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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How to dispose of a wooden fence

Fences aren’t something you need to dispose of very often, so when the time comes to do so, you might be unsure of how to go about it. After all, fences are large and cumbersome. They are often constructed from treated and painted wood too, which isn’t as easily recycled as plain wood.

Before you even consider dismantling and replacing your old fence though, you have an important job to do, which is explained in full below.

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Landfill is bad for the environment

Landfill is an area of land which is used to dump unrecyclable (and sometimes recyclable) waste materials.

Landfill sites exist all over the UK, and all over the world. Some sites practice ‘landraising’ (piling the rubbish directly on the ground), and some practice ‘landfilling’ (filling a hole in the ground with the rubbish). The rubbish in these piles is a mixture of household and commercial waste.

 

The household waste on landfill consists of mostly organic waste and plastics, and the commercial waste is primarily inert rubbish such as rubble, bricks, soil, and concrete. The inert waste is often used to build roads onsite, and then to cover the site over when it is full. Once the site has been covered and has been made ‘safe’, the area can then be repurposed, but there are heavy restrictions in place regarding this.

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