We believe that for many of us we have just gotten lazy and familiar with a throw-away lifestyle. Investing in reusable, rechargeable or refillable products may initially involve greater expense but this is paid back over time. With a little bit of imagination we can often find secondary uses for things - when you walk around the gardens at Fonte de Baixo you might be amazed at how DVDs and CDs we have used around the vegetable patches. Waste is a waste of money, a waste of natural resources, a waste of consumed energy and a major contributor to landfill where it breaks down to produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. It is estimated that if all the food that goes to landfill was eliminated this would have the same impact on carbon emissions as taking one in five cars off the road. For a great website that is full of ideas about wasted food visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com - all we have to do is shift our way of thinking.

Most of us I suspect are familiar with the concept of 'Spring Clean', brushing off the cobwebs of winter and letting the spring sunshine into the house. Similarly, many of us will have made New Year resolutions - to do, act, think or behave differently. Reuse is essentially a combination of these two concepts. Before throwing something out consider other uses for it - if not with yourself then perhaps by someone else. We recently built a rocket stove on top of a large floor tile (which was from a skip in Serta) and the fire box is an old olive can (courtesy of Nigel Green) both of which were not wanted or needed by their owners. Sometimes just a lick of paint, a new covering or an alternative use can make all the difference.