Training in October

We're doing our free training session in October on Car Washing. We will cover all you need to know about the cleaning chemicals and cleaning equipment required for a car washing business. This training should be filled with demonstrations and useful information for selling products to car wash companies.

Our training sessions are offered to our clients and their staff as well as anyone looking into this business. If you would like to attend this session please call Cynthia to book your place on 011-805-9940. Training will take place at 10AM on the 16th of October 2013 at Blendwell Chemicals offices in Midrand.

Recycling at school

It’s Clean-up and Recycle Week and there are lots of community cleaning up projects all over the country. If you want to find out more, please visit http://www.cleanup-sa.co.za/cleanupdiary.htm.

Schools are often very involved with their communities. A school is the perfect place to locate recycling bins. These bins do need to be well managed so that they do not over-fill. The school may choose not to have facilities for all recyclable material but only select collecting one or two items.

The school should identify a company that can come collect the recyclable materials or alternatively find a charity organisation that will collect the recyclables who can benefit from these goods.

Educators, learners and parents must be educated and encouraged to use the recycling facilities to ensure participation. Learners should know about how the packaging of their lunch or drinks maybe recycled. They should be encouraged to use bottles and lunch boxes that are not disposable so that they create less waste.

It may be necessary for bottles, cans and boxes to be flattened if they are to be stored before they are collected.

We can all do some kind of recycling. If you haven’t yet started then pick one thing to recycle. You’ll see it’s easier than you think. At Blendwell Chemicals  we’re always looking for new ways to recycle our waste. We can all work together for a better world for our children.

Recycling at the office

Since it’s Clean Up and Recycling Week, this is the perfect time to look at how we are doing things and see if we can do them better. Find ways of recycling goods in your office is a great way to contribute. For more information on community projects, please visit http://www.cleanup-sa.co.za/cleanupdiary.htm

Each office is different but there are many different things you can do. Firstly you will need to assess your environment and see where you create recyclable waste. Many offices still use a lot of paper. Making sure that where possible the blank side of paper is also used is an easy way to recycle. You can cut up this used paper and use the clean side to write phone messages and notes. Even better, your phone messages can all be on email – taking out the need for message slips that may get lost. Instead, you may consider paper that has been printed to be taken home and used by your staff member’s children for drawing on.

The paper that does have to go through your shredder can be collected by a paper recycling company to ensure that it does not go into normal waste.

If you do not have a canteen on site, staff members should be encouraged to bring lunch in a plastic lunch box and something to drink in a glass or plastic juice bottle. If these are used every day, there will be much less of an environmental impact than new plastic or paper bags and cans or new bottles being used each day.

All staff members will need to be informed of your recycling efforts and bins for different items must be easy to access for the system to work.

Identify a company that will be able to collect your recyclable items if you do not have facilities nearby to drop off.

There are many creative ways to recycle things in your office. You just have to look at your office and  work out what can be re-used or recycled. Find a way to do your part in Clean-up and Recycle Week! Blendwell Chemicals is looking for ways to improve too.

Photo courtesy of Sanja Gjenero for RGB Stock.

Recycling Day - What you can do at home

On Friday the 20^th of September it will be Recycling Day. This initiative is part of Clean-up and Recycle week which runs for the whole of this week. There are community clean-ups arranged around the country for individuals to participate in making public spaces cleaner. If you would like to know about events that have been organised by Clean-up SA please visit http://www.cleanup-sa.co.za/cleanupdiary.htm

Not all of us are going to be able to be part of events like this one but we can all still do our bit. We can start recycling at home, at work and helping arrange recycling schemes at local schools.

For your own recycling at home, you should start to separate the things you throw away. There will be wet waste mostly from food stuffs and dry recyclable materials. Some of your wet waste like fruit and vegetable waste can be used in your compost heap.

Find out about recycling schemes in your area. Some suburbs have separate rubbish trucks that collect different materials – one for paper and one for glass, plastic, tin, polystyrene, etc. You may need to find a shop or school in your area that has recycling bins for you to drop your goods into.

Create separate bins or boxes to store your recyclable goods until you can dispose of them. If you can, try to colour-code your bins if you have small children. Or you can put labels on the bins if your family is older. Teach everyone in your household about what items go in which bin and what state items should be in if they are to be put in these bins. Bottles, tins and jars should be cleaned out before placing them in the recycling bin – there should not be chunks of food attached. Once your family is in the habit of sorting it’s really easy. A huge advantage of doing this is that you dramatically reduce the amount of waste that would go into your big black wheelie bin. During the last rubbish collector’s strike we only filled our big wheelie bin after 4 weeks. We’re a large family and most of throw away goods are recycled so we were barely affected by the strike.

Here’s a picture of my indoor recycling bins. I find this system works really well for my household.

I’ll be looking at other places to start recycling so check back tomorrow.

Clean-up and Recycle Week

This week is Clean-up and Recycle week and now is the time to get involved in community clean-ups of public spaces. If you're not able to, just starting your own recycling scheme at home or work is a great way to contribute.

It doesn't take a lot of extra time to throw different types of waste into different bins and once you start you'll find it's really easy. Kids love to follow through with recycling at home.

Get involved and find a way to be kind to the environment. This is a great week to start!

It's Spring!