Recycle Your Waste

Recycling Quick Links:

We've made a short film about our 'Door Knocking' initiative to boost recycling rates across the District - take a look at our film on our YOURspace online magazine now!

Recycling Facts

• Over 60% of the contents of your dustbin/wheelie bin could potentially be recycled. 

• Additionally over 25% of your dustbin contents is garden and kitchen waste. A large proportion of this can be turned into valuable soil conditioner by composting at home or making use of your Council’s green waste recycling services where available. See the Compost section under Re-use for advice on how to obtain and set up a compost bin and how to trouble shoot any composting problems that you may have. 

• Make use of your Blue Box Kerbside Recycling Scheme or a local recycling site. Your local supermarket may have a recycling site in the car park. Why not drop off your recycling when you do your shopping, don’t make a special journey there. You could also use the local facilities available at the Stonegravels Household Waste Recycling Centre.  

• Try to choose products in recyclable or re-usable containers.

Glass Bottles and Jars

• Glass is 100% recyclable and does not lose its quality or strength no matter how many times it is recycled.

• The 587,000 tonnes of glass recycled in the UK in 2001 saved 202,515,000 kWh of energy - that’s enough energy to drive a car around the Earth 6648 times. 

• On average, each person in the UK uses 110 glass bottles and jars per year. Only 27% of these (about 30) get recycled. 

• The energy saved from recycling just one glass bottle will power a colour TV for 20 minutes.

Plastic Bottles

• Some types of plastic can be recycled into such things as ‘fleece’ tops and duvets, pipes & garden furniture. It takes about 25 plastic bottles to make 1 fleece jacket yet approximately 7,000 million plastic bottles were sent to landfill sites in the UK last year. 

• In Britain we use about 275,000 tonnes of plastic bottles in the home each year - that’s about 15 million per day.

• Just one plastic bottle recycled saves enough energy to light a 60W light bulb for 6 hours. 

• It is important to remove lids & crush containers as they are bulky. It takes the equivalent weight of an elephant to crush a bottle with its top on!

Metals

• Every Day 80 million food & drinks cans are buried in landfill sites. That’s 1.5 cans per person per day. In one year each person could fill a bath with the contents of these cans! 

• Producing steel cans from recycled materials saves up to 74% of the energy needed to make them from raw materials. 

• If all the aluminium cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 12 million fewer full dustbins each year. 

• If your pet has one can of food a day that’s 365 a year - rinse & recycle them! 

• Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. 

• You can tell aluminium cans from steel cans with a magnet aluminium does not stick to the magnet. Look for the ‘alu’ symbol or check the can base - aluminium is shiny, steel is dull. Aluminium also does not go rusty. 

• Some shiny packaging looks like foil but may not be foil. Test it crumple it in your hand - if it stays crumpled it is foil and can be recycled.

Paper

• Each tonne of paper recycled saves 15 average size trees and their surrounding habitat & wildlife.

• About a third of the contents of your dustbin is paper. 

• The average British family throws away six trees worth of paper each year. Only 1 out of every 3 newspapers is recycled. 

• Each year the UK uses the amount of paper that would be supplied by cutting down a forest the size of Wales. 

• Make sure you don’t put books, envelopes or cardboard into the paper banks and kerbside
  collections as they will contaminate the recycled paper. All telephone directories including Yellow Pages, can be recycled in the Blue Bag Kerbside collection or in paper banks.

Textiles

• In Britain only 1 out of every 4 items of clothing is recycled. 

• Try to mend or alter clothing to extend its useful life. 

• Use cloth nappies instead of disposables. A child may use over 5,000 nappies before potty training. Disposable nappies make up 50% of the rubbish produced by a family with one child in nappies. On average that’s 25 wheelie bins full over 2.5 years. 

• Take old or unwanted clothes to charity shops, car boot sales, jumble sales or put in recycling banks or in the white and red bag with the Kerbside Recycling Scheme.