By Julie Morgan

Last updated at 16:02, Thursday, 26 November 2009

IN the run-up to Christmas, Copeland Council is launching a campaign to encourage people to increase their recycling.

RECYCLE IT: Pupils at St Gregory & St Patrick's Infant School are being taught the need to recycle. Here reception class pupils Caitlin Boyles; Tyler Travers and Keiran Bailiff recycle some of their class's waste paper.

The festive season, with its gifts and gorging, produce increased levels of waste – and yet the recycling figures are lower than at any other time of the year.

Janice Carrol, Copeland’s waste services manager, said: “We are keen to promote recycling in Copeland, especially coming up to Christmas, when people will have more materials that can be recycled – often from their kerbside, with our black box collections of paper, tin cans and glass bottles.”

The kerbside recycling service will continue right throughout the festive period, Mrs Carrol said, to collect extra waste such as cans and bottles from parties or paper from card envelopes and wrapping paper.

“When we thought about this campaign, we knew that school children would be the perfect group to help us. Many are already recycling at their schools, know many of the reasons why we should be recycling, and are keen to recycle at home as well,’’ she added.

Pupils at St Gregory and St Patrick’s Catholic Community School are committed to recycling, collecting all their paper, card and plastic.

Next week, they will be assessed to ensure they retain their Green Flag Eco-school status. The Mirehouse school’s action plan includes growing their own organic food, sourcing local produce as well as adopting a lamb called Trixie.

St Gregory’s and St Patrick’s is also looking to be one of the leading renewal energy schools in the area as it uses a ground-source heat pump and a wind turbine.

Margaret Messenger, teacher and eco-coordinator, said: “We feel it is important that children are aware of green issues. When we started this scheme in 1996 it was an unusual thing to do. However, now it is a way of life and that’s how it has to be.’’

In addition to kerbside recycling services, Copeland will be continuing to operate recycling sites all over the borough. These can be used to recycle all of the above, as well as cardboard, plastic bottles and other items.

A list of all of the sites and the materials they take is on the Copeland website, www.copeland.gov.uk and on page four of The Whitehaven News.

Waste collections will also continue over the Christmas period. Details will be announced in the near future.

Recycling and waste calendars for the year ahead are being distributed to all homes in the borough with alternate week wheeled bin and kerbside recycling services, which contain full details of future collections.

EVERYTHING collected from the kerbside goes to a local company which bales up the materials or stores them in containers before they are sold onto other companies for reprocessing. They are then reprocessed as follows:

GLASS: Goes to a company in Southern Scotland and, according to quality it is either made into rock wool for loft insulation, or broken into cullet to make more bottles and jars.

CANS: Steel cans go to a large company in the UK, which then melts them down into other steel products – including cans! Aluminium cans go to another UK company who make them into sheet aluminium.

PAPER: Remains in the UK (many paper mills are in the north-west of England) or transported abroad depending on the markets. It goes through a sorting and contamination removal process to remove glue and staples and then is de-inked and mostly turned back into more newsprint. Recycled card is a similar process.

PLASTIC bottles: Generally go abroad, often to China to be made into packaging for goods we buy here in UK. Copeland only send types of plastic which can be easily reprocessed, such as bottles. This helps avoid other types ending up in landfill abroad.

First published at 15:35, Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Published by http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk