Rethinking Rubbish

Our aim is to:
Reduce the amount of household waste sent to landfill. We do this by informing local people about items that can be recycled (but are not currently collected by Dorset Council), and where to take such rubbish.

What about you?
✓ If you, like us, are determined to do something to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill, you could join our group, sign up for our newsletter updates, or like and follow our Facebook page.

What have we achieved so far?

  • Set up collection points in Wareham for items that often end up in landfill:- used bras, corks, rubber gloves and dental products (see below).
  • Held information display stands at various community events.
  • Supported local litter-pickers, Wareham Wombles.
  • Run a workshop helping people find out how to make use of left-over bread.

Did you know you CAN recycle the following items locally?

Tin foil and tetrapaks (juice and milk cartons) – Streche Road Car Park.

Books (too old for charity shops!) – Westminster Road tip.

Used bras – Bare Necessities, our local zero waste shop in South Street. Bras are collected there, taken to Poole Hospital to raise funds for Breast Cancer Research, and have a destination in Africa. (We have rescued 3553 bras so far -Sept 2023)

Dental items such as Electric toothbrush heads and covers, electric flosser nozzles, flossing sticks and interdental brushes, dental floss containers and manual toothbrushes at Bare Necessities in South Street, Wareham and Wareham St Mary School. Bare Necessities also collect wine and
champagne corks plus rubber gloves.

Writing implements such as biros, ink pens, felt tips, highlighters and markers at Wareham Library, Sandford Primary School and Wareham St Mary Primary School.

Plastic plant pots can be recycled at Norden Farm near Corfe Castle, and also at Dobbies Garden centre in Owermoigne.

Old mobile phones, laptops, tablets, DVDs, CDs etc can be sold at CeX , High Street, Poole. Old mobile phones can also be handed in to Weldmar Hospice charity shop in West Street,  Wareham and also at the Scout Hut at Lychett Matravers on the 2nd Saturday of each month. (Please remember to remove your sim card and restore factory settings first)

You can take your old (intact) spectacles to CH Webster opticians on North Street, Wareham.

Blister Packs update:

Sadly, Superdrug stopped taking blister packs for recycling and we had to stop collecting them in Wareham. Aldi partnered with TerraCycle so households and individuals could recycle all brands of empty medicine blister packs for free, but as of November 2023, this has also been paused. A longer term option is to make Pharmaceutical Companies responsible for dealing with their own waste. Please sign this petition to stop medicine packaging (including blister packs) from going to landfill. It will take 10,000 signatures to get a response from government, 100,000 to get a debate in parliament. And any other suggestions would be welcome.

We would like to find more businesses or organisations willing to take materials for recycling and to reduce the amount of non-recyclable materials that they generate. We are hoping to work with the council to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill by improving the collection of recyclable materials. You can find a list of other recycling possibilities at :http://winonwaste.org/ and here for electrical items.

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