Time to step it up this Recycle Week

This year Recycle Now welcomes a celebrity ambassador to front Recycle Week, TV Presenter, Invictus Games Medallist and Strictly Come Dancing Star JJ Chalmers for the national campaign. 

JJ Chalmers said:

I’m thrilled to be part of this year’s campaign. I’m passionate about the environment and how we can battle climate change. I am delighted to be working with the Recycle Now team on what has become a really important week of action across the UK. I really want to encourage people to look at what they are doing and how they can ‘Step It Up’ and do even more… even better.

Councillor Karen Shakespeare, cabinet member for public realm, said: 

This year’s campaign focusses on how recycling can help fight climate change and how by recycling even better we can have a bigger impact on our environment.

So many of our residents are already passionate recyclers but there’s so much more we can all do. Every empty can, every yoghurt pot, every scrap of paper should make it into your recycling, none of these items should end up in your general waste. Sometimes it’s just a case of taking that extra few steps from the kitchen into your recycling bin, but every little thing helps us to make a huge difference.

So far in 2021 Dudley residents have recycled a whopping 5700 tonnes of paper and cardboard in Dudley alone, equating to 97165 trees. It all adds up and we can all play our part

Latest research from Recycle Now reveals that almost 9 out of 10 people now recycle.

However, 55% of households put items in the general rubbish bin that can be recycled including foil, aerosols, and plastic toiletry (shampoo and conditioner bottles), plastic trays and cleaning and bleach bottles. This is where people need to ‘Step It Up’. We can all help fight climate change by recycling because recycling currently saves 18 million tonnes of CO2 every year, which is the same as taking 12 million cars off the road.

Recycle Now and Dudley Council are asking the nation to ‘Step It Up’ and perfect their recycling habits.

Top tips for recycling in Dudley:

• People can recycle more plastics than ever including plastic yogurt pots, plastic food trays and shampoo bottles. 
• Never put polystyrene, food waste, black bags in with recycling
• Wash and squash plastics and breakdown large carboard to maximise capacity at home and on collection vehicles. Better use of space means fewer trips, fewer collection vehicles on the road and a smaller carbon footprint.

For people unsure how to recycle a specific item, the DudleyRecycles locator shows exactly what can go in the recycling bin and what can be recycled a other locations visit www.dudleyrecycles.org.uk/recyclinglocator

For more information on Recycle Week, visit www.recyclenow.org.uk/RecycleWeek