Recycle Week round-up

Sea Lions spread recycling message in Scotland

Every day, the four sea lions – Lola, Poppy, Bali and Bella – showed children and adults how to avoid littering and make green choices as part of the parks education programme.

Support from Zero Waste Scotland also means that the park, situated between Edinburgh and Glasgow, now offers recycling on the go facilities to all visitors.

Visiting the Park last week, Scottish environment secretary Richard Lochhead said: Recycling is so easy – even a sea lion can do it. You just need to put things in the right place and that’s exactly what Blair Drummonds sea lion quartet show visitors every day.

And, according to the parks operators, compared to this time in the season last year, the safari park has seen a 41% reduction in the amount waste to landfill from 51.59 tonnes to 30.42 tonnes.

Iain Gulland, Zero Waste Scotland director, said: The scheme at Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park is an excellent example of how much can be achieved by making recycling facilities available to visitors. Using education work to reinforce the message will ensure that visitors will continue to recycle once theyve left the Park.

Nottinghamshire school children visit Mansfield MRF

Schoolchildren across Nottinghamshire were invited to visit the materials recycling facility (MRF) and education centre in Forest Town, Mansfield, as part of national Recycle Week.

Organised by Nottinghamshire county council and contractor Veolia Environmental Services, schoolchildren took part in tours of the MRF and craft activity sessions in which they reused recyclable materials.

Visitors were able to watch the MRF in action as it sorted material collected from households across the seven boroughs and districts before it was baled up and sent to reprocessors.

The MRF is operated by Veolia and processes all of the countys household recyclables using a range of techniques from hand picking to optical sorters, magnets and eddy currents to separate materials. It can sift through 25 tonnes of material per hour.

Kevin Parker, regional communications manager for Veolia Environmental Services, said All local schools and community groups are very welcome to visit the facility throughout the year.

Cambridge highlights importance of paper recycling

Cambridge residents could generate 80,000 for running local services by recycling more of their paper and card, according to Cambridge city council research.

The research showed that around 2,000 tonnes of recyclable paper and card was sent to landfill last year because residents put the materials in the refuse bins instead of recycling containers.

Cambridge residents recycled more than 6,000 tonnes of paper in 2013/13, but recycling this extra material could have earned the council 80,000, it said.

As a result, the council in partnership with recycling contractor Viridor launched a publicity campaign in Grand Arcade to highlight newspaper recycling on Friday (June 21).

The Mayor of Cambridge, councillor Paul Saunders, said: Paper and card are some of the easiest things to recycle you can just stick them in your blue bin with no rinsing out like other items. Weve been able to recycle paper at the kerbside in Cambridge since 1995 so I think people tend to forget how important it is, and focus instead on newer materials like plastics. But recycling paper has huge benefits it saves a lot of water, energy and carbon emissions, as well as generating money that the council can use to keep vital services going.

The Grand Arcade stunt was launched as part of Recycle Week and the council now plans to take its paper recycling campaign on a pop-up roadshow around Cambridge neighbourhoods.

Nottinghamshire residents encouraged to recycle WEEE

Nottinghamshire residents were encouraged to take their waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) to local recycling centres as part of national Recycling Week last week (June 17-21).

According to Nottinghamshire county councils waste contractor Veolia Environmental Services, research shows that households on average have at least three unwanted or broken electrical goods such as kettles and mobile phones. However, only 20% of these items end up being recycled.

Electrical items contain valuable components and metals. According to Veolia, one iron contains enough steel to produce 13 cans.

Kevin Parker, regional communications manager for Veolia Environmental Services, said: All our recycling centres allow residents to bring their old electrical goods for reuse or recycling, making it easy for residents to increase recycling and send even less waste to landfill.

Nottinghamshire county councillor Jim Creamer, chair of environment and sustainability, said: People can sometimes forget to recycle small electrical items and they can often end up in the household waste bin and then lost to landfill. Were encouraging residents to visit their local recycling centre instead to help deliver a cleaner and greener Nottinghamshire.

Recycling progress celebrated in Merseyside

Since national Recycle Week started in 2003, Merseyside has seen a 28% increase in recycling, according to the Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority (MRWA).

Merseyside now recycles 36.9% of household waste compared to just 8.5% in 2003. 62.5% of waste is also now sent to landfill in the region, whereas ten years ago Merseyside was sending 91.3% of waste to landfill.

The MRWA is now looking to recycle 50% of household waste by 2020 and also reduce the total amount of waste produced per household per year from 1.30 tonnes to 1.18 tonnes by 2030.

Carl Beer, chief executive of MRWA, said: The progress made on Merseyside and Halton is due to a huge amount of effort on behalf of residents, local district councils, businesses, community groups and charities. We are proud to have played our part in this collective effort.

However, one of the reasons that Recycle Week is still around is that theres more we can all do to recycle more things, more often to capture these valuable resources. And for us recycling isnt just about using material for something else, it also includes waste prevention. Ideally we should be doing everything we can to prevent waste in the first place, before having to recycle it.