Why should I recycle?
Calderdale households produce a staggering 90,000 tonnes of household rubbish every year. This is the equivalent of 18 million bags full of rubbish! The problem is getting worse as we buy more packaged and disposable goods the volume of rubbish we produce is set to increase by 4% every year.
Most of Calderdale’s rubbish is buried in landfill sites. These sites have negative effects on our environment and space is fast running out to bury Calderdale’s rubbish.
At the moment over 25% of Calderdale’s rubbish is recycled. This needs to increase to 40% by 2010 to help us avoid expensive fines by the Government. The only way these targets will be reached is if everyone takes part in reducing the amount of waste they produce and by recycling, reusing and composting.
The Recycle for Calderdale campaign is committed to working in partnership with all local authorities, businesses and individuals in Calderdale to help achieve these targets.
Most of Calderdale’s rubbish is buried in landfill sites. These sites have negative effects on our environment and space is fast running out to bury Calderdale’s rubbish.
At the moment over 25% of Calderdale’s rubbish is recycled. This needs to increase to 40% by 2010 to help us avoid expensive fines by the Government. The only way these targets will be reached is if everyone takes part in reducing the amount of waste they produce and by recycling, reusing and composting.
The Recycle for Calderdale campaign is committed to working in partnership with all local authorities, businesses and individuals in Calderdale to help achieve these targets.
Recycling facts
- Every 8 months the UK produces enough waste to fill Lake Windermere (the largest lake in England).
- Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of rubbish annually, amounting to about 31 million tonnes for the UK each year.
- Every year, the average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5,000 hours of television.
- If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14m fewer full dustbins per year.
- If every Briton purchased one item made from recycled wool a year it would save 371 million gallons of water, 480 to nnes of chemical dyes and 4571 million days of an average family's electricity needs.
- On average, every family in the UK uses around 330 glass bottles and jars each year.
- As a country, we use 150 million plastic bags each week – and it takes 500 years for one plastic bag in landfill to decay.
- On average, every one of us in the UK throws away seven times our own weight (around 575kg) in rubbish every year.
- Each year, the average British family throws away 6 trees worth of paper! If we recycled it we could save 12,500 litres of water, 1,500kwh of electricity, 3.5kg of carbon dioxide and 7kg of nitrogen emissions.