Climate Change: What can I do 5

Hello Everyone,

I hope you’ve all been having a super day.

Day 5 is here and with it comes a double whammy to reduce climate change!

5. Recycling and Repurposing

We live in a world filled with plastic. A brilliant material, used for its versatility and its long lasting life. It’s hard to break it down and in some cases it can take centuries to degrade and yet we use it as a disposable item, items designed to be short lived. But whilst these items are short lived, the plastics we use don’t have to be!

     a)     Recycling. Plastics take large amounts of fossil fuel to create which just further pumps ever increasing amounts of CO₂ into our atmosphere. Recycling a plastic and turning it into a new piece of plastic uses less fossil fuels than it takes to create it

     b)     Repurposing. So much of the plastics we use are turned into containers of all shapes and sizes which can all be reused to store various things. I, personally reuse nearly all of my plastic containers to store things from nails to sea shells. By repurposing the containers we use no fossil fuels up and it means less containers are manufactured.

Along with our plastics we also use many forms of paper in the guise of cardboard and card. Again it’s something that many of you, and even myself, have thrown away in the bin; usually without even thinking. I know from a lot of people I’ve spoken to that the most common reason is when they have a little scrap of paper that doesn’t really matter if it’s put in the bin. The problem with this mentality is that people think they are individual but we are all part of the machine that is life and all of those little scraps soon add up.

a)     Recycling. Just like plastics card and paper can be recycled using less fossil fuels than it takes to create. In fact it takes even less fossil fuels to recycle paper than it does to recycle card!

b)     Purchasing. Many places, especially stores, favour plastic over card and paper which can be seen in packaging. So, we can help by choosing products made of recyclable materials especially if they choose to use card and paper over plastic; which will cause us to use less fossil fuels in the long run

c)     Repurposing. Just like plastic card can be repurposed especially by using the boxes for storage, but also to be used as craft materials in millions of different craft activities.

Along with CO₂ another culprit trapping heat in our atmosphere is methane. This gas is produced by everything that farts with vast quantities coming from cows! But it is also a by-product of landfill sights that is caused by matter being broken down in anaerobic conditions.

Landfill is filled with many different products and a large amount of it is organic matter such as apple cores, banana skins, peelings and other bits of food. All of these materials can be composted at home in a compost bin.

     a)     Recycling. In terms or recycling we are composting the organic matter. Compost is made by breaking down the organic matter in aerobic conditions which do not produce methane which reduces man made climate change. But, it also helps because compost is an amazing substance that can be used to feed plants and encourage them to grow tremendously and healthily.

Last is clothing. Many of us have unwanted clothes or clothes we bought that just never got worn. For the most part if these clothes are in good condition they can be given to charity to be sold on to raise money or to be given to people who don’t have access to clothes. For the clothes that aren’t good enough for charity they can be repurposed for many things from craft activities to chopping up old t-shirts to make cleaning rags.

Our society is filled with many products that have been designed to be disposable but disposable is not sustainable and never will be. The only way to a sustainable future is by recycling and repurposing as much as we possibly can.

More to come each day so keep checking in ;) Be a force for change!

Thanks for reading,

Heyze