Reducing rubbish

Fed up with the hassle of recycling? Then don't create so much rubbish in the first place...

That's the view of Pete Caunter and he's as good as his word - he hasn't put out a black wheelie bin for refuse collection in over a year.

He moved into his home in April 2007 and is still filling the bin with the cellophane food wrappers that cannot be recycled.

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Pete made a conscious decision to buy items without wrapping wherever possible and recycles as much as he can.

Paper goes into the green box which is placed outside for collection every six to eight weeks, and the same goes for his black box which contains plastics and tins.

Cardboard is saved in a box in his kitchen to be taken to Ravenside which now has a recycling facility, and he also takes drinks cartons there, plus glass if necessary.

A vegetarian, all his food waste is put into a compost bucket and later taken out to the compost heap in his garden - this includes vegetable peelings, leftovers, cores, pips and other food waste.

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He saves food bags and re-uses them for making packed lunches until they can't be used any longer and then recycles them at the supermarkets.

"Plastic bags as such are an issue - but they are not the major issue. There are certain things I refuse to buy because they are overpackaged, like when there are peaches or apples on a polythene tray with cellophane over the top of that. That's pretty unhealthy anyway. Sometimes I buy tomatoes in plastic cartons but only if they can be recycled."

Pete began way back in 1989 to live his life with concern for the environment. He remembers being struck that year by how much hotter the weather seemed to be and joined Friends Of the Earth as a result.

"I think also I was brought up as a person who doesn't like waste - that is any sort of waste. It is a fairly normal thing for me not to buy stuff I don't need and not to waste stuff. I think I put myself with my parents' generation - they had the war and rationing. I think I took that on from my parents."

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A former maths teacher, Pete now works for Living Streets which is the former Pedestrians' Association. He cycles as much as possible and two weeks ago sold his car which was used only for essential trips and was bought while he was living in West Wales in a rural community and needed his own transport.

"The car only did 400 miles in a year. I spent 500 on it, all costs in, so that was a ridiculous way to live because it was costing over 1 per mile."

He started recycling back in 1990 back when he lived in Reading.

"I had every month to get in my car and take recycling stuff down the road to a collection bin. Then in 1995 kerbside collection was laid on for the community and ever since I have been recycling. Then I went to West Wales in 2003, a very rural area, but even there they were starting up a council recycling scheme. Then in 2007 I came to Bexhill, back to apparent civilisation, and there was no recycling scheme at all. I felt I was going back in a time warp...I think the council is rubbish, so far behind the times in many areas. For someone coming into the area it was a shock."