Reduce your festive footprint
In Gloucestershire alone the average family produces an extra 4 or 5 bags of rubbish over Christmas. However, some of the most common items of waste such as glass, cans and paper can be collected by your local council for recycling.
Cllr Stan Waddington, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Waste Partnership, said: “Having a good time at Christmas inevitably creates extra waste, but recycling it and reducing your carbon footprint has never been easier. For example, food and drink cans can be collected with your kerbside recycling or taken to your nearest recycling bank or Household Recycling Centre (HRC).”
Most people will celebrate Christmas with one or two drinks – adding up to an extra 7 million glass bottles and jars for the county. Around 13,350 tonnes of glass will be thrown out in the UK during the festive period. Recycling them would save the CO2 equivalent of taking 1,300 cars off the road for a year.
Glass bottles and jars can be recycled over and over again into:
- new bottles and jars
- ‘processed sand’ – finely ground glass for golf bunkers
- ‘glassphalt’ – for road surfacing
Most aluminium cans are made into new cans – taking only 6-8 weeks to appear back on the shelves. Steel cans are used to make bicycle frames, pipes, ships and railway tracks.
Photos show a Christmas tree made from glass bottles, cans and paper with Grace Jose from Gloucester.
21 November 2011