Page 15 - Oundle Life December 2021

6. Rethink your decorations – if living or reusable plastic trees aren’t for you, get your chopped tree chipped! Nene Valley Tree Services will be chipping trees in return
for a (£10 minimum) donation to the Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice (details on their website). Natural, compostable decorations such as ivy, pine cones, holly, mistletoe
etc are stunning. If you prefer bought decorations, use them year after year and only buy repairable electric decorations – one blown fairy light bulb can ruin your display, but it’ll be back in a flash if the bulb is replaceable.
7. Cut the Cracker Cr*p – If you don’t fancy making your own (ask Refill Revolution
at Oundle Wharf for help on this, or look online), buy crackers which contain useful little gifts (and good jokes – or is that asking too much?!).
8. Reduce the wrapping – Ahh yes - ‘brown paper packages tied up with string’. Both the paper and the string can be reused.
Alternatively, wrap presents in newspaper, old road maps or leftover wallpaper and cut up a card from last year as the label. If you buy wrapping paper, avoid plasticky paper as it cannot be recycled – if it scrumples up into a ball, it can be recycled; if it springs open again, it cannot.
9. Ditch the glitter – sparkly wrapping paper and twinkly cards cannot be recycled. Glitter litter (even the biodegradable type) is found in our soils, on riverbeds, in seas and even inside fish we eat, so is best avoided.
10. Recycle right – we can put lots of recyclable items into our green lidded bins, but don’t be an overenthusiastic recycler and put in items which shouldn’t be in there! The list of what goes into each bin are given on the North Northamptonshire website here: https://tinyurl.com/38kx22r9
Follow @OundleWasteLess on social media for more tips on greener living.
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