Redbridge collects the 5th highest amount of rubbish in England. Let’s do something about it.

Did you know Redbridge currently collects 22 million sacks of household waste a year? We collect the fifth highest amount of rubbish in England. It’s a statistic we’re determined to change, and can change –  but we can only do it by working together.

By taking simple steps to reduce, reuse and recycle, every resident can play their part in helping lower the amount of waste being produced, and Redbridge Council is here to support you every step of the way.

One of the reasons Redbridge collects more waste than other boroughs is that residents have been able to leave out unlimited rubbish sacks for collection each week.

This provided little incentive for households to reduce, reuse or recycle. Many items which could have gone into the recycling box ended up in household waste instead – resulting in more rubbish and more rubbish sacks on collection day.

A borough wide move to wheelie bins is currently underway in Redbridge, and is a big leap forward towards reducing household waste, and improving recycling rates.

The wheelie bin replaces rubbish sack collection, and only waste contained inside the bin will be taken away – so no side waste by the bin please!

This encourages residents to put more items in their recycling boxes, and explore waste reduction ideas, to ensure there is enough space inside the wheelie bin for the average household waste that can’t be recycled.

It’s a big change –but we’re here to support you. We want to arm you with lots of tips, advice, info and links to resources to help you recycle more, and learn how to reduce your household waste:

• Check out our dedicated page for bins, waste and recycling. Whether it’s finding out about the Green Garden Waste service, different ways to dispose of refuse, or swotting up on what can and can’t be recycled –there’s lots of advice and info available on the page.
• Discover easy ways to reduce household waste here, including home composting, and using cloth nappies if you have a baby.
• Book yourself onto Redbridge Council’s series of free online workshops covering a range of waste reduction, and recycling themed topics.
• Cut out single use plastic! It’s another way to reduce your household waste, and help the environment. Here are some great alternatives to help you cut out single use plastic.

And if you needed any additional motivation to recycle, check out these thought provoking eco facts:

• Recycling one bleach bottle saves enough energy to power a street light for 6½ hours
• If everyone in the UK recycled one plastic milk bottle, enough energy could be saved to run a fridge in around 6,430 homes
• It only takes seven days for a recycled newspaper to come back as a new one!
• Recycling just one glossy magazine saves enough energy to boil a kettle 9 times
• Recycling paper rather than making it from wood uses 70% less energy, causes 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution
• Every tonne of paper recycled saves 17 trees

A staggering 50% of waste collected in Redbridge is food waste - there’s lots of ways to cut back on it.

Check out these handy resources and tips:

Portion planning and buying

Make a shopping list to help you stick to only buying what you need. When it comes to mealtimes, serve the right amount of food. Why not try this useful portion planner to help with serving sizes?: https://lovefoodhatewaste.com/portion-planner

Fridge optimisation

Did you know that your fridge should be below 5°C? In fact, the average UK fridge temperature is set at a way too hot 7°C. This is terrible news for milk and other food items kept in the fridge, which can perish quickly when not stored at the right temperature.

Find out more about fridge temperatures on: https://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/article/chill-fridge-out?_ga=2.190044905.317125162.1612275985-2076548065.1588605611

Date labels

Do you know the difference between ‘Use By’, ‘Best Before’ and ‘Display Until /Sell By’ dates? Check this guide to clear up any confusion with date labels, and to make sure you’re not throwing away food unnecessarily:

https://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/about-date-labels

Use it all

Did you know that you can eat broccoli stalks? And that you can leave potato skins on? Discover more food items that you can literally eat more of: https://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/compleating

Using up leftovers

Why not explore lots of tasty recipes from Love Food, Hate Waste, many of which can be used from leftovers that you might already have. Save money and the planet by checking the recipes out on: https://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes

Food storage

Not sure where to store foods to make them last longer? Unsure of what you can and can’t freeze, and what the correct way of defrosting is? Find out this and much more in Love Food, Hate Waste’s A-Z of food storage: https://lovefoodhatewaste.com/article/food-storage-a-z

By making small changes to the way we buy and use food in the borough, we can change the amount of food being wasted, which will also have a big impact on the environment and help you save money! Each small act can add up to make a big difference.

Don’t believe us? Check out these facts:

70% of wasted food comes from our homes - Each year, UK households throw away 4.5 million tonnes of food that could be eaten, with some of the most common products being milk, bread, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas and poultry. If every person stopped throwing away food for just one day in the UK, it’d do the same for climate change as taking 14,000 cars off the road for a whole year.

You should cry over spilt milk - We throw away the equivalent of 3.1 million glasses worth of milk a day - it can be from putting too much in our cereal or that unfinished cup of tea. It takes 358 million cubic meters of water to produce this milk, and 31,000 hectares of land used for production is also wasted. If we only bought the milk we needed, or always used every drop of the milk we bought, every year we could do the same for climate change as planting 5.9 million trees.

Ketchup on the facts about wasted tomatoes - In the UK we waste 1.2 million tomatoes a day, which generates 113,000 tonnes of CO2e through the labour that goes into the seeding, watering, the fertilisers, harvesting, and transporting of tomatoes just to get them on your plate to start with! Over a year, saving your tomatoes and the valuable resources that have gone into producing them would do the same for climate change as planting 1.8 million trees!