National Recycling Week

Last week was actually National recycling Week - but, hey, recycling is something worth doing all year 'round. For a whole lot of ideas and information abut recycling check out the recycling week website here - including a whole of lot of resources to help host a Swap Party!

Another tack on recycling is to buy products made from other products

From this: To this:

Last year I purchased some little tin angel Christmas decorations made out of drink cans, and made in Cambodia, where the picture (above) of the family on the dump is taken. So while getting the goods here probably uses up far more resources than the product is worth buying these goods is helping some of the world's poorest to live. One of my favourite examples of this is Trashbags (web site here). Fabulous looking bags - for shopping or for handbags, and some homewares as well, are made out of rubbish from poor regions in the Asia Pacific, including the community who live on the Smokey Mountain rubbish dump in the Philippines (see photo below). Trashbags are committed to ethical and fair trade and the income from these bags goes to community and livelihood projects.