Zero waste week days four and five

Well done and thank you to Rae Strauss for another inspiring and informative zero waste week. Day four was all about WEEE and furniture. So I thought I would share my most recent furniture makeover.

My daughter found this in a charity shop and I gave the white drawers a coat of paint to freshen it up. It definitely has a few more years of use left in it.

On the WEEE front, I've managed to recycle a very old pair of curling tongues that were my grandmother's and I was concerned for the safety implications of anyone plugging them in.  I also recycled an old camera and a broken torch that I felt was beyond repair and in truth was never much good anyway!

Day Five all about paper is one I'm going to tackle when I get back home.  I've decided to have another go at slimming down the paperwork in my office.  Despite my clear out a couple of years ago I still have way too much paper, and I have way too many books.  That will be my post holiday challenge to get down to the minimum of paperwork and to give away yet more books.  I want to see at least part of a tree put back into use instead of sitting on my book shelves and inside my filing cabinet.

Back to La Belle France, I was pleased to see that one of the supermarkets here has a row of recycling boxes for batteries, light bulbs and printer cartridges. A step in the right direction :)  The amount of rubbish in the general waste bins here shows that it is really only the first step of what needs to be a marathon.  We are lucky that we do have very good recycling facilities in the UK - we just need to use them.  I think the same is true in France - just not enough care and attention is put into the issue of what we throw away.

Happy recycling  and reusing all you Zero Heroes!  If you haven't yet signed up for Zero Waste Week, it is well worth doing so.  There will be monthly updates to keep you going until Zero Waste Week next year.  If you've been on board this year, please do share you reuse projects on social media.  It all helps to spread the word and in turn reduce the amount of needless waste.