City of Joburg landfills are close to capacity. All residents are now required to recycle from 1 July.

In order to ensure that recycling becomes a reality across the city, it needs to become part of our daily lives with little disruption.

Here are some handy tips from Suzelle DIY; Introduction to Recycling 

However it is important to know which household items can and can’t be recycle.
Not all plastics are created equal! 

For the items that can’t be recycled, creating an Ecobrick not only prevents waste from ending up in the landfill, but also offers the potential to turn waste into something useful.

Go to Eckobricks.org for inspiration on what your ecobricks can become.

“Turning dead end trash into a cycle of use and reuse“

 “Everything feeds back into the circle of life”

#PlasticFreeJuly looks at the longer term solutions to reducing the amount of single use plastics being produced.

• break up, not break down – becoming permanent pollution
• have low rates of recycling (only 9% of all plastics ever made have been recycled) and are mostly downcycled (made into low grade product for just one more use) or sent to landfill
• ‘escape’ from bins, trucks, events etc. to become ‘accidental litter’
• end up in waterways and the ocean – where scientists predict there will be more tonnes of plastic than tonnes of fish by 2050
• transfer to the food chain – carrying pollutants with them
• increase our eco-footprint – plastic manufacturing consumes 6% of the world’s fossil fuels
• Every bit of plastic ever made still exists and in the first 10 years of this century the world economy produced more plastic than the entire 1900’s!