Food Waste Action Week

This year, the Waste Initiatives Team will be supporting "Buy loose, Waste less” for Food Waste Action Week, which will take place from 17 to 23 March 2025.  

In the UK, most fruit and vegetables are sold packaged, meaning that people must buy a whole pack, regardless of the amount they will use. Buying loose fruit and vegetables instead of those wrapped in packaging might seem like a small action, but if all apples, bananas and potatoes were sold loose, Love Food Hate Waste (LFHW) estimate 60,000 tonnes of food could be saved every year. 

The campaign this year will focus on getting more and more people talking about why buying loose fruit and vegetables is better, encouraging them to buy only what they need. 

Let’s join LFHW in spreading the message to choose fruit and vegetables loose where we can. Below are some tips for how you can get involved in #FoodWasteActionWeek: 

• Look out for hints and tips on social media from @Leicestershire Recycles and @Leicestershire County Council. 

• Plan your meals and your shops for when you can buy loose. 

• If you can’t buy loose, try to plan meals around the ingredients you have left. 

For more information about Food Waste Action Week 2025, click the below button.

 Spring Clean

Lighter nights and warmer weather: spring is on the way! If you aren’t already looking forward to summer, you might be thinking about a spring clean, clearing away cobwebs and decluttering can give us all a boost. If you are looking for ways to do it without generating waste, here are a few things you could consider:  

• Clothes – sell, swap, or place in a clothes bank. Don’t let them go into your bins at home. 

• ReHome Zones – make use of them for any items that can be reused, just drop them off at one of our recycling and household waste site (please read the article further down in this newsletter for more details). 

• Cleaning products – use them up and recycle empty bottles but remember to remove the trigger sprays and use refills where possible.

Enjoy the spring refresh and if you need any further tips or advice on what to do with items you no longer need, please click on the button below to see how they can be reused, recycled or safely disposed of.

Easter

Easter is a symbol that spring has arrived and whether you celebrate Easter as a religious festival or just enjoy joining the celebrations, there are lots of little changes we can make to be more sustainable. We can make great decisions by swapping the way we shop, to buy less or make more mindful choices. Here are some of our top tips: 

• Buy Easter eggs and treats that have the least packaging. Recycling the packaging is great but it is even better not to have it in the first place. Remember foil and carboard can go in your recycling at home. 

• If you are hosting a gathering or meal, make sure you know many people are coming and plan portions accordingly. This Food Portion Calculator from Love Food Hate Waste will help.  

• Now that it’s spring and the weather is warming up, it’s a great time to reinvigorate the compost bin with any veg peel, cut flowers or anything else compostable that might come from the celebrations. 

• Things like decorations can be saved from one year to the next, which is better than buying new and throwing them away at the end of Easter. 

For more ideas on a less waste Easter this year and beyond, please click on the button below.

Reuse and Repair

Reuse is all about using something again, whether for its original purpose (conventional reuse), or to fulfil a different function (creative reuse or repurposing). It’s something we all do, often without even thinking about it. There are so many ways that we can take part in reuse activities, whether it’s borrowing something that we only require for a short period of time, passing an item on to someone else when we no longer require it, or repairing or fixing something that’s broken instead of buying something new.  

These behaviours of sharing, borrowing, reusing, and repairing, don’t just benefit us individually by saving us money and space, they also benefit us environmentally. They help us to make the most of the items we have, protecting our natural resources and preventing unnecessary waste.  

To support these behaviours, the County Council have created a waste prevention map to make it easier for Leicestershire residents to find local services that help to reduce waste. The map is already in use and covers a wide range of services, including refill shops, repair cafes, rehome zones, tool libraries, etc. 

To look up local services near you, please click on the button below. If you’re aware of an organisation that isn’t on the list, then do signpost them to the page and encourage them to sign up by completing the form.  

ReHome Zones 

Leicestershire residents can now bring household items they no longer want or use, but that are still in a good condition, to their local recycling and household waste site in order to be found a new home. 

Items can include household and garden furniture, home office equipment, bicycles, scooters, DIY and garden tools such as handheld or petrol-powered lawnmowers and other equipment.  

