Posts tagged "2010"

Recycle This in 2010 – my favourite stories

So here we are at the end of another year – and it’s been a great one for Recycle This.

We’ve had more than 1,000,000 unique visitors over the year: about 300,000 from the UK, 350,000 from the US and the rest from around the world – including 12 people from Papua New Guinea, 5 people from the Congo, 3 people from Greenland, 1 person from Micronesia and another single person from Christmas Island. Hello and welcome to everyone!

We’ve posted 265 stories and had more than 3400 reusing & recycling ideas suggested by our commenters – thanks so much to everyone who left an idea or asked a question, you guys really make it a pleasure for me to run this site.

I really have had a lot of fun running it this year – we’ve had some great discussions, especially on ways for people to reducing their consumption in the first place. I loved hearing people tips and advice for getting into the habit of taking packed lunches – it almost made me wish I left the house for work so I could join in the packed lunch fun! Linked to that, we also had quite a lively discussion about how to move away from Graze boxes – a pet hate of mine and I loved Alice’s ideas for destroying their clever branding! More recently/less rantily, I’ve liked hearing about ways to freshen up winter coats – to stop the want-a-new-one craving from settling in.

I personally don’t celebrate Christmas so in previous years haven’t spent much time thinking about it for Recycle This – but this year I decided to showcase the best recycled decorations and upcycled present ideas from around the web — and you know what? there is some pretty awesome stuff out there and it was fun exploring it all. I’m going to use the ideas to make non-Christmas-sy stuff instead.

Finally, since we’ve covered nearly 1000 different things on Recycle This over the years, I decided that it’s worth revisiting old subjects to highlight the best reuses for them and linking to new ideas that have popped up in the (often four years+) since I posted them. I think my favourite of those has been “Five fantastic reuses for expanded polystyrene foam packaging” because it reminded me of some really great ideas for using up that accursed stuff.

Thanks again to everyone who has visited the site in 2010, and a double-triple-quadruple thanks to all those who’ve commented, emailed or Tweeted me throughout the year. See you all in 2011!