House projects you can get ready for 2017

Many of us subscribe to the ‘new year, new start’ way of thinking, even to the extent that some people spend New Year’s Eve itself getting some DIY done – a perfect way to use those long hours until midnight, if you’re not one for partying.

As 2017 gets underway, here are some ideas of how you can prepare projects around the house and get your living space up to scratch for the new year.

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Recycling Christmas Waste

They say one person’s trash is another’s treasure, and when it comes to recycling Christmas waste that can be an especially true adage.

According to research from Sainsbury’s Bank, 5% of people ‘re-gift’ items they received in previous years, or even earlier in the same festive season.

Among these, 8% of people – over 150,000 working-age Britons – do so because they don’t want to harm the environment by buying something else, and 40% or over 750,000 people re-gift to avoid waste.

During a season of celebration, reducing Christmas waste can be a major challenge, and one that is easy to overlook, but there are some simple steps we can all take to keep more festive materials out of landfill sites.

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Christmas food waste: knowing the figures

The autumn is a peak time for edible waste, and while Christmas food waste is a major concern for many households and businesses, it is by no means the start of the seasonal problem.

Already UK households have carved 15 million pumpkins without eating the flesh, according to Hubbub, enough to give everyone in the country a bowl of pumpkin soup.

A third of people believe the pumpkins we carve for Halloween are an inedible variety, and more than half don’t think of them as food.

Combined with other celebrations like Easter and, of course, Christmas food waste, the UK throws away 7 million tonnes of edible waste every year.

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Five things to recycle to make way for Christmas

Christmas is coming, and in these final few weeks before the holiday season really begins, there’s just enough time left for a proper clear-out to make room for all the guests and gifts you might be welcoming, or just to go into the new year in tidier surroundings.

Here are five things you might want to recycle in the run-up to Christmas, clearing the way for whatever festivities lie ahead for you and those close to you.

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11 astonishing things that were found in a skip

When you hire a skip you are able to dispose of the majority of waste in it, which is often fairly predictable stuff: rubble, broken furniture, plasterboard, and so on. However, every so often there is an unexpected or surprising item discovered in a skip – an item nobody would expect to find tucked away in there. There have been some fascinating finds over the years, so we’ve collected some of the most amazing stories together here for you to enjoy.

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Clearing out your garden for winter

As the autumn turns to winter (winter officially begins on December 21), it’s the time of year to clear out the garden and prepare it to survive the oncoming frost.

With a few simple steps, you can dump the dead wood in a skip, pile leaves and lighter organic waste into your compost bins, and leave behind a fairly blank canvas ready for your spring planting to come through.

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Avoid the red cups and go green this Christmas

One of the landmark events in the run-up to Christmas is also a red flag – quite literally – for companies aiming to go green as we move into the new year.

This is the time of year when the major coffee shop chains release their festive takeaway cups, which include the infamous Starbucks ‘red cups’, along with seasonal designs from the other big brands too.

It’s a marketing gimmick that puts the traditional red and green colour scheme of Christmas into customers’ cold hands on the morning commute from early November right through December, but it poses a challenge to sustainability too.

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Yellow hard hats banned from building sites

Bob The Builder is now wearing the wrong colour of hard hat, and wouldn’t be allowed on site. Build UK, the body that represents some of the UK’s largest building contractors and trade associations, have set new guidelines regarding hard hats on building sites, which omits the traditional yellow hats altogether.

White hard hats will now be the most common headwear on building sites – worn by site managers, qualified tradesmen, qualified labourers, and those directing vehicles.

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Everyday sustainable tips for the office

Most people think about the environment at home – even if it’s just to keep the general waste bin from overflowing before collection day – but at work it’s easy to overlook those same concerns, and can sometimes seem hard to change our behaviour to benefit the environment.

Here are five very simple everyday sustainable tips for the office that shouldn’t need a change in company policy (although that might help to make sure everybody joins in).

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How to properly wipe and dispose of office computers and laptops

Office IT equipment is the essential tool we all love to hate – no matter how new it is, it often already feels sluggish and obsolete, and software patches can only keep old systems relevant for so long.

When it comes time to replace the entire system, you’re faced with a dilemma, as there may be sensitive data stored on the hard drive.

Here are ten steps to properly erase and dispose of office computers.

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