West Parley Residents Association

We want to dramatically increase recycling in West Parley. East Dorset District Council provides the recycle banks and the collection service but it is up to Residents to use them.

Some of your waste can be recycled at home. Depending on your lifestyle, around 80/85% of all the waste you produce each week can be recycled or composted.

As you can see in the chart below over half of your weekly waste is made up of ‘dry’ recyclables, with paper and glass being the heaviest items. Uncooked food and garden waste are a quarter of a household’s usual waste.

Go through that table and list all the materials you think you want to recycle and add them together to work out your household recycling target. 50% should be easily achieved, 60% is good, but over 70% is excellent.

There are 3 steps to maximizing your recycling.
Residents who are recycling can often do a bit more, whilst those who are not doing anything can see how easy it is. Good recycling is achieved by having the right organization in the home and having the right attitude to it.

It applies to all rubbish you produce; from the office, garage and bedroom as well as from the kitchen.

Step 1 - Use your Council doorstep collection service fully
East Dorset provides free Green Boxes and Bags for dry recyclable material. It is collected every 2 weeks.

Step 2 - Take other materials to your local Recycling Bank or Charity Shop
Recycling Banks are at the Parley Cross shops and near the Sports Club. Tesco and Sainsbury have a good range of banks in their car parks, including aluminium foil, clothing, shoes and plastic bags.

The Charity Shops in Ferndown always welcome good, saleable items.

Step 3 - Home compost degradable items
This is the best way to deal with your waste as it means that the Council does not have to collect it. Uncooked food, such as vegetable and fruit peelings etc, tea bags, tissue/kitchen roll and thin cardboard eg. cereal packets, tissue boxes, toilet rolls along with garden waste can all be recycled in a compost bin. Good quality compost will be produced within 6 months. The value of the compost produced is around Ł10 a year.

Reducing the amount of waste you actually create is a very important way to reduce the waste problem. Thinking about your shopping habits will reduce the amount of goods and packaging that you will ultimately have to throw away.

You can also reduce the amount of waste you produce by trying to reduce much of the junk mail you receive. Each year some 20kg of junk mail lands on your doorstep. Some may be for you; some for people who used to live in your house and left years ago. Most of it is not read.

Your junk mail can be reduced by registering online with the Mail Preference Service the names of people for whom you want to have junk mail stopped. This can be the names of everyone in your family and anyone who used to live at your address.

What do I do next?
·Often households are not recycling as they may have lost or broken the Council bins or boxes. Phone the Council on 886201 and ask them to let you have any missing items.

·Order your compost bin and use it mainly for uncooked kitchen waste. The Council can send you an order form.

·Register with the Mail Preference Service to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive. Do this online or ask the Council for a registration form.

·Talk to your low-recycling neighbours, family or friends to see if you can help them recycle more or talk to someone who is a good recycler if you need any help.

DON’T DO IT TOMORROW, DO IT NOW!!!

Perhaps work with some other high recycling neighbours to encourage your whole road to do a lot more.

Sometimes people need just a bit of a push to get involved or make a bit more effort.

How do you know that you are achieving a high level of recycling?
Just look at what is in your rubbish bag or bin. If you are a high recycler all that’s left are items made of plastics that are not recyclable, such as thin food containers or thick heavy plastic items, any items made of mixed materials that cannot be separated and any non recyclable items, such as nappies.

Another way is to check how much waste you are putting out each week. For example a high recycling household of 2 adults would usually fill only one whole black bag with waste.

If you are not recycling now, the amount of waste you put out for collection should halve when you recycle fully.

Remember, set your targets now to see what you can do.

			% of your waste	% of waste you will recycle
Not recyclable	Miscellaneous		11
	Other plastics		4
Recyclable	Textiles	Clothes / Shoes	2
	Metals	Tins / Cans / Foil	3
	Plastic bottles	Drink / Shampoo containers	4
	Glass	Clean bottles & jars	10
	Paper	Newspapers / Junk mail	21
		Other paper. eg Office paper	3
		Card & cardboard	8
	Organic / Food	Garden waste	11
		Uncooked kitchen waste	12
		Cooked kitchen waste	11
		YOUR RECYCLING TARGET	85%	Total: