Reducing Your Waste
Find out ways to reduce your waste by clicking on the actions below:

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Recycle more paper, food & drinks cans, glass, plastic bottles, cardboard, drinks cartons, textiles and clothes, electrical items and other items. 15% of average bin waste by weight is paper which could be easily recycled! Use your kerbside collection and Highland council points and centres.
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Stop Unwanted Mail. It's good to recycle paper but its better to stop unwanted mail altogether.
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Reduce Your Food Waste - you might save yourself £430 per year. It's good to avoid binning waste food by composting it, or feeding pets or birds but it's better not to create the food waste to begin with!
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Compost your garden & fruit & veg waste - over 20% of average bin waste by weight is fruit & veg & garden waste which could be composted. You can also compost cardboard and enveloppes that can't be collected for recycling. Cooked food and pet waste can also be composted using special bins - see our composting page for details on how to start compost or compost more and go peat- free.
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Cut down on plastic bags and packaging - use reusable bags and choose items with less packaging.
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Cut down on using plastic bottles - use refillable bottles and non disposable cups. Even refilling a plastic bottle for a week nstead of buying a new one each day cuts down on resource use and waste.
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Have children in nappies? You can use Real Nappies - washable nappies.
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Buy less. Do you really need that new .....? Could you reuse, repair, borrow, swop or hire instead of buy? Use the libraries to borrow instead of buying books. Buy from charity shops and give clothes and other goods to charity shops or other local groups. Have you tried Freecycle to pass on unwanted items instead of throwing them out or find things you may need?
Download our Pledge to Cut Waste leaflet.
Find out: Where, What and How to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
Buy recycled products
Close the Loop and Buy Recycled, Fairtrade and Eco-friendly!
Many supermarkets stock standard items like recycled bin liners, kitchen roll and tissues but there are lots more fun and interesting recycled products out there if you know where to look. We've had lots of requests for more info on this, so here is list of businesses that sell recycled products or see the Sort-it list. RoWAN does not endorse any particular product or company - it is up to the purchaser to judge but do let us know if you think any company is unsuitable for the list.
Binweigh and check your binweight
If you are an householder on the monitored RCV (Refuse Collection Vehicle) route you can check your past weekly bin weight. All you have to do is enter your binweigh number. The bin lorry is no longer recording binweights.


