It's easy to recycle plastic in Bristol

Around 90% of Bristol residents now live within a mile of a plastic bottle recycling site thanks to an initiative to boost plastic recycling in the city.  Today (October19) sees the official opening of the 33rd plastic bank in the city located at the Scrapstore in St Werburghs.

Cllr Gary Hopkins, Executive Member for Sustainable Environments and Neighbourhoods said, "The easy availability of plastic banks is key to ensuring Bristol leads the way when it comes to recycling.  The installation of these banks complements the kerbside recycling scheme and means that less waste goes to landfill while the cost of dealing with waste is kept to a minimum.  More plastic bottle banks are planned to ensure 100% of Bristol residents will live no more than a mile away from their nearest facility."

The city council has also unveiled a comprehensive map to help residents locate their nearest plastic bottle recycling site.  More plastic bottle recycling sites will be added to the map as the facilities are installed.
The map is available online at www.bristol-city.gov.uk/recycling or residents can telephone Customer Services on 0117 922 3838 to find out about plastic recycling in their local vicinity.

Before April 2004 plastic bottle recycling points were only available at seven sites across the city including the household waste recycling centre at St Philips.  With over 30 sites now available the rate of recycling has increased from 9.8 tonnes of plastic bottles collected in September 2004 to
73.3 tonnes collected in September 2006, an increase of 745%.  This means that 1,465,800 plastic bottles were recycled last month.  If this trend continues for the next 12 months, a total of around 879 tonnes or 17,589,600 bottles will be recycled by Bristol residents.

The introduction of the new waste services in May this year encouraged people to recycle more plastic.  A sharp increase in the amount of plastic bottles has been seen since May when just 29 tonnes was recycled.

"This is something Bristol residents told us they wanted.  Plastic is bulky and with residents moving to fortnightly collections we needed to make sure they could easily dispose of plastic waste.  I'm delighted that private businesses across the city agreed to the installation of these banks on their land, it shows how much can be achieved by working together," added Councillor Hopkins.

Jeff Hill, Co-ordinator of Scrapstore said, "Everyone in the Scrapstore building wanted these facilities because we all believe in the community both locally and globally.  We house five children's charities, art and craft shop, organic retail and environmental architects, all striving to improve our growth, health and environment.

"We are a willing partner to Bristol City Council who are making this positive contribution, so to offer our site was the least we could do."

Local resident, Karina Balado, said, "I recently contacted the council to suggest that we have a plastic bottle recycling facility in St Werburghs.  I was really pleased to find out that one was due to be installed in the Scrapstore carpark that same week.  Now I don't have to make a special trip to Tesco's to recycle my plastic, I just take it with me when I go to the local shops."

Residents can dispose of plastic bottles at these sites.  The plastic is collected by Recresco, which has a compacter lorry that is able to extract bottles and compact them down in a number of minutes, enabling one or two lorries to cover the whole city.

Ends

Press release issued: October 12 2006