Waste prevention is about all of us making decisions about the products and services that we buy, use and then no longer want. Do we throw these things away when no longer needed, forever losing the materials they were made of?
Waste prevention stops the generation of waste in the first place, so it is the most preferred method of waste management and goes a long way toward protecting the environment.
We all need to reduce the amount of waste that we produce in order to cut the amount of material being lost. There are many ways in which you can do your part:
Don’t buy what you don’t need
Use and reuse what you have
Recycle what you can
Compost kitchen and garden waste at home
Donate to charity
Fix broken electrical items
Use real cloth nappies
Mend clothes and textiles
Give away items you no longer use, or try and sell them to someone who wants them
Every item that we throw away contains precious materials (for example, gold, silver and lithium in mobile phones) which are energy intensive to retrieve from deep underground and extremely rare in quantity. Many materials are not replaceable in our lifetimes, which is why we need to use what we have carefully.
Hopefully this website will inform you about most aspects of waste prevention and how and why you should make those important personal decisions and help protect the planet.