The Three R's - Reuse

I went to the tip yesterday. We had some stuff in the garden that was there before we moved in that needed moving before a party next week (for example, a broken mirror!). A sign proudly proclaimed that 75% of the waste was recycled, which is good. But what upset me was that I saw a lot of people throwing out things that could have been reused instead. I had to stop myself from reaching into the skips and having a closer look at things.

Recycling is a good thing, but it should be a last resort. To many people, it seems that recycling has become a concious alleviation strategy for throwing things out - it's ok to waste something because it's going to be recycled.

However, most things that are recycled are turned into lower quality materials - glass often ends up as an element of road surfacing for example. and so we're downgrading our raw materials. Therefore, we should make a concious effort to reuse things where possible.

The item that symbolises this most for me is jam jars. We all use jam jars. From sauces to jam to olives, all manner of things we buy come in jars. They're massively useful, allowing food to be kept fresh for days, weeks, months or even years. And yet, once they're empty, we throw them in the bin (or the recycling), destined for landfill or to be ground down into a road surface. However, a jam jar's real destiny should be to be refilled and used again.

At a guess, the reason that recycled jars aren't cleaned and reused is that it's cheaper to make new ones. I stopped putting the ones from my house in the recycling though, certain there must be another solution. I brainstormed a list of uses with one of my friends - from candle holders to vases, plant pots to multi-purpose storage, there's a lot of uses. However, we still produce more as a house than we can use.

And then it struck me after leaving the council event on waste - there's a lot of people around who need jars - maybe for making jam or chutney, or for art projects. And there's a lot of people who produce a lot of jars but don't have a use for it.

Twenty minutes later, the Bristol Jam Jar Network was born (in the form of a facebook group). A few days (and a couple of posts on local mailing lists) later, the group has 80 odd members. It's not the ideal time of year for people to be needing jars, but already someone doing a local art project has been supplied with a large amount that she needed.

It's made me view waste differently - that plastic bag that my broccoli came in can be washed out and reused. My camera film cartridges can be saved and used to keep things in. A scrap of paper can be used to write a list on rather than using a fresh sheet. Before I throw something away, I'm trying to challenge myself to find another use for it - I'm still throwing things out, but the amount has definitely decreased significantly. And hopefully will continue to do so.