Carbon date

It’s energy efficiency week, with ‘tonnes‘ of advice on offer about how to cut down environment-polluting carbon emissions.

But Wigan Council’s green team has a simpler message for local residents – “keep up the good work!”

The borough’s recycling rate has climbed from just four per cent six years ago to 18 per cent today and the trend is set to continue as the public embraces new schemes to recycle garden waste, magazines and papers.

Waste management education officer, Nick Deakin says:

“We really appreciate residents’ efforts over recent years, but even now four fifths of our rubbish is sent to costly landfill sites when we could easily recycle over half of what we put into our wheelie bins.

”Every year, an average dustbin will contain enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3 500 showers and 5 000 hours of TV. With little effort, there’s plenty of ways to really help conserve precious resources for the future. The routine of filling paper sacks, and putting garden waste and clean brown cardboard into green wheelie bins, has been embraced by the grown ups, so I’ll be taking the message to the next generation that something can - and must - be done.

”Here’s an example. Every year, some three billion cans are buried, wasting tonnes of useful materials. With a can bank within a mile of everyone’s home, and very probably one next to the same supermarket where you do your shopping, it is so easy to save your empties from landfill.

”Often we blame industry for causing pollution, but larger aluminium products used in buildings and vehicles have a 95% recycling rate. It makes business sense to recycle them. It requires only 5% of the energy it takes to make new aluminium – and produces only 5% of the CO2 emissions. Put simply, just one recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run your home television set for three hours.”

Residents can log on to the council’s website at www.wigan.gov.uk for details of their nearest roadside recycling point.

Note to editors

• For more information, please contact John Rowbotham on 01942 404369.
• Energy Saving Week is a national event designed to raise awareness of climate change and energy-saving products. It seeks to demonstrate how individuals can help to combat climate change by showing that every time someone makes an energy efficient choice, they contribute towards the UK targets of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.