WRAP’s recycle week campaign is now well underway, with companies, councils, retailers and residents across the country taking part.
letsrecycle.com looks at some of the schemes which have been taking place so far this week, with just four days of the campaign left.
Veolia
Veolia has marked Recycle Week by announcing the extension of its ‘good to go’ coffee cup recycling scheme, in partnership with Westminster Council and the Heart of London Business Alliance.
Reusable cups were on offer for those who recycled their cups using the bin provided
In March 2018, Veolia introduced the scheme which saw Westminster street-sweepers become ‘mobile coffee cup recycling points’, meaning they will have a separate bin as part of their equipment exclusively for people to dispose of coffee cups.
There was also specialised on-street bins introduced to help people “do the right thing”
Initially, the scheme surrounded busy footfall areas the West End around Victoria Station, as well as Piccadilly, St James and Leicester Square.
Target
Now, after hitting its 100,000 target, the scheme has been extended into Carnaby Street and Baker Street, which are both based in London.
Commenting on the expansion, Helder Branco, senior contract manager for Veolia, said: “Through the success of Good to-go, we’ve already given new lease of life to over 100,000 cups, but we see this as just the beginning. Cup recycling increased over the course of the trial, which was extremely encouraging and indicated Londoners’ enthusiasm to recycle more while on the go.”
Cllr Tim Mitchell, cabinet member for Environment and City Management, added: “Londoners’ love affair with the latte is creating a serious environmental problem, with less than one per cent of coffee cups across the capital being recycled.
“Here in Westminster as part of our plan to be a greener city we’ve set ourselves an ambitious target of recycling at least half a million more coffee cups per year.”
A new target of 500,000 cups in the next year has now been set.
Below is a video with Caroline Boidin of Veolia, with Joshua Doherty of letsrecycle.com, discussing the expansion of the scheme and material quality.
Cllr Tim Mitchell, from Westminster Council, was also present, and discussed the council’s future plans.
Re3cyclopedia
The app enables residents to search for what can be recycled
Meanwhile, the waste management partnership for Bracknell Forest, Reading and Wokingham borough councils – re3 – marked Recycle Week by launching an app to help residents with recycling.
Called ‘Re3cyclopedia’, the free app enables residents to search for any household items to find out exactly what can or can’t be recycled at the kerbside or at the recycling centres.
It also helps resident find out what items can be composted at home or find the location of the nearest bottle or textile bank.
Better recycling
In a joint statement, a group of councillors on the committee said: “re3 analysis shows that around 10% of our rubbish is still items which could be recycled in our mixed recycling containers. Meanwhile one in five items we put in the recycling containers should be binned as they currently cannot be recycled or are problematic in the recycling process.
“We want to help residents to understand recycling a bit better and ask to go above and beyond to recycle more and waste less. We encourage residents to download re3cyclopedia and follow its guidelines so each of us can do recycling a little bit better.”
School education
EMR used Recycle Week as an opportunity to reach out to schools nationwide
Elsewhere, metal recycler EMR pledged its support to Recycle Week to raise awareness of the importance of recycling in schools.
The company launched a school educational programme that will be delivered to schools up and down the country to educate children on metal and the importance of recycling.
EMR’s marketing and communications director, Gareth Williams, said: “We are proud to be supporting Recycle Week and launching our schools education programme.”
Mr Williams added: “We believe in the importance of educating as many young people as possible as the more metal we recycle, the less ore we need to take from the ground.”
Boots gave its employees the opportunity to vote on the use of single-use coffee cups
Schemes
Other British companies also took part in Recycle Week in their own way.
For example, staff in Boots had the opportunity to vote on whether they would like to phase out the use of single-use coffee cups, while Arcadia’s head office in Central London, had a takeback scheme with textiles Charity Traid, which saw staff bring in their unwanted clothes from home to recycle them.
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Source: letsrecycle.com General
