Great Big Green Week: Small Swaps
The theme for Great Big Green Week this year is 'Small Swaps' organisations across the country will be hosting events and local Green Weeks to encourage people to work together, to make swaps every day to help create a better tomorrow! We have some top tips to share with you on how you can make a big difference with small changes!
Outgrowing ponies and clothes?
Create a children's kit swap box to help move on items when your BD Youth superstars have outgrown kit. Have a box in your room/yard for 'too small' and once it is filled up, you can take it to a swap in your region or with friends. It's also a good idea to have a 'too big' one for when people give you things for your children to grow into.
Weed out your wardrobe wrong’uns!
This is so important as fast fashion account for almost 10% of emissions globally, so doing a clothing swap is excellent. Pull out all of your clothes from the wardrobe, weed out anything that doesn't fit or you don't like in the first instance, this can be swopped straight away. For everything else, put back in the wardrobe with the hanger the wrong way round, when you use the item, put it back in the right way round. When the season is over, anything still the wrong way round you obviously don't wear, so swap it.
Swap by the sell by and keep an eye on what's going to waste
A third of our food is wasted, so preventing food waste is another great thing to do. Lots of us clear our kitchen cupboards out far too infrequently, which means that we throw a huge bag of out of date food away when we do it. If you sort your kitchen cupboards and notice that food is approaching sell by date and you know you wont use it, take it to a food bank, or swap it with your friend so that it can actually be eaten - throwing food past its sell by date is a terrible waste.
Take a look at your 'stuff' and re-home things at home
Our homes are filled with clutter that we don't like, don't want and don't need. Regularly doing a clear out of spaces and swapping with friends and neighbours means that we buy less stuff, our homes are more orderly and bonus, we can reduce the amount of moths in the house - did you know that the presence of moths in homes has exploded due to the gradually increasing temperatures and the profusion of stuff piled up in our houses!
A caramel macchiato to go please... without the plastic!
A small sustainable swap in how we consume our favourite drinks can make a big difference. Choose to use a reusable bottle, whether it’s for water or coffee, and swap out the plastic or paper cups in your day-to-day drinking.
We have created a poster below with all of these quick wins included, download the poster now and use it at your yard or venue, to help spread the message and get more people involved!
