Changing the way we think about waste
We currently produce an enormous amount of waste in our day to day lives, from packaging of online deliveries, to food waste and litter that continues to blight our beautiful coastline.
While we know that residents are constantly looking at ways to reuse and recycle their waste, there are still more improvements we can make to limit the waste produced in Brighton & Hove.
Managing waste effectively involves educating more people and businesses around how waste is produced and what can be done to manage and reduce waste.
We are exploring schemes to reduce waste including continuing to encourage businesses to limit single use plastics and exploring the amount of food waste created in the city.
By thinking differently about how we use materials and what we throw away, we can also reduce the number of heavy vehicles on the roads. This reduces congestion, improves air quality and creates partnerships across the city to utilise waste material as a resource.
The top 5 actions for waste are to:
- encourage residents to reduce waste and reuse before recycling
- look into extending the range of plastic that can be recycled through feasibility studies
- extend Revalu electrics (Tech Takeback) to recycle more electronic materials
- develop and deliver an accreditation scheme to encourage businesses to end the use of single use plastics
- introduce additional garden waste rounds to different property types
When we think about buying items, the waste they produce is sometimes an afterthought or even seen as a necessary evil.
We want to reduce waste by reusing items and developing more opportunities to recycle the waste we produce in Brighton & Hove.
Only through finding innovative and creative ways to reduce the increasing level of waste, can we start to reduce our individual and collective carbon output in the city.
Tech Takeback
The Tech Takeback scheme is one of these creative ways to combat waste. It provides a free and easy way to dispose of unwanted electrical items like:
- laptops
- mobile phones
- small appliances
The first service of its kind in the country has been set up so people can simply book online and have their old tech or electricals collected from their doorstep.
Goods that work or can be refurbished or upgraded are donated to charity.
Anything that can’t be saved will be dismantled and recycled responsibly.
The scheme had already achieved 591 household collections of 6,474 items weighing 10.9 tonnes between November 2020 and January 2021. This means an incredible 616 tonnes of CO2 was saved from these items being recycled.
What you can do
Continue to try to reduce, reuse and recycle materials where possible to reduce waste in the city, either in a personal capacity or if you run a business, through the use of our recycling A to Z.
You can also join the call to tidy up Brighton & Hove by volunteering for the Tidy Up team.