Time to recycle more plastics

WARRINGTON’S annual “Recycle Now” week starts on June 18 – and this year the focus is on plastics.
Town Hall chiefs will be urging people to recycle plastic bottles, yogurt pots and margarine tubs in their blue bins.
These discarded items could be turned into items such as fleece jackets, park benches and new plastic packaging.
Cllr David Keane, executive member for environment and public protection at the borough council said: “In using old products to make new ones, precious natural resources are saved and the amount of carbon dioxide released in the manufacturing process is often significantly lower as well. It takes just a quarter of the energy to make a plastic bottle from recycled plastic as it does from new materials.”
Unfortunately cling film, plastic bags and hard rigid plastics like old plant pots or broken toys are not accepted in the blue bin, however.
Once collected, all recyclables from blue bins are taken to the material recovery facility at the UPM Shotton Paper Mill, 30 miles away, where they are sorted for reprocessing.
From there around 80 per cent of the recyclables travel only a few miles to be reprocessed into new products – and 99 per cent of the materials stay in the UK.
To find out more about recycling in Warrington, visit www.warrington.gov.uk