Make Moving Home Eco-Friendly By Recycling Your Packing Materials

These easy tips to make your house move eco-friendly will help ensure this huge life event is beneficial to your family, with minimal impact to the earth.

 

Moving home takes a lot of packing materials to work, because all your items need protection. If you care about your carbon footprint and being eco-friendly, they you will want to apply that kind of ethos to all big events in your life like moving home. Making green decisions when moving home will leave you feeling confident that this big life change you have made, hasn’t had a negative impact on the planet. There is of course, no way to move home without using lots of packing materials, so you can’t avoid purchasing or using those products altogether, but what you do after the move is done is what really matters, because that is what will have the impact on the environment if any, although there are certain actions you can take before the move to keep your carbon emissions down.

Before The Move

Before the move, you will be getting materials to help you pack. If you choose to use plastic containers, then buy ones you will use afterwards and if possible, ones that use recycled materials so they can be recycled when you have stopped using them. Where possible get strong cardboard boxes, such as banana boxes from the supermarket which are free, you just need to ask. Packing peanuts are useful but rarely necessary, instead why not use newspaper? You might also be tempted to buy plastic bags, but if possible, cloth bags or recycle bags from the supermarket are really strong and can do the same job.

During The Move

It helps to have an eco-friendly moving service on board who can ensure your move is as eco-friendly as possible. They will ensure the route planned is as minimal as it can be, and they usually offer a packing service which involves boxes and moving materials that can be recycled as well.

After The Move

After the move you will have hopefully had a minimally stressful time, and gotten all of your items to your new home free from harm. You are though, left with lots of items you need to recycle because you have (hopefully) unpacked as well. Items like the following are great candidates for recycling:

  • Cardboard boxes
  • Newspaper
  • Bin bags
  • Carrier bags
  • Plastic boxes
  • Magazines
  • Cloth or clothing used to protect items

How to recycle

You may think recycling is as simple as flattening items and putting it into your recycling bin, but that i rarely the case. You may need to clean certain items, separate certain items, and take them to different places to recycle them. You might want to see if any friends or family are planning on moving house or doing a carboot soon, as they will likely find a lot of use in containers and packing materials. If you are planning on investing in cheap self storage near your new home, or you already have your own cheap self storage unit then you could save your containers until you have another clearout as they are sure to come in handy. If you are recycling everything, check out the rules with your local collection, and see what you need to do to recycle certain materials at your local recycling depot.

Remember, it might be a little more effort but, when it comes to the environment, every little really does make a collective difference.