Renovation Tips: The 7 R’s of Waste Management

Should we take the rubbish to the landfill site or have it collected by a skip company who will see that it is responsibly recycled and not left in harm’s ways until we find time to deal with it?

This article will explore how waste can better be managed during a renovation project.

Refuge

The final journey of an item might be when it is defined as refuge. This does not, however, need to be the case, as when skip companies take away waste, they can ensure that it is directed into a useful purpose rather than just end up as landfill.

Many companies will ensure this is the case. If you are in Australia and looking for skip bin hire sydney click on the link. This is an example of a company that hires out skips to deal with large quantities of waste in a responsible way.

Reduce

To reduce the amount of a consumable that you use will in turn reduce the amount of packaging that you are throwing away. Not all packaging is recyclable, so that is something to think about.

Buying drinks in cans will mean that they can be recycled. Also, many plastic drinks bottles are now being made so that they can be recycled, too.

The international symbol for recycling is the Mobius Loop. Sadly, though, the use of this symbol to indicate that an item is recyclable is currently only voluntary.

Reuse

Buying items that can used more than once can be the key to also reducing waste. For instance, all territories and states across Australia, except New South Wales, have banned the use of lightweight single-use plastic bags.

Repurpose

Finding another use for an item is one way of not needing to dispose of that item and have it end up in landfill. An example of this might be the use of plastic or steel drums as feeding troughs, or perhaps as composting bins.

Recycle

With glass being replaced by plastics, it became necessary for recyclable plastics to be manufactured to protect the environment. With plastics, the PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) in drink bottles and the HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) in milk bottles has made them easier to separate in terms of recycling.

light bulb recycling boxreplace with LED bulbs

      some lighting solutions to consider      

Rot

Organic matter like lettuce will automatically rot in the wild, adding nutrients to the soil. Paper easily biodegrades, too. Products are now being made biodegradable so that they rot, too.

For instance, the plastics that are biodegradable include: Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), Polylactic acid (PLA0, starch blends, and cellulose-based plastics. This is to name a few.  For more information on biodegradable waste, you might find the attached article interesting.

Replace

Replace is, of course, the last resort but necessary in many instances. It then becomes important how we dispose of the old items.

Skips are good for large items and where there is a quantity of them to dispose of. Skips firms are responsible in seeing that the waste is disposed of appropriately and safely, and with the environment in mind.

Despite all these methods of waste management, there is no avoiding that we will invariably still end up with large quantities of rubbish to deal with.

It may be because of large jobs that we attempt at home or simply from cutting back our garden at times when it is flourishing. Skips provide the perfect solution in that they can deal with the rubbish quickly and easily and make sure that it is directed to the right places for recycling and reuse.

Image credit: waste management by twenty20.com

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