What is recycling?

New! Beat the binman game - Follow the link to the Beacon Radio website to play this great new recycling game.

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In Shropshire we produce around 160,000 tonnes of rubbish every year – around 1 tonne per household and the same weight as more than 20,000 double decker buses. If parked end-to-end these buses would stretch from Shrewsbury to London!

Most of our rubbish goes into holes in the ground called landfill sites, but these are filling up fast and we are running out of space to bury our rubbish.

The good news is that nearly 60 per cent of what we throw away could be recycled or composted, and Shropshire Waste Partnership is working hard to make it easier for you to recycle.

At the moment almost 43 per cent of Shropshire’s rubbish is recycled but, with your help, we can do much better and we all need to recycle more of the right things, more often.

Unlike burying and burning rubbish, recycling allows materials to be used again and made into useful products. It can take as little as six weeks to turn the things you recycle into a new product, which can then be bought and recycled again! In fact, if you recycle a newspaper within seven days it could be back in your hands as a new newspaper!

Many types of material can be recycled, including glass, food and drink cans, metal, paper, cardboard, plastic, wood, clothes, food and garden waste, TVs and more.

For information about how to recycle and dispose of trade and hazardous waste, follow the 'business waste' link in the menu bar.

Recycling credits
You can claim money from Shropshire Waste Partnership if you collect rubbish and recycle it rather than it being sent to landfill. Payments can be made to a wide range of not-for-profit groups such as guides/scouts, charities, schools, churches or voluntary groups. For more information, follow the 'recycling credits' link.