Author: Mimi

Change your lifestyle habits and save money

Change your lifestyle habits and save money

At NGC, we’re great believers in buying second hand where possible. It creates less waste and packaging, it means that there’s less need for new stuff, and it saves you money!

You can check the local Freegle  & Freecycle groups or Facebook ‘everything free‘ pages.

Newhaven has some great charity shops including Sense and the SCDA main shop and their children’s shop. And if you need furniture, there’s always Age Concern at Units D1 and E on Ranalah Trade Park, New Road, Newhaven, BN9 0EH.

Any primary school uniform you can get from the Newhaven Uniform bank or the Uniform lady

And there’s always ebay, Music Magpie and World of Books for second hand online shopping.
Music Magpie will even pay you to send them old phones / CDs / laptops too.

Of course, sometimes you have to be buy new – you can’t always find what you need when you need it.
But there’s a huge amount of good quality second hand goods around if you have time to look.

More recycling tips

Now we have a storage facility and are doing regular stalls we’re able to start accepting items for recycling. Here’s a list of things we can take:

Any plastic items – including broken toys – we can recycle them through Reworked

Corks – we’re in touch with someone who can take these to Recorked

Spectacles – these can be sent to Peep Eyeware

Contact lenses and Blister packs (the packaging most tablets and contact lenses come in) – we can take these to Boots Opticians for recycling.

Packaging and strong boxes : We are now accepting any kind of packaging and trying to coordinate with people moving house or selling things online who are in need of packaging.

Worn-out clothes and shoes: These can be put in the TRA bins at the waste depot or given to the SCDA shop in Newhaven in bags marked ‘rags’. They will then be processed and either sent to countries who can mend / make use of them or be turned into waste products such as insulation, mattress filling. (Or come along to our Repair Cafes to find out how to mend them).

Anything else – we’re in touch with people who run art workshops with kids so if there’s anything we can’t recycle we can donate it to them to turn into artwork.

What should I throw into my bin? Not very much! Make sure all your food scraps go in your doorstep collection.
If you have any questions about anything you want to avoid putting in your bin drop us an email and we’ll see if we can help.

info@newhavengreencentre.com

Repairs & recycling

Check this weekly column for ideas & advice about how to recycle or reuse the stuff you don’t need any more.

REPAIRS

As we’re running our first repair cafe it seemed appropriate that this week’s tips will focus on repairs. Too often it’s cheaper and easier to throw away and replace an item than to get it repaired, so as well as inviting you to the Repair Café, we wanted to remind you about some of the local businesses that offer repairs. (Please note, we don’t know all these businesses directly & we’re not making recommendations – but we have checked that they all do offer repairs).

And if things really can’t be repaired, then there are ways to dispose of them responsibly. Electrical items get returned to the place they were bought or go to the electrical bin at the waste depot (there’s a walk-in bin there too). Textiles beyond repair or reuse can go to the SCDA shop in town in a bag marked ‘Rags’, or in the ‘Textiles Recycling Association’ (TRA) textile bin at the waste depot – not in your bin for incineration.

LOCAL COBBLERS (SHOE REPAIRS): Courtyard Shoe Repairs:

https://www.courtyardshoerepairs.com/   North Court Lewes East Sussex BN7 2AR Tel: 01273 480576

OTHER TEXTILE REPAIRS: Corrina at https://www.theseafordseamstress.co.uk/ (now lives in Newhaven) 07875292000

Sarah Martin Designs (including chair repairs etc): https://www.facebook.com/Sarah-Martin-Designs-860197834020675

ELECTRICAL REPAIRS: There are lots of phone repairers in Newhaven, Seaford and Peacehaven including igadgetfix in Seaford: https://www.igadgetfix.co.uk/

And the iFixit website & app are an excellent source of free information about how to fix lots of electronic devices – and if you need any specialised tools, they can sell them to you cheaply. If you are even slightly handy with a screwdriver, they are worth a look: https://www.ifixit.com

UNWANTED BEDDING

NGC is excited to report that Dunelm takes all unwanted textiles INCLUDING duvets, pillows and cushions, providing it’s clean. (I would imagine by clean it means no sticky jam etc, stains are probably fine as stuff that’s not reusable gets made into things like insulation.) Good for them. They take mattresses too. Nearest stores down this way are Hampden Park or Shoreham. Unfortunately this is hard to access without a car, this is something NGC would love to be able to help with further down the line. Follow the link for more info. https://www.dunelm.com/info/about/take-back-scheme

SCHOOL UNIFORM

FREE CLOTHES: Did you know if your child attends a primary school in Newhaven you can get their uniform for free? Run by volunteers, Newhaven Uniform Bank collect and distribute good quality primary school uniform and all completely free. Great for saving money and the planet. Please visit these links for more info

https://www.newhavenfamilies.com/newhaven-uniform-bank

https://www.facebook.com/NewhavenSchoolUniformBank

To request any items you just fill out this form here:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx…

If you’d like to donate any uniform just drop it in at the school office or email nff@sussexcommunity.org.uk

Also, the Uniform Lady based in Peacehaven takes and sells for a very low fee a wide variety of children’s clothes and shoes including lots of different uniforms, she also upcycles many of them if they need basic repairs. Visit her Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1678697685534278/

And of course there’s always many second hand online shops and community forums for donating, buying and swapping uniform.

