Melton and District Furniture Project collects unwanted, good quality furniture, electrical items and bric-a-brac. These are then available to the public at low prices. Their web site has further information.

Freeuse and Freecycle are both online services for donating and receiving usable household items locally. Items can be of any size and value and no money changes hands. The person who receives an item should expect to collect it.

Regular car boot sales take place within Melton Borough in Bottesford and in Melton Mowbray.

There are several charity shops in Melton Mowbray town centre. Items donated should be in a reasonable state and most shops will recycle any items they can not sell.

How did recycling week go for you? Did you manage to recycle unwanted electrical items? I took an unwanted TV to my local British Heart Foundation, and I borrowed a lawnmower from my Dad instead of buying a new one. Please don’t forget to recycle all your unwanted electrical items at your nearest BHF shop it’s for a good cause too!

British Heart Foundation are the charity partner teaming up with recycle now to promote recycling week. Our nearest BHF furniture and Electrical store is at: 40-41 White Rock, Hastings.

Garden waste collections.

The good weather which we have recently recieved, has seen the increased usage of the garden waste wheelie bins. This is great news, last week we collected 271.4 tonnes of garden waste, which meant we recycled 48.2% of  waste produced.  Keep up the good work Rother!

Please remember to keep soil, big stones and branches thicker than your thumb out of the brown bins, and any other non-compostable waste such as general rubbish should never be put in the brown bins. We also cannot take food of any sort in the brown bins.

However this does not mean that you have to put food waste in your black bin instead, and you can also recycle most of the goodness in your garden by composting it yourself. The County Council offers compost bins at reduced prices and you can get more information by following this link.

You can really make the most of your garden this summer by making the most of your garden waste.

We need to prevent this food from being wasted in the first place and think of ways to do this: e.g. planning ahead when food shopping, only buy what you need, look at how we store the food and understand the useby dates.

Obviously we understand there is going to be some food waste especially from fuit and vegetable scraps/ peelings, tea bags and egg shells. For these compostable items home composters and the green cone are great for disposing of such items, which means your preventing toxic green house gasses being emitted into the environment, at the same time your producing compost for the garden.

Green cone limited sell the green cones and composters- their website is  http://www.greencone.com/

Whilst many of us are now comfortable with the collection scheme, many others are still throwing most recycleable waste into the black bins along with plenty of food waste and plastic bags. Please visit Melton Borough Council’s web site or call (01664) 502502 to find out all the materials you can recycle and how to cut down on the amount being thrown away.

We ask if residents can keep their wheelie bins and boxes out at the normal collection point, as crews will be catching up yesterdays work today, tomorrow and into next week if need be.

Thank you for bearing with us during this difficult operational period. We apologise for the inconvenience caused, but we are sure you will understand the reasons for this. please refer to Rother District Council’s website for the lastest information on refuse and recycling collectios http://www.rother.gov.uk/

Across Melton Borough we are already saving almost 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year by recycling and composting rather than landfilling all our waste, and this saving could be almost doubled.

Of course Verdant has a role to play as the company that collects your waste. We are continually looking at the ways we work and using the latest technologies to lower the impact we are having. Watch this space for more news on the progress we’re making, and carry on recycling.

Eco Products

There are now many electrical products on the market that reduce the impact on the environment. Take a look at the recycle now website http://www.recyclenow.com/
 Eco products are sustainable products which use ways to reduce their environmental impact. Several ways of doing this are:

I’m particular impressed with the mobile phone which has a solar pannel to charge the phone and the casing is made from recycled plastic bottles, it also has a built in pedometer which calculates how much C02 emissions have been reduced by walking instead of taking the car.

Garden waste collections are suspended until week commencing 1st February, due to the vehicles being used to assist with the catch up of collections which were cancelled due to the severe weather conditions.

Please note Clinical waste collections are operating as usual. We thank you for being patient through this difficult operational period and apologise for any inconvenience which may have been caused.