Waste Reduction

The production of unwanted waste is a significant barrier to a sustainable future.  It involves unnecessary resource use such as paper, plastics, metal and the fossil fuels for energy needed to produce it all.  Once you have thrown away waste, environmental damage of some kind is likely to be caused, such as pollution and land use. This costs money to manage, effecting economy and society, as well as the environment.

With all resource use it is important to minimise the use first before improving efficiency or reusing and recycling.  Waste, the by-product of resource use should be minimised in the same way; reduce before reusing, recycling then disposing sustainably.

Waste reduction is largely the responsibility of industry but you can help. 

Waste Hierarchy

International organisations and national governments are already creating and following policy to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover energy form waste but you can help too.

Doing Your Bit

• Try to avoid products which have a lot of packaging
• Buy locally produced items which often do not require as much packaging
• Avoid using disposable plastic bags and try to use stronger re usable plastic bags which many supermarkets now offer or light weight material bags, like calico
• When possible buy products that use paper or card packaging rather than plastic
• Use refillable containers
• Recycle as much as possible in your kerbside collection box
• Use recycling collection points, often at large supermarkets for any other recyclable
• Compost food scraps, garden and even torn up paper and card, like pizza boxes

Eastleigh Borough Council is one of the leading local authorities in the UK for domestic recycling, information on all the waste management services can be viewed on the Councils Waste and Recycling site.