Plastic recycling expanded

Great news about something I have been banging on about for years now! From 1st May, some of the city's plastic bottle banks will be taking pretty much the whole range of domestic plastics. It's for a six month trial period in the first instance, but I and others are very hopefully that this will become permanent and quickly spread to others.

The pilot banks will now take Types 1 and 2 (as at present), plus Types 5 and 6. Among the pilots will be the one which is most convenient for Cotham residents by Roo Bar, behind Clifton Down station, just off Whiteladies Road. Just look for the the triangle mark (see left) and pop it down!

The main addition is Type 5 plastic - aka Polypropylene. This is what most of the plastic food containers from the supermarket (e.g. yoghurt pots) and most other commercial hard packaging is made from. This now makes up 80% of my black bags. In theory, this should mean that I can get down to one black bag of landfill every six months, instead of every six weeks at present. About all that cannot now be recycled in Bristol are soft plastics like cellophane.

It's great that this has finally happened and that the slide in recycling under Labour is now starting to be reversed. It would be churlish to claim credit for the new Lib Dem administration for making this happen given that I blogged about it coming a couple of months back. However, the question I have is why it took Labour so long to do anything after their pointless Citizens' Jury on waste. It just seems like they kicked the whole thing into the grass for two years. I'm glad Gary Hopkins has picked this one up by the scruff of the neck and is moving things along quickly again. Our budget amendments in February have ploughed significantly more money into this agenda and I am hopeful that we'll see some big leaps forward in coming months.

I'm off to London on Monday for a Friends of the Earth conference on waste reduction where I am hoping to pick up some hints from the continent where they still have better rates than we do in the UK...