{youtube}https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJWSLmOnC6E{/youtube}

A farmer in West Sussex has captured an amazing video of a mini tornado (known as a ‘dust devil’) on his farm in Rudgwick.

Tim Bargman was out collecting hay from his fields at Canfields Farm on the 18th of July when he spotted the small swirling phenomenon. 

He is quoted as saying:

“It was about lunch time, around 12ish or 1ish. I was just hay turning and I looked up and all this hay was coming towards me. “It must have been 25-30ft (wide) and went up in the sky 100 odd feet.” 

Read more

Following on from our recent story about a woman who was prosecuted for fly tipping in her own back garden in London, a story has surfaced in the papers today of what appeared to be the entire contents of a house fly tipped in a public car park in Boulton Road, Handsworth, Birmingham yesterday afternoon. 

How one man’s simple innovation for recycling plastic bottles helped some of the world’s poorest communities.

In 2002 a Brazilian mechanic came up with a ridiculously simple way of reusing plastic bottles to help some of the world’s poorest people light their homes.

In the city of Uberaba in the south of Brazil, Alfredo Moser had his “Light-bulb” moment during one of his country’s many power cuts.

Read more

Most people will have seen images of wildlife caught up in our discarded trash before. Sea-turtles, fish, sea-gulls and other wildlife caught up in plastic and other human-made rubbish that finds its way into our oceans.

Once entangled in plastic refuse, animals are unable to free themselves causing much unnecessary suffering and even restricting the animal’s natural growth.

A well-publicised culprit is plastic beer holders. With millions produced every year, they are among the most abundant examples of plastic pollution and it’s damaging effects on our sea-life.

Read more

If you’re thinking of renovating your house and are tempted to dump all the waste material in your garden, it may surprise you to know that you could potentially be prosecuted for fly-tipping; even on your own property.

A recent story has surfaced in the news about a Londoner who was ordered to pay more than £1,100 after refusing to clear up her own garden of an assortment of materials including old furniture, rubble, mattresses, wheelbarrows and even a gas boiler.

Read more

 Since there’s a lot of buzz around the subject of voting at the moment, we thought we’d put a playful spin on how the idea of voting has found its way into the waste management and recycling world with the shamelessly headline grabbing title “how to vote with your butt”!

As you can see from this picture, a new innovative scheme that’s being trialled in London is aiming to clean up the streets of cigarette ends by turning the disposal of them into a bit of fun for smokers.

Read more

A new acronym, PAYT has found its way into the world of waste management.

“Pay As You Throw” gives you an idea about what this new proposed incentive is about. In short, the aim of the new scheme is to entice us all to reduce the amount of waste we throw in our bins, and increase the amount of rubbish we recycle by paying us for it.

A report published on the Association of Cities and Regions for Recycling and Sustainable Resource Management (ACR+) website details how a number of areas in the European Union were used as case studies to gather data about this interesting subject.

Read more

Here’s an interesting experiment you can try at home.  The video at the end of this post shows you how to cut a glass jar with just water, oil and a blade.

If you’ve got kids, then this may be a fun one to try with them – It’s a great way to make science a bit more interesting, whilst creating something that that they go on to use afterwards as well.

It will also teach them about the benefits of recycling old things that are going to be thrown away, into new things that they can use.

Read more

Most people don’t realise the real hazard of breaking a modern day light bulb. The bulb you see in this picture is called a CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) and is often referred to as an energy saving light bulb; they are now extremely common in most households today.

If you hire one of our skips, one of things we don’t allow you to put in it is any kind of light bulb. Aside from the dangers of the very thin glass used to make them, fluorescent bulbs also contain mercury, which is potentially dangerous if inhaled.

Read more

According to some recent research done by the BBC, the amount of waste produced by the average household has risen by around 60% in council areas across the UK, with 8 councils reporting an increase of 100KG per household over the last 3 years.

There is speculation that the UK’s enthusiasm for recycling may be on the downturn with some believing that there is little overall long term benefit for the environment. It’s been suggested that there is a growing apathy towards the whole idea coupled with a lack of routine and bad habits when it comes to recycling.

Read more