The UK throws out lots of things that have little or nothing wrong with them.

From charity shops, to schools, to community groups, or even individuals there is always someone who can make use out of someone else's rubbish.

Want something for free? Looking for your local reuse project? Can't find your nearest charity shop?

Local Reuse projects

Local charity shops

www.choose2reuse.org.uk

How about organising a garage sale down your road, or simply exchange things you don’t want anymore yet someone else might? Or come to our next Junk Swap where residents can swap items absolutely free. Give us a call for get help with organising one. Click here for details.

Join a local swap shop group via FreeCycle, where you can recycle items you don’t want and pick up free items so you don’t need to buy more.

www.giveortake.org is a new website for Essex that offers the same service.

Mobile Phones
The UK discards around 15 million mobile phones a year.

Keep toxic chemicals from batteries out of landfill and use your phone until it breaks.

When it does there are hundreds of charities happy to reuse phones to refurbish for worthwhile causes, including:

• Recycool is the new school initiative that many schools are taking up that raises money for the school. Take your mobile or cartridges to Purleigh Primary, St Mary's in Burnham on Crouch or Maldon Primary School. See here for details
• Heybridge Primary School collects for the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
• Help the Aged receive £5 for each reusable mobile phone.
• Oxfam also receive £5 for each reusable mobile phone. ]

Bikes for Africa

Have an old bike in your garage you don't use, or want to donate one to help communities in Africa with no transport? Click here for a Re-cycle, an organisation based in Colchester that refurbishes old bikes then exports them to Africa.

Re-Invent Old Clothes
Out of fashion? With a bit of imagination you can literally create old clothes into something new. Jeans into a skirt, a tee-shirt to a head scarf, a jumper into a bag.

Try sewing buttons, badges or even ribbons to give your wardrobe a makeover.

The clothes shop chain TRAID shows how old clothes can be transformed.