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Re-use and recycling

Headings on this page :

The first benefit - revenue for charities

Secondhand goods sold by charity shops come from three sources :

• people taking goods direct to the charity shops
• people taking goods to those Re-use/recycling centres which include charity-owned containers for clothes etc (eg in some supermarket car parks)
• house-to-house collections by charities.

Whichever way they get to a shop, the goods raise valuable revenue for charities.

The second benefit - helping the environment

But we'd like to remind you that there is a second benefit from this - namely re-use and recycling. You're helping to save the planet by conserving finite resources :

• materials - plastic, metal, glass etc
• energy - coal, oil, gas etc

You're reducing pollution :

• air and water pollution
• solid pollution - eg reducing the space needed on landfill sites

Why re-use is better than just recycling

Re-use of clothes, books, crockery etc as finished/manufactured goods is much, much more environmentally friendly than just recycling the goods as raw materials - for instance using local authority refuse/recycling collections.

For example, look at what happens when you get rid of a typical book :

• Re-use it by taking it to a charity shop for resale as a finished/manufactured item - It will raise 25 pence to £25 depending on what it is (on average around £1). This reflects the value of the printing, binding etc as well as the paper.
  OR
• Recycle it as raw materials - It will be disintegrated to liquid pulp and re-manufactured to make medium/low-grade paper (wasting lots of energy), and will be worth under one penny.

The big difference between these figures (of £1 and under 1p, ie over 100:1) gives you a rough idea of the environmental benefits of :

• re-use as finished/manufactured goods, compared with
• just recycling as raw materials.

Links - quotes

www.rethinkrubbish.com* Extract from Web User magazine's review of the site :

"... this site ... encourages you to reduce the amount of rubbish you dump and get into recycling. There's information and tips from local councils, retailers, celebrity patrons and the waste management industry

on how to recycle your rubbish, and a 'bank locator' to find your nearest recycling facility. You can find out how to get rid of rubbish at home or at work and change your shopping patterns to cut down the amount of waste."

www.recycledproducts.org.uk Extract from their homepage :

" This is your guide to products available in the UK which contain recycled materials. The database provides the most comprehensive listing of recycled products available.

It is compiled and maintained by Waste Watch, with support from Biffaward and the [Yellow Pages] Directory Recycling Scheme via the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme."

Re-use and recycling :
Related pages and Useful links

Note:  There are no red double-arrow symbols next to the external links below.

 

 

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