Graham, Tom and Ian

Your Lib Dem team for Cheadle West & Gatley Learn more

Five green recycling resolutions for 2016

by Lib Dem team on 12 January, 2016

Stockport binsThank you to everyone who has helped Stockport stay as one of the greenest boroughs in the country. Last year, Stockport residents recycled more than 60% of our household waste, putting us in the top 2% across England and Wales.

We can do even better though: here are five green resolutions for 2016

  1. Resolve to begin recycling if you don’t already. You can start small. Try putting aside your plastic bottles for your brown bin. Plastic bottles can take up to 500 years to decompose if they’re not recycled! Remember the only plastic we can recycle is plastic bottles.
  2. If you already recycle, then recycle more. Did you know, Aluminium foil may be easy to scrunch up and throw away but every last bit of it can be recycled in your brown bin. 
  3. Resolve to purchase more items made from recycled materials. Paper towels, toilet paper, aluminium cans, cereal boxes, and many other paper products fall into this category. Even the clothes you wear can be made from recycled materials – Did you know, fleeces are made from plastic bottles?
  4. Resolve to recycle in all rooms, don’t just recycle in the kitchen, sort it in the bathroom too! You can help to boost your recycling by putting the right items in the right bins from your bathroom including shampoo bottles, shower gel containers and cardboard toilet roll inserts.
  5. Resolve to recycle all your paper and card in your blue bin, including all those unwanted Christmas cards. Recycling a tonne of paper spares 17 trees! If you’ve been inundated with junk mail this Christmas, contact the Mailing Preference Service to remove your name from mailing lists. Visit the website to register online or call 0845 703 4599.
   9 Comments

9 Responses

  1. Garry says:

    The council can also do more to help. By expanding the amount of plastics we can put in the brown bin. If they can do it in Sydney Australia, where they can recycle everything in grades 1-5 then we should be able to do it here.

    • Paula says:

      I agree, I find it so frustrating that I cannot put, for example, plastic fruit and vegetable containers in the recycle bin as they do in Eire and many places in the UK also.
      Also, silver foil containers and foil itself is difficult to remove food traces from and I am unhappy about putting even slightly soiled stuff in the paper recycling.

      • Iain Roberts says:

        There are some places that allow you to put your plastic containers in the recycle bin. They aren’t actually recycled though – they’re separated out and probably go to landfill. In GM we currently incinerate them to generate electricity but we would recycle them if we could. Silver foil is fine slightly soiled in the brown bin. Stockport’s 7th best in the country for recycling so there aren’t many doing it better than us.

  2. Roy says:

    I do recycle but am I correct in thinking that the frequency of empting the blue ,(paper) and brown (tins glass) has been reduced, if I’m correct that it has been reduced could somone explain the thinking behind this.

  3. Les Leckie says:

    6. Demand that your retailer, if they have to use plastic bags, uses biodegradable bags like Pimlotts in Cheadle Hulme.

  4. Arthur lampkin says:

    I find once a month is fine for blue and brown bins and I only dink bottled water so you can imagine how many I have. They are all squashed down along with cans so it is simple just needs a very small amount of extra effort.

  5. Mr S Powell says:

    Many plastic containers and also other items have no indication regarding as to whether they are re-cyclable or not it would be helpful if ALL types of containers are labelled re-cyclable or not.
    Why not pass a law that all containers are made from re- cyclable material – that would solve this problem and ensure that EVERYTHING is re-cycled – and so reducing the amount of landfill.

    Stan Powell

    • Iain Roberts says:

      Nearly all plastic can be recycled. The question is whether there’s someone willing to buy the plastic material at a price that covers the costs of recycling. At the moment Greater Manchester recycles all plastic bottles because that market exists – they can sell them. If in the future GM finds someone willing to buy other sorts of plastic then they’ll (hopefully) collect those too.

  6. Hilary T says:

    Please can you tell me if kitchen towel can be recycled. I have ordinarily been placing this in my blue bin. An article in The Times yesterday indicated that I may be at fault. Apparently some Council’s allow a small amount in Green waste. What is the position in Stockport please ?

Leave a Reply to Arthur lampkin

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>