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Repair Café
Repair cafés are a worldwide movement to encourage repairing broken items instead of throwing them way. It provides a meeting place for people to come together and mend things which can still be used for longer.
At a repair café, free tools and materials are available for people to make their repairs. Volunteers with repair skills in different fields are on hand to help, if needed. Many household items can be fixed at a repair café, such as clothes, computers, bicycles, gardening equipment and more.
Joining a nearby repair café helps reduce the amount of raw materials and energy needed to manufacture new products and cut your personal carbon footprint.
A pop-up repair café was recently held at Spencers Wood Village Hall with great success. On the day of the event, a number of items were saved from going to landfill and given a new lease of life. The next pop-up repair café will be on Saturday 9 July, 9:30am to 12:30pm at the same venue.
What shouldn’t go into my recycling bag
Putting non-recyclable things in your recycling bag can contaminate the entire load of materials and prevent them from being recycled.
Recently, we’ve found that some fairy lights in a resident’s recycling have tangled up in the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) and caused it to stop working.
There have also been reports of metal waste mixing in general waste or plastics.
At the MRF, the recycling collected from residents is sorted and then sent to reprocessing companies to be turned into new materials and products, from kitchen appliances, to toys, clothes, packaging and much more.
However, items like plastic carrier bags, glass bottles and jars, wires, wet cardboard, textiles, video tapes and food waste can damage the sorting machine, leading to the need for repairs and downtime.
If you are in doubt, download the free re3cyclopedia app and find out what, how and where to recycle different items.
Waste less, recycle more – save energy at home
As energy costs are expected to keep rising, consider changing some of your daily routines to reduce the amount of energy used in your home and to save money:
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Use LED bulbs: an LED bulb is 80 per cent more efficient than an incandescent one
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Use your microwave: according to the Energy Saving Trust, using a microwave for 5 minutes costs you 1.3p and 0.09kWh of energy whereas an oven costs you 3.4p and 0.9kWh
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Turn off switches at the wall: standby mode on electronic devices uses energy and accounts for 1% of global emissions
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Fill your mug only: Only put the amount of water you need in the kettle, as over-filling wastes energy and money
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Use a cold wash cycle: 90% of the energy a washing machine uses goes towards heating the water. A 30°C wash could save over a third of the energy you use when comparing with washing at higher temperatures
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Wash full load of dishes: the amount of energy a dishwasher uses for a half load is the same as that for a full load
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