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Festive recycling counts - using a recycling bin makes it easier!

Festive recycling counts - using a recycling bin makes it easier!

The cards used over Christmas would cover the London Eye almost 50,000 times, and recycling 6 foil mince pie cases saves enough energy to watch the Christmas episode of Downton Abbey. At Christmas, when we all have extra bottles, packaging and paper to put in the bins, it really is worth recycling as much as possible instead of throwing it away as rubbish.

Across the country you can now recycle material easily in your kerbside collections such as:

  • * Greetings cards, wrapping paper (white backed, non-foil) and gift tags
  • * Glass bottles and jars 
  • * Plastic bottles, tubs and trays 
  • * Foil trays including mince pie and quiche cases and takeaway trays
  • * Cans, tins and aerosols including biscuit and sweet tins.

Cardboard boxes, food waste and even Christmas trees are increasingly recycled from kerbsides in many areas.

Even if you don't have your cardboard collected from home, it's worth taking it to a recycling centre at the supermarket. The quantities of recyclable materials used over the festive season are increasing and the quantities are staggering:

  • * The packaging paper we use in the UK each year at Christmas is the equivalent to the weight of 124 London Eyes. 
  • * 300,000 tonnes of card is used in UK households during the festive season - enough to wrap Big Ben almost 260,000 times.
  • * An estimated 500 tonnes of Christmas tree lights are thrown away in the UK over the Christmas period. If they are in good working order, you could donate them to charity, but if broken many councils will recycle the materials
  • * Around 250 tonnes of real Christmas trees are thrown out after Christmas but many local authorities offer free collections for composting and using the needles as mulch in parks and woodland. Next year it's predicted that more people will buy a living tree that can be kept in a pot, brought in each year and finally planted in the garden when it's outgrown the house!
  • * If we laid all the card packaging side by side, it would cover the return distance between London and Lapland over 100 times.
It helps to visualise the sheer volume of card used in the UK over Christmas, by wrapping some sizeable landmarks:
 

The card used over Christmas would cover the London Eye almost 50,000 times.

The card used over Christmas would cover the Eden Project biomes over 11,000 times

We could wrap Big Ben up 260,000 times using 300,000 tonnes of card, which could easily be recycled and turned back into new boxes and packging in 2016.

So it's a great time to start recycling, or do more of it, over Christmas and into the New Year.

We wish you a very Happy Christmas and send our best wishes for 2016, from everyone at Binopolis!

With thanks to the excellent http://www.recyclenow.com website.