Plastic Recycling – Council has it bottled!
The Highland Council ’has introduced facilities for plastic bottle recycling at a 9 of Recycling Centres throughout Highland. For the first time plastic bottles marked with either a 1 or a 2 in a small triangle can be recycled at the Centres in Wick, Thurso, Tain, Alness, Dingwall, Inverness, Nairn, Aviemore and Fort William.
Type 1 bottles (PET) are mainly used for fizzy drinks and type 2 (HDPE) are used as milk cartons or for detergents. The Council urges everyone to try and make sure only bottles marked 1 and 2 are deposited in the banks as other plastics will contaminate the load, this may lead to a need to dispose of the materials rather than recycling them.
Chairman of TECS services, Councillor John Laing welcomed the new service introduced on 1 July giving Highlanders an opportunity to recycle a lot of their plastic waste.
He said: “In Highland we use around 50 million plastic bottles a year but now everyone has the opportunity to improve their environment. Approximately 25,000 empty plastic bottles weigh a tonne and research shows that by recycling 1 tonne of plastic we are able to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5. Householders across the Highlands have been asking us for some time now to introduce plastic waste recycling so I am sure this new service will be popular.
“The Highland Council has greatly improved the recycling infrastructure throughout Highland over the last few years. The introduction of kerbside recycling to 70 % of households and an increase in Recycling Points and Centres have enabled the public to play an enormous part in improving the recycling rate from just a few percent a couple of years ago to just over 30% in the last year. On behalf of the Council I thank everyone for this incredible effort. The introduction of plastic recycling will now give residents the chance to recycle the last major element of the waste that is found in their dustbin.”
The Council’s waste analysis identified that, while plastic bottles only make up about 2% of the weight of the waste in a wheelie bin, they do take up quite a bit of space.
The average household in the UK use 500 plastic bottles a year most of which are PET or HDPE (http://www.recoup.org/).
For more information on how the Council can help you improve your environment you can visit http://www.highland.gov.uk/recycle.htm or phone 01349 868439.To find out more about plastic recycling you can visit http://www.recoup.org/
In the UK...
• 2,700 million plastic bottles were recycled in 2006 (108,000 tonnes)
• 20% of household plastic bottles were recycled in 2006
• An estimated 13 billion plastic bottles are disposed of each year
• Plastic bottle recycling schemes currently operate in 434 local authority areas
• 13.9 million households can now participate in kerbside recycling collections that include plastic bottles
• The quantity of plastic bottles collected for recycling has more than doubled since 2004
• On average, every household uses 500 plastic bottles each year, of which just 130 are recycled
• The 108,000 tonnes of bottles recycled in 2006 saved approximately 162,000 tonnes of carbon.
• There are approx 6,500 bottles in a typical bale weighing approx 250kg
• The majority of plastic bottles are made from PET or HDPE
• The average sales value of sorted baled bottles (PET & HDPE) over the last 5 year period has been £120/tonne.
• 346,500 tonnes of plastics packaging waste were recycled in 2004 (DEFRA)
• 11% of household waste is plastic, 40% of which if plastic bottles
• During 2006 plastic bottles worth around £50 million were disposed of at a cost of £100 million
• Reprocessor demand for plastics outstrips supply 3 times over
• High performing kerbside collection schemes typically generate between 10-15kg plastic bottles per household per year, with some schemes indicating they generate over 20kg/hh/year.
General
• 1 tonne = 25,000 plastic bottles
• Recycling 1 tonne of plastic bottles save 1.5 tonne of carbon
• 25 recycled PET bottles can be used to make an adults fleece jacket
• Up to 40% less fuel is used to transport drinks in plastic bottles compared to glass bottles
• Plastic packaging uses only around 2% of all crude oil produced