Government wants us to recycle on the go

Apparently happy with progress on the home front, Government now hopes to encourage us to embrace recycling while we're out and about.


Launching the Recycle on the Go pilot scheme in London’s Hyde Park on Monday, environment Minister Joan Ruddock told edie that the idea was to provide recycling bins in convenient locations to give people the opportunity to do the right thing.

“We’re saying, ‘look, we know you’re not going to take those cans and bottles home with you but now you can recycle them rather than just throwing them in the bin’,” she said.

“We know people are prepared to recycle and this is about giving them the opportunity to do so.”

She said that previously litter collected in park bins would go to landfill as it was inefficient to try to sort it for recycling.

“Normal bin waste is usually highly contaminated so it is difficult to recycle,” she said.

She acknowledged there was likely to be a relatively high level of contamination initially with these bins, as there had been with kerbside recycling schemes when they were first rolled out, but she said people had learned how to sort their waste at home and she was confident they could do so while out and about too.

She accepted that two bins in one park were unlikely to have a significant impact on general recycling rates, but argued that it was better to start with a pilot scheme to assess the public appetite for recycling while they’re on the move, before rolling out a wider initiative.

Sam Bond

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