Reduction of your rubbish and recycling is one of the first and major steps you can take to becoming more sustainable. How do we do this? Well one of the most important things is to take a good look at the items you buy and evaluate if you will use them all or will you end up discarding them. This may sound like a crazy statement at first, why would you buy something and then throw it away? Well what about the packaging? Do you need all of this fancy packaging? Probably not.

The supermarket is probably the first and foremost place to start your reduction. When you are doing your shopping take some time to look at the packing. Is there too much? Can it be recycled? Are there other products available that will do the same job with less packaging at an affordable price? Even if the cost is a little more then have a think about the ultimate cost of the item, how much will it cost to dispose of the excess packaging? How many years will it take to biodegrade once it has reached the landfill? Do you really need to use separate plastic bags to place all your fruit and veges in? Once you reach the checkout do you need to take all those plastic shopping bags offered to you? Have you thought about buying some reusable shopping bags? Most supermarkets now sell them at the checkouts.

According to the MfE 45% of New Zealands average rubbish bag could be composted. That equates to an enormous amount of material that could be diverted away from the landfill and put to very good use elsewhere. So what makes up this magic 45%? Well it is mostly food scraps. You could either build yourself a compost bin or start yourself a worm farm to dispose of these materials instead of throwing them in the land fill. Worms will eat almost anything, there are a few things to watch out for but generally you can put all your food scraps into the worm farm. Take a read of the fantastic article on Northland Regional Council's web site all about worm farms, how to make them and what to feed them. The prize you win for starting a worm farm is a by product called vermicast which is an awesome compost for use within your garden and you also get the good feeling that you are doing your bit to keep the land fill as empty as possible.
 

Are you finding that the majority of the paper you put out to be recycled comes from Junk Mail? If you are then may be it is a good time to think about getting a 'No Junk Mail' sticker for your letter box like the ones available from the Green Party. If you do continue to get junk mail then you can either keep recycling it or send it back to the sender stating that it is unwanted.