Please note that soft furnishings must have a compliant fire label attached and no electrical equipment, gas bottles, batteries, fluorescent tubes or light bulbs can be accepted for reuse. Liquid paint can only be taken to the Whetstone site and with a valid paint permit, even if the paint is suitable for reuse. 

Participating sites are Barwell, Bottesford, Coalville, Kibworth, Loughborough, Lutterworth, Melton Mowbray, Mountsorrel, Shepshed and Whetstone. These items can also be taken to Lount, Market Harborough and Oadby. Look out for ReHome Zone signage, orange containers or speak to site staff.

For more information please click on the button below.

Metal Matters

Have you seen any #MetalMatters content on social media recently? 

The average household uses 182 foil trays, 144 metres of household foil and 27 aerosols each year. 

To encourage residents to recycle these household metal items, the County Council recently partnered with Alupro (Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisations) for six weeks to deliver the Metal Matters campaign on social media to encourage the recycling of metal at home and change recycling behaviour. 

The campaign was delivered because metal is hard to beat when it comes to recycling, as it’s endlessly recyclable. Every time metal is recycled, it saves energy, cuts greenhouse gas emissions, and prevents it from being wasted. Whilst many know to recycle drinks cans and food tins in their recycling bins, fewer know that empty aerosols and kitchen foil can be recycled at home in Leicestershire. 

We’re asking you to keep sharing the message that #MetalMatters, so more people recycle their metal packaging at home.

For more information about the Metal Matters campaign, visit our Lesswaste website via the button below.

New Library of Things and Scrapstore in Loughborough

Charnwood Eco Hub

Charnwood Eco Hub opened its doors to the public on Saturday 1 February. The Hub is a not-for-profit, shared community space which is dedicated to reducing the borough’s carbon footprint by connecting individuals with local sustainability initiatives.  

The Hub is located in the Towles Mill Building on Clarence Street, Loughborough and aims to provide a communal space for residents to meet, make, fix, create, and share sustainable ideas and resources.  

They offer a Library of Things, from which members can borrow a range of items, providing access to resources that people may only need to use occasionally, such as household or gardening tools and equipment. This helps to reduce waste and save members money and space.  

They also offer a Scrapstore, which collects surplus or waste materials from businesses or individuals and makes them available for creative use in arts, crafts, education and DIY projects.  

Both facilities are run on a separate membership basis. Later in the year, they will opening a Makerspace, a collaborative workspace, providing shared access to technology, tools and expertise. 

To find out more, and check opening times, please click on the button below.

Single Use Vapes Ban   

From 1 June 2025, the Government will ban the sale or supply of single use vapes.   

These items are often discarded as litter or just thrown away in the rubbish bin. Littering of single use vapes is not only an eyesore but is also harmful to the environment we live in. Substances can end up within the soil and rivers and cause harm to biodiversity.   

Single use vapes that end up in the rubbish bin will go to landfill or incineration and are therefore a loss of valuable resources. They also have the potential to cause fires at waste management facilities. 

The ban does not include reusable vapes. For a vape to be reusable, it must be both rechargeable and refillable.  

For more information please click on the button below.

Swift Action for Swifts Update 

Leicestershire and Rutland Ornithological Society have been busy working hard over the summer and autumn to assess properties for their suitability for the installation of specialist swift nest boxes and bird callers. The boxes will help provide crucial nesting habitat for our declining Swifts, and the callers will help to attract the species to suitable areas. This work will continue until the end of March. 

Following the successful installation of Swift boxes and callers on suitable properties, the next phase of the project includes essential monitoring of the occupation of boxes by Swifts. This can be done more efficiently and rapidly using specialist thermal imaging cameras. The cameras can detect heat signatures to show whether boxes are occupied. This helps minimise box disturbance and provides rapid assessment of box occupation. 

The funded element of the project is due to end in March but as a legacy, the society have gained hundreds of new advocates for Swift conservation and some more active volunteers who are helping to assess properties for boxes, record sightings of the birds and look for nest sites.

In 2025, Leicestershire and Rutland Ornithological Society will also be working alongside another project funded by Natural England and supported by the RSPB which is assessing the efficacy of nest boxes and bird call playback technology to understand how well they help to attract the birds to new nest sites.  

If you interested in helping to record and monitor nest sites, please contact secretary@lros.org.uk