Recycling Roundup 10th September

Recycling Roundup 10^th September

An initiative to encourage people to recycle properly has been in introduced in western Australia. The ‘Own Your Waste’ scheme has been launched to reduce the amount of waste that households in the region produce, which is almost 20% more than the national average.

As part of the scheme, council officers will be checking residents’ bins and putting stickers on bins that contain incorrectly recycled waste. The stickers are hand signals in either yellow, green or red, and they show either a thumbs up, an OK sign, or a finger pointing down to indicate whether the household has been recycling correctly.

The government of western Australia say that about 25% of waste that is put in the bin is recyclable material, and it adds that people want to do the right thing but many still don’t understand what they can and can’t recycle. As well as the inspections and sticker campaign, recycling information will be given out to residents.

All of Gloucestershire's household recycling centres are set to reduce their opening hours and will close one day per week throughout the winter to save money. The reduced hours will see the county’s five recycling facilities opening from 10am-4pm from October 28^th. All of the sites are currently open from 9am-6.15pm every day, all year round. The council has not yet announced on which day the centres will be shut, but it’s believed that it will be a weekday, and not at the weekend.

The council estimates that the changes will save them £216,000 per year, but critics have raised concerns that it could lead to fly-tipping and that closing the centres for one day per week gives out the message that recycling is not important.

Council officials say that the recycling centres receive 30% less waste during winter, so the move to reduce opening hours makes strategic and financial sense. They added that they are still committed to reaching a 60% recycling target by 2020.

Hundreds of letters from Blaenau Gwent council advising residents of changes to household recycling collections have been dumped on a hill. A man who was looking for his missing dog made the discovery and claimed that the letters were crammed under rocks in an area between Abertysswg and New Tredegar.

The council had apparently outsourced the delivery of the letters to another company. It said they are disappointed that the company appears to have just dumped the letters and added that it has asked them to conduct a full investigation. The council has also asked the delivery company to clear the letters from the area at their own cost.