Reduce, Re-use, Retain, Recycle....

The National Waste Hierachy promotes the following methods of waste minimisation in this order of importance:

1. Waste Reduction - for example reducing product packaging, buying only what we need etc
2. Waste Re-Use - making use out of items we might otherwise throw away, such as old clothing or bicycles that can be repaired
3. Waste Retention - Simply keeping waste at home and stopping it getting into the waste system, such as home composting or using yoghurt pots as kids paint pots
4. Waste Recycling and large scale composting - collecting of recyclable material and green material for centralised reprocessing
5. Recovery of 'value' from waste - disposing of waste in Waste-to-Energy plants
6. Landfill with energy recovery - burying waste in a landfill that has a system to collect the methane produced and convert it to energy
7. Landfill - our last option should only be considered if all the above have been exhausted.

For further information and details on how Herefordshire Council and Worcestershire County Council are handling waste minimistation, please download the Joint Municipal Waste Strategy document.