The Forge Skip Hire Leeds Blog

We all collect ‘stuff’ in our homes, just different types and for different reasons. It could be books if you’re an avid reader, and you’ve not yet made the change over to ebooks. Perhaps your house is full of unwanted gifts, given to you by well-meaning friends and relatives whose feelings you don’t want to hurt. You could have sentimental things piled up, items from your childhood you can’t bear to part with, or a vast collection of shoes and clothes, half of which you’ve never even worn. Whatever your clutter vice, having a clear-out in your home can bring many benefits. In fact, there are so many benefits to decluttering your house or flat, you will wonder why you’ve not done it before now.

The nine points below are just some of the reasons why you might want to consider decluttering your living space. This doesn’t mean you have to live an entirely minimalist existence, but living amongst less mess and excess ‘stuff’ can help you in the following ways:

Continue reading 9 benefits to decluttering your home

Polystyrene recycling is one challenge on which progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go before cheap, efficient recycling methods are found.

The white, fluffy material most of us think of when we hear ‘polystyrene’ is actually made from the same plastic as CD cases, but air is mixed in during the production process to make it much bulkier and more lightweight.

Dow Chemical Company invented the process in the 1940s – and own the rights to the trade name Styrofoam, which many people use when referring to polystyrene in conversation.

More recently, expanded polystyrene or EPS has become the commonplace term for the material, and there are slight variations available in terms of the exact production method, density and even the colour of the finished product.

One thing all of these materials have in common, unfortunately, is that there is currently no cost-effective way to 100% recycle them into new materials.

Continue reading Can polystyrene be recycled?

Depending on the profession you work in, glass is probably either something you throw away in only small quantities – the occasional broken tumbler or empty coffee jar, for instance – or in large amounts, for example if you run a pub or restaurant.

No matter how much or little you produce each year, it’s important to make sure you collect it separately from your other waste for recycling, or that your commercial waste collection service provider will separate it out retrospectively.

The benefits are huge – in terms of energy security, resource efficiency and climate change, recycling glass makes sense.

Continue reading Why everyone in Leeds needs to recycle glass

If you’re a new business, or even a well established SME, long-term profitability can be all about the margins, cutting costs, and making the most of the resources you have available.

Luckily, issues like resource efficiency, usage reduction, and reuse or recycling all contribute towards a lean environmental strategy too.

Continue reading Why recycling makes financial sense for SMEs

How much do you know about recycling in the UK? For instance, did you know that we create around 200 million tonnes of waste each year? Or, did you know that very single day we throw away 20 million slices of bread and 1.6 million bananas? They are quite shocking figures, however, the nation is steadily getting better at recycling. Take a look at our infographic below, and learn all about it. Could you or your business make a difference? Every bit of waste saved from landfill helps, as does every item made from reusable materials instead of single use.

Continue reading Recycling facts & figures for the UK

Electrical waste is subject to specific regulations under the 2007 EU WEEE Directive, which requires electrical goods to be reused or recycled when they reach the end of their usable life.

That doesn’t just mean computers – although they need to be disposed of in the right way too – but it includes even smaller everyday items like toasters and kettles, which the vast majority of businesses may have on hand for staff to make snacks and hot drinks throughout the day.

Continue reading What to do with electrical waste in Leeds

Office waste is a burden every company must bear – not only in terms of disposing of your waste affordably and ethically, but also in terms of minimising the amount of waste you produce in the first place.

Here are four tips for ways you can reduce your office waste and do more with the waste you produce, so that you create less recycling and, crucially, less landfill. Continue reading Office waste: how to get the most out of it

We’ve all encountered fly tipping to some extent – whether it’s an old sofa or mattress dumped in an alleyway, or a bag of commercial waste thrown out on the pavement.

The name itself gives an indication of why this is a problem: fly tipping literally means tipping or dumping rubbish ‘on the fly’ before running away, which is why much of this waste can go some time before it’s cleaned up.

But it’s not just a problem in the inner cities – fly tipping happens in the remotest of countryside locations too, where the risk of being caught in the act might be significantly less for the perpetrators.

Continue reading Why fly tipping damages our countryside