I hope everyone has had a cracking start to 2012. I feel a bit bogged down catching up on everything leftover from 2011 but other than that, it’s been good!

One of the things I’ve been struggling over all week has been my first Recycle This post of 2012. At this time of year, I usually set myself a green goal or two for the year – and invite everyone else to set one as well. Something that, with a bit of focus during the year ahead, will become a lifelong reducing, reusing or recycling habit.

In 2010, I wanted to curb my addiction to cheap clothes – it took a while and an additional quota-based challenge in 2011 but I think I’ve cracked it now. Last year, I aimed to reduced the amount of food waste & food packaging waste we generated and while we haven’t been perfect in that regard, I think things have improved a lot.

This year though I can’t think of anything that feels like such an obvious crunch point for me/us. We’re not perfect by any means and are still working on improving our habits in a number of different areas but nothing feels like it’s an obvious “we really need to do that to be greener” thing this year.

I suspect it’s partly because we’ve been at this for a while now, have addressed the low hanging fruit and now I’m being blind/have rationalised away our biggest problems areas. I’m going to think very careful about that sort of thing for inspiration over the next few days but while I’m doing that, I’m asking for a bit of inspiration: what are you guys planning to do (or not do!) to make your life greener in 2012?

A few weeks ago, I was sent a couple of gardening books by Timber Press to review here and on The Really Good Life. This is the first one – Garden Eco-Chic by Matthew Levesque.

The subtitle of this book is “reusing found objects to create decks, paths, containers, lanterns and more”, so it’s quite clear why it fits a recycling site – it’s about reusing and recycling old stuff for a new purpose in the garden. Right up my street! I don’t usually like re-making inspiration books because they often focus on some very lucky finds for their key pieces and while that is the case with certain things in this book (the rusty gabions that crop up again and again, thirty 1970s light fixtures from a hotel, a stash of spectacle lenses), there is plenty of attention paid to easier to source things – piping, old sheets of metal, and scrap wood or stone – and where to get them.

It also included some useful sections on general skills – which tool to use for which job, how to cut difficult materials like polycarbonate sheets or steel, and advice on patinas & finishes to make newish wood or metal look more interesting.
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I know I said the other day that I try to keep politics out of this blog but I’ve struggled to find side-by-side comparisons of each party’s environmental policies so I thought I’d put this together here.

Personally, I’m a member of the Green Party but I can’t vote for them here as they’re only running candidates in certain areas to focus their attention – if you’re in a similar position and green issues are your hot political button too, hopefully this will help you identify the best alternative.
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I usually forget about Recycle This’s birthday and only remember in a rush of guilt a few weeks afterwards but for once I remembered – Recycle This is four year old today!

As I mention on the About page, we were inspired to make the site after eating a bowl of pistachio nuts and wondering what we could do with the shells. We came up with the idea one night and just about 12 hours later, the site was up and running!

In the last four years, we’ve covered nearly 800 items and had nearly inspiring 11,000 ideas in reply, been mentioned in the national & international press on numerous occasions, and I’ve had hundreds of interesting e-conversations with wonderful people from all over the world.

Thank you all so much for making these past four years so much fun!

(Photo by Joccay)

• Make wipe-clean bibs out of old plastic bags
• As part of Dollar Store Crafts‘ Stashbusting April, Heather has put together a great collection of reusing and upcycling links
• A number of recycling professionals are standing the upcoming UK General Election – supporting green issues and the green economy
• While it’s not as reusable as glass, this alternative milk bottle packaging is an interesting idea – a plastic bag in a supportive cardboard case.