Recycle week 18 - 24 June 2012

Monday, 18 June 2012

This week is Recycle Week; a national campaign organised by recyclenow.com to encourage everyone to think more about what they can recycle. The focus this year is ‘recycling home and away' with a special emphasis on recycling plastic bottles.

Here at the University we have an excellent use for all your empty 2 litre bottles. Reading University Volunteering Society are busy building a plastic bottle greenhouse for Little Learners Nursery on the Whiteknights campus and they are only 200 bottles short of finishing.

If you have any 2 litre bottles you can donate, please drop them off in the Hub in the Students' Union - there is a collection bin in the reception area.

On Thursday 21 June from 12pm - 3pm, the University's big tidy up will be taking place. Come along and join the Clean and Green Team who will touring the Whiteknights campus with litter pickers and recycling bags keeping our beautiful grounds tidy. Meet at the Palmer Building at 12pm.

Recycling at home and at work can have significant benefits to environment from saving energy to preventing pollution as well as significant financial savings. Recycling just one tonne of plastic bottles saves 1.5 tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. To put this into perspective, if everyone in the UK recycled just one extra plastic bottle during Recycle Week, this would save enough energy to power over 71,000 plasma screen TVs for a year.

Recycling week aims to remind us all of the value of recycling and just how easily we can do it at home and at work. The University has introduced recycling facilities across the estate to encourage recycling and has set an ambitious target of 50% of waste to be recycled. Look out for these bins across campus:

For 2012, think twice before jettisoning plastic bottles into the rubbish bag - because now it is possible, thanks to technology and help from the University's waste management contractors at Select, to recycle ALL shapes and sizes of bottle as well as plastic containers (type 5 and 6 - depicted on the base of the container with a number encircled by arrows). Milk, shampoo, bleach, shower gel and yoghurt pots - you name it; all you have to do is wash 'em and squash 'em.

So what will you be doing for Recycle Week?  Let us know at waste@reading.ac.uk or tweet us UniRdg_EEST