Beyond the Bin:The Livewire Guide to Reusing and Recycling

Out of the same stable as the excellent Dirty Planet comes this equally significant and forceful crash-course in personal responsibility for making less waste. For waste, Budd reminds us, is a human invention, so human solutions have to be found if it is not to overwhelm us. Writing in a clear unpretentious style, Budd deals first with the nature of waste - the linear processes that produce dead end products, and provides valuable pointers to choosing low-waste items. A laudable aim for producers and consumers is to make these linear processes more circular so that either waste items become raw material or - best of all - they can be re-used unaltered. This leads to a consideration of the nature of recycling and thence to a look at 'Working Waste'. Town-dwellers can make compost as well as countryfolk. The final chapter 'The Way Ahead' brings us back to selection of lowwaste products, avoiding consumer pressure, sharing, borrowing, buying secondhand, the Old Fashioned Milkman and the Old Fashioned Christmas. This leads on to '50 Tips for Action' - all highly practical and achievable. Sustained by an excellently comprehensive and up-to-date address list, this is a book that can definitely lead to Action about what ends up in your local Tip. If we start thinking of the dustbin as the beginning of a process rather than the end of it, our bin will fill more slowly. Caroline Clayton, who wrote Dirty Planet, says 'Reading this book could seriously reduce the rubbish in your life' and I couldn't agree more. I could go on, but it's time to re-wind the radio.