You may have come across the 3 Rs of sustainability – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – or even the 7 Rs (or even 9 Rs) of sustainability (see our previous blog on this).

We are examining these in a little more detail – here is the second in the pyramid – Refuse.

Have you ever wondered why your bins are always full?

Do you ever wish your house was bigger to store all your stuff?

Did you know that there has been an 8.1% rise in self-storage space in the UK, triple the amount available in 2005 (Self Storage Industry Report 2024). People are outgrowing their homes and so they put some of their “stuff” into storage!

All this “stuff” has an environmental impact. So much of this “stuff” is used once or only a couple of times and then thrown out. Fast Fashion has an environmental footprint larger than that of flying! All this “stuff” doesn’t necessarily make us happy or improve our lives.

Jason Hickel wrote that everyone on the planet could live good lives with decent living standards using “30% of current global resource and energy”.

So why don’t we teach ourselves to just say no!
Say no to single use plastics.
Say no to something you don’t really need.

Let us refuse to trash the planet!