clean paper once again. More often than not there is no discernible difference between new and recycled, except that you have helped prevent the chopping down of a tree. Any paper that you do use, make sure you use it to its fullest. Don’t discard a piece of paper because you made a small mistake. Use it as scrap paper, perhaps near the telephone to take messages or to leave notes for your loved ones to do the dishes etc!

You can re-use envelopes using the envelope re-use labels available from the stationery section, and some recycled Post it Notes When your paper has been as useful as it can possibly be to you don’t just throw it away but make sure that you get it recycled. This way it can be useful to you or someone else once again. Check out all the products in the Stationary section. You will find a myriad of useful things. Oh – and use the free Wikaniko e-Kards (online greeting card service) to reduce the number of cards you have to send out in the post! It will save you a fortune too….

We are producing more rubbish than ever and with landfill space fast running out, this is a major problem. Once thrown in the bin, what happens next is thrown out of our minds too. However, a few little changes can make a great difference to reduce this pollution.  To create less waste is easier than you may think.  

When shopping, avoid goods with unnecessary packaging. Pick loose items whenever possible, it is cheaper too! You will find that supermarket fruits and vegetables wrappings tend to be the main offenders, so it may be worth checking the local market or greengrocer.

If you must have packaging, ensure that it is recyclable. Before recycling, try to get things that you can re-use, like bottles and various containers for example.

Rather than throwing your food waste away, you can compost it   It will be great for the plants in your garden, you could even use it to start to your own organic food.

Give away unwanted goods to charity shops. You can also check the freecycle website.  

These are a few suggestions, but there are 100’s of ways that we can reduce the amount of rubbish we produce. Just think about it. For more info about recycling, you can also check out the recycling information centre recycle-more website.  

You are welcome to comment share with us any more tips you may have on the subject. Thanks!

Designed in the US in 1957, the plastic bags reached the UK stores in the late 1960s. Over a trillion are manufactured worldwide each year, but growth has stabilised and there is now a downward production trend in some countries like Britain. It is an encouraging fact that our use of plastic bags has reduced by 26 per cent last year, to 9.9 billion. 

Plastic bags do not biodegrade and can pollute the environment for several hundred years, whereas degradable bags will disappear after an average of 18 months.

As well as landfills, plastic is polluting the world’s oceans too. In some part of the Pacific, at a density of 46,000 pieces of plastic per square metre, it kills a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals per year. Unfortunately nothing can be done to clean-up the existing damage; however we can all stop adding to the problem.

How can we help?

 Stop using plastic bags and switch to the following options:

·     Degradable or Biodegradable bags

·     Turtle string bags

·     Cotton Tote bags

·     Paper bags

Think of the impact over a year if just a small number of people did not use another plastic bag to carry the produce they have purchased during their weekly shopping. For example, if just 20 people from now on used a Tote or Turtle bag over the course of a year, that would be around 1,040 less plastic bags polluting our environment.

Everyone can make a positive difference today!

Resources:

You can find Degradable Carrier bags, Degradable Black Bin Bag, Degradable Pedal Bin Liners, Degradable Swing Bin Liners, Degradable Food Freezer Bags, Degradable Dog Waste/Nappy Sacks, Bag Tubes, Turtle Cotton String Bag, Large Cotton Tote bag and much more eco-friendly items on Wikaniko’s website.