Monmouthshire County Council’s Recycling Team – working in partnership with Waste Awareness Wales throughout Recycle Week from June 18th to 24th – is to hold road shows to provide answers on the best ways to deal with and avoid waste. Among the issues raised will be tackling waste generated by the purchase of drinks in plastic bottles over the summer.
All roadshows start at 9am and the team look forward to meeting the county’s residents at the following venues:
- Monday 18th June – Chepstow Town Centre
- Tuesday 19th June – Caldicot Market
- Thursday 21st June – Monmouth Shire Hall
- Friday 22nd June – Abergavenny Red Square
In Wales we consume a staggering 725,000 plastic bottles a day, but only half of these reach the recycling bin. This summer’s exciting events programme, which includes the Queen’s Jubilee, London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as well as soccer’s European championships, will drive up the amount of packaging we generate by a considerable amount, so Waste Awareness Wales and Monmouthshire County Council want to ensure that if 2012 is a bumper year for producing waste it’ll be a bumper year for recycling it too.
Monmouthshire’s Waste Strategy Officer Rachel Jowitt explained the aim of Recycle Week 2012: “If everyone in Wales recycles just one more plastic bottle each during Recycle Week, we’d save enough energy to power roughly 3,500 plasma TVs for a year. If we can encourage people to change their routine and start recycling as much as possible now, the difference it will make over the summer when we’re all likely to be out and about and creating a lot more waste will be huge.
“Every local authority in Wales offers a kerbside collection service so recycling has never been easier. Monmouthshire is leading the way, with 55% of household waste being recycled, but we’re taking this opportunity to urge people to maintain this behaviour when holding barbecues or throwing street parties over the summer. Avoiding disposable paper cups, plates and napkins is ideal, but where waste is inevitable make sure you take it home and recycle it.
“If we keep throwing away as much as we currently do we’ve only seven years of landfill space left. So we need to make sure that we recycle as much as possible and cut down on the number of black bags we throw away.”