If you’re like me, you may be full of unwanted Christmas cards and wrapping paper. You could reuse wrapping paper for next year’s presents and use the cards for gift tags – but there is likely to be lots left over still. Our very own District Council has lots of good advice and also updated recycling / refuse collections until the catchup from Christmas is over.

https://www.lewes-eastbourne.gov.uk/…/christmas-bin…/

“Most wrapping paper (ed: and cards) is recyclable, apart from glittery, plastic, or metallic paper. Use the Scrunch Test to check – scrunch the wrapping paper up in your hand, and if it stays scrunched up then its recyclable. (Ed: Also, the metallic paper is often very good for reusing.) Ribbons, bows, and other decorations are not usually recyclable, but they can often be removed and saved for next year. Save space in your recycling bin by flattening cardboard packaging first and squashing plastics and tins.

Make sure any bits of food are removed from foil, paper or plastic packaging before you recycle it. You can take any extra household refuse or recycling to your local Household Waste Recycling Site.”

For information about the Newhaven site on New Road, including what they take and opening hours,
please visit: https://new.eastsussex.gov.uk/…/house…/escc-newhavenhwrs

Unfortunately you do need a car to access most of the site – but there are a few bins at the entrance where you can leave electrical items, small amounts of garden waste, cardboard, wood, glass and a general recycling bin.

And if you had a real Christmas tree, the Newhaven collection point is the Bay Vue Road carpark (by the Hillcrest Centre).

Boots and Toiletries containers

Reworked (who recycle ALL plastics) is teaming up with Boots the chemist in a ‘scan2recycle’ scheme. This is especially aimed at recycling things such as empty makeup packaging and containers, toothpaste tubes, body lotion bottles. You can find out about the scheme here:

https://www.reworked.com/…/recycle-at-boots…/…

Unfortunately the Newhaven Boots store isn’t offering this but Boots in Lewes and Seaford are. The idea is that you scan the item and stand to gain reward points. This information is really helpful for the scheme so they know how they can increase recycling. However it is possible to drop in any items (even if not purchased at Boots) without scanning them if you prefer.Once we start doing regular stalls we hope to liaise with local stores to help with this.

A to Z of what to recycle and where

How to work towards zero waste? We’re hoping to link this onto our website soon but in the meantime Brighton Green Centre has an excellent A to Z page of recycling – with advice on how to recycle things ranging from spectacles to mobile phones.

https://thegreencentre.co.uk/get-involved/green-a-to-z/

Also, any questions or ideas of what to recycle and where just get in touch. We’ve managed to get it so we put about one small bin liner in household waste per month!

Rags and old clothes

Do you have old or ripped clothes or shoes? Please don’t put them in household waste where they will be burned. If they’re placed in charity bins they go into a system where unwanted rags get sent to be sorted, some get claimed or sent to developing countries and at the end of the chain they get made into insulation or animal bedding. Even single shoes and socks get reused before that – in many countries two shoes of roughly the same size and colour is acceptable as a ‘pair’.

Charity shops don’t advertise this as they don’t want to be inundated with stuff they can’t make money out of. But the good old SCDA shop in Newhaven has said they are happy to take ‘rags’ but request they’re separated from resellable clothes and marked as rags to save them having to sort through them. Please wash all clothes and shoes first (stains which don’t come out are fine, it’s just so there’s no contamination of other stuff!)

Coop and Soft plastics (plastic packaging)

In case you didn’t know, the Coop (including the Newhaven branch) is now offering a fantastic recycling service of ‘soft plastics’ – this is your crisp packets, bread wrappers and so on. Personally I prefer to use this for soft plastics as the council’s plastic recycling service gets exported.Please remember it’s really helpful if you can open up food packaging especially to make sure it’s empty of crumbs as contaminated recycling sometimes has to be thrown away.
If you have enough drying space a quick rinse can help too, especially with things like greasy crisp packets. I’ve emailed Coop to check what happens to the plastics and was delighted with their response: The plastics collected will be recycled in the UK and, turned into useful secondary products – including: bin liners; buckets, and material for the construction industry – rather than flooding land-fill sites, going to incineration or, being shipped overseas.

For more information please visit: https://www.coop.co.uk/environment/soft-plastics