Have You Done Your Bit Today ?

What is recycling?
Recycling takes things that are old and unwanted and makes them into something new. Some thngs can be made back into the same item and others into something totally different. For instance, glass bottles can be recycled and made into new bottles, whereas plastic drink cups can now be made into pencils and plastic bottles into fleeces.

Why we should all be doing more
Londoners produce 3.4 million tonnes of rubbish a year, this is enough to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool every hour. The problem is getting worse as we buy more packaged and disposable goods. Most of London’s rubbish is buried in landfill sites or burnt. Both of these have negative effects on our environment and space is fast running out to bury London's rubbish.

At the moment just over 9% of Londoners rubbish is recycled. This needs to increase to 25% by 2005 to meet government targets. This is a tough challenge and requires boroughs to improve services and you to recycle more.

What happens to your recycling?
Once you have put your recyclables out for collection, or taken them to the recycling site, they will be picked up and taken for sorting into the different materials or bulked into large quantities ready for transporting to the reprocessors. They are then turned into another material e.g. crushed glass and chipped plastic. This material is then used by manufacturers to make new products. These new products can then be found on shop shelves for you to buy.