TWO tonnes of rubbish has been saved from the tip thanks to a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust initiative.

The #WasteFreeFeb campaign was run by Gemma Annan from Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s Waste Team.

It saw more than 100 people sign up to the challenge of producing only a jam jar or small tub’s worth of rubbish during the month or to be more aware of how much they were throwing away.

The aim was to try to reduce or eliminate the worst offending items ending up in their bins.

Wiltshire Council fund the team to encourage residents across Wiltshire to reduce their rubbish and recycle more. It was a tough challenge and people were given the options of taking part for a day, week or the whole month.

Amy Blount, who joined in with the campaign, said: “We were already keen recyclers but by focusing more on not buying plastic and recycling as much of it as possible we must have reduced our waste by at least half. Being organised was difficult, waste comes from convenience and it required a lot of effort to break a bad habit, it shouldn’t be this difficult!”

People taking part found that by making a couple of small changes and being more conscientious when out shopping it was possible to recycle more and reduce their rubbish. Since the BBC’s Blue Planet II series aired, single-use plastic items such as food packaging have been much in the news and were among the worst offenders during the challenge.

A spokesman for the trust said: "Buying loose vegetables, taking home-made lunches to work and even taking your own container into a shop for the cheese/meat/fish to go straight in all helped people kick their plastic habits.

"The campaign started lots of discussions in shops and because this subject has been in the news recently, many people are more aware and interested in this issue now.

"Reducing our rubbish helps protect the environment by saving on resources needed to produce and then dispose of the items we throw away. This means less waste ends up polluting nature. At the end of the challenge, some people had managed to reduce their waste for the month to less than 100g.

"And of course you can still try to be waste-free beyond February - the #WasteFreeFeb Facebook group set up to support the campaign is still active and has lots of tips."