Waste Minimisation

All our recycling, street cleansing, waste collection and waste disposal services cost the Council Taxpayer.

These services although cheap in comparison to other Councils still cost over £ 4 million per annum (about £70 per household per year).

In Thanet every person generates an average of 400Kg (1,000 lb) of rubbish per year. This means that in your lifetime (70 years) you will generate 28 tonnes of waste, equivalent to 25 saloon cars or a full double decker bus.

Waste minimisation is cheap. Reducing the amount of waste generated benefits the environment and everyone, it reduces waste road miles, reduces disposal and processing costs, best of all it is free to all those that take part.

By careful shopping and re-use of goods, you may well be able to reduce the waste generated from your household by up to 30%. If you don’t buy waste you don’t need to have it collected.

Some tips:

• Is that old sofa really rubbish, can someone re-use it? Can you sell it? – contact a second hand or charity shop before arranging disposal.
• Do you really need that carrier bag? Does your shop offer a ‘bag for life’ scheme – a plastic carrier bag takes hundreds of years to degrade or rot down.
• Try to buy food or goods with the least amount of packaging possible – if you think that something is over-packaged, complain to the store or the local trading standards office.
• Get rid of junk mail – contact the Mail Preference Service, at Freepost 22 LONDON,   http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/, or ring 08457 034599, they will remove your details from databases used by advertising / direct mail companies.
• Buy "refills" for washing / washing machine liquids - not only are you saving the environment it will save you money.

If you do have some recyclable waste then please recycle all you can, for information please see recycling.

Waste & Recycling

E-mail: waste&streetcleaning
@thanet.gov.uk

Tel: 01843 577115

Fax: 01843 290906