When does hoarding become a bad thing?

Hands up those of you who saw the documentary about hoarding last night?

Judging by Twitter I wasn’t alone in feeling very disturbed by the lack of compassion or understanding that some of the neighbours displayed    ..and a feeling of intense claustrophobia! 

 Mental health issues aside, what particularly struck me was how fine the line is between storing and hoarding. At what point do you tip over from being someone who stores things to protect your resources and reuse where possible to being a ‘hoarder’? Is it about the sheer quantity of ‘things’ that you keep, or whether you actually reuse, recycle or upcycle them?

I'm sure that many of our MIAMI friends and members are very good at not throwing things away indiscriminately, but what is it that stops us keeping everything? Where do we draw the line? Keeping something that's broken or not to your taste or useful any more isn’t sustainable either. Taken to extremes you're just creating a landfill site in your home.

So what do you do if you don’t want something anymore, but can’t stand it being thrown away? Obviously you can reuse it or repurpose it, but if that isn’t going to happen, you could offer it to someone who might want it. There are lots of sites on the net where you can donate, swap sell or recycle your goods, so it's worth spending a few minutes seeing what other people want.

So as we rush headlong into Christmas and the chance to acquire yet more ‘things’, 

what's going to dictate what you throw away and what you keep? 

What’s your litmus test?  

Tell us where  you draw the line? 

>>Click here for your chance to catch up on Obsessive, Compulsive Hoarder

Hilary Bruffell

Waste Not Want Not

Did you know that according to Waste Watch, the volume of waste we produce in the UK in one day is enough to fill Trafalgar Square up to the top of Nelson's Column? When averaged out over a year this equates to 300 million square metres of land, that's the same as covering the pitch at Manchester United Football Club's ground, 28,450 times .

Or that the UK uses over six billion glass bottles and jars each year? It would take you over three and a half thousand years to sing "Six Billion Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall"! We produce and use 20 times more plastic today than we did in the 1950's! An average person throws away 74kg of organic waste each year, which is the same as 1077 banana skins and 900 million items of clothing are sent to landfill each year.

This is pretty shocking stuff and when you realise that on average, each person in the UK throws away seven times their body weight in rubbish every year. It is quite humbling that we are so wasteful, but what shocks me more is not just the amount we throw away, but the quality of what we throw away. Ok, we have schemes for recycling, but that is about plastics, papers and tins etc. If you want to get rid of larger items, what happens to them? Yes there are schemes out there that will relieve you of your items, but this sort of recycling is centred on somebody else doing the work. If you want something recycled you have to give it to somebody else to take away and deal with. More importantly it seems that a lot of people can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and organise it, a huge amount of perfectly serviceable items are taken to local rubbish tips every day and dumped.

Just think of all that wasted potential sitting on a tip, waiting to simply rot away. So many of these items are perfectly useable, just a little worn and faded or surplus to requirements. This throw away society that we live in means that we think it is acceptable to just dump things that we no longer want and buy something new. And yet all some of these items need is a lick of paint and a little TLC and they could have years of service left in them.

Your local tip is a great place to go bag a bargain. Take a trip and see what you can find. One note of caution though is that some local authorities will allow you to go and buy things from a specially designated site, but others refuse outright on the basis of health and safety, so do double check before you go.

Recycling Nirvana?

We often have heated debates at MIAMI Towers about how far we should take our efforts at sustainable living, as some of us only merit a "Could try harder" on our school report. On the other hand there's Anne, who is a black-belt Ninja recycler, so we decided to get her take on 'Recycling Nirvana' so the rest of us will be clear about where we are falling short!:-

Maybe it’s just me, but when you have a jolly good clear out – dispose of those old toys the kids don’t need any more, tear a hole in the garage clutter, find out what lurks at the back of the spare bedroom wordrobe... don’t you feel an enormous sense of release?

I find it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Cleaning may be therapy but a good clear out is Viagra for the soul.

But, do we deserve to feel that good?

Well the answer is ‘yes’, as long as we don’t approach our recycling willy-nilly:
• We’ve taken the clothes and bric a brac to the charity shop (but kept back several items to be made over and given a new lease of life).
• We've de-nailed some of the best wood from the old garden shed and taken it down to the wood recycling centre (assuming we can't find another use for it at home).
• Our cardboard is flattened and our glass bottles colour-sorted and rinsed (in dirty dishwater).
• We look at everything we might recycle and ask the question – ‘Yes, but is there something better I can do with this?’

Take the picture at the top of the page which shows a fence made from old skis. I find that truly inspiring!

We'll all get a lot better at reducing our recycling if we try to do the following:
• Where we can, we buy loose (not pre-packaged) fruit and veg and use old paper bags we take to the supermarket ourselves, putting them of course into our own carrier bags and not the store's plastic ones.
• The garage still has one or two boxes full of ‘stuff’ but we know what’s there (it’s labelled) and we’ve kept it because we believe we will eventually find a really worthwhile use for it.
• And our recycling bins are ever so tidy. And there’s a lot less recycling in them.

Top tip: Get together with other families in your street and start buying in bulk and then decanting things like flour and oil into your own re-useable containers).

We’ve started a new recycling section in our Make it and Mend it store:

The aim is to group together things that help you get better at recycling, such as containers. Plus some inspiration – including a picture of that ski fence, because I couldn’t resist it.

And we’ve included a great book - Eco Books: Inventive Projects from the Recycling Bin.


>> Visit the new recycling centre in our store

Recycling tip of the week
Spend a little longer on the recycling process. Don’t sort it in a half hour frenzy. Take a little time to consider what you should hold on to and make sure you follow your recycling collectors advice on sortingand cleaning.
Related Links
>> When giving to charity is not really giving
>> A new lexicon for recycling
>> 229,389 tonnes of recycling ends up in landfill
>> Taking inspiration from the 3rd World
>> Our website tips on sorting your recycling

Top tips from Which? to ensure your recycling gets recycled

According to the May edition of the UK's Which? magazine, some 229,389 tonnes of recycling and composting material put out by households in England last year ended up in landfill.

The experts spoken to by Which? say recycling only gets rejected if it is ‘contaminated’ – for example when the wrong type of material gets put in or the items are in poor condition (soggy newspapers).

Rejection levels vary around the country. The 5 authorities with the highest rejection levels, according to Which?, had rejection rates between 22% (Hertsmere Borough Council) and 11%.

We have our own views on whether local authorities truly embrace recycling or are just going through the motions but, as make and menders, we should give them the least possible excuse for rejecting what we put out.

Which? published some excellent tips from Philip Ward at Wrap for improving your recycling skills. Wherever you happen to live, this is sensible advice to follow if you are consigning items to a recycling facility or kerbside collection.

Top tips from Which?
1. Only put something in a recycling box if you know your council will accept it. One wrong thing could result in the whole box being rejected. Ask your council or use the postcode checker at recyclenow.com.
2. Wash and squash – use old washing up water.
3. Remove lids and labels if your council asks you to do this.
4. Find alternatives for items your council can’t deal with.

We’d add one more tip: On the morning of your recycling, double check if a passing pedestrian has tossed something into your box that would lead to it being rejected (crisp packets and half eaten sandwiches seem to be particularly popular).

TheWhich? guide to recycling has tips on what to do with those difficult-to-recycle items, how to make the most of your council's services and a detailed breakdown of the materials councils typically accept for recycling.

Useful links
>> www.which.co.uk/recycling
>> Make it and Mend it tips for sorting recycling