It’s easy to be green at Queens’ and pretty much all the information you need can be found in your room and the gyp rooms, but for more information and a detailed breakdown, just keep reading………..

Gyp Rooms

• Food & Kitchen Waste
• Glass
• Cardboard
• Plastic
• Tins & Cans
• Tetra-Paks (place in cardboard recycling)

Your Room

• Paper  -  the metal bins in your room, which will be emptied by your bedder.

The Plodge (my pigeon hole – C.A.A. Maudsley)

• Printer Cartridges
• Mobile Phones
• Batteries

Don’t forget that most new ink cartridges come with a freepost envelope to send your old cartridges away to be recycled, and most mobile phone shops have a mobile phone recycling service. Companies such as Mazuma mobile (http://www.mazumamobile.com/) and Envirofone (http://www.envirofone.com/) will offer you CASH for your old phone!

For big items, use the large recycling bins behind the kitchens. To find them go past the laundry room in Cripps court, go down the ramp and there, on your left, are the beautiful, big, clearly marked bins. Recycle to your heart’s content!

For electrical goods, please contact the maintenance department via the ‘maintenance request’ icon on the QJCR homepage or watch this video for more ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un30-QB7qc8.

• Switch off lights, stereos, hobs, computers, mobile phone chargers when you’re not using them.
• Try not to boil more water than you need.
• Turn your radiator down instead of opening a window.
• Fill a sink for washing up, rather than running the tap.
• Take a bag to Sainsbury’s rather than using their carrier bags. Any carrier bags you do use can be recycled at the Sainsbury’s branch on Sidney Street. Alternately, leave any used carrier bags outside my room (EE17, Cripps) and I will recycle them for you.
• Think about the distance your food has travelled when doing your shopping: if you can buy British carrots or carrots flown in from abroad then get the local ones. Or even better, buy locally sourced produce from the town market.
• Think about Fairtrade when shopping: buying fair trade chocolate, coffee, bananas may cost a little extra but it helps others a lot and tastes just as good.
• Buy recycled goods e.g. printer paper, stationery, food container/wrapping. (500 sheets of recycled printer paper costs £1 more than the non-environmentally friendly equivalent, thats only 0.2p per sheet more!)

My aim is to make it as easy as possible for you to recycle and be environmentally responsible. If you have any questions or suggestions then please get in touch; either by e-mail or just drop-by, my room is EE17. If you want to get more involved then join the Green Committee; let me know at the e-mail address below and I’ll add you to the mailing list.

Please do what you can – every little really does count!

Milly Maudsley
JCR Environmental Officer.

[email: camilla.maudsley@qjcr.org.uk]