our story
We had glamorous jobs before we started earthsmile. We lived in a brand new house and filled it with brand new stuff. We drove a big shiny 4x4 and a Smart car. We ate heaps of organic food, clothed our newborn in cloth nappies (yeuk), looked after ourselves at the gym and recycled anything that could be. We felt as pleased as punch about it actually. Well, for a while. It dawned on us that for all our efforts we weren’t smiling nearly enough. It turns out our life choices were all arguing with each other; yup our jobs, lifestyle and beliefs didn’t all live together as one happy family. Being ones to give change a chance we turned everything upside down. We left our super-cool modern pad and found a cutesy cottage with lots of green space, ditched the blingy-wheels, the TV career and started collecting recyclable goodies for the really busy people we know.
We got lots of smiles from the nice people at the council and other recycling campaigners so now our life choices all sit happily together and we believe we can truly save the world. Well, perhaps just make the earth smile!
our ethics
Waste is no laughing matter, whether it’s wasting precious time or the earth’s resources. All a bit heavy man? Here’s the thing:
- our insatiable appetite for everything new is a bit of a worry for us.
- if everyone in the world lived as wastefully as we do today, we’d need the resources of eight planets – we have just the one.
- our glass recycling rate is one of the lowest in Europe
- plastic takes hundreds of years to degrade but recycling it makes loads of things like fleeces for our kids to wear
- doorstep collection schemes are the most effective way to collect waste for recycling
- a rinsed out, sorted-at-home approach improves the quality of materials collected for recycling in the UK. Bottle banks end up full of the wrong materials which can contaminate a whole load rendering it unusable – what a waste of waste!
our vehicle
We love the idea that our vehicle works on behalf of all the busy cars in the area by doing the bottle bank run for them.
If you see us out and about on our collections, give us a smile, or why not go one better and stop us to sign up?