What is a Circular Economy?
Hi it’s dirtgirl here
Let’s talk rubbish!
There seems to a lot of it in our world and how we handle it is a big challenge.
But what is rubbish?
It’s the stuff that we have no use for anymore, that we want to throw out of our lives.
The stuff that we put in our bins.
Stuff like packages that the things we need are wrapped or travel in, to get to our place.
Stuff like plastic bottle and tubs, plastic wraps and bags, glass jars, tins and cans and paper
Mostly it’s stuff we use once.
The there’s broken stuff, used up stuff like batteries and car tyres and dirty stuff like tissues and used baby nappies and ikky band aids.
Some people think that these things go away when we put them in the bin
But they don’t
There’s no magic place called ‘away No suburb! No country! There is no AWAY
The rubbish that we put in our red lidded bin ends up in a hole in the ground called landfill and that’s definitely not away…it’s definitely not gone.
Some of it sits there on our precious earth for 100s and 1000s of years making pollution and harming the planet….and us!
Lots of our rubbish… we recycle …YES!.
That’s the stuff we sort carefully and put in our yellow lidded bins…our recycle bins
..and that’s the bit I’m super interested in
There’s a whole new way of looking at our rubbish.
In fact we have even changed the way we talk about our rubbish…our wasted stuff… so much of it can be recycled
That means they can be used again to make new stuff
We even call our recyclables, RESOURCES now …instead of rubbish.
If we are smart about it , these jars and bottle, can and plastics , paper and tins can go round and round and round…saving materials being made, saving energy that make’s new stuff and best of all its saving our planet from pollution and harm
It’s like one big circle.
And that why we have new way of talking about this circle of resources
We are calling it…fanfare please…. the circular economy!!!
And we can be part of it too
We can be recycling rockstars
Here’s my 3 top tips for helping to grow our circular economy
1. Be a nature detective…visit your local council website and find out exactly what goes in your recycle bin. If it’s not clear send them a letter or email to find out more.
2. Learn the lingo…start thinking and talking about your recyclables as resources. Remember that these resources are going to make new things and are part of the new circular economy.
3. Be a good sorter…make sure that only the right things end up in your recycling bin, that you follow your local councils recycling rules and that the resources you put in the recyclable bin are ready to get used again.
So there you have it..
We are just at the start of the new way of thinking
It might take a whole for the whole community to get on board
And now we know how it goes, we can be leaders, share the news and help other people to get involved too
Together we can be Rockstar recyclers.
ps…Sign up to my newsletter and get this free activity sheet. Can you find all the things that can be recycled?
Photos from Unsplash
