Christchurch Bridge goes green for Recycle Week

Christchurch Bridge will be lit up in green from today until Saturday to mark national Recycle Week. At the same time, residents are being encouraged to embrace recycling habits and think more about what they can do to help Reading recycle.

Reading Borough Council is particularly keen to encourage more people to engage with its free food waste recycling scheme introduced in 2021, to ensure everything that can go in their food waste bin does. This includes all plate scrapings, vegetable peelings, meat bones and carcases, egg shells, banana skins, fruit stones, tea bags and coffee grounds. Used cooking oil can also be put in your food waste bin, as long as it is in a sealed plastic bottle.

By recycling as much food waste as possible, residents are contributing to a more sustainable planet by sending less waste to landfill and helping to generate fertiliser and electricity. It also saves the Council money, as every time a lorry load of food is recycled it is four times cheaper than treating it as general waste.

This year, the national Recycle Week campaign from WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) is focusing on the “Big Recycling Hunt", highlighting some of the main items that we should all ensure goes to our red recycling bins instead of our grey or residual waste bins. This nationwide hunt aims to engage children and families to find 'lost recyclables' that too often find their way into the rubbish bin.

These include:

• Empty aerosols
• Plastic bottles for shampoo and shower gel
• Food tins
• Plastic tubs and pots

Residents are also being reminded to help keep Reading safe by disposing responsibly of batteries. Batteries, vapes and small electricals should never, ever be put in residual waste as they can start fires. Such a fire happened only last week at Reading’s re3 facility. Careless battery and vape disposal endangers lives and adds to the burgeoning costs of waste removal for everyone in the end. Batteries should be recycled properly at the re3 centre on Island Road or via battery recycling stations which can now be found at many supermarkets.

Karen Rowland, Lead Councillor for Environmental Services and Community Safety, said:

“Our residents have so positively embraced recycling in Reading, but we need to look at the things we can do to do even better. We need to each really use national Recycle Week to have a look at how we can further improve our recycling habits at home. Ensuring that the right items go in the correct bin, utilising the food caddy for food waste, ensuring the proper disposal of batteries, or opting to reuse or repair before making a new purchase all help tremendously. Any extra effort really does contribute to fewer increased costs for each of us. By “upping your recycling game” at home, each of us can contribute to reducing that overall expense and making Reading a better and greener place to live. We hope that illuminating Christchurch Bridge will serve as a useful reminder to everyone, so please go and check it out”.

Top tips for recycling in Reading:

• Never bag your mixed recycling - keep all plastic bottles, plastic pots, tubs, trays, cans, tins, aerosols, foil and cartons loose.
• Make sure to use your food caddy and recycle all left-over and out of date food.
• Any bags can be used in your food waste caddy, including the bags your vegetables and bread come in
• Never, ever bin batteries or vapes as binned batteries can cause high-risk, expensive fires - take them to supermarket drop off points or recycling centre.
• Take your jars and bottles to the bottle banks – you don’t even need to separate the colours any more