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Ideas page
The history of rubbish
Composting waste
What happens to your recycling?

The history of rubbish

When human beings first started living in organised communities there was hardly any rubbish.  Everything was produced locally from natural resources and the waste found in archaeological sites tends to be bones and shells.  Tools were often repaired again and again until they were completely worn out.

Times have changed. we now tend to buy everything in packaging and we often find it is easier and cheaper to replace things rather than repair them.  All of this builds up to fill our bins and something needs to be done with it all.  The UK produces over thirty million tonnes of rubbish each year, that's about half a tonnes per person.


 landfill site
Over time the waste management industry has grown as our lifesyles change. The law has been modified to cope with the changes in rubbish composition that have occurred since the industrial revolution, as more and more people live in urban areas.

To view the development of rubbish collections in the uk through the last century, follow this link (external website)

Composting waste

Composting is becoming more popular because:
Healthy plant
  • garden plants love it, it gives them a varied, nutritious diet to help them thrive
  • compost improves all soils: it binds together sandy soils so that they hold water better and it breaks up clay soils to improve their structure
  • it reduces the amount of rubbish in your bin and stops it from smelling
  • soil is a basic food source for plants, the healthier the soil, the healthier the plant – if it’s a food plant, even better!
  • by producing your own compost, you won’t need to use a peat based compost (saving peat which is a non-renewable resource)
  • noxious fluids and dangerous gasses are produced by organic material in landfill
Find out more about composting

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What happens to your recycling bins?

At home, we pile all our recyclable materials into the light green bins, put them out in the street once a fortnight and somehow they disapear into back of a lorry never to be seen again.

But what happens next?  Putting things in a bin isn't recycling, it's only the first step.

The lorries transport the materials to a materials recovery facility (MRF) in Colnbrook where they are sorted both mechanically and manually into separate bales. From there the materials are reprocessed in the UK and in Europe and are returned to consumers as recycled products.

where recycling goes

We sent a reporter to the MRF to discover what happens there. Read more

Useful links

www.recyclezone.org.uk (external website)
www.2recycle.co.uk (external website)
www.freecycle.co.uk (external website)
www.thinkcans.com (external website)
http://www.scrib.org (external website)






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