Garden

25% of the contents of your household dustbin is biodegradable and could end up making your garden grow rather than adding to the nation’s growing rubbish mountain.

Objects that have outlived their original purpose along with garden furniture and any other unusual items can be recycled and re-used to make exciting and individual garden features.

Researchers for Rethink Rubbish, the UK's first national umbrella campaign uniting retailers and local authorities to encourage the public to reduce their rubbish and recycle more, have selected a range of recycled garden merchandise to showcase what is currently available for those “green” gardeners.

The Rethink Rubbish team recommends a few easy ways to recycle in the garden and save some money at the same time:

• Buy recycled products for the garden – there’s a wide range of high quality and competitively priced products to choose from ranging from compost bins to garden sculptures.
• Make compost from your garden and household rubbish as this makes up the biggest percentage of our household dustbin contents – it’s free fertiliser and top gardeners including Alan Titchmarsh and Bob Flowerdew* swear by it.
• Get together with other households and gardeners and start your own local composting scheme.
• Plant seedlings in egg cartons and yoghurt pots.
• Put broken crockery at the bottom of plant pots – it improves drainage.
• Display plants in items that were previously used in other ways, for example, a wellington boot, a sink or on a chair.