Why do we need to reduce, reuse, or recycle? When we recycle we reuse important resources - metal, glass, plastics and others - instead of mining for new ones. Recycling reduces your carbon footprint, or the gases and other pollution caused by the manufacture of items and materials that could have been reused or recycled.

If every individual on earth reused or recycled just one kilogram of materials, the impact would be enormous. Imagine the possibilities of the more than 11 billion people on earth reusing or recycling materials - in a lifetime, a year, a month, or even in a week.

For the City of Tshwane, the cost implications of supporting a two-bin system for recycling are enormous. While we are moving in that direction, it will take a lot of organisation, time and money.

How to reduce, reuse, recycle

Glass: there is no need to remove labels. Just remove caps from bottles and rinse the bottles to remove waste that can attract flies. You can sort the caps according to type for recycling too.

Paper: Except for the wax-covered boxes in which some fruits are packed, everything can be recycled. Even milk or juice-containers with plastic or foil can be recycled to make plastic roof tiles and corrugated plastic sheets.

Electronic apparatus: This is recycled by E-Waste recyclers. For more information, see the E-Waste South Africa or EWASA website.

Plastics: Cool drink bottles are shredded to form a fine wool, which makes pillows, duvets and jacket linings. Coloured bottles are shredded and used to make isolation material for roofs.

Hard plastics: Including some bottle caps, computer cases and so on – are melted and used to make garden furniture, Wendy houses and plastic "sleepers". Some plastics are also used to make filters which is used on landfill sites and when building dams.

Key contact numbers:

• Collect a Can: 011 4662939
• Paper recycling: 011 803 5063
• Plastic recycling: 011 314 4021(selling recycling bins)
• Glass recycling: 0861 2GLASS (45277)
• Polystyrene: 012 259 0554