Re-use & Recycle Tenner Week Challenge

This week is all about the Re-use & Recycle Tenner Week Challenge, so let’s get budgeting and try to be kinder to the environment at the same time.

The budget is currently £25 per person for the week, or you can just try to keep your spending as low as possible and allow yourself £10 for pocket money.

There are seven different activities to try too, to keep things interesting.

Daily Re-use & Recycle activities

While you’re keeping an eye on your budget for the week, there’s also something new to try every day in keeping with our planet-friendly theme. Small actions can really add up.

Don’t worry if you miss a day here and there, it’s all designed to be simple enough to catch up at the weekend.

Monday: Tackling food waste

One of the easiest ways to tackle food waste is by using up what you already have, so try a quick stocktake if you didn’t manage one yesterday (see tips in the Sunday Stocktake section.) Next, make a menu plan for the week, including snacks as well as meals, and make a short-ish shopping list if you need any extras. Write out the plan and keep it somewhere you can’t miss it.

You could also look into what to do with any food waste. For example, some of it can be composted. Making compost is a useful skill and there’s plenty of good advice at Gardeners’ World and the RHS. Or perhaps you could find out about worm farms, or local schemes that take away food waste.

Tuesday: Fix something day

Get everyday items back into proper use – fix them! That could be glueing an ornament back together, repairing a punctured tyre or refitting a bicycle chain, or sewing a button back onto a shirt.

Whatever you like, and it’s fine to keep it simple. Probably best not to strip down a car engine or try a load of amateur plumbing, seeing as it’s only Tuesday.

Wednesday: Easy reach recycling

As recycling facilities improve in many areas, you might find out that there’s something new near to you. Plus it never hurts to refresh your memory of what’s already available. One easy place to start is your local council’s website, to see exactly what’s on offer (most if not all will be free). Look up glass, paper, cardboard, foil, plastics, cartons, garden waste and food waste, furniture and old appliances, etc. Also check their ‘do’s and dont’s’ list.

Local supermarkets, libraries and various community spaces all offer extra recycling for all sorts of things, such as water filter cartridges, batteries, small electrical appliances, contact lens packaging, crisp packets and so on. The Recycle Now site is a useful place to start if you’re looking for anything specific.

Re-use & Recycle Tenner Week Challenge daily activities green energy glass

Thursday: Rent, borrow, lend, swap

You can have a perfectly good life without constantly purchasing things, especially if you only need to use them once or very occasionally. Today, try to borrow something for free, research renting a useful item, or find out about lending things out that you already own. One of the best examples is a visit to your local library for borrowing free books and more, and many places have a toy library too.

For a small fee you can use more general lending sites such as FatLlama, which covers most of the UK, or there’s a Library of Things in London, where you can reserve and borrow anything from a pressure washer to a waffle maker. There’s also more informal sharing and borrowing with trustworthy friends / neighbours / family, or you might want to think about swapping clothes with similar-sized people you know.

Friday: Repurpose something

Give an item a new lease of life today by repurposing it. For example, you could move some furniture, ornaments or storage boxes to a new place for a different use, or turn an old milk bottle into a bud vase, or a jam jar into a piggy bank. Or perhaps you could sow some seeds into old takeaway containers or yogurt pots, remembering to add a few holes for drainage.

There’s also scope here for some upcycling if you have time, such as decorating a cushion, dyeing a pair of shoes or curtains, making a tote bag out of scrap material, or altering clothes to give them a different look. Be as creative as you like.

Saturday: Tackling clothing waste

The fast fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters and creators of waste in the world. Today let’s tackle clothing waste by sorting through clothes, and deciding what to do with them. Do you want to keep it, mend it, alter it, spot clean or iron it, put it into storage for a different season, sell it, recycle it, or give it away?

Go through a chest of drawers or a wardrobe, or a box you’ve kept in storage, and make some decisions. Try making different outfits that could bring rarely-used items back into circulation. You could even try putting together a capsule wardrobe. Alternatively, have a sort through your shoe rack, or your accessories and see what needs to be done.

Sunday: Get it out of the house!

Not everything we own can be re-used, and sometimes useful things you no longer want or need just hang around and become clutter. Today’s the day to make an effort to get at least three things out of your home, weather permitting, and you might even be able to make some money out of it.

Useful items can be listed for sale, donated to local charities and community groups, or given away (try Freecycle, Freegle, Gumtree freebies, your local Facebook group etc). Items that are no longer useful should be recycled wherever possible. Even putting three pieces of cardboard into your recycling bin counts – go, go, go!

Re-use-Recycle-Tenner-Week-Challenge save the planet

Enjoying this article? You may also like:

Will you be joining in with the Re-use & Recycle Tenner Week Challenge?

Let us know how you get on!

Re-use & Recycle Tenner Week Challenge