AI Google (1/11/2025) put this into a nutshell. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” is a hierarchy for waste management that prioritizes minimizing waste in the first place. Reduce means using less, reuse means using items more than once and recycle means processing materials to create new products. Reducing consumption is the most impactful, followed by reusing items, and then recycling materials as the last resort for items that cannot be reduced or reused.
In fact there is another R in addition to the above three – Repair. See our Recycling page for information on the Repair Café.
Did you know that we are running out of places to put our rubbish in the UK and some of our rubbish travels across the world to be dumped in other countries? This is part of the reason why reusing, recycling and reducing the amount of stuff we buy is so important. A major reason is the effect of landfill rubbish on our health.
Plastic and Single-use Plastics (SUPs)
Plastic is fantastic! Where would we be without it? The problem is that too much of it ends up as litter on our streets and in our oceans. The chair you are sitting on to read this may be made of plastic. Plastic is heavily used in our everyday lives.
SUPs include items such as plastic drink bottles, milk containers, straws, plastic cutlery and margarine tubs, food containers and soft plastics.
By stopping using SUPs we can improve the health of the local and wider environment. We can improve our own health too, as micro and nano plastics are now being found in human bodies.
Soft Plastic
This is most of the plastic wrapping your food and household goods are packaged in. New items e.g. furniture, books, magazines are often wrapped in soft plastic.
Check out https://www.coop.co.uk/environment/soft-plastics
What did REG do?
REG decided to try and do something locally to encourage people to reduce the plastic mountain. See the Plastic Free Initiative…..
We are encouraging our primary schools and local businesses to take up our Plastic Free Initiative. The aim is to make Read and Simonstone free of SUPs, thus doing ‘our bit’ for the planet. Why not try a ‘Plastic Free Month’ this year? You may even be able to continue this further so it becomes a habit for your household.
Disposing of our belongings or ‘stuff’ responsibly is paramount in protecting all our ecosystems and human health.
By dealing with our rubbish responsibly we are helping future generations to have access to more green fields, play areas and cleaner rivers and seas to paddle, play and swim in. We are also preventing ill health.