Recycle Week 21-27 June 2010

Monday, 21 June 2010

One of the many recycle bins on the Whiteknights campus

This week is Recycle Week; a national campaign organised by recyclenow.com to get everyone thinking more about what they can recycle. In partnership with the British Heart Foundation, the focus of this year is recycling small electrical items instead of leaving them to rust in your garage or loft, so that the plastics and metals can be reused to make new products.

If you find electrical items at home that you no longer use but are still in good working order, you can donate them to your nearest British Heart Foundation Furniture and Electrical Store to help raise money for the charity. Or if they are completely broken you can take them to your nearest Household Waste Recycling Centre, such as Smallmead or Longshot Lane, where they will be sent off for recycling.

If University of Reading staff have electrical items from their department that they want to be recycled, they can email waste@reading.ac.uk with the subject title ‘Recycling electricals' to arrange a collection. Unfortunately we are unable to take any of your home items for recycling.

What are we doing on campus?

Here at the University we are continuing to replace our litter bins with recycling units, with 20 new bins being installed in June. We are also taking orders for internal recycling bins for departments to encourage waste segregation in offices.

These actions have helped us to recycle over 40% of our waste so far this year, but our target is to recycle 50% by 2012. By introducing new recycling streams to the campuses in the months to come, as well as communicating closely with our Environmental Champions, we hope to exceed our goal.

For more information about Recycle Week, go to http://www.recyclenow.com

For information about the University's recycling, go to http://www.reading.ac.uk/cleanandgreen

For your local BHF store, go to http://www.recyclenow.com/recycle_week/bhf_reuse.html