Homeowners everywhere dream of stamping their personality on their home, and while kitchen renovations can be ambitious, they can also have the biggest effect, and it doesn’t have to cost the earth to get the job done.
These are just some of the ways you can complete kitchen renovations on a budget, without compromising too much on the finished product – and how you can even save money over the long term.
Continue reading Kitchen renovations: tips for a more economical cooking space
Restaurant food recycling helps businesses in the foodservice industry to manage their waste more carefully – and crucially means that organic waste that could still be used does not get sent to rot in a landfill site.
A general restaurant food recycling scheme might mean small food caddies around the kitchen for vegetable peelings and so on, a large bin lined with a biodegradable bag to empty them into, another one for leftovers from the dining room, and a hygienic lidded skip outside for the full bags to go into for collection.
Eliminating unwanted draughts from your home could save you anywhere from £25 to £50 a year, depending on who you ask – and as draught proofing the home can be done on the cheap, it’s easy to come out in profit even within the space of a single windy winter.
The autumn months have an undeniable effect on our gardens – not all trees lose their leaves of course, but those that do end the summer season in a blaze of glory before covering the grass with a crispy or mulchy mass that needs quick attention to avoid it getting trodden into the lawn.
Dead growth from the summer bedding plants and some larger shrubs need attention too, and even a small garden can quickly produce more rubbish than a garden waste wheelie bin can handle, making a garden skip a worthy seasonal investment to get the job done while the last of the fair weather holds.
Continue reading Garden waste: prepping the garden for autumn
The WEEE Directive governs the disposal of electrical goods – its shorter name is much more fun, but to give it its full title, it’s the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive 2012/19/EU and it originally set a target for EU member states to recycle 2% of electrical waste by 2016.
Continue reading Recycling electrical items: what you need to know
There’s no better time to give to your local food bank than in the run-up to Christmas and the winter months, when a fresh, hot meal can make even more difference to families on low or no incomes.
Having food inside you on a cold day provides natural warmth, so it’s not just about feeding people; it also helps keep their heating bills down and gives them the strength to combat seasonal colds and flu.
Continue reading How to find and give to your local food bank
We all know recycling is good for the environment – at least compared with sending household waste to the landfill site – but some people take it a step beyond altruism and recycle as a way of making money too.
There’s nothing wrong with recycling for profit, as you still achieve all the same benefits for the environment, and might even be able to do more to keep your neighbourhood clean when there’s some money in it for you.
Here are five of the main types of recyclable waste that can be turned into a profit – or at least, into money that you would not have if you simply threw them away.
Glass recycling has been one of the most familiar forms of recycling for decades, and many of us cannot remember a time when there weren’t green, brown and white bottle banks in supermarket car parks and other public places.
But the problem has always been getting to those public bottle banks when you have large amounts of glass to recycle, not to mention when you have anything other than a green, brown or clear bottle to recycle.
Here are our five top tips for recycling glass at home, which can help you improve your commitment to the environment with some simple everyday lifestyle changes.
The autumn months have an undeniable effect on our gardens – not all trees lose their leaves of course, but those that do end the summer season in a blaze of glory before covering the grass with a crispy or mulchy mass that needs quick attention to avoid it getting trodden into the lawn.
Continue reading Garden waste: prepping the garden for autumn
Recycling metal is an important way to protect the remaining stocks of ore, notably chalcopyrite, which accounts for about half of the world’s total production of copper; metal is in principle a non-renewable resource, but by recycling it using modern techniques, there is no reason why we should ever run out.